The Princess Who Tamed Demons (4 page)

I felt another arrow thud into the earth not
long after my hoof had pounded it, and I knew that they were
gaining. It wasn't enough that I was lithe and fast. Their
warhorses had the endurance I didn't. They were magnificent beasts,
loyal and well-trained. They wouldn't tire, not for a long
while…not until well after the hounds had torn me to shreds or the
hunters' arrows had riddled my body.

Someone please help me!
If there was
ever a time to wake up from a nightmare and nervously swipe the
horrific cobwebs from my brain, now was it. Yet this
was
reality. I tried to use anger to smother the fear, to slit the
throat of the panic that threatened to overwhelm my chest and
lungs. It hurt to breathe in much the same way a slow burn hurts
all the more intensely with the knowledge that it will only get
worse.

I tried to talk—to scream even, but only a
loud bawling noise came out. I had to tell them I was really human!
But how did you tell a Knight and his royal household exhilarated
by the prospect of the kill that the creature they were about to
slay was a human shape-changed into a wild animal against her
will?

Without lips and a tongue to properly form
words the question was moot, and I was about to die. I thought of
Drake, and it occurred to me with a sinking feeling—
what if he's
part of the hunting party?
Was my own husband shooting arrows
at me? I swerved further to the east, heading for a knot of hills
topped with a few substantial tufts of tree cover. It was possible,
if I could get up into those hills, maybe I could….
What, Naji?
Live a few heartbeats longer? There's nowhere to go. The Gold
Kingdom is a heaping desert. The city of Tajma and the Gold
Knight's palace is in the opposite direction, and there are at
least a dozen knights and probably twice that many hounds between
you and it.

As my inner thoughts welcomed despair with
open arms, that's when I felt it. The sharp stab of intense,
heart-stopping pain as a barbed crossbow bolt tore through my
abdomen. I lurched onto my side, my antelope's legs thrashing in
the throes of my agony. I heard a keening, bleating-like wail, and
it took a few moments to realize that that was
me
.

I wondered, in those dwindling moments.
Why?
Why had someone done this to me?

Horses cantered up to me as the hounds
circled. One of them lunged, its jaws closing like a vice just
above my back right hoof. My bleating magnified, as feverish as the
frenzy of the animals around me. I was vaguely aware of horses
snorting and someone congratulating someone else as another rider
shouted at the hounds to disperse. Luckily they obeyed, but the
pulsating pain still made my heartbeats stumble.

"A superb shot, Lord Drake. I've not seen
anyone shoot from the saddle so effortlessly in some time, and
using our newly designed crossbow no less!" I heard a reedy voice
speak its flattery. "Why don't you and his Lordship continue on?
There's no need to bloody yourself with the mundane details here.
I'll put the beast out of its misery. We can have a fine feast
tonight. What say you, my Lord?"

I was hearing the voice of the Vizier al-Sham,
the high councilor to the Great Amir. I was straining with every
fiber of life left in me to hear what was being said. On one level
I suppose the idea of hearing Drake's voice one more time appealed
to me. More importantly though, I wasn't straining just to hear—I
was straining to cry out in a
human
voice, yearning to at
least die as the person I really was.

My frantic eyes watched the ivory-cloaked
Vizier dismount from his steed, a curved dagger slipping free at
his waist. He marched up to me, and the satisfied look in his eyes
made me think him a monster.

Perhaps I was imagining it, hallucinating so
close to death, but the Vizier's smug expression did look like more
than the satisfaction of a man happy from a successful hunt.
Does he know? Is he the one who did this to you, Najika?
The
question hit me like a knife between the ribs. My heart writhed in
my chest, yearning to explode. My hooves thrashed, and I so,
so
wanted to punch one of those hooves right between that
bastard's eyes.

Then I felt my body turn to jelly, a ripping,
snapping, re-melding series of cracks making me twitch in a
thousand directions. A scream, desperate and primal, tore from my
throat, and for a heartbeat I was deliriously happy. Human. It was
a
woman's
scream. My scream.

