Eversworn: Daughters of Askara, Book 3 (24 page)

“You’re not an outlander?” Lindsay spoke up. “I don’t understand. Where are you from?”

Tongue so thick, I almost choked, I answered, “I’m Sereian.”

“Oh.” She gasped. “
Oh
.”

“Yes,” Dillon said. “Oh.” Another step and his boots were in sight. “There’s more I take it?”

“I was told to report anything I heard about the mines. He…he wanted control of them, and he wanted information on Harper so he could plan his move against him.” I stammered when Dillon froze mid-step. “At first…I was afraid…I told him everything. Then Emma became my friend…and I couldn’t. I couldn’t…betray her. So I told him less, and only what was common knowledge, only things any courier visiting might overhear. Nothing of importance. And I stole the samples to keep him placated. Instead, it fueled his greed. He knew from the reports the Feriana embolite was yielding almost pure progesaline. The samples were no longer enough. He wanted exclusive mine rights. I think, now, that was his intention all along. To learn how the operation was run, to ensure the salt was pure over a period of several months, to make sure the veins weren’t in danger of depletion.”

“You were a spy.” Dillon’s voice made me shiver anew.

“I was.” I steadied myself. “When Lindsay found me, I’d been made an offer. If I stole a shipment of processed salt, then I would be freed.” I swallowed. “My daughter would be freed.”

Lindsay toppled her stool when she stood. “You have a daughter—?”

“—what do you mean freed?” Dillon closed the distance between us.

Heat radiated from his body, and I wished I had the right to burrow against him. His palms landed on my shoulders hard enough my knees buckled. His fingers dug deep. His voice was a harsh grating sound tinged with betrayal I wasn’t finished supplying. “Damn it, Isabeau, tell me.”

Releasing my glamour, I held up my wrists. Let him see the slave bands. His eyes widened.

“What I told you about serving my master was true.” I winced when his fingers tightened. “I was his lover. For years he was content training me in the use of my powers. He’d taken me from my mother’s temple, you see.” I coughed up a bitter laugh. “He said he saw great potential in me, so he made a hefty donation to the temple and they…gifted me to him.” My voice softened. “My mother tried to stop them, so her sister priestesses beat her as he dragged me toward his sled. By birthing me to replenish the order’s numbers, she had become unclean. She had no say in temple matters. She had nothing but the shelter and food they provided in exchange for her…services.”

Dillon’s hands slid down my arms until they hung at his sides. “Is that what you were?”

“A breeder you mean?” I sensed more than saw his nod. “No.” I exhaled. “I was young and in love and foolish, and I believed my master cared more for me than he did.” I laughed at what a fool I’d been. “We were content those first few years. I had been drinking a contraceptive tea, so I had no aspirations of childbearing. When I became pregnant, he was elated. I thought it was joy that I had provided him with an heir.” I kept my voice level. “After I gave birth, he changed, and I…was glad when he severed his ties to me. He left our daughter in my care, and I was content.”

“What changed?” Dillon’s voice rasped hard in my ears.

“I don’t know.” I risked a glance up, but his eyes were too hard to meet. “I’d opened a small booth selling herbs and healing ointments. I had returned to the town of my birth, and my mother left the temple to live with me and help raise my daughter.” My vision blurred. “We were happy for the first time, until…” Warmth overflowed onto my cheeks. “I came home from market one day and found Mother. She’d been stabbed.” I blocked the mental picture before it devoured me.

“And your daughter?” He sounded closer.

“She was gone,” I whispered. “I looked—everywhere, and then I found the note.” Dillon’s touch startled me. “He said I owed him for the years I’d lived as a freewoman. He said my debts had come due, and our daughter was the payment.” I wasn’t proud of how my voice trembled. “I begged him. I promised him anything if he would only give her back to me, and he said that he had an idea.” Hysterical laughter bubbled in my chest. “I was to leave for Askara and hide in the outland slave market. He would handle the rest. I didn’t ask for details. I did as he told me. That was a year and a half ago.” My voice hardened. “I haven’t seen my daughter for eighteen months.”

