The Flame of Wrath (30 page)

             
Salem stopped before Maven and bowed. “My Mistress,” she greeted.

             
Maven closed the remaining distance between them. She cupped Salem's face gently. “You are a vision,” she praised. She smiled as Salem blushed.

             
“Thank you, Mistress.”

             
Growing a bit more serious, Maven arched her brow. “Is everything ready?” she asked. Her hands lovingly lowered from Salem's face.

             
“Yes, Majesty. The Empress is overseeing the evening. She seems in good spirits.” Salem paused then added, “And she has asked about you.”

             
Maven nodded her understanding. Then she daintily offered her hand.

             
Salem politely slipped her hand beneath her Queen's, feeling it lightly cupped by Maven's warmth. With a confident stride, she led Maven from her bedchamber and into the hall. They walked together through crowded corridors until making their way to the ballroom.

             
Cheers rose high into the air at Queen Maven's arrival. She smiled beguilingly to the adoring masses then took her place within the throne directly at the Empress' side.

             
Aurea turned her head and smiled approvingly as her eyes roved over Maven.

             
The Queen dressed in white was glowing. Her golden hair caught in the light. She focused her emerald eyes on Aurea then smiled.

             
The Empress extended her hand. As she ran the back of her hand along Maven's cheek, the gold of her cuffs glinted like radiant stars. The passionate red housing her body embodied what Maven easily read inside her eyes. Each free-flowing curl gently falling around her face was soft in the light.

             
“You look beautiful,” Aurea spoke softly.

             
Maven leaned into the touch caressing her skin. “As do you, my Empress,” she purred.

********

              The evening was magical. Romance lingered in the air like incense. Decadence thrived like stars in the sky, but something tarnished the shine of what should be a glorious night.

             
Aurea crossed her arms over her chest. She stared across the room to the woman standing apart from all others. “Maven,” she breathed sadly. What was wrong with the sensuous Queen? She seemed so haunted.

             
The Empress' brows furrowed into a frown. She could not have a broken Maven. It did not suit her plans.

             
When Maven slipped away from the others in search of solace, Aurea followed.

********

              When others press against you in a sea of social warmth, the cool isolation of one's own soul can make their nearness all but unbearable. She wished to be among them, truly among them, but she could not endure it any longer. The ghosts of Logos would not allow it. They pulled her away from this world, condemning her to return to its memory.

             
Maven slipped into the darkened sanctuary of her chambers. She let the darkness embrace her like an old friend. She needed that comfort, that intimacy. And yet, all that came were the screams of the fallen.

             
Pained, she closed her eyes. “Go away,” she hissed to a land which would not release her.

             
She could not see the empty room. She saw only a frightening twilight. In that never-ending twilight, she saw the ghosts forever lingering near to her.

             
A tear rolled with hot heaviness down her cheek. She stood motionless within the heart of her bedroom.

             
A scream ripped through her existence causing her to tremble.

             
“Maven, go to the jungle where the sun sleeps!”

             
“Rapier,” she thought mournfully.

             
Her head fell forward. She saw her face. It grew more vibrant as if powered by the night. She smelt the sweetness of soft skin. She could feel its warmth radiating near to her.

             
Maven tensed, suddenly feeling as though she were not alone.

             
A body pressed itself to her back.

             
The Queen exhaled a quavering breath. “You aren't real,” she whispered. “You're just a dream.”

             
Lips mapped the ascent of her spine into the elegant line of her neck. Soft warm hands lightly curled over her biceps. They held her close as supple lips spoke soothing words which reverberated throughout Maven's soul.

             
“Dreams,” she heard, “can take away the pain that nightmares bring.”

             
Maven huffed a sob as her legs lost the last of their strength. She sank to the ground with the satiny body at her back sensually descending with her.

             
Arms slipped around her shoulders, embracing them with a lover's familiarity. She felt the nurturing nuzzle of her long hair. Lithe fingertips cupped her chin, guiding her head to turn. Her face was lovingly blessed with sweet feathery kisses.

             
The breath smoothing her skin warmed the cold which Logos brought. It promised to forever free her of it.

             
“Is it you?” the Queen choked. “Is it really you?” She allowed her body to be instructed by the seductive hands calling her to lie upon her back.

             
Maven's green eyes were radiant once more. Her heart raced within her breast as a shadow passed over her. She stared up into it just as the moonlight began to reveal the splendors hidden once as silhouette. She drew in a sharp breath, holding onto it as if it were her most precious possession. When, at last, it left her lips, it was as an exhaled name.

             
“Aurea.”

********
             

             
Green eyes opened just as night began to wane. Twilight was calling.

