She’d grown up hearing the people her father had enslaved whispering of the four royal children, the true heirs to the jewel that was once Elden. The hope in their furtive voices had nurtured her own, fostering dreams of a future in which fear, sharp and acrid, wasn’t her constant companion.
Then, a month ago, driven by a steadily strengthening belief that something was very, very wrong, she’d stolen away into the putrid stench and clawing branches of the Dead Forest to call a vision as her father could not, his blood too tainted—and seen the tomorrow that was to come.
The heirs of Elden would return.
All of them … but one.
The Guardian of the Abyss would not be there on that fateful day. Without him, the four-sided key of power would remain incomplete. His brothers and sister, their mates, would fight with the fiercest hearts to defeat her father, but they would fail, and Elden would fall forever to the Blood Sorcerer’s evil. Horrifying as that was, it wasn’t the worst truth.
Elden had begun to die a slow death the instant the king and the queen—the blood of Elden—had taken their final breaths. That death would be complete when the clock struck midnight on the twentieth anniversary of her father’s invasion. Not so terrible a thing if it would strip the Blood Sorcerer of power, but Elden’s people were touched by magic, too. Without it, they would simply fall where they stood, never to rise again.
Her father had spent years seeking to find a solution to what he termed a “disease.” Which is why he would not murder the returned heirs. No, she’d seen the horror in her vision—he’d have them enchained and cut into with extreme care day after day, night after night, their blood dripping to the earth in a continuous flow to fool it into believing the blood of Elden had returned. They were a race that lived for centuries, would not easily die. And so her father would continue on in his heinous—
Thump!
Jumping at the booming sound, she realized her guard was whacking on the door to hurry her up. “I’m coming,” she said, and turned away from the mirror.
Bard began to shuffle off in front of her as soon as she stepped out. It was difficult to keep up with him, for even shuffling, he was a far larger creature than her, each of his feet five times as big as her own. “Master Bard,” she called as she all but ran behind him after reaching the top of the stairs.
He didn’t stop, but she saw one of those large ears twitch.
“I do not wish to die,” she said to his back. “What must I do to survive?”
Bard shook his head in a slight negative.
There was no way to survive?
Or he didn’t know how she might?
Surely, she thought, not giving in to panic, surely her father’s evil hadn’t completely destroyed the soul of the boy who had been Prince Micah. She didn’t know much about the youngest child of King Aelfric and Queen Alvina, but she’d heard enough whispers to realize that he had been a beloved prince, the small heart of the royal family, and of Elden.
“For who could not love a babe with such a light in his eyes?”
Words her old nursery maid, Mathilde, had said as she told Liliana a night-tale. It had taken Liliana years to realize that Mathilde’s night-tales had been the true stories of Elden. And then she’d understood why Mathilde had disappeared from the nursery one cold spring night, never to be seen alive again.
Months later, her father had taken her for a walk, pointed out the gleaming white of bone in the slithering dark of the Dead Forest, a faint smile on his face.
Pain bloomed in her heart at the memory of the only person who had ever held her when she cried, but she crushed it with a ruthless hand. Mathilde was long dead, but the youngest prince of Elden still lived and, no matter the cost, Liliana would return him to Elden before the final, deadly midnight bell.
The Lord of the Black Castle found himself waiting for his prisoner. It had taken longer than he’d anticipated to capture those spirits destined for the Abyss who had somehow managed to halt their journey at the badlands that surrounded the doorway to their ultimate destination. Usually, time had little meaning for him, but this past night he’d known the hours were passing, that the intruder who had dared look him in the eye slept in his dungeon.
He wasn’t used to such thoughts and they made him curious.
So he waited on the black stone of the floor beneath his throne, aware of the day servants from the village going about their business in jittering quiet. It had been so as long as he could remember. They feared him, even as they served him. That was the way it should and would always be, for the Guardian of the Abyss must be a monster.
The thunder of Bard’s footsteps vibrated through the stone just as he was getting impatient, and then came the deep groan of the massive doors at the end of the great hall being opened. The Lord of the Black Castle looked up as Bard walked in. His prisoner was nowhere to be seen—until Bard moved aside to expose the odd creature at his back.
She was … mismatched, he thought. Though her skin was a smooth golden brown that reminded him of honey from the redblossom tree, her eyes were tiny dots a peculiar sort of nowhere color and her mouth much too big, her hooked nose overwhelming every other feature. Her hair stuck out in a stiff mass akin to the straw in the stables, and she limped when she walked, as if one leg was shorter than the other.
Truly, she was not a prepossessing thing at all. And yet he remained curious.
Because she looked him in the eye.
No one had been unafraid enough to do that for … He could not remember the last time.
“So, you survived the night,” he said.
She brushed off a piece of straw from the coarse material of her sacklike brown dress. “The accommodation was lovely, thank you.”
He blinked at the unexpected response, conscious of the servants freezing where they stood. He didn’t know what they expected him to do. Just as he had no awareness of his actions when the curse came upon him. He just knew that after it passed, parts of the castle lay wrecked, and the servants scuttled away from him like so many insects afraid to be crushed. “I shall have to speak to Bard about that,” he murmured.
“Oh, don’t blame him for my comfort,” the odd creature said with an airy wave of a bony hand. “You see, I am quite used to a stone floor, so straw is the height of luxury.”
“Who are you?” Whoever she was, she could not harm him. No one could harm him. No one could even touch him through the black armor that had crept up over his body until it encased him from neck to ankle. He’d felt the tendrils spearing through his hair of late, knew the armor would soon cover his face, too. All for the best. It would make it more difficult for evil to touch him when he went hunting its disciples.
“Liliana,” his prisoner said, those tiny eyes of no particular color meeting his own with bold confidence. “I am Liliana. Who are you?”
He angled his head, wondering if she had all her faculties. For surely she wouldn’t dare to speak to him thus otherwise. “I am the Guardian of the Abyss and the Lord of the Black Castle,” he said because it amused him.
“Do you not have a name?” A quiet whisper.
It made him go still inside. “The lord does not need a name.” But he had had one once, he thought, a long time ago. So long ago that it made waves of darkness roll through his head to even think of it, the monstrous curse within itching to take form.
He snapped a hand at Bard. “Take her back!”
Liliana could have kicked herself as she was dragged away by a massive hand, her heels scraping along the stone floor. She’d attempted too much, too soon, and the twisted evil of her father’s sorcery had struck back like the most vicious of snakes.