A Soul for Vengeance (3 page)

“Release her, Loku,” Sazi ordered, her tone as dark as her skin, “before you are forced to have me as your jailor.”

“Another time, my little Soulbearer,”
he whispered in her mind before withdrawing completely.

As soon as he did, Sazi released her from the spell. A series of hoarse coughs rattled Arden’s chest while she gulped in the delicious air. She pressed her pounding forehead against the cool stone floor and waited for her pulse to return to normal.

Sazi knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. Warm magic flowed from her touch, driving away the chill of near-death and the pain lingering in her throat. “I am sorry I had to resort to such measures, but I knew of no other way to make him release you.”

Arden lifted her head and stared into the Ornathian’s unreadable dark eyes. How many secrets did they hold? “You could have just told me what I wanted to know.”

“You are letting him influence your actions too much.” She placed a finger under Arden’s chin. “Remember why you are here. It is to learn how to control him, not to let him control you.”

She recounted the last few minutes in her mind. Loku had seized control of her so quickly, she’d hardly realized what he was doing. In the past, he’d always asked her permission. But this time, he grabbed control of her body, her mind, her voice in less than a second. She shuddered, anger filling the void left as her fear faded. What else was he capable of doing? “And how do you suggest I do that, should this happen again?”

The Ornathian replied by offering Arden one of her rare smiles. She lowered her finger to Arden’s chest and pressed it into the place right above her heart. “By looking inside here. Only you can control him. Remember who you were before he entered your life, and draw on that for your power.”

Arden almost laughed. Before Loku’s soul entered her body, she was a nobody. A skinny, yellow-haired witch who constantly lived in fear of being burned at the stake. An outsider who reminded her mother every day of the man who’d abandoned them. A girl who wanted nothing more than to disappear completely. “And what if I want to forget that person?”

“Then you will succumb to the madness as quickly as the others.” Sazi stood and walked away.

Arden wrapped her arms around her stomach to drive away the chill forming deep inside her gut. Sazi had managed to hit upon the one thing she feared the most—losing her mind to the chaos god just like the prior Soulbearers had. Memories of the prior Soulbearer, with his wild eyes and incessant muttering, filled her mind and added a chill to her blood.
“Is that what you’re trying to do, Loku? Turn me into Robb?”

“Of course not, my little Soulbearer.”
A pair of invisible arms wrapped around her. Normally, Loku’s embrace comforted her, but now she only wished to shake it off. Loku seemed to sense her thoughts and retreated.
“They are the ones who wish to control you. You are the closest thing to a goddess they will ever encounter. Remember that.”

Her mind swirled as she rose to her feet, throwing her off balance for the first few steps. Who should she believe? Sazi? Loku? It wasn’t until she was halfway down the tower’s spiraling stairs that she decided she needed to be wary of both of them. Gravaria was a land seeped in both magic and secrets. It made her wish for the simple hostility of Ranello. At least there, she knew where she stood.

When she reached the bottom, she went straight for the wing where the Mage’s Council met. These men and women were considered the ten most powerful mages in Gravaria, although she questioned their power after seeing what Sazi was capable of doing a few moments before. Since Nelos’s priest had killed the Mage Sextus in an attempt to get to Arden, a new mage had been elected to the council. She only hoped the new Mage Decius would be willing to divulge some information about the Empress’s entourage.

Unfortunately, her path intersected with Empress Marist instead. The two women stopped a few feet apart and eyed each other warily. Arden had only recently learned that she and the Empress were cousins, although there was no denying the strong family resemblance. They were the same height, the same build, possessed the same golden hair and blue eyes. If her mother hadn’t clipped the tips when she was a baby, perhaps Arden’s ears would’ve formed the same elegant points as Marist’s.

But instead of welcoming her to the family, the Empress seemed to view Arden as a threat to her power. She lifted her chin ever so slightly and regarded her with cold blue eyes.