             
Maven carefully withdrew from the bed housing a sleeping Empress. She wrapped a lavender sheet around her erotic form. As she stood at the side of the bed, she gazed over her shoulder. She took in the ravaged glory of Aurea's seductive wiles. She backed away fearfully as Aurea sat up with an eerie slowness.

             
The Empress' body bowed upward as if compelled by a puppeteer's string. Her head lolled weakly while her curls swayed at her back.

             
Aurea's long hair grew weighted by unseen force, until her curls straightened. Their color fell away. Then infused by moonlight, the tresses flashed silver.

The Empress’
head rolled languidly to the side. Her closed eyes suddenly jerked open. She stared at Maven with Rapier's face, with Rapier’s expressive brown eyes.

             
“Logos,” Rapier said, “has further need of you.”

             
Terrified, Maven rushed out into the night. She was gripped by shadows. Her body was tugged and pulled by whispering voices, hissing out to her.

             
“Maven,” she heard. “Logos is calling.”

             
“Logos needs you!”

             
“You will never be free of it!”

             
“You can never escape Logos.”

             
Maven ran faster, but skittered to a violent end as her foot tripped over something in the dark. She panted wildly into the thick blanket of grass. She clutched at its cool blades angrily.

             
“What do you want from me?” the Queen snapped. Her beautiful face lifted. It was veiled by disheveled gold.

             
Through her mussed tresses, her glistening green eyes stared up to the sky. This was the sky she was never far from, the sky of fathomless twilight. She trembled beneath it.

             
The whispering grew louder until it bled together into one indistinguishable sound.

             
A whimper left her. It grew more pained as she felt something otherworldly and electric course throughout her being. As she tore the sheet from her body, her eyes lowered to her left side.

             
Beneath the pale light, she could see a symbol burning like molten lava against her skin. Its burning was more than she could take. Maven eyes rolled back into her head as she fainted from the pain and collapsed against the grass.

             
A woman lurched forward from the shadows. She raced as fast she could to the Queen's side. As she cradled the blond royal within her arms, the sultry green of Maven's eyes opened. Their depths glistened with pain.

             
“Salem,” Maven spoke weakly.

             
“What has happened to you, Mistress?” Salem asked in a wavering voice. Her tearful eyes stared down at the horrible branded symbol she saw wounding her Queen's side. “Did the Em---” Her voice fell away as she was unable to finish that horrible thought.

             
“Help me.”

             
Salem nodded quickly and obediently. She helped her Lady to her feet then escorted her to her bedroom. She tended to her wounds with skillful though trembling hands.

             
When she had dressed her wounds and offered up comfort for her pains, Salem placed a brown wig securely over her hair. “Stay here, my Queen,” she whispered. “I will be with you again as soon as I can.”

             
She quietly left her quarters then traveled through the halls wearing nothing more than the lavender sheet once garbing her Mistress.

             
Salem's heart was racing as she drew nearer to the royal bedchamber. She knew that beyond those doors the Empress was waiting.

             
Soundlessly the decoy slipped into the Queen's bedchamber. When she entered the bed, she woke the Empress with impassioned kisses and heated caresses. As she was kissed hungrily by the Empress, Salem thought only of her Queen and the alibi this would strengthen. 

********

              The following days were days of carefree ease. Though it was clear that Aurea had much she wished to discuss she did not press the matter. Salem took comfort in the fact that Aurea seemed far too eager to strengthen their alliance than alienate Maven by demanding information the way she had during their first encounter.

             
It was only after Maven had begun to heal that the Queen resumed her life. However she did ensure that every time she was to bed the Empress, Salem could enter the chamber through the castle's many secret passages.

             
Tonight was another night during which the switch had been necessary. Maven knew that Salem was inside her bedroom with Aurea, lost within the throes of passion while Maven, herself, gazed over her nude reflection in the mirror. Her eyes stared keenly to the symbol burned against her side. She lightly traced it. It was beginning to fade. Soon, she suspected it would be gone entirely, but even as she dared to think it, something ominous warned her that it would not be so simple.

             
“Logos,” she remembered, “was not finished with her.”

Chapter Eleven

There are times when the soul rejects what it once cleaved to. We know those times by their clarity as beautiful agony. Still
, when the pains ebb and a new feeling swells to consume us, it comes in the form of second life. It is then that the soul discovers the beauty of what it was always meant to know. It is then that the soul takes into itself serenity.

----The Book of Wrath

********

             
The Empress stood at the windows with a thoughtful expression donning her features. The glory of the sun radiated inside her hair, setting it ablaze like shimmering gold. Her hand extended to rest against the glass. She stared out into the morning wondering when her plans would come to fruition.

             
It was hard, she thought. It was hard to be so close to what she craved, to see it hovering in the distance of her reality and be so achingly far from it as well.

