Ah…his body remembered. His cock thickened and swelled, pressing against the lacings of his leather breeches, blood pulsing thick in his veins, the whispering echo of her scent flooding his nostrils.
An image assaulted him.
Her beaten starving body, mauled and scarred, her eyes so dim and lackluster.
No power on earth—his hands closed into fists and the blade at his back felt heavy.
No power on earth would stop him from finding the one who had done this.
Who are you? Where have you taken her?
Without his intent, the magic that had begun to seep into his very bones lashed out, stamping its mark into the words and when the thoughts left Aryn, his ever-growing magic followed.
An image slammed into his mind.
Blood-red hair, blood-red mouth, pale, pale skin, blood magic.
And...he had a name.
Tainan…
“Aryn?”
“Wait,” Aryn whispered, his voice low and harsh. His lids lowered until only bare slits of his eyes showed and his breath came in harsh gasps as he remembered that night six years earlier.
Jaren, Tyriel and he, in the bowels of the city as they sought the man who wanted to sacrifice innocents to the Darkness Below.
Tainan.
His prey had a face.
* * * * *
Aryn woke in the silence of the night with a blade pressed to his throat.
Magic choked the room, the kind that sought to peel flesh from bone and boil the blood in your veins.
“I trusted you, human. Into your hands, I gave my princess, to love, and keep and protect. And my Lord Prince tells me she is gone, away from his power, his touch, even beyond his reach—his reach—one of the most powerful fae in all the land. For six long months I have searched for her.” The low, almost silent whisper brought a dread fear into Aryn’s belly but he threw it off and opened his eyes, staring into Jaren’s face, all but lost to the shadows.
The elf moved away and threw a mage light into the air, staring at Aryn with glittering, angry eyes. “Six long months. Six months is nothing to the kin. Nothing unless you seek what is dear to your heart, as Tyriel is to me. I trusted her to you. And you did not keep her safe. For that I should kill you where you lay.”
Aryn sat up slowly, staring at the elf as Irian came out of the darkness, wavering into view, solidifying and staring at the elf with cool eyes.
“And these past three months, I have searched for you, swordsman. I was led here and I have waited. Now you arrive,” Jaren murmured as he drew his blade and ran one finger down the deadly edge, ignoring the enchanter.
Aryn felt the cold fear sliding through his belly as the assassin continued to stare at him with gleaming green eyes that glowed and shifted with a morass of colors and magic that swelled from within. There was a power there, like what he had sensed inside the half-elf, but it was more deadly, finer, focused—all of it focused on him.
“I know who has her. Are you here to fight it out with me, or here to help me save her, you long-eared son-of-a-bitch?” he asked in a low, harsh voice.
A flashing smile lit the elf’s poetically beautiful face and Jaren threw back his head, his long, razor-straight hair falling down his back as his musical laughter filled the air.
“’Tis no wonder the Princess was so drawn. Not a bit of fear in you, though you’re stupid to not have some fear. And so very unmortal do you act.” Then he moved like a streak of lightning across the room.
Aryn fell back on the bed, rolled backward and landed on the balls of his feet, barely managing to draw his blade and lift it before Jaren was at his back. In such close quarters, a sword did little good. Unless it was enchanted. A long knife at his throat, Aryn breathed shallowly as Jaren whispered silkily, “Where is my lady Princess?”
“Go fuck yourself and the bloody steed that brought you here, you magicked son-of-a-whore.” Aryn didn’t bother to reach for the hands that held him. Jaren was centuries old. He slashed his roughened palm down the blade as Irian stood watching it all with what looked like very amused eyes.
“So nice of you to help me here.”
“Oh, it’s not your death he wants. He’s just bloody pissed. If he tries t’ kill you, I’ll stop him.” Irian leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his broad chest, lifting a curious brow as Jaren continued to ignore what Aryn did with the blade. Was the elf truly so ignorant of what Aryn did?
Aryn mouthed the words silently and too late, Jaren felt the magic rustle through the air just before the air above Aryn’s body grew fire hot. Aryn whirled away just as Jaren fell back silently, the front of his body scorched and smoking. Most men would have been screaming in pain, but the elf just stared appraisingly at the swordsman before lifting his reddened hands and studying the blackened, blistered flesh as it formed.
“What an interesting change,” he mused.
“Tyriel is not your lady.”
Jaren’s eyes narrowed and a feline smile, predatory and sharp, settled on his face. “And pray tell, why not?”
Irian perked up with interest as Aryn lifted the blade and pointed it at the elf. “She is mine.”
* * * * *
The firelight flickered across Aryn’s face, casting half of it in shadow as he sat staring into the night. Irian had swarmed up from the recesses of his mind and forced his damnable will upon Aryn’s body until Aryn sullenly agreed to stop for the night.
Tyriel’s cousin Kellen had erupted into fury when Aryn said he wouldn’t be traveling with them to rescue her, but he’d finally acquiesced after seeing the elvish steed. Aryn’s mount Bel couldn’t keep even half the pace, although the gelding was fast.
However, Kellen rode a plains pony when he rode anything at all and no plains pony could keep pace either warrior’s beast.
He’d given both of them a scathing send-off, but promised to send word through the Wildling clans that they believed they’d found a line on Tyriel.
Bring her back to us or you’ll face all the fury of the clans, Kellen had promised.
It hadn’t been an empty threat.
They’d already encountered four Wildlings out on a ‘roam’ as they called it, each of them asking after Tyriel. Aryn knew only one of them.
Word had already spread. They’d been gone from Ifteril just three days.
Three days of solid, hard riding, Aryn brooded, and the blasted elf looked as rested, and as out for blood, when they stopped as when they started.
He lay on his bedroll, smoking a long, oddly scented pipe, stroking a crescent-shaped metallic stone of black at his neck as Aryn stared into the night.
The swordsman had no idea how closely the elf was watching him. And likely wouldn’t care either.
He had sat for the longest time alone, undisturbed, aware of nothing but a sense of her…somewhere in the east. Closer and closer.
Now Irian was at his side, lowering himself to his haunches, his rough-hewn features puzzled, curious, almost too afraid to hope. His voice, when rarely he spoke in a voice for somebody other than Aryn alone to hear, had a deep, rippling quality, like a stone cast into a well.
“I sense something…Tyriel…but not her. I know not what.” Irian glanced over as the elf rose to his feet in one smooth graceful movement, his muscled body gleaming in the firelight. “It sensed me. Doesn’t know me. Mayhap you, brother mine. Come.”