Arden mirrored her stance, the only person in the room who dared not bow before the Empress. “Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Soulbearer.” Her eyes glittered silver for a moment, heightening the Empress’s icy nature.

“To what do we owe the honor of your presence?” She secretly hoped Marist was here to lift the spell that kept Arden captive behind the Conclave’s walls. The Empress had arrested her after she and Loku defeated Nelos. The Tribunal of the Gods feared what would happen if she actually killed a god, but since the order of the world didn’t fall out of balance, Loku had reassured her that Nelos’s soul had survived. It was crippled, perhaps, but not destroyed. Hopefully, enough time had passed to convince the Empress of that.

Marist arched one golden brow. “I’m here to oversee the selection of your new Protector.”

Her supply of spit doubled, forcing her to swallow faster. “I already have a Protector.”

“Yes, but he’s asked the Mage’s Council to be relieved of his duty.”

The blood drained from her face so quickly, her head swam. She took a step back. “Dev no longer wants to be my Protector?”

“Didn’t he tell you?” A slight smirk adorned the Marist’s lips.

“I was hoping to wait until we’d found a suitable replacement before telling her, Your Imperial Majesty,” Dev said from behind Arden.

She turned around, scarcely believing what she was hearing. Dev’s face remained unreadable, as always, but a glint of some unrecognizable emotion glowed from his dark green eyes. Yet, despite the news that he was planning to abandon her, her heart quickened, and she was drawn to him as though he’d looped a rope around her waist and was pulling her toward him. “Why?”

He winced and tightened his jaw, his gaze stripping through all her defenses until he came to the raw pain of her soul. “You know why,” he replied in a hoarse whisper.

She drew in a sharp breath, the air burning her nostrils and making her eyes water. Her hands trembled. Yes, she knew why. She’d crossed the line by letting him know she wanted something more. She’d risked her heart by showing him that she loved him. And this was his answer.

Her feet backpedaled, stumbling over themselves as she placed some much needed distance between her and the man who was breaking her heart all over again. But she refused to let him see her cry. She fought to keep her emotions concealed, her face as hard as her cousin’s and her voice as cold. “Then so be it.”

She kept her steps slow and deliberate until the shadows of the narrow hallway consumed her. Then she ran back to her room, the sound of Cinder’s padded feet following her through the twisted paths of Conclave. Once she was behind closed doors, she sank to the floor and let the tears fall. The fire wolf nudged her with his muzzle, inviting her to run her hands through his coarse fur and cling to it while she cried.

“Forget about Dev,”
Loku said.
“You’ll always have me, and I promise never to hurt you.”

“So you say.”
After his little demonstration in Sazi’s tower today, she doubted his sincerity.

Loku replied with a snort of disdain.
“If you wish for me to abandon you like Dev—”

“Just shut up and let me mourn.”

“No, I refuse to let you cry over a man who obviously is too stupid to know what he has. He’s not worth your tears
.
”
He paused, filling her mind with an image of a man with long black hair whipping in the wind, glowing yellow-green eyes, and lines that chaotically danced across his skin like lightning bolts. It was the same form he’d revealed to her in a dream many months ago, a glimpse of what he’d looked like before his body had been destroyed.
“If I still had my body, I’d prove to you that you didn’t need any other man but me.”

The seductive tone of his words snapped her from her world of self-pity and halted her tears. Over the last year, she’d come to view Loku as a confidant, a friend, but never a lover. She could only imagine the trouble she’d be in if she accepted his invitation.
“Thankfully, you don’t have a body.”

“But imagine what you’ve been missing.”
A breeze bathed the back of her neck as though Loku was standing right behind her.
“I’d make Kell look like an inexperienced boy.”

More images flooded her mind—scenes of tangled bodies and tangled sheets, of two people caught in the throes of passion. A rebellious spark of desire ignited deep inside, flushing her skin. A whimper rose from her throat. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the world Loku painted for her, only to realize that she was the woman in the scenes. Her mouth went dry, and her pulse quickened as the man’s face came into view. She knew that dark auburn hair, as soft as silk, and the eyes the color of evergreens.

