17 | Yaron
Shadow Keep
“If I’d known you’d be like this, I’d have let the blacksmith flog me days ago.” She hasn’t stopped touching me since the square. Her touch is heavenly. I’m lying on my stomach on the bed at her insistence while she cards her fingers through my hair and applies more cooling rags covered in healing salve and aloe to the deepest lacerations across my spine.
“I knew you did this on purpose. Taking so many lashes just to win over me and my family.”
“I am sorry, Kiandah, that they had to endure any pain at my hand at all.”
“You did the right thing. At the church. In the dungeons. And here in the Orias marketplace, you did the only thing you could have, really. The villagers would never have given us back the respect we lost. You restored some of our honor. Now, we might have a chance to rekindle some relationships, get our jobs done, maybe even restore our friendships. Justine was rooting for us out there. She’s one of my friends. I never thought she’d talk to me again after your Riders killed Tor.”
I’m quiet. It’s hard to know what to say next. I am filled with regret and yet, I am not sure I would have changed my actions if I could go back. “I am sorry, Kiandah, for those that you’ve lost at my hand.”
She doesn’t answer right away, and when she does, she redirects, “You know, I happen to like looking down at you like this, below me on the bed.”
I smirk, thrown by the sudden power I hear in her tone. “And why is that?”
Her fingers are strong and sure against my scalp, distracting me from the pain of my wounds. “You can’t meet my gaze and reduce me to rubble with that smoky stare.” She bends down and whispers against the back of my hair. Her breath is warm and contrasts against the chill of the healing strips and I shiver. She laughs menacingly and I feel it when she says that I’m vulnerable. “It feels like you’re at my mercy, injured like this…I like it. It fills me with visions of you at my mercy in other ways.”
“Kiandah,” I hiss. “Stop this. Do not use your power now when I cannot rise to match it.”
She pulls back on a huff, but I can sense that she’s smiling. We lapse back into a strained silence. I’m not sure it’s strained on her end, but I can feel the tension on mine as she’s left my question unanswered. Do you forgive me? “I… Your attempts to distract me will not be met with success. I want you to hear my apology for the wrongs I’ve committed against you, your family and your friends.”
“And you want my forgiveness?”
Yes. “I want…whatever you are willing to give.”
She sighs. “I think I’m starting to understand how you became one of the most feared Lords of Gatamora at such a young age. You don’t lose. You know just what to say…”
“I do not lie. I do feel regret.”
She pauses, as if trying to gather the right words, before she eventually says, “I don’t know that you are sorry. I think that you are sorry I saw what you’re capable of. But I’m not sure you feel regret in the same way I do. I think you regret only that you’ve had to take such drastic steps to fix things in such a way that when you ask for me under the blood moon, I won’t be able to give any answer but one.”
“And what answer is that?” I ask, heart beating hard rather than fast.
She leans in close once more, her lips brushing my temple. “You are a clever male, Yaron. You tell me what I’ll say then.”
“You cannot say no to me.”
“No, I cannot.”
“But do you want to say yes?”
Her hesitation fills me with madness. I grab her wrist and bring her callused hand to my mouth, brushing my lips over her hardened knuckles.
“I…do.”
“However?” I snap.
“However, I…” Her fingers still against my scalp. She removes them and I curse my temper. “I’m still quite afraid of you. Your capacity for violence and brutality. I just…” She inhales deeply once again and exhales heavily, her cool breath fanning over all of my wounds. “I don’t have anything to say, Yaron. A day ago, the whole town was convinced my family was a bunch of killers. It makes sense that the male who wants my hand would be, too. Justice is no excuse for death and yet…it does not change my feelings. Because you were right in the cab of that chariot. You could raise an arrow to my friends and a torch to my family and forgiveness would still find a way to trump my reason.” Her fingers return to my arms this time, and she begins massaging me in firm ministrations.
It feels glorious — or it would, if I weren’t so tense. Damn the wounds on my back, I flip over and move into a seat, startling her so that she slips off of her knees and lands on her hip with a squeak. “I want you to want me for who I am, not in spite of it.”
She scowls. “I want you to lie back down and rest.”
I growl. She narrows her eyes and points at the sheets. “Down, boy.”
I growl louder, incapable of keeping my blood from surging south. “You speak to me like that and you’re inviting my beast to rage.”
“Keep him in your pants and maybe I’ll see to him later.”
I bark out a laugh and Kiandah’s lips quirk. I begrudgingly lie back onto my stomach, mostly to cushion the erection she’s just provoked. Luckily, movement makes the pain flare and it’s possible to overcome my sudden need for her. A gift, when she ambles off of the bed a few moments later.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to fix you a meal.”
