Gambit (21 page)

“I was bred to fight and to hunt.” His mouth twitched. “It would be my pleasure to hunt you.”

“Innuendo?”

“Maybe.”

He’d broken the tension of the moment, but he had to. They had to go. He stepped back and Chae still found it strange that her thoughts, her emotions were completely open to him. She willed herself to leave the shower, to walk away from Daned and find her clothes. He followed her, rubbing a towel over his stomach. Chae looked away to stamp into her boots.

“How long will this take?”
She arrowed a thought to the sunder-seld, wanting to keep the question from Daned. Glancing up, she found him turned from her as he fastened his shirt, his hand sliding over the dark material to smooth out the creases. She pressed her lips together. He gave no sign he’d heard her thought.
“This insane ceremony?”

Her question met heavy silence. The tips of Chae’s fingers itched as she counted out the seconds in the fast drum of her heart. The sunder-seld shouldn’t be silent.

“Each prince will hold a sliver of crystal, the thrum echoing with the crystal in their blood.”

Chae’s hands formed fists, the first panic of breaking her connection to the chair gone in the reminder of what was to come.
“And you judge who I fuck first and whose sperm gets to play?”
She ignored the sour burn in her gut.
“Do you even know that I’m fertile?”

“Your body is ripe.”

“Lovely. Now I’m fruit.”
Chae winced and ran her fingers through her damp hair. Where was her team of compliant minions to make her hair smooth and sleek, make it shine like dark water? The selfish thought pulled her mind away from making her feel like a prize cow being served up to a bull. Several bulls.
“Why is this necessary?”
She watched Daned shrug on his jacket and straighten his shirt, admiring his lean perfection. Her fingers still itched. Yes, she needed to touch him. “
Just to make the Houses play nice? To make them accept an empress they’ve all had a shot at?”
She tugged at her tunic, anger making her hands jerk.
“And if you say it’s tradition, I swear I will take a hammer to you.”

“Remain calm, Majesty.”
The sunder-seld’s even, almost too-slow tone did little to cut the fear-driven anger surging under her skin.
“Trust that the right decision will be made.”

“Seriously, I preferred being shot at to this.”

Daned turned to look at her and Chae closed her thoughts to the chair.

She lifted her chin. “I’m ready to go.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

His words stabbed into her gut but she took his offered hand and his heat, his strength, flowed into her flesh. Time to decide the father of a baby she hadn’t even considered the day before. Ladaians. Insane. Every last fucking one of them. Her included.

Chae let out a slow breath and silently followed Daned from the imperial suite.

Chapter Eleven

Lights flickered in the long corridor and Chae winced at the strobe flare bursting over the veins of black crystal. Daned’s hand tightened around hers and the absence of her gun burned as hard as the lights. Something didn’t feel right. Her instincts screamed up her spine. The air had chilled, taking with it the hint of cloves, the scent of black crystal, that she pulled in with every breath. Was it a part of the ceremony?

Chae pushed at the holes in her memory but found nothing.
“Is this your doing?”
She hit the heavy wall of silence, the one that itched in her fingers and now twisted an unexpected knot in her gut. All right, not good. “Something’s wrong with the chair.”

Daned tensed and Chae felt the push of his mind. Her heart beat hard and hell, heat and excitement caught her. For a hot moment, she could avoid the room and nine depraved princes. It probably wasn’t a good sign that she was welcoming an unknown terror over fucking a gold-dressed prince.

Daned’s search tugged at her thoughts. He’d found senior guards on Kynon’s former ship, in the throne room and the suites of the attending princes and broke through their mental defenses with ruthless efficiency, battering them with questions.

Chae half caught the answers. She snorted. She obviously had to work on her telepathy just that little bit more…but she rubbed her hands over her eyes and waited. He had his job to do. But everything going to shit did make her wonder if she’d brought her infamous bad luck to Ladaia-Ara.

He let out a slow breath and his shoulders dropped.

“What?”

