Chapter 3 #2
Xaydin snorted. “Looks like any place else. Except for the demons who live there. They’re particularly ugly.”
“How so?” She’d never seen an ataswere before.
Masakage lifted his hand, and when he did, a blue ball formed over his palm. Inside the swirling blues, she saw the image of a huge, twisted being. One that had wings made of flesh and other appendages she couldn’t even define…all of which were covered with writing.
Literally every inch of its skin, including its eyelids and bald head. “Behold the ataswere.”
He was right. It was all kinds of ugly. Gisela couldn’t take her eyes off it. “Do they all look like that?”
Xaydin glanced over his shoulder. “They do. The more flesh, the more contracts they hold. They use their magic to elongate their limbs and grow or attach other body parts so that they can accommodate their records. When that fails, they flay the skin off others, even their own kind or they merge themselves together to have more contract space.”
Gisela grimaced at what he described. The nightmare of it. How did they live? “What started this?”
“One twisted wizard.” Xaydin curled his lip as Masakage closed his hand and the image vanished.
“Centuries ago, he made a pact with the sidhe king to enforce a contract with another. It was forged in blood on his skin with his promise to unleash demons to protect their contract. Once he started, other wizards, witches and sorcerers followed. Each one wanting to outdo the other until they created an entire race that had no other purpose.”
Masakage nodded. “That’s the curse of striving to follow another and outdo them. Sooner or later, it becomes someone’s greatest folly.”
“Now we have an entire race of half demonic creatures who have no souls and no purpose other than to enforce ridiculous terms.” The anger in Xaydin’s voice was palpable.
“What contract did your father break?”
Xaydin came to a stop in order to level the most malevolent stare toward her that she’d ever seen.
“He didn’t. A shape shifter pretended to be the man my father had a contract with and broke it.
Thinking they no longer had a contract, my father attacked, believing he had every right to do so.
He was set up, but the ataswere didn’t care about truth…
or what consequences would befall an entire kingdom.
He fulfilled the contract by killing an innocent troll who’d been deceived. ”
“And because of that, the only thing Xaydin hates more than an ataswere is a shifter.”
“A pox on them all. May they burn and rot. Preferably by my hands.”
That made her blood run cold, and she was glad they knew nothing about her.
Except for one thing… “You don’t hate King Dash. Isn’t he a shifter?”
Xaydin snorted. “He’s a unicorn. They only take one human form and can’t become a deceptive lie that gets an innocent killed. Besides, you can look at their horns and tell if they’re trustworthy or not.”
True. Unicorns had several different shades of their horns. If they were treacherous, their horns were gray. If they were dangerous, red.
And black like the king’s…
All bets were off. He was death incarnate and a threat to anyone who got in his way.
Masakage tsked at his brother. “In X’s mind they’re not the same thing. Only true shifters rattle his rage.”
Good to know. She’d make sure to keep her powers in check.
Just as she had to do around Meara. The queen became insane if anyone shifted forms, especially in front of her.
Her jealousy over that ability was terrifying.
It was why Meara hated the entire unicorn race.
She took it as a personal slight that they had the ability to become fully human while she was locked in her centaur form.
In the queen’s mind, her entire race was a spell gone wrong. A genetic mistake.
Meara viewed her own race as unnatural. And that self-hatred had destroyed everything in her life. Nothing was enough for their queen. All she’d been gifted with and none of it made her happy.
It would never be enough.
Even if Gisela succeeded in protecting the ataswere or the queen found some way to attack and destroy the unicorns without incurring its wrath, Gisela knew it wouldn’t satisfy the queen.
Meara knew nothing of happiness. Only brutality and misery. The queen reveled in it, and she made sure that everyone around her was equally as miserable.
Sighing, Gisela tried to put it from her thoughts. There was no need in drifting to the past or to things she couldn’t change.
So she let her gaze wander into the thick trees around them.
Until she saw something move. “What’s that?”
“What’s…” Xaydin didn’t get to finish his words before a dark shadow rushed toward them. It moved so fast that she barely registered what it was before it engulfed him.
Cursing, Masakage attacked the shadow with fireballs. The darkness wrapped around Xaydin as if it were trying to devour him. Xaydin’s skin and eyes turned bright red.
With a vicious growl, he slung his arm out, and as he did so, the darkness burst into embers.
Gisela stared in awe. “What was that?”
“The ataswere knows I’m coming for him.” Xaydin’s tone was flat and emotionless.
“Does this happen often?”
Xaydin gave her a wry grin as his skin and eyes returned to normal. “Enough to keep me young and primed.”
How she hated the fact that smile made him so bloody handsome. Almost charming. How?
You need to hate him.
But that was easier said than done. He was irresistible, and she had no idea why. Was it some kind of glamour spell? A potion? She had no idea what to call it. All she knew was that she was drawn to a man she should hate.
One with unknown powers. Terrifying powers, if the truth was known.
“Do they always come at you?”
“No. Normally, they have no idea that I’m after them until I take their heads. But given all that’s transpired with Dash and your queen, I imagine our friend is very much aware of my mission and dreading the day we meet.”
“How do you intend to find him?” she asked.
“I have my ways.”
Her gaze went to Masakage. “Magic, then.”
Masakage shook his head. “Not the kind you’re thinking. Yes, I could concoct a potion for tracking, but he doesn’t need one.”
“Troll powers?” she tried again.
“You know nothing of my people, do you?”
