ONE

Blessed Lady above, let him kill me quickly.

Eleni refused to cower as her brother strode toward her, his darkened face twisted with rage beneath the simple gold circlet on his head. Blood splattered the front of his velvet frock and once pristine ruffled shirt. The messenger had been reduced to a dark smear on the white marble of the High Court.

From the very first day of Darius’s rule—when he’d killed his predecessor, wife, and their three-year-old child with his own hand—everyone in the Green Lands had learned to fear their new High King’s wrath.

“How close?” Veins throbbed in his forehead and neck, but his voice was painfully calm. Darius didn’t need volume to intimidate. “Can I stop them before they reach Allandor?”

“My contacts confirm she’s already in Rashan.” Eleni’s stomach clenched, but her hands were steady; her face, smooth; her voice, the same melodic and deliberately soothing tone she painstakingly cultivated. From an early age, she’d learned best how to diffuse Darius’s temper in order to survive. “Both Taza and Maston have already sided with her.”

Darius paced before the golden monstrosity he’d stolen with murder, treachery, and lies. Massive lions pawed above the High Throne, mouths gaping, claws like swords. Old blood stained the regal profiles. The last person to infuriate the High King had learned that those vicious talons were not merely decorative. The young noble had suffered for two days dangling above Darius’s head before finally dying.

“The North Forest holds strong with me, and the Shanhasson Guard is mine.”

Prudence told her to remain silent, but she couldn’t when her brother needed information she possessed, no matter how much he would dislike it. “Your Shanhasson Guard is down to only two hundred, Your Majesty. An entire division was sent to silence the rising rebellion in the east, along with two divisions of Northerners. All were lost to Princess Jenna. You have few troops on hand, and resources stretched thin. We must—”

Darius whirled, charged, and before Eleni could soften the truth, she found herself dangling with his hand wrapped around her throat. “We, dearest sister? We must what?”

Her heart hammered in her chest, and instinct screamed at her to fight, dig her fingernails into his forearm, scream, and kick toward his groin, yet she did none of these things. Fighting would only inflame him. Crying out would only incite his need to hear more screams and pleading.

“Allies,” she forced the word out through her strangled throat.

He set her on her feet but kept his fingers locked around her neck. “I’m listening.”

Dark spots filled her vision and she couldn’t help a loud rasp, fighting for air through her constricted windpipe. Eleni gasped out, “disposable allies…fighters…no claim to Throne.”

“Who?” His voice was still cold with menace, but he grudgingly loosened his fingers enough that she hauled in a wheezing breath. “The bitch has taken Allandor, my strongest enemy, along with all its allies. Pella will stand with me, but it’s only a duchy, no match for the other countries in our happy republic.”

Eleni took another deep breath of air before answering. She had a feeling he would dislike this answer as well. “Keldar.”

“Savages?” Darius laughed, his dark eyes dancing as he slowly squeezed his hand shut again. “Why should the High King of all the Green Lands seek help from desert bandits?”

A wave of nausea flooded her stomach as the darkness rolled back. So many times she’d feared he would kill her. She’d dreamed it for years, in a thousand gruesome ways. Surely he wouldn’t kill her this way, so easily; endless torture was much more to his liking. She forced the word out. “Revenge.”

He waited for her to continue, but she couldn’t get enough air. Head aching, lungs blazing in agony, she clutched his wrist and tried to keep the pleas out of her eyes. Keep calm, she thought. No panic, no tears. That will only infuriate him.

Impatient, he slung her on the floor. She fell on her back, barely catching herself on her elbows to avoid smashing her skull open on the marble. Panting, she concentrated on breathing. With her skirts tumbled crazily, her silk stockings were bared to the room, but she made no move to cover herself. Darius would enjoy humiliating her before the entire High Court with worse if she acted missish. He’d done so, countless times already. He knew very well how best to torment and punish without a single mark.

“I’m waiting.”

“Would it not be poetic justice for you to use her distant relatives to quell her rebellion?”