“It’s not just the sunder-seld.” He swore, low and hard. He looked back to the closed doors of her imperial apartments. “You can’t stay here alone.”

“I wasn’t going to.” She lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve survived worse environments than a palace with dodgy lighting.”

He pulled her toward an arch that spilled a golden arc of light across the stone floor. “The shield is down.” He shook his head. “The shield is never down. Has never
been
down. All palace security has evaporated.” He wiped his fingers over his mouth. “No one knows what’s going on. Maybe one of the princes is holding a grudge against losing.”

A laugh broke from her. “Entirely possible. There wasn’t much love for me in the throne room before.” She squinted into the plain blue sky. The sheen that had covered the palace no longer protected them. “The sunder-seld regulated the energy for that.” She straightened. “Is the chair broken?”

“Impossible…” But there’d been enough hesitation in Daned’s voice to suggest it
was
possible.

“Well?”

His mouth twitched, his professional mask cracking. She caught the wisp of his thoughts and they mirrored her own. He
wanted
the impossible because it kept them together for a while longer. She held back a smirk. She’d completely corrupted him.

“We need guns.”

“And snacks.”

His dark gaze narrowed on her. “Snacks?”

Chae shrugged. “I always need snacks. Wasn’t that on my file?”

Daned touched her cheek and dropped a quick, warm kiss on her mouth. She licked her lips, savoring his taste. His eyes shone. “I was more interested in your physical attributes.”

“Of course you were.” She closed her eyes, the push of her emotions too strong. They were caught in an insane and precious moment, and the tug to simply run gripped her. This wasn’t her fight. It never had been. It was just more of her twisted luck. She was a reluctant empress, and her “people” were as equally reluctant to have her. She could run. She could take a ship and disappear. Leave the maniacs to sort out their own mess.

“Is that what you want?”

Daned’s soft voice wrapped around her and his thoughts offered no resistance. He would turn away from his people. For her. Her heart tightened. And how long before he hated her for that decision? Daned had been bred for his duty. She let out a long slow sigh. How much easier had her life been earlier in the week? And damn it to hell, she didn’t want to be so selfish.

Chae pulled away from him and shoved at the closed doors to her apartment. They didn’t give way, just as she expected. “If the power’s down for the doors, then the production unit is too. We need to get our guns—and snacks—somewhere else.”

“Chae…”

“I can’t take all my black crystal with me.” She gave him a short smile, not wanting him to press her right then. The light from the window threw him into shadow and the wrap of emotion, her need for him, twisted inside her. She’d never wanted, or loved, anyone more. It still scared her. “Reason enough to stay, don’t you think?”

“Thank you.”

Chae wiped her hand over her face and denied the burn in her eyes. “Guns, Imperial Advisor.”

He took her hand, his fingers lacing through hers. “This way, Majesty.” Daned broke into a run, taking her with him down the twists of darkened corridors.

“Where are the guards? Shouldn’t they be swarming to protect me?”

“Yes. I had words to say about that.”
He stopped halfway along the corridor. The chilled air steamed his breath, and curls of it vanished into the carved blackness of the wall. His fingers traced a straight line down, revealing a thin crack in the stone.
“They said their princes called them away. That my presence was enough to protect you. I’ve overruled them. They’ll meet us at the throne room.”

“Well, it’s true. You’re protecting me.”

“It’s a lie.”

Chae blinked.
“I’ve seen how you work, Daned.”

“My Family are seen as playthings. Grabbed and taunted as sex toys. Odgar reckoned on that when he chose me for the mission.”
He grunted as his fingers pushed into the crack.
“The others see us as little more than decorative ornaments for the Ara royals.”
In the dim light, his mouth thinned.
“Pretties.”

Chae winced.
“That’s why it pissed you off.”

“Yes.”
He swore and yanked his hand free.
“I can’t break the seal.”
He flexed his fingers.
“No one ever considered the possibility of the sunder-seld dropping power.”

“Then I need to get to the throne room.”