No, not really. “There weren’t any in Thassalia, and I’ve never been sent beyond our borders before this.” Meara preferred her to kill those in their court or the nobles who angered her. All of whom were inside the queen’s kingdom.
“Then you don’t know anything about Meara, either.”
She resented Xaydin’s tone. “I beg your pardon?”
“We both lived there for a number of years.” Masakage’s voice was much kinder and lacked the venom of Xaydin’s.
But those words explained why Xaydin had become angry.
“I’m sorry.”
Xaydin scowled. “For what?”
“If you were in her lands, then you were hostages and I know how she treated those she kept in bondage. No one deserved that.” Not with Meara’s cruelty. Even now, the horrors of those years were seared into her memories.
As bad as her time with Meara had been, it was nothing compared to the nightmares Meara had gleefully subjected her captives to.
“I wish you’d been spared her hospitality.”
Xaydin was caught off guard by the sincerity in her tone. That was actual kindness he heard. He only remembered it because it was rare to find, and the few times he had, he’d made an effort to commit it to memory.
Most creatures were like him. Angry and bitter to the core of their souls. Aching so much that they lashed out at others just for spite.
It was the one thing he hated most about himself. He hadn’t always been that way. There had been a time when he’d been a happy child.
Unlike Masakage, he’d been accepted by his father. Loved even.
No. Treasured.
His father had appreciated the fact that Xaydin was different from other trolls.
It makes you special, lad. You are a child of three distinct worlds. That means you know more than others, as you feel it in your bones. Never lose sight that you owe loyalty to your mother’s blood as much as mine.
He hadn’t really understood those words until he met his brother. Masakage had finally given him an appreciation for their mother and her powers. For that entire side of his family, as well as their heritage.
To this day, he was grateful for the lesson. Harsh as it’d been.
Gisela cleared her throat. “You haven’t answered my question, you know? How do you track an ataswere?”
“How were you planning to find him?”
By the expression on her face, he could tell she wanted to scream at his refusal to answer. “Ask.”
He burst out laughing. Until he realized she was serious. “And you thought…what? They’d tell you?”
“I’m not trying to harm him. I want to protect him from you. Why wouldn’t they tell me how to find him to keep him safe?”
Mostly because they closed ranks and hated outsiders even worse than trolls and ogres.
And he couldn’t help but point out another matter. “What makes you think it’s a male who holds the contract?”
Confusion flickered across her beautiful face. “I thought they all were men.”
“They are not. Some are even children.”
Her eyes widened with horror. “You kill children?”
“No!” The mere thought offended him. What kind of monster…
Well, to be fair, he was a monster. Just not the kind that would ever harm a child, and it bothered him more than it should that she’d think that of him.
“The children aren’t allowed to take contracts until they’re able to defend themselves and see their terms met.
Usually around fifteen or sixteen. I just wanted you to check your knowledge and assumptions.
Before you seek something, you might want to understand it. ”
She rolled her eyes. “How easy you make it sound. As if there’s a history book about them. Not to mention when Queen Meara sends you off to do something, you don’t ask a lot of questions…or dawdle. You go immediately.”
Those words hit him like a fist. Mostly because he knew exactly what they meant.
Gisela was right. No one asked Meara questions. To do so would awaken her nasty wrath.
“How did you get into her service?”
She glanced away. “Like you, my father abandoned me to her.”
Those words also offended him. She made a lot of assumptions about things she knew nothing. “Just to be clear, my father didn’t abandon me. He had no choice.”
She snorted in derision. “We all have choices. Your father was king of the trolls, ogres and giants, and you’re telling me that he couldn’t have fought against her to keep you safe?”
“It was more complicated than that.” And it was something he struggled with on his own. He loved his father dearly, but he’d never understand why his father had given in to Meara’s demands without a fight. Why he’d forced Xaydin to go when he could have sent another.
As Gisela had noted, they’d had an army, and his mother’s and father’s magic. He would have never handed over his own child. Not for anything.
Not for any cost. He’d have fought every devil in every realm for the sake of his child.
And it was hard to forgive his father for the fact that he hadn’t been so protective. But he’d never been in his father’s position, and for that, he was truly grateful.
Maybe he would have done the same thing.
That was the nightmare that forever haunted him.
Would he give up his child for his kingdom?
And it made him curious about something. “If the only way to secure your kingdom and procure peace for your people meant you had to send your child to another, would you do it?”
Gisela frowned at his question. “No. Never.”
“So you would send your kingdom to war rather than trust your child to protect himself?”
She nodded. “Knowing what I know…what I’ve seen? Yes. I would send grown soldiers to die before I’d risk my child’s safety with someone I didn’t know.”
“What of the innocent children who would die in the conflict?”
“I would trust their parents and my soldiers to protect them. I would never send an innocent into hell to secure anything. It’s not a child’s place to protect their kingdom.”
There it was. That note in her voice that told him she’d been a hostage too. Only she didn’t want to acknowledge it for some reason.
But he knew the hatred and venom that lived within her. It was the infernal fire that stayed inside him, night and day. All of them, really. Everyone who’d been sent to Meara as a hostage. None of them had survived that trauma without being filled with darkness and rage.
How could they?
They’d spent years being beaten and tortured. And all for the centaur queen’s depravity. “I’m sorry, Gisela.”
“Sorry for what?”
He didn’t answer. There was no need, especially since they were nearing the shop he’d come out of their way to visit.