I looked down to see my nakedness covered in
blood, and then struggled to lift my gaze. My eyes snagged on a
broad-shouldered man with storm-gray eyes, his square jaw and
muscled torso hinting at power in every sense of the word. He was
the man I had fallen in love with. The man I was married to. The
man who had just shot me with a crossbow bolt, leaving my body a
ruined and bleeding mess. Somehow I sensed the bolt's barb broken
off somewhere in my vitals.

I kept screaming, and being coherent was low
on my list of priorities. Drake's thunder-struck face quickly
vanished, replaced by desperation as he vaulted from the saddle and
rushed to my side. The Great Amir soon joined him, bellowing at the
healer in the hunting party to ready himself. Drake's hands were
pressing on my abdomen, trying to stifle the appalling gush of
blood. I was turned onto my side, my eyes struggling to stay open
as Drake's words sought to soothe me even though their anguished
tone and my flaring pain told me that it most definitely would
not
be okay.

"Najika, focus on me. Keep your eyes open.
Najika!" I was vaguely aware of Sir Amir using a wad of torn cloth
to stem the blood flowing through the exit wound. Then I saw a
hook-nosed man kneeling over me, his beady midnight eyes swallowing
me up in the fiercest concentration. His hands plunged into my
wounds as I screamed my voice raw, and strange incantations tumbled
in jumbled mumbles from his lips. A tingling heat tore through my
body. I jerked, spasms ricocheting up and down my spine, soon
spreading through my arms, legs, torso and waist.

I groaned, whimpered pitifully, the tears
streaking down my face produced by sheer pain.

Next I wasn't sure what happened, whether my
eyes closed first or I blacked out. I guess by then it didn't
matter.

~*****~

Chapter 3

Day Three

Pale light filtered through the tiny slit in
the closed drapes. I didn't move. I didn't dare to. I lay there
underneath the sheets, a camisole hugging my chest and
undergarments of cotton around my hips, plus the bandages wrapped
so snugly around my abdomen. It hurt to breathe so much that the
very act of breathing seemed accomplishment enough. My eyes were
closed, and I kept them that way. I heard the stir of voices,
several sets in huddled counsel.

"Forgive me, Lordships. I healed her before I
knew that the barb had broken off into several pieces. There wasn't
time. Now I
was
able to go back in and remove them, but
there was some lasting damage during the process…and she, well, I'm
afraid that she…."

The healer's uncertainty trailed off with
regret before I heard Drake's growling voice.

"Spit it out, man!"

The healer sighed. "She…will never have
children. I am sorry."

There was a hush, and I tried to be good. I
tried to be so quiet and so still. The problem with being quiet and
still was that usually that required not crying, and as the
healer's words sank in a wave of emotion crested and enveloped me.
My chest heaved as sobs shook somewhere deep inside a place I
hadn't known existed. Tears were streaming down my face, not the
I'm in physical pain
kind, but the
My heart feels like
it's been ripped out
variety. Drake was at my bedside in an
instant. His hands cupped my face and I saw my pain reflected in
his eyes.

"Najika, I'm so sorry." Drake's words sounded
broken. He leaned down, gently putting a hand against the back of
my head as I cried into his shoulder, making it damp as if a tiny
but effective torrential downpour had targeted just the one spot.
Everyone else must have been intelligent enough to vanish because
once I was all cried out and feeling numb, I eventually blinked,
looked around, and saw that it was now just the two of us in the
infirmary. Drake had slipped onto the bed beside me, gathering me
into his arms. I pressed my face against his chest, inhaling the
deep, musky scent that was Drake to ground me. His arms cocooned
me. I pressed my wet eyelids against his shirt, keeping them closed
as a steadying shudder emptied my lungs.

Breathe, Najika. Just
breathe.

Usually I was the shrewd Queen listening to my
husband's problems, giving him advice when he was at his wit's end.
Not now, though. Sometimes life laid you bare, made you feel
totally leeched of all strength. It happened to everyone sooner or
later, no matter how strong they were. For the first time in my
life, truly and absolutely, it had happened to me, to the level of
a raw-rubbed and depleted soul.

