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“I can make this easy for you,” Kinsey said. “You’ve seen some combat, but you’ve never seen true war. You’ve spent a life drilling and training, and you’ve become very adept in the art of killing — but that’s what it is to you, isn’t it, Sir Knight? It’s an art. But what is coming will not be artistic. It will be bloody. Monsters are rising. The world is turning. This age of false peace is coming to an end. You can emerge into your becoming under my care, or you can take your chances with forces far greater than you understand, evil that has laid in wait, made careful plans, and is now executing those plans with bloody brutality.”
Lucan looked the devil in the eye, trying to see soul where none could possibly exist. He could not take the measure of this creature as he took the measure of a man. It was not possible. It was more like looking into the eye of a storm, or the depths of an ocean. This was an elemental creature, one that served only its own nature and hungered for just one thing.
“I know there will be a price to be paid,” he said. “My soul will be forfeit, I assume?”
“You have a strong, powerful soul, Lucan. It shines like a diamond. Yes, I want it for my own.”
It might have been too much a temptation for Melinda Force when confronted with a devil’s bargain, but Lucan was not so easily swayed. He had known hard times before. He knew what it was to lose loved ones, and to walk the world with nothing. He also knew that a devil’s bargain was never worth the price one paid.
“Do you have Melinda Force now? Does her soul writhe in your possession?”
Kinsey let out a little chuckle. “Melinda Force was a strong one too. I have a use for her. Her soul will not go to waste, and nor will yours.”
“I have pledged my sword and my life to the house of Force,” Lucan said. “But my soul will always be mine.”
“You’re going to regret that,” Kinsey said with a little shrug, an all too casual gesture to accompany a horror.
He dropped the veil.
All disappeared in an instant.
The devils were gone. The chasm was gone. Lucan and Sebastian suddenly stood in the middle of three soldiers, with not a weapon in their hands.
The only advantage they had was the one of surprise, and by sheer luck, Lucan found himself behind one soldier. He reached out to grip the soldier’s arm, elbowed him in the back of the head and grabbed the sword pommel from his grip as his fingers released in surprise.
It was the work of a second to run the soldier through, but the cry of the dying man brought the attention not only of the other two soldiers in the clearing, but of a good half-dozen more who came crashing through the undergrowth, blades raised.
“Kill the knight! Capture the boy!”
The order was shouted loud enough to ring in Lucan’s ears.
Sebastian was frozen again. He saw the prince’s slack jaw, and the glassy, faraway look in his eye. Even if he had known how to fight, he was in no state to do so. There had been no time to prepare him, and there had been absolutely no warning that this particular conflict was about to ensue.
Lucan leaped into the fray. He had been fighting his entire life, and always against unfair odds, but there was a limit to what even one impressively trained knight could do. He pushed that thought out of his mind. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in this moment besides killing each and one of these people.
His sword flashed, his training taking over. No thoughts. Only blood.
Sebastian stood stock still, finding himself suddenly in the center of chaos and steel. He felt the energies of the hostile soldiers and knights, men who had come to take him and to kill Lucan. The sensation of being surrounded by so much intense loathing was almost impossible to bear. These people did not know them, and yet they wanted to kill. Blood lust raged in their veins which bulged along with their eyes as they rushed toward the prince and his knight.
His fear was so deep it had made him like a statue. Yet again, he was unable to move as danger whirled around him. Every time he encountered a situation in which he needed desperately to fight or to flee, he found himself utterly incapable of it.
It was just as it had been in the castle two days prior, when an invading force had claimed his family and his throne. He knew he had to do something, but his pathetic little rabbit brain made him freeze.
But there was something inside him still moving. Something that watched and remained alert even when all the usual parts of his mind had gone blank with terror. That part of him was not afraid. It was beyond fear. It was calculating. It was quiet. And it was powerful.
