AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you not like boldness in your women?”
His eyes a brilliant dark green glowed with drowsy sexuality. “It has its uses, yet I must admit I have never had a hari so consumed by lust she pinned me to the ground with the intent to ravish me.”
A growl rumbled from his throat as she rubbed her chest over his, in an attempt to ease the painful throbbing that had infused her breasts. Her nipples tightened, eliciting an answering whimper from her. “I do not believe I like the feelings inside. My breasts ache, my center throbs, and I want to do things to you I am not sure how to achieve.”
His fingers stroked over her nipple, causing her to arch in exquisite need.
“An honest statement, hari Tehdra? Might pleasure be your undoing? Should this be my weapon of torture?”
“I am ever honest with you, my king,” she said lightly.
“A complexity I must unravel. A hari who is tutored in the sensual arts, but blushes reeks of duplicity.”
Tehdra recoiled at his statement. She sat up, and it was impossible to miss the hard erection pressed so intimately against her core. She could not help moaning. Amusement curved his lips. Staring into his eyes, she lowered herself until her nose pressed against his.
“You laugh at me?”
“I laugh at the contradictions you represent. Worry not yourself, Tehdra, I will unravel them.”
She ran her tongue across the seam of his lips. The blood in her veins became molten, and she wanted to consume his essence. “What contradictions do I present that you need to take time from your precious kingdom to unravel?”
“You are the enemy,” he said it so innocuously it caught her off guard.
Her eyes clashed with his. All traces of humor had vanished, and in its place was a watchful awareness that probed and cataloged her reactions. She had forgotten that she dealt with a master at stratagem.
A piercing cry reverberated through the mountains, instilling a dangerous stillness in Ajali and granting her a reprieve. A reprieve from what, Tehdra was not sure. Death? Imprisonment? Torture?
“They come,” he said flatly, and spun her around. He flashed to his feet, standing with feet braced apart.
Tehdra slowly rose, and inhaled. Darkans. She saw them in the shadows of the team heading towards them with sinister intent, they advanced with predatory swiftness in impeccable formation. Their intentions were made clear with their pattern of movements. The team of ten—five in front and five flanking them—offered little avenue for retreat. But that was all Ajali and his blades would see, ten enemies approaching, not the additional three Darkans that flowed in the middle within the shadows. Those hidden Darkans were their certainty for success.
Betrayal shafted her insides. “Ajali,” she said, her voice throbbing with anger.
A frown marred his features before his mien smoothed to blankness. He thought her shakiness due to fear. The confirmation that Darkans worked with other kingdoms not at her king’s orders, rattled her hard.
“Acheron and Gavyn will be here in a few minutes. Stay alert.”
White light flashed with an intensity that blinded her. Thunder rolled ominously, shaking the very earth beneath her feet, and the air crackled. Avindites, they wielded their elemental lightning peppering the sky with precise attacks at them, trying to separate her from the king. The bolts imploded upon impacting the earth, leaving scorch marks in their wake. The sound of Ajali’s blade unsheathing rang loudly in the clearing.
Tehdra was blinded by the electric glare of their lightning, leaving her momentarily defenseless. Her thought raced ahead, cool and calculating. She had to take out the three Darkans before Ajali’s blades arrived. The attackers’ fighting form, their moves and the coordination of their attacks indicated the highest caliber of assassins. Without thought she coalesced the shadows around her, pulling them from the trees, and the assassins themselves, and stepped inside. Cool darkness greeted her, emptiness, a void that others would never understand. She dug deep and absorbed the darkness, learning the shape of the shadows around her, the pockets she could manipulate to her whim. No longer blinded by the light that surrounded them like halos, she paused in the void and mapped her moves with lethal precision.
Ajali fought with a deadly grace that had two of the attackers maimed on the ground, all without calling his flames. Tehdra’s heart clenched as she saw the shadows at his feet bend, elongating as a Darkan shifted under his flank, rising. Tehdra surged with the shadows and appeared behind the attacker.
Shock flared in his eyes as they regarded each other without their beastly essence, only blades and taijiu skills to determine the victor. This man was unknown to her. The brutal coldness buried inside her sprang to life as she smiled. His eyes slittted. That’s right. You’re not fucking with just any Darkan. Her smile widened. He slashed at Tehdra, his speed and adeptness at shadow stepping placing his age at around two centi or more. They viciously came together. Tehdra moved with the assassin, her lethal dance dislocating his shoulders and hipbones and severing his lower spinal column.
Though paralyzed from the waist down, he still fought. Tehdra grunted as a blade embedded itself high in her shoulder. He was severely hurt, yet he pulled on energy and bent the shadows trying to distort her perception. He threw daggers with deadly efficiency. The weapons whistled through the air, and pain streaked through her thigh as another one found her. She launched towards him with the intent to rend his neck from his shoulder. Ripples alerted her to another Darkan stepping into the abyss in which they fought. More than a dozen blades sliced through the air, aiming for her with brutal precision. She dodged the attack, and the distraction allowed the first darkan to use the shadows to carry away his body like waves roiling in inky darkness. She directed her attention at the new Darkan, manipulating the shadows with a speed he could not match to sever his head while simultaneously throwing two of his blades in the throat and heart of the third Darkan who was attempting to take her in what could have been her blind spot. And he was some what successful, for Tehdra could only shift her body enough to avoid a vital organ being pierced by the flying blade he had cloaked with shadows. Streaks of pain sizzled down her spine, yet it was the scream of rage and denial from Acheron that caused fear to pump deep inside her.
The taste of the shadow pulsed on Tehdra’s tongue, vibrated across her skin, and she inhaled deep, drinking the void into her being. She shiktred to Ajali’s side and intercepted the sword that was thrust towards his back. Pain unlike any Tehdra had ever experienced cascaded through her as the blade pierced her stomach, ripping through tissue and organs. The enemy slashed the sword up, parting through her flesh with an easiness that testified to the blade’s sharpness. Her screams echoed across the mountains. In a daze she saw the ball of fire that curled around her incinerating the enemy as a sword lopped off his head.
She crumpled, cold sweat enveloping her body.
“Acheron!” Ajali snapped. “Call the wraiths.”
Nausea churned in her gut, and she grabbed Ajali’s hand. “Are you hurt?” she managed to ask through the pain.
“Do not speak,” he hissed as blood bubbled from her lips.
She had never been hurt this badly before without her beast. The beast present in all Darkans allowed them to heal at a more accelerated pace than all other Amagarians. If she had her beast inside, her wounds would have already started to heal, checking the damage. Instead, hot blood poured down her leg, soaking her caftan.