Darius stroked his chin and jaw. “Perhaps. The idea has merit, but only if the savages would consider such an alliance. From the little we know of Keldar, they have no such inclinations. They know only thieving and killing.”

Now to play her most important card, the one ace that might free her from beneath her brother’s boot heel: “They’ve shown an undue interest in Green Land women in the last few years, don’t you think?”

Eyes narrowed, he stared at her for several long moments before gesturing that she could rise and continue.

“We’ve lost two caravans to Keldari raiders in the past month, and both times they took the goods and Green Land women. The men were either killed or ignored. The merchant of the last caravan had a Mambian wife, and she was untouched.”

“Perhaps the savages have no taste for exotic women.”

“I can find out for you,” she said, trying to keep the eagerness out of her eyes. “Once they capture me, I’ll bargain with their leader and win them to your cause.”

“You?” Darius turned away, hiding his face from her. He knew how well she read people. “I can’t spare you, Eleni. I considered sending you to Princess Jenna instead to parley.”

“Humbly, Your Majesty, I suggest that might be a mistake. Do you want your greatest enemy to have your best eyes and ears? Why not use me, instead, to win a horde of savages you can loose on the rebels?”

He paced, silent and hard and grim. He valued her skills as a negotiator, but he was also possessive of her. Why, when he enjoyed beating and berating her for the simple pleasure of seeing her broken yet again?

“I can’t lose you, Eleni.”

Despite all the years of torture and abuse, her heart still warmed. He was her only family left in this entire world. He’d done horrible things, and forced her to join him time after time. Yet he was her brother, and she loved him.

“Before Father died, he told me that he’d dreamed I would seize the High Throne and legitimize his royal blood. The key to my success was you, dearest sister. As long as you were by my side, I would hold Shanhasson. But if I lost you…”

Darius threw himself onto the High Throne and buried his face in his hands. Stunned, Eleni went to him and hesitantly laid her hand on his head. She’d never seen such vulnerability from her brother.

“He told me I would be better off to cut your heart out of your chest before ever letting you out of my sight.”

Her hand froze. Horror churned her stomach, burning up into her throat. She could well picture their father telling young Darius such a thing. Their family had long been tormented by nightmares, darkness, and taint through their bloodline. Touched by Shadow, they wrought evil in the world without premeditation simply by breathing. Since their grandfather had raped his own High Queen all those years ago, her family’s existence was a testament to the evil done in the world by men’s hands.

Ignoring the terror screaming through her body, she forced her fingers back to his hair. She stroked him like a little boy and deliberately lightened her voice. “I’m never out of your sight, Your Majesty, not when you haunt my dreams every night.”

“True.” Darius raised his head, a smile quirking his sensual lips. His eyes were dark with madness, hurt, and death. Worst of all, though, was the mirth, the foul joy he found in such atrocities. He could kiss and pardon or murder with his own hand, and his eyes would never change. “I will walk in your dreams every night, dearest. I will know if you intend to betray me.”

He reached out and touched her neck with the steel blade of a knife she hadn’t even seen him draw. His voice lowered to a silky smooth seduction that prefaced his most horrific crimes. “I can kill without laying a single hand on you, Eleni. But it would be much sweeter to hear your screams, taste your blood, and earn your agony with my own hands. Do not fail me, dear sister, or I will leave my throne for that bitch, Jenna, who dares to challenge me and hunt you down in the darkest, farthest reaches of the world.”

Relief and terror warred in her heart. He would let her go, for now.

To win her freedom, her brother must die. She couldn’t do it herself, and the very people who would bring him to justice would rightfully execute her as well. She had to win an ally for herself. She needed someone far from Shanhasson and strong enough to protect her from him, someone who could kill him.

Darius had chained her at his side her entire life with her love and duty. Now, before the darkness growing in her heart claimed the last bit of the hope, before he killed her with that love, she had to flee.

* * *

Zahak didn’t think much of the bedraggled munakura. Her once fancy clothes were stained and torn. Dust camouflaged her skin and hair so he could not confirm her coloring. “Are you certain she’s Green Land blood?”

