Then, with deliberate slowness, he let the shadows rise. They curled around him in coils of black, cloaking him until hisform blurred, until his father's eyes widened just slightly at the display. And then—he was gone, swallowed whole by the dark.
A reminder.
A warning.
He slipped from the chamber unseen, passing the unconscious guards without a sound. The stronghold was hushed in the gray stillness of dawn as he moved through hidden corridors, his body heavy with fatigue but his resolve like iron.
Back to his chambers he went, down the corridors, through the door, invisible to all.
Back to where she slept.
The Queen of Maidan.
Eliza.
Creature of iron resolve and human softness.
Perhaps his father suspected. Perhaps he knew that Rakhal would have had no choice but to take her, to keep her close.
The only thing that kept his father at bay, that kept the soldiers and the guards at bay, was the threat of his magic.
They had no idea how spent he was, but now that he was back, here in his chambers, nobody would dare disturb him.
For although all shadow orcs had magic flowing through their veins, they feared those such as him, those who walked in darkness more often than they dwelt in the light.
Rakhal staggered into his office. Then, weaker than he'd ever been, vision swimming, pain flooding his body, he released the shadows.
They pulled him back, threatening to engulf him, to claim him, his will, his mind.
Chest heaving, grunts of pain escaping his lips, he rose to his feet and stumbled toward the window, flinging the heavy drape open in a desperate swipe.
Bright morning sunlight flooded through, weakening the shadows just enough for him to utter a very old, simple, but powerful incantation.
Adash.
Begone.
The shadows fled, and Rakhal collapsed in the sun's embrace.
Chapter
Fifteen
Eliza stirred as midday light pierced through a narrow gap in the heavy drapes.
She had slept deeply, dreamlessly—the lykal tea's doing, no doubt. Her body felt heavy, reluctant to wake after what must have been hours of uninterrupted rest. The massive bed enveloped her in its rough comfort, the linen sheets twisted around her legs from sleep's restless movements, trapping her in their coarse folds. The chamber's air hung heavy with unfamiliar scents—smoke from the dying embers in the hearth, stone warmed by hidden fires within the stronghold's walls, and the faintest trace of something like incense lingering from passages beyond.
She blinked against the gloom, her mind gradually sharpening as full awareness returned.
And then she felt it.
The weight of fabric against her skin that wasn't hers. Broad, loose, smelling faintly of smoke and iron and something sharper—male.
His shirt.
She was disoriented, drifting in the strange comfort of warmth still clinging to the cloth. Then reality struck.
She remembered where she was... and whose chambers she had been brought into.