             
She had remained with Maven for one month's time, but she felt herself no closer to knowing the Queen's secrets. Aurea had seduced the woman into offering up her most devoted loyalties, she knew, but fear prevented Maven from overcoming her final obstacle. The Empress sighed.

             
“There has to be a way,” she whispered. Her voice all but hissed in its hushed life. “I have to make her trust me.”

             
Quietly, the seductive ruler of Pyros moved away from the windows. She was a warm vision in a gossamer cream robe. As she drew nearer to the bed, she allowed it to fall away from her body. She lowered her body to Maven's bed with the gentlest of intentions. Dawn had come to lovingly bask over the lovers.

             
Aurea watched over the sleeping blond. She could not help wondering what secrets she kept, but she refused to demand those secrets of Maven. She had witnessed the manner in which she had shut down at the monastery. Aurea did not wish to see a repeat of that withdrawal. If Maven lost her trust in Aurea, she would forever keep the knowledge Aurea craved so desperately. 

             
She settled her weight upon her elbow. Her eyes lifted from the blonde’s wiles to the small locked box settled tauntingly upon the nearby table. Once and only once in the time that Aurea had been in Whispering Winds had she witnessed its contents.

             
Maven had stood within the grips of another time, another place. Her green eyes were dark with a haunting beauty which left the Empress spellbound. In the Queen's hands she had held the blood red key. Suddenly, Maven tensed. Aurea remembered that Maven's flushed beauty had reminded her of a wild animal upon discovering man is near. Just as the animal would take flight, Aurea watched Maven quickly leap into action. The blond Queen had promptly placed the key back inside the box and locked it away.

             
The Empress frowned. The question she had wondered then plagued her now. What did the key open? Had Maven found the key on Logos?

             
The fires of her eyes were stoked heatedly. With a quivering inside her heart, Aurea struggled with the reality that her patience was running thin.

             
Maven had insisted that she would lead the expedition into the jungles, but refused to elaborate any further. That meant that Aurea was forced to hold off on any further plans until Maven was strong enough to begin.

             
Slowly, green eyes opened. They slowly adjusted to the morning light, but Salem did not dare to speak. A fear raced through her as she recognized the familiar feel of the weight in the bed behind her.

             
Was the Empress awake already? Salem listened for Aurea's breathing. It was not the slow controlled breath of sleep. That doubled the fear coursing through her body. Had Aurea been watching her as she slept and if so had the morning light revealed her freckles to watchful eyes?

             
Sensing that the woman was awake, Aurea drew closer. She enveloped Maven within her arms and held her close. “How do you feel,” she asked softly.

             
“I am well, Empress,” Salem whispered.

             
Aurea smiled against Maven's soft hair. She could feel her arms grazing the fleshing pebbling with goose-bumps.

             
Salem felt the familiar feeling of fear causing a shiver to race up her spine. She was grateful for the fact that the Empress had always presumed that it was the very fact of her closeness which inspired the gentle rise of goose-bumps against her skin. She knew that truth was that she was always afraid that in the moments her guard was lowered, Aurea would see through her guise to who she truly was and that then it would mean her death as well as the death of her beloved Mistress.

             
Gently, Aurea rested her lips against Maven's silken hair.

             
Together they laid in silence, each wary of the other.

             
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Aurea asked at last.

             
“The party you promised,” Salem began.

             
“Yes?” Aurea queried with a racing heart.

             
“Ready it,” Salem said. “I will leave again in two days.”

             
Aurea's brows rose in surprise though she quickly regained her composure. “Would it not be better for you to stay at home and continue resting? I can send one of my Knights.”

             
Salem shook her head. She slipped from the Empress' arms. Slowly, she sat up. “No,” she said, “I started this and I will finish it.” She thought of her Mistress. She thought of what she had endured. Most importantly, she thought of how she had begun her mission to protect Maven, to act as her decoy and how she would fulfill that role no matter the danger. It caused her body and will to steel with resolve.

             
Aurea's brow arched as she surveyed the woman closely. She nodded then asked, “How many men will you need?”

             
Once, Salem had overheard her Mistress voicing a promise to herself. Maven had sworn to herself that she would not make the same mistakes which she had made upon Logos. Never again would she lead the same number of men to die. The Queen realized that if she was going to continue on with this quest for ancient knowledge, she was going to do it with as little risk to innocent life as possible. At the time, it had struck Salem silent. She had seen more than physical changes in her Mistress. She had also noticed the changes of spirit in her Mistress. Maven was no longer consumed by the things which had once been so important.

             
The blond decoy found herself more protective of the Queen than ever before because in Maven Salem saw a certain glimmer of hope that the old ways were not dead. “I shouldn't need any more than twenty men,” she answered while returning to thoughts of the present.