His gaze narrowed on her.
“Yes, you do.”

In his run for the secret stash of guns, Daned had turned her around and she’d lost her bearings. Her thoughts reached out to the sunder-seld before she remembered that the chair was dead. Her stomach hollowed. She wasn’t certain whether it was her unexpected reliance on it or its absence that scared her most. She pushed the worry from her mind.
“Which way?”

Daned led the way through the maze of empty darkened corridors, the cut of the late afternoon sun breaking through narrow arches, gray light folding in from interconnecting rooms. The air tasted…dull. No delicious hint of cloves. Not that she’d liked cloves before, but their scent reminded her of the veins of black crystal woven through the stones around her. And she still liked being the richest woman in the quadrant.

Her instincts prickled her skin and all thoughts of the hoard at her disposal vanished.

“We’re close.”

Daned’s words echoed her instincts and her heartbeat ramped. The artwork on the walls, the tapestries started to look familiar, and the pain in her hand for her gun ached down to the bone.

At the end of the sunlit corridor, the wide doors to the Ara throne room stood open. There were no armor-suited guards snapping to attention and staring blankly into space, only the gusts of icy air washing over her as she paused. It cooled the sweat on her skin.

“What now?”
She frowned.
“There’re no guards.”

“I can’t touch their minds. There’s a resistance.”

“But not for us?”

“
Nothing about this makes sense.”
Daned released a slow breath.
“We have to go anyway.”
He eased her into the shadows that lined the wall, his feet silent on the stone flags.

She tried to match him, but she’d never been good at creeping. She ran or she blasted. That was pretty much her defensive repertoire.

“Now we get as close as we can. There are scents. Ladaians.”

“On
my
throne?”

His brief smile touched her, wry amusement edging it.
“They won’t be there long, I promise you.”

There was no glimmer of shielding blocking the arch. Still, her nerves held an echo of the inflicted pain and her feet were reluctant to move forward. Light cut across the vast room and over the men kneeling before
her
throne. She recognized one of the kneeling men as Odgar by his dark head and the breadth of his shoulders.

She sucked in a breath as the man on the throne sat forward. Sunlight edged his thin features.
“Kynon? How the fuck did he get out?”

“He’d been transferred from the ship to the cells beneath the palace. With the power down…”

“Wait. I have
cells?”

“Chae. Focus.”

She pressed her hand to her mouth, kicking her brain into order. Her heart thudded and the rush of adrenaline had her mind scattering. She needed to get a grip. She’d been mired in shit far too often and never had a sentient slab of rock or a muscled bodyguard to get her out of it. Her luck was crap, but she managed to survive even that.

She straightened.
“So we wait for the guards and storm the room?”

“It’s the safest plan. Though not the best…”
His thoughts trailed away and she felt a strong pulse of horror, of fear surge though him.

She didn’t want to know what could scare Daned, but she had to ask.
“What?”

It was several hard heartbeats before he answered.
“There are only five princes. Meroga, Creador, Valens and his own replacement are gone.”

“Gone as in…?”

“His guards have Ar-20s.”

Chae scrubbed her hands over her eyes. Kynon had obviously planned his own absolute monarchy. She stopped. That wasn’t what had the twist of fear lurking in Daned.
“All right, why is that bad? Besides having dead princes.”

“Removing all princes distorts the power of the emperor and brings on the Host.”

Chae ignored the familiar ripple of horror that came with the word. “
Of course it does.”

Daned looked behind him, down the long corridor. Chae strained to listen, but she hadn’t been bred with his sharpened senses. She blinked. The shadows at the farthest arch flickered and she caught the glint of light across the barrel of a gun. More shadows shifted and boots shuffled against stone.

“Your friends are here.”
She couldn’t hold back her relief. They had to stop Kynon before he killed all of his rivals. Daned as a mindless killing machine scared the shit out of her.

His fingers wrapped around her forearm, holding her tight, and he pressed her to the cold wall.
“Stay behind me. And stay silent.”