Aryn lifted a brow, quizzically.
“Didn’t you wonder how I knew you were in the city?” Jaren’s humorless laugh came, faded. “You are in the presence of one of the few psychic warriors known among the kin, swordsman.”
Irian was oddly quiet.
The blade at Aryn’s back was becoming heavier, the way it had in the early years, before Aryn had realized just what he held when he first took up the blade. “Know you, friend, it grieves me that it led to this. If I had known she would come to any danger, any pain…never would I have risked her, never.”
As they crept closer, their presence muffled by the deft touch of Jaren’s magic, Irian spoke somberly into Aryn’s mind.
“It’s not your fault, Irian. Tyriel has always done what Tyriel wants to do—and her actions shouldn’t have put her at risk, but they did. That isn’t your fault.”
“Ahhh, but my wanting her so desperately clouded my thinking. And my fear, that clouded what little rational thought I had left.”
Aryn slid the enchanter a wry glance as Irian walked through a tree without blinking an eye.
“You love her,” Aryn said quietly. “Don’t think I don’t know it. Don’t act like I’m not aware. The person who is to blame is Tainan. And Tainan alone. Not you. Not me, though I will kick my ass from now until the day I die. And certainly not Tyriel.”
“Do not be so quick to acquit me, brother of my soul. There are things you cannot know about me. Things I haven’t told a living soul in more millennia than even I can recall.”
Aryn drew the blade at the door. Jaren took the back. Very few servants were here. Very few living souls. But many, many magicked traps and creatures. As Aryn drew the blade, he also called Irian, pulling the enchanter willingly inside himself, so that the two were one inside his skin.
Five humans. Including the most important one. Tainan Delre.
And the ever-weakening soul of a very battered Wildling elf.
Aryn launched himself at the door, words he didn’t know he knew pouring from him. And not a drop of blood was spilled, not a grain of salt flung on the ground. The magic was well and firmly inside him, and in his rage, the accouterments so many enchanters needed were forgotten, no more than props to the power Aryn now wielded easily.
Irian smiled bitterly. His task was nearly complete. But at such a high cost.
Fire erupted the moment Aryn’s body touched the door. At the same time, the very foundation of the building shook as Jaren’s magic breached the barriers that surrounded and protected it. Under the onslaught, it buckled.
A berzerker, Aryn lifted his sword and cut through one guard, severing his torso from the waist up.
Aryn’s eyes gleamed red with rage as he scented Tyriel on the body of the huge man who came running at him, blade drawn. Aryn flung one hand up, slicing it along Asrel’s edge for blood, smearing his blood on the face of the man who stopped, frozen in abject terror at the sight of the warrior standing before him with death and vengeance in his glowing blue eyes. The images continued to shift—from a tall, leanly-built blond man, with an almost inhuman beauty with eyes that burned bright with fury, sweeping down on them like an avenging angel, to a sinister-looking, towering warrior of a man with wildly curling black hair and rough-hewn features in barbaric garb, a wicked smile on his face, the very devil to prey upon your fears.
The guard screamed and screamed, as the man rubbed a smear of blood down his cheek, then impaled him on the tip of the sword, pushing it in slowly from his belly, downward.
“Why is it I smell her on you? All over you?” Aryn asked hoarsely, his rage tightening his throat. As the blade forged through his internal organs, it burned them, searing them, charring them. “My lady—you beat her, raped her and whipped her. If I could spare the time…” A growl ripped from his throat as he twisted the blade.
The blade scraped over the guard’s internal sex organs, and then outward, and his screams locked in his throat.
“Die…slowly,” and he jerked the blade forward, ripping bone, tissue, muscle, and the man’s cock from his body.
In the hall, Aryn came face to face with Tainan.
Jaren had planned on taking this bastard.
But both Irian and Aryn had other plans.
Of course, Tyriel was more important, but if they happened upon him…
“Bury Asrel deep inside his black heart, my brother. Such a simple blow, and he will not expect a physical attack from an enchanter.”
Irian formed. Larger than life, full of vengeance, rage, anger, his black hair whipping around his face, the ancient enchanter’s voice rang out in a way it never had as he cursed the sorcerer in a tongue no longer spoken. His hand closed into a fist, then he slapped it against the stone wall behind him, setting the old stone manor house to shaking until even the foundation quivered.
Tainan paled as Irian’s focus narrowed on him.
“You die today,” Irian said, his voice still ringing with that booming echo. He flung his hand toward the thinner, trembling man and a streak of red sliced down Tainan’s face.
Aryn lunged, snarling at Irian. “He’s mine.”
“Then kill him. She doesn’t have time.”
Aryn wanted to linger, wanted the sorcerer to suffer. But Tyriel’s suffering mattered more.
So, he did just as Irian said, lunging full-on, but pausing to deliver an arm-numbing blow to Tainan’s face, taking him to the ground and straddling him as the man went down. Aryn dropped his sword, normally a sin he’d never allow himself. But he needed to feel the man’s blood on his hands as he died.
Drawing a dagger from the sheath in his boot, he pushed it into Tainan’s chest. As the dagger pierced the man’s heart, shock and denial pierced Tainan’s dying eyes. “May the demon you enslaved find you in the afterlife, pig fucker.”
Irian’s translucent form appeared at Aryn’s side and knelt. Tainan’s body jerked as Irian touched his hand to the man’s brow—sigils appeared as if branded into his flesh.
“He will now,” Irian said. “Tyriel gave us his name. And now you are marked. Enjoy your suffering, worm. You earned it.”
Tainan’s weak scream ended as Aryn savagely twisted the dagger, shredding his evil heart.
As he rose, thick blood bubbled up through Tainan’s mouth.
“Now, we must hurry,” Irian said, resting a ghostly hand on Aryn’s shoulder. “The magics may fall without him here to maintain them.”
Chapter 16
Jaren lifted her broken body in his arms, his throat tightening.
Ah, sweet. I failed you, didn’t I?
If he had kept his promise, his bond sooner, but he had thought he had time.
She might yet die with bitterness between them.
Their last words had been in anger and while she battled a demon, Jaren stood by with a woman-child in his arms. He’d just watched, too enraged, frustrated with her, with her arrogance, her insight…with the very things she’d been right about, the very situation that had brought them to where they’d been.
That she’d not needed his help did not matter.
It mattered that he had not offered. Even now, she bore the demon’s silver mark on her breast, the insult of it a line down her torso and her normally strong, limber frame now thin to the point of frailty. That silver brand had gone gray and her thick black hair was brittle and dull.