             
“Then you will have them,” Aurea vowed. Her heart was thundering inside her. Her weapon against the druids was so very close now.

             
The graceful decoy stood. She eased into a gown of gentle frosted blue. Her trembling hands tied the sash about her waist. She tensed with an echoed voice racing through her subconscious.

             
Remember, Salem, I must have my men. I want to depart in two days. Two days.

             
Fear raced through her. She did not want her Queen to leave for parts unknown where she could not protect her. It terrified her. What if something happened again? Salem had a flash of finding Maven beneath a twilight sky while a burn seared her once perfect skin. It weighted her heart and mind.

             
With Aurea's eyes studying her closely, Salem left her chambers.

             
As Aurea noticed Maven's shaking, she felt a certain sense of tenderness creeping up inside her. Maven had been so haunted by her memories of Logos. It lingered with her always.

             
Aurea understood that the woman must have been afraid of leading another failed expedition. She squashed those soft feelings beneath a hardened resolve to have what she desired. The Empress tightened her fist as her determination rose.

             
“This expedition will be different,” she vowed inwardly. The flames of her eyes pitched upward furiously. “It has to be.”

********

              The castle had been abuzz with activity. A certain static electricity loomed in the air. It was as if the kingdom knew that something was about to take place. Though what it was or what it might mean to all their lives remained a mystery.

             
It was the hour when the sun reigned high in the sky. Its light caused dramatic shadows over the land. The Empress was stood discreetly within one such shadow. The air was soothingly cool within the haven created by a stone archway. From the terrace overlooking the courtyard, she possessed a clear vantage of the golden-haired Queen. Tomorrow Maven would leave for the jungle region of Pyros. What she would be searching for was still a secret kept only by Maven, herself.

             
Aurea trusted Maven to succeed based on the determination the blond exuded at the mere mention of her impending mission, but what Aurea did not trust was that Maven was without her own personal agenda. Then again, as she thought more of it, Maven had always possessed her own person agenda. It was their openness in seeing that ambition in one another which had led to a close kinship between them. If Maven's present ambitions were simply clearer to her or visible at all, Aurea knew that she would breathe easier. It was the mystery surrounding Maven since her return which was unnerving to the Empress.

             
Maven drew back the string of her bow. She took careful aim then released the arrow. It whined through the air as it headed zealously toward its target. She sighed in frustration as the arrow missed its mark. Though the arrow had found a home directly near the center, the fact that it was not lodged within the target's heart told Maven that she was not yet fully recovered.

             
Aurea knew precisely what Maven was thinking. She read it easily within her tensed jaw. It seemed almost baffling to her that Maven could be displeased with her shot. It would have been the envy of most, but it further proved to Aurea that Maven was not content to settle for anything less than perfection this time around.

             
The approach of a servant called Aurea's thoughts away from the Queen. She listened as the servant spoke respectfully into her ear. It was done in unison with the servant below who also informed Maven of the same news. The castle of Whispering Winds had important guests wishing to speak with Maven.

             
The Empress withdrew from her home inside the shadows. Without a sound, she left the terrace.

             
Only after she was certain that Aurea had gone did Maven turn her head to stare heavily upon the spot where Aurea had been. Her brow arched with a slow knowing air. At her left side, the symbol long-since faded from sight continued to throb in warning.

********

              Queen Maven wordlessly walked through the halls of her castle. The doors to her throne room were opened with a discernible groan. Their massive weight parted to reveal the room's crowded occupancy. Curiously, she entered the elaborate throne room to take in familiar faces. Aurea was among the faces looking to the Queen who stood just past the doors with an awestruck expression written across her face.

             
Maven disregarded formal etiquette and all the trappings of her title. She rushed forward and took the nearest man into her arms. She held him close.

             
The man, overcome by his warm greeting, wrapped his arms tightly around the Queen. “Highness, it is so good to see you,” he said.

             
Maven backed away with glowing eyes. She scanned the faces sharing in her happiness. She could not believe it. The men flooding her throne room were those formerly under her command. They were each dressed for battle. True, they were not nearly what they had once been in number but all those who were healthy enough to travel had come.

             
“What are you doing here?” she asked them.

             
The soldier straightened his stance. “We were told you were heading out again,” he said.

             
Angelos stepped forward and smiled as if to take responsibility for that fact.

             
“We've come to join you.”

             
Maven's stomach knotted so profoundly that she was forced to slump forward slightly. She shook her head, choking on the thought of the pains her men had suffered. “No,” she croaked. “You all have suffered so much. I can't allow you to---”

             
A woman stepped forward. She smiled with an overwhelming sense of understanding. “We truly appreciate that you want to protect us,” she said, “but we've all gone through something that's made us a sort of family. If you're continuing on then we're going with you.”