"Sleep, sweet Najika. Sleep," Drake whispered.
His hand followed a soothing rhythm along my hair.

"Don't stop," I mumbled. That felt good. More
than good. I let myself get lost in that touch, a lifeline yanking
me from unpleasant thoughts.

You're still alive, Najika. That's
something, right?
The little optimist in me was suddenly,
inconceivably there, perched on my shoulder and boldly grinning
down at me.

A stray thought made the pieces scatter
again.

I opened my mouth, but these were the only
words I could manage: "The ones who did this to me…?"

"Have been caught, Najika, and all will face
justice. Put it out of your mind for now. Sleep here, and know that
I'm not going anywhere. I love you, Najika, and I'll be right here
when you wake up."

I shuddered again, but it was much less
violent this time. The warmth of Drake's body had started to
provide a second, invisible layering to this comforting cocoon.
Suddenly and intimately, I felt safe. Knowing that whoever had
turned me into an animal was going to get what they deserved, that
was helping—I had to admit. My eyes fluttered and closed one more
time, and I let the fear, pain and grief temporarily ooze out of
me, forgotten as sleep claimed me.

~*****~

Chapter 4

Day Four

"Uuhhh!" I'd been having a nightmare, but the
moment I woke up it faded away like a cloud before gale winds
pulled it into oblivion.

"Najika, wake up. You're okay. You're okay."
Drake was still there, just like he'd promised, his hand on my brow
stroking my hairline as he looked down at me. The concern filling
his eyes told me that I might as well have been a brittle glass
sculpture to him, the most fragile piece in the world.

My head cleared, and the memory of what had
happened came rushing back. I cringed, half sat up to bury my head
in his chest one more time, and took a long, fortifying breath.
Okay, Najika. It's time to get some answers.
The thought of
finding who exactly was behind my attempted assassination gave me
strength, though if I was being honest with myself fear was peaking
at a close second.

"Who did this to me?" I saw guilt flit across
Drake's face. He was probably remembering shooting me with the
crossbow bolt, nearly murdering his own wife without knowing it. I
wanted to comfort him for a tender moment, but I was still pushing
through my own grief and right now I needed this. I
needed
answers.

"Najika…." I saw that look on his face, the
one he always gave me before he hemmed and hawed. And there it was,
again, that concern sheening his eyes which said
Is she
breakable? What if I tell her too much?

I pushed myself to a full sitting position,
wincing as a pinching ache flared through my insides.

"Najika, you're in no position to be up and
about. Perhaps you should rest longer before we talk about this."
Have you ever had someone suggest something which was really a
command? Well, that was how Drake's words came to me just then, and
it made me furious.

"Perhaps you should tell me what I need to
know before my anxiety soars any higher than it needs to be," I
said, striving to keep my voice level.

My guess was that Lady Caerra and the Vizier
had been co-conspirators.
She
had been the one to invite me
for an evening drink in her sitting room, after all. It saddened me
to think that underneath Caerra's seemingly genuine and friendly
exterior she'd been so vicious and cruel. "Tell me, Drake." I was
leaning forward, straining, my hands gripping his shoulders as he
sat on the bed next to me.

"Najika, please lay back down. I'll tell you
what you want to know if you'll do that much." My eyes blazed, but
I did as he asked. I would have huffed, except I didn't have the
energy. Drake's distracting hand resumed those devastating strokes
along my forehead and hair again before he waded into the fray of
whatever terrible truths needed telling.

"Vizier al-Sham was in league with the Red
Queen, Lady Agwen."

My blood chilled at the name of my
longstanding nemesis. Queen Agwen was the mother of the Red Knight,
a brutal and abusive man who I had killed on my first wedding night
while defending myself. It had gotten me banished from my homeland
because no witness would stand up for me, and Agwen had not only
never forgiven me…she'd sought my death ever since. What made my
history even more bizarrely tragic was that on my wedding night
with Drake his two brothers had nearly killed us in an attempt to
usurp power. Then too, Agwen had had a hand in things, promising to
prop up the brothers' upstart rule. She was like the ultimate
unlucky coin that kept turning up.