“That explains your hair fetish. It’s proof of life, right? He exchanges it for the salt.”

I nodded.

“Do you trust him? I mean—” Dillon swiped a hand down his mouth. “Are you sure…?”

Are you sure she’s alive?
How many times had I asked myself the same question? It was the source of my nightmares and the first question I asked myself every morning when I woke alone.

“I have to believe she is.” There was no other alternative. “We agreed on using a spell for confirmation. He brings me a lock of her hair that’s no more than three days old. After that, all its energy has bled after being cut, and the spell comes back negative. If the hair is fresh, I know she was alive before he brought his trimmings to me. It’s not foolproof, but it has worked so far.”

“So you had confirmation about a week ago.” He sounded thoughtful. “I doubt he would hurt her one way or the other.” He kept to himself that child slavery was a more lucrative venture for a male looking to rid himself of his unwanted offspring. “If he believes you’ll deliver, then he will have her close in case you balk.” He paused. “When were you supposed to deliver the salt?”

“He gave me one week to meet him.” I jerked my gaze to his. “In Sere.”

“Give me a name.” His tone hardened. “Who are we up against?”

Phantom twinges in my slave bands warned me speaking his name carried consequences.

Dillon caught my chin. “Name the bastard.”

Shivers made me lock my jaw against clacking teeth.

He tilted my head, forcing our gazes to meet. “Who did this to you?”

My lips parted on a whimper.

His eyes glinted silver with his fury. “Say it.”

My eyes shut tight.
His name has no power over me.

“Look at me.” His hands cupped my cheeks, his thumbs brushing beneath my eyes.

When I did look, I drank in the sight of him, filing away the worry lines and the sympathetic frown softening his features. His beautiful eyes would harden in the next moment, never again to return my stare with anything besides the disgust I had feared glimpsing in their depths all along.

“Roland.” My voice carried through a heavy moment of silence. “Roland Bernhard.”

Dillon was gone before I finished saying his name.

Wood splintered in Dillon’s haste to escape the clinic. Four strides later, he still dragged the door by its handle. Flinging his arm, he cast it aside. Roland Bernhard, heir to Sere’s throne and a rank bastard. No wonder Isabeau had kept his name a secret. After what that son of a bitch did to Emma, Harper would throttle Isabeau if he learned of their connection. Damn it. Dillon’s mind spun faster than his thoughts gathered traction. She was a pawn, but she wasn’t the only victim.

Roland and Isabeau. Isabeau and Roland.
Clamping his hands over his ears, he knew that it wouldn’t help the mantra blazing through his mind, but the knowledge Roland owned Isabeau, had been her first lover, had fathered her child for fuck’s sake, was cracking more than Dillon’s glamour, it was breaking his heart. For her. For her daughter.
Roland’s daughter
. Flinging his head back, Dillon roared until his lungs emptied and voice smothered.
His
. Isabeau was his mate.

That sadistic bastard had cut her loose as far as Dillon was concerned. According to Isabeau, Roland had surrendered custody of their child until it suited him, which was perfect for Dillon.

Once Isabeau would have contented him, but now he wanted a matched set. He wanted his mate and her little girl. Staggering, he moved his hands from his ears to his temples. His fucking horns kick-started another migraine as his mating instinct flared his nostrils, sharpened his focus.

The past few days distilled in a hot mash inside his skull. One name floated to the top.

Roland Bernhard.

Understanding plowed into Dillon with the force of a runaway train, and his world lurched.

Kings, even future kings, I find are much easier to please
.

Phineas had all but named Roland as his new patron. Between Dillon having his ass kicked by goons at the mine and Isabeau’s reveal, he’d put zero thought into the breeding ring. After all, slavery was a trade as old as time. Forget Sere, look far enough south in Askara, in the outlands and below, and all that stood between you and your heart’s twisted desire was a piece of silver.

Fantasies sold at auction. Desire had a price. Age was just a number made of dollar signs.