Dev.

Fury replaced her lust. She jumped to her feet so quickly, Cinder tumbled back on his haunches.
“That wasn’t funny, Loku.”

“You did that,”
he replied, his voice laced with acid,
“not me. If I was in control, it would have been my face you saw as you came, my body giving you pleasure.”

Arden pressed her hands against her flaming cheeks. Her legs twitched, forcing her to move from one end of the room to the other.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t be near him any longer, not after he made very clear he wants nothing to do with me.”

“Then leave.”

“I can’t.”
Even if she could sneak past the spell that held her prisoner, where would she go? Crawling back to Kell? No, she couldn’t do that, not after she’d chosen Dev over him. She reached for the comfort of her mother’s necklace, the object that had always served as her anchor in times of trouble, only to be reminded once again that it was gone. She’d lost it the night she fought Nelos.

“I can help you. I know how to get past the Empress’s spell,”
Loku teased.
“I even know where you can find your mother’s necklace.”

She froze, weighing his offer with care. Why would be offering to help her now?
“What makes you think you can do that?”

“I am still a god, you know. I’m just trapped by your body.”

“And what do you want in return?”

He chuckled.
“I just want you to be happy, my little Soulbearer.”

Somehow, she doubted that. But he offered the only solution to her current situation, and if he could help get her mother’s necklace back, she’d be willing to take the risk.
“Then we’ll leave in the morning.”

“Who says we have to wait until morning? The Empress and the entire Mage’s Council are occupied at the moment. What better time to leave than now?”

Cinder whimpered as though he knew the contents of their private conversation. He came between her and the door, leaning against her and pushing her back from the escape route.

“Isn’t it dangerous to go down the mountain at night?”

Loku laughed.
“That’s want they want you to believe. Besides, I’ve been up and down this mountain so many times over the centuries, I could navigate it while you slept.”

“Sorry, but I don’t trust you that much.”
The last glowing embers of the sun slid behind the mountains. Scaling the steep path in the dark would be dangerous—one false step could lead to a hundred foot drop—but Loku had a point about this being the perfect time to escape. She ruffled Cinder’s fur to calm him.
“Let me change and pack up a few things.”

It only took her a few minutes to switch her dress for a tunic and leggings that were more suitable for travel. She stuffed the dress into a sack and grabbed a few apples from the bowl in the center of the room. There wasn’t much else left to take. A fire had destroyed most of her belongings several months ago, but at least it made for lighter travel.

When her gaze fell on Dev’s bed, however, her heart hiccupped. She’d been a fool to ever think she could change his mind… or win his heart. He was a knight, sworn to uphold a vow he made a century before he met her and unwilling to let anything come between him and his duty. And as much pain as his choice had caused her, it also made her admire him for his unwavering devotion to his promise.

At least, until tonight. After learning that he wanted to be released of his vow to protect her, she no longer held him in such high esteem. He was a coward who chose to run away from his feelings rather than embrace them.

You have no room to talk,
she reminded herself.
You’re running away, too.
But I can’t afford to be hurt by him anymore. It’s time I took charge of my own life.

She draped a warm cloak around her shoulders and hurried down the stairs, constantly checking around corners to make sure the path was clear before darting forward. Her hands trembled, and her magic simmered under the surface of her skin, ready to be called upon if needed. Cinder stayed close beside her, no longer hindering her escape but making it very clear he was coming with her.

By the time she reached the stables and saddled up her horse, confidence had replaced any fear that may have choked her up. With each step, she grew more resolute. This was the best path for her to take now. She’d find her mother’s necklace and then find a way back home to help Kell. If there was any truth to the rumors that Thallus had invaded Ranello, he’d need her help. Months had passed since she’d last spoken to Kell through the mirror, and every attempt since then had ended in silence. She prayed it was because he was angry with her and not because of something more dire.