The Far Illone trader rushed to assure him. “Yes, yes, a Princess of the royal line, all the way from Shanhasson.”

Remarkable blue eyes glared back at him, bright and shining like moonlight in a midnight sky. Even with her wrists bound with rough hemp and surrounded by his warriors, she did indeed stand like a queen: white, small, and fragile like night-blooming jasmine.

Ah, the crucial question. Was she a true White? If not, she was of no use to him. He would be better served to let the trader sell her to a slaver bound for Mambia.

An odd impulse banded his chest and clenched his jaw. Heat flared deep in the pit of his stomach, searing flames roaring to life. Instincts not his, not human, raged at him to seize the woman, drag her to the ground, and sink his teeth into her slender throat.

Tightening his concentration, Zahak breathed deeply, forcing down the dragon’s Fire. After a thousand years of punishment, the prophesies would be fulfilled. The Last Days were nigh. He would not fail his brother in this time of great need. Roughly, he asked, “What is your name?”

“Eleni.”

Her voice was soft and mellow but not afraid, a nightingale singing from the fragrant branches of desert jasmine. “What tribe? What family?”

“Eleni, daughter of Moran, bastard son of the High Queen Angelina, whose legitimate heirs were fathered by a Keldari named Jakon rav’Tellan”

Zahak blinked. His warriors murmured, the rustles of taamids loud in the desert stillness as scimitars were drawn. If she belonged to Tellan, they could expect fierce fighting long before they reached the Wall.

Hope blossomed in his heart. What chance that the woman he managed to find would claim the only tribe still carrying the rarest White’s holy blood?

“Surely a fine choice for the azi.” Malum trailed the tail of his supple whip through his fingers, nodding approvingly at the woman. “If you can keep her long enough. Are you sure you wish to hand such a treasure off to Amin?”

Tightening his mouth, Zahak refused to respond. No matter how many barbed hints his friend tried, he could not be baited into treachery.

“I cannot claim Tellan as my tribe,” the woman answered calmly. “They are merely my cousins. My grandfather was not Jakon.”

“Are you a Daughter?”

Emotion flickered across the woman’s face: pain, misery, failure. Ah, such emotions he knew intimately. “Yes and no.”

“Are you descended from your Blessed Lady, whom we call Somma, the White Dragon, She Who Hung the Moon?”

“Her blood runs in my veins, yes, but I have no power.”

Zahak knew not what she meant, and quite honestly, he didn’t care. The blood was enough. Switching to Keldari, he negotiated a price with the trader and jerked his head at Malum to pay the munakur off.

With a malicious grin, the trader shoved the woman to her knees before Zahak and rushed to his wagons, gold clinking.

Regal and silent, Eleni stared up at him. Fear and tears he expected; the hope in her eyes bewildered him.

“What are you going to do with me?”

He leaned down to look deeply into her bright eyes. Her warm scent filled his nose, and his voice thickened with emotion he dared not admit. “You will mate my brother, Amin tal’Cobra, who will soon be azi’Keldar, He Who Leads all Keldari tribes.”

Some of the glow faded from her eyes like the moon sinking beneath a bank of fog. “I see. And if I don’t choose to mate this tal?”

Clenching his jaw, Zahak sat up and hardened his voice. “I’ll feed you to Agni, the Red Dragon, and hope your blood purchases forgiveness for our ancient sin.”

Even more unexpected was her laughter. Although mirthless and ragged, there were no tears, not from this strange, regal woman. Perhaps she had lost her mind. If so, she wouldn’t survive the long ride to the Wall, let alone life on the desert, no matter how carefully his brother tended to her.

“Why do you laugh, woman? You should beg for protection.”

Solemn once more, she tilted her head, studying him. What did she see, this fine Green Land lady? A savage, a bandit, a jackal? So he had been called, rightfully, and worse yet had he done as his brother’s saif.

“It seems I have escaped one pit of hell merely to land in another.”

At last, something he understood. He allowed a small smile to soften his face. “Keldar is a hard land and a hard life. No rain has fallen in a thousand years, save when a White was sacrificed years ago, and we suffer the endless heat of Agni for our sins. Iyeh, I know hell very well.”