Nesvia’s
wham bam, thank you, ma’am
emancipation proclamation had earned her the scorn of her noble peers. Slaves who’d bathed their masters’ feet before bed tossed in their rags and set out for the consulate or for the colony bright and early the next morning. No flourish. No fanfare.

While the blatant thumbing of her nose at Askaran tradition might be cathartic, it bit Nesvia on the ass when Roland kidnapped her. Funny how, in retrospect, she was rescued by the slaves she had freed while not a single member of her inner circle had so much as batted an eye at her disappearance. First Court had kept her disappearance a secret, but who’d arranged their silence?

Roland Bernhard, the male of the hour, was Dillon’s guess.

On the heels of his failed attempt at siring Nesvia’s heir, Roland’s name showed up in connection with a ring of breeders specializing in rare demon breeds and sexes? It was too much of a coincidence. Factor in Phineas’s eagerness for the stolen salt and Dillon’s ears began to ring.

Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner!

Roland must be bankrolling the breeders, the same as he was bankrolling the raiders.

Another thought had bile perched in the back of his throat. If Isabeau had taken precautions against pregnancy, which he knew from personal experience all slaves well-versed in sex did, it stood to reason Roland’s excitement over her pregnancy may also be connected. Substituting her contraceptive tea for something benign would have been a simple matter. Dose up a Sereian female and she wouldn’t go into heat, but she might ovulate, which was the result that mattered.

Dillon was willing to bet Roland had not only gotten Isabeau pregnant, but he’d engineered her pregnancy. Sure. Why not? It fit. He must have started somewhere, right? Going after Nesvia without testing his theory, praying an overdose wouldn’t kill her, would have been a boneheaded move. Since dead queens bore no offspring, Roland wouldn’t have risked it. He wanted that heir.

Jolted from his thoughts, Dillon jumped at the light caress down his forearm.

Isabeau stepped in front of him. “I’m sorry.”

Dillon had no clue how long he’d been standing there before Isabeau scraped up the nerve to come look for him. “S’okay.” His heart clogged his throat. “I shouldn’t have walked out on you.”

Color rose in her cheeks. “I should have told you sooner.”

“He has your little girl.” His voice went rough. “Anyone would have done the same.”

Her head bobbed, giving him the answer she thought he wanted.

He caught her face between his palms. “I mean it.”

“You say that,” she said, searching his eyes, “but you would have fought for her.”

“I don’t know what I would have done,” he snapped. “I’ve never loved someone like that. I have never had to make life or death decisions that impacted the life of someone I couldn’t live without.” He cursed his timing as he said, “Not until this.” He brushed her lips. “Not until you.”

She blinked, stunned, and he crushed his mouth to hers before she said something he wasn’t brave enough to hear. Admitting she was his mate was one thing. But if she claimed him now, if she spoke the words and made their relationship binding, Dillon would always wonder if Isabeau really loved him. Or if she felt obligated to parrot his affection in order to secure his cooperation.

Damn it. He wanted more than her gratitude, more than an exchange of his freedom for hers.

If he was going down, he was taking her heart with him.

Chapter Fifteen

Biting my nail, I kept watch on the tent flap and the demon I wished would walk through it. I had an idea for locating the grimoire, but Dillon wouldn’t like it any more than I did. As for the salt, well, I doubted we’d find any at this point. The odds of the horse roaming free after all this time were slim. Nudging that fear aside, I lowered my glamour, and runes glimmered over my forearms. I skimmed the neat rows on my left arm with a finger until I hit the symbols I required.

“What are those?”

I glanced up to find Lindsay’s brow crinkled as she stared at my arms. Her hesitant question was the first she had spoken to me since we’d relocated from the clinic back inside Dillon’s tent.

“They’re runes.” I traced a crisp line of ink. “Each one holds a different spell.”

Fabric rustled and Dillon entered the tent with a bulky male behind him. He held a letter and tap, tap, tapped it across his palm. His guest grinned at me. I wasn’t fool enough to smile back.