TWO

Everything had gone perfectly according to plan. So why had Eleni never been more afraid in her life?

She wasn’t afraid of this savage warrior. No, she feared herself, her own reactions, her sudden wish to discard her carefully laid plans.

With bronzed skin and dark glittering eyes, he was certainly fearsome. Black and red tattoos on cheeks framed by black hair cropped to his shoulders gave him an exotic appeal. He was swathed head to toe in black cloth, his chest crossed with leather straps holding various weapons. A wicked, curved blade hung on his hip.

Grim yet not cruel, not like she expected, he drew the scimitar and held it out to her. She’d seen the money exchange hands. Quite a sum, she guessed, although she couldn’t understand the fluid language of the desert at all. So why would he risk freeing her?

Eleni prided herself on her ability to read people. At Shanhasson, she’d watched the nobles constantly, searching for any sign of betrayal, uncertainty, or revenge. Numerous times she’d given Darius information to quell a rebellion long before the instigators could gain support. This grim warrior offering his blade, however, was completely unreadable. Trying to study him without being obvious, she reached out and sliced the ropes off her wrists.

The Keldari savage frowned at the red marks dug into her flesh and made some brisk order to the man at his shoulder. “Forgive me, woman. I’ll spare you what suffering I can.” His mouth twisted bitterly and he shoved the scimitar back into its loop on his belt. “The ride will be difficult and I have little water to spare, but I will make this as easy as possible for you.”

In her mind, she saw death hanging about him like wisps of nightmare. He hadn’t been jesting when he’d said he would feed her to a dragon if she refused his brother. Blessed Lady above, is that what the Keldari did with all the poor women taken from the caravans?

Shuddering, she pushed the thought of rending teeth and slashing claws from her mind. She dug into the coarse bag at her feet. She’d been thorough in her research. The Palace Archive had meager details, but what it recorded held some very interesting traditions.

Lady help her, she never intended to return to the Green Lands, at least not alive. She would slit her own throat before returning to Darius. Death by the Keldari’s dragon was a better end if she failed.

Eleni drew out a leather flask of water and laid it on the ground before her. “My water is yours.”

The savages muttered uneasily, while their leader stared back at her, his face closed, his dark eyes shuttered and devoid of emotion. Such weight in his gaze, she could almost feel her life hanging in the balance. Had she made a dreadful mistake?

Finally, he picked up the flask and took a measured sip of water. “I’m Zahak saif’Cobra. My tent is yours, Eleni.” A faint crinkle about his eyes and mouth hinted at a smile as he helped her rise. “Come share water in my shade.”

Knees shaking beneath her gown, Eleni neared the tent he indicated. As she ducked down to enter, she noted the material of the tent walls. She’d assumed it was some kind of fur or coarse cloth, but it appeared to be leather. Teardrop markings were stamped into the heavy hide, mostly black but spotted here and there with red.

Dragon hide.

Suppressing a shiver, she ducked to enter and stepped aside to allow him to move past her. Uneasy, she watched him, trying to control her reactions no matter what he did in the privacy of his tent. He vibrated with menace when he chose, but he didn’t have that dark edge of cruelty that her brother wielded so terrifyingly well. Something deep in the pit of her stomach stirred when she looked at the Keldari. It wasn’t fear, exactly. Fascination, perhaps?

Sighing softly, she forced herself to admit the truth. She found him very intriguing, even attractive, much more than she expected. Darius had sent her to plenty of beds over the years, but she wouldn’t mind sharing this Keldari’s at all. If Zahak’s brother was half as appealing, then she had nothing to worry about, but despite such rationalities, she couldn’t suppress the twinge of disappointment that he had not bought her for himself.

He moved silently about his tent gathering various implements and then returned to sit cross-legged on a cushion. Gesturing before him at the low table, he invited her to sit. His face was closed and hard. She had no idea what he was thinking. Uncertain, she sat before him and placed the flask on the low table between them.

He poured a small amount of water into a clay teapot and spooned in some dark leaves and sticks. The unusual tea hit the water and released a rich, spicy aroma into the air. Her nose and throat burned as the tea steeped without fire or heat.

Into a small bowl, he poured another measured amount of her water. He took a square of cotton, dabbed it into the water, and lightly pressed it to his lips, forehead, and heart. “May Somma’s waters cleanse us of our devalki.”

Meticulously, he washed his hands and face with the little cloth. Suddenly, she realized how precious water truly was to the Keldari. She thought of the hot springs beneath the Palace and the many long baths she’d taken in the months since Darius had ascended the High Throne. She’d been completely immersed in steaming hot water, while these people used less than a thimble full. Her eyes filled with moisture, whether with sympathy or fumes from the tea she could not be sure.

“You’re surprised.”

At his voice, she twitched before she could control her reaction. Smoothing her face, she met his fathomless gaze. “I was merely thinking how strange you would find our baths in the Green Lands.”

She swore flames flickered in the dark depths of his eyes. “This is not a true Keldari bath. Perhaps…” Muttering beneath his breath, he turned his attention to the tea. A curse? “Cleanse your hands and face, azharana.”

She did as he demonstrated, taking care to treasure the fluid and use very little to actually wash away the grime of travel. As soon as she finished, he poured tea into a cup. Thick and black, it looked more like tar than any tea she’d ever drunk before. Her nose itched, and she feared she might sneeze at the burning spice. He took a sip, turned the cup in his hands, and held it out to her.

Stomach fluttering, she took the small cup he offered. His eyes held hers, gleaming in the meager light of the tent. A challenge? Why? Cursing the lack of Keldari documentation, she lifted the cup to her mouth, hesitating at the sudden intensity of his gaze.

Steeling herself, she took a small sip. Her throat convulsed, blazing with heat, but she got it down. Heat spread in her stomach, burning just shy of pain. Eyes watering, she fought not to shudder or make any facial movement.

Nodding with approval, he smiled slightly. “Fire Tea feeds the Fire within, if it doesn’t kill you. So, tell me how you came to be captured by the trader, azharana.”

Warmth flowed through her veins, relaxing muscles she hadn’t even known were tense. What exactly did they put in that tea? She probably didn’t want to know. Staring into his chiseled face of weathered granite, she felt her eyelids getting heavy. How long had it been since she’d slept more than a light, restless doze? “Azharana—what does that mean?”

“Bright eyes.” His voice lowered, husky and soft. “Your eyes glow like the silvered moon on water. You’re a White indeed.”

Sitting up straighter, she fought to retain her alertness despite the weariness suffusing her limbs. Any mistake could get her killed. Did she dare tell him the truth? That she’d planned her capture and subsequent “sale” down to the last detail? That she carried Our Blessed Lady’s blood, yes, but she was also corrupted by Shadow?

Her eyes were heavy. She was so tired. She needed to rest, just for awhile.

Confusion and terror flickered across her face before she could suppress it. Darius waited in nightmares. He would know everything. “Did you drug me?”

“Everyone reacts to the tea differently, especially the first time. You must be weary after your journey. You may sleep without fear in my tent. None shall harm you here.” Zahak’s face softened slightly, his head tilting as he watched her. “You are a treasure indeed.” His face flinched so quickly she was sure she imagined it. “For my brother.”

“No sleep.” Even to her ears, her voice sounded thick and heavy. “I can’t. Please, don’t let me fall asleep.”

As if in slow motion, she started to fall. He stood and flowed to her, easily catching her as she collapsed. His arms were hard yet gentle, holding her carefully as though she might break. Had she ever known a man’s touch in gentleness? She couldn’t remember.

“Ishtay, azharana,” he whispered, his breath warm against her ear. The heat and spice of tea filled her nose again. No, that was his skin, his neck against her face. “You’re safe with me, bright eyes.”

No, there was no safety. Nowhere in the world could she be safe, not while her brother lived. The warmth inside her faded, swallowed by the Shadow bubbling up to suck her down to oblivion.