“You’re still injured from yesterday, Kiandah. We need to wait for Okayo to return with the rest of his supplies. You must rest in the meantime.”
“He has already seen to me.”
“And said your throat needs medication.”
“The bruises look worse than they feel.”
“Kiandah, sit.”
“Worry about yourself. You’re not healing properly because of the undead Alpha venom in your system.” She makes an angry sound. “I cannot believe you willingly injected yourself with that.” I plant my right cheek on the mattress and see her walking across the room away from me. I try to rise, but before I can so much as shift my arm, Kiandah pegs me with an angry stare. “If you get out of that bed, I will punish you, Lord Yaron. You will not like how,” she says, repeating my own words. “Okayo says you need to keep still so you can keep your blood pressure low.”
“Kiandah…” She’s ignoring me entirely, sliding her arms into the sleeves of a fresh tunic. One of mine. I need to procure her clothing. The Lady of the Shadowlands can’t be walking around the castle in a fucking shirt. “Put pants on, for your precious ancestors’ sakes.”
She rolls her eyes, but does as I ask, then she heads to the door, despite my instruction. “I’ll be back shortly with Okayo, if he’s not back before I return. Stay still. If I find you up and moving about the room when I return, I need not remind you that there will be consequences, Lord.”
If I were feeling better, my beast would have certainly surfaced at that pronouncement. As it is, all I can do is listen to her and let her go. She is not a captive, she is not a slave to me. In fact, one could argue quite the opposite. I yearn for her approval, for her to find me just as she left me, but also for her punishment, to chase after her — but the trouble is, I really am tired…I yawn once and I fall asleep to the scent of Kiandah, still lingering on my sheets.
The sounds of voices rouse me some time later. Kiandah’s light laughter is punctuated by a deeper voice saying, “…was nothing…my pleasure…”
I wake fully then and jerk back, only to have a heavy weight smack the back of my head. “Stay still,” Okayo’s throaty voice says from much closer. “I know what you’re thinking and no, Kiandah is not thanking Dorsten for bending her over your half-dead corpse and fucking her…”
“Okayo,” Dorsten’s deep voice rings at the same time Kiandah shouts, “Ancestors bless. What are you two talking about?”
She comes closer and I still struggle to blink my eyes fully open. I’m exhausted. I’m not used to feeling this tired. This injured. And then I remember the undead venom in my veins and how I have felt this tired and exhausted once before, when I was bitten in Echo’s garden, in the battle of the North Island against the reanimated corpses. But I did not have Kiandah’s voice and touch to soothe me then.
“Lord Yaron was prepared to launch out of bed and strike Dorsten down for defiling your honor, but rather than risk burning the shit out of him, I decided to cut off that impulse at the knees.”
“Defiling…burning… What are you talking about?” Kiandah’s voice is near a shriek as she hands her tray to Dorsten standing at the door, eyes bugging out of his head.
“Uh…” Dorsten starts, moving to set the steaming tray of food on the table. “I will leave you all.”
“What were you doing with Kiandah?” I ask him while Kiandah and Okayo argue over my back.
“You can’t take that torch to him…”
“Oh, and are you a medical professional…”
Dorsten looks uncomfortable as he glances back over his shoulder, as if trying to decide whether to approach or retreat. It vaguely occurs to me that I should be annoyed that he’s in my private chambers and that his gaze is focused too heavily on the Omega for my liking as I squint up and look at him. But I don’t seem to be able to muster the energy other than to bark, “Dorsten.”
He jolts. “I was escorting the Omega back from the kitchens. She prepared a meal for you and, as Cyprus is still being tended to by Finn, I wanted to ensure she was not left alone. But I will leave now and see how he progresses and if I cannot get him outfitted today in a red cloak.”
“A red cloak?” Kiandah says, looking at Dorsten before something above me draws her attention. “No, don’t!”
She lunges for Okayo and I laugh gruffly as the male squawks. “Stop it!”
She shouts, “Give me that!”
Dorsten jerks backwards and forwards, looking concerned, clearly trying to decide whether or not to intervene. “Uhm…yes, my Lady. Your…Lord Yaron has decided to give him a red cloak, conditional on his supervision of you until a time that he is no longer needed. At that point, he will be folded into the regular guard, should his training progress normally.”
“You…did?” Kiandah says, the sounds of a struggle have me lifting my head to see Okayo and Kiandah fighting over a small, red-hot poker in Okayo’s gloved fist.
“Good grief, stop this at once. Kiandah! Okayo!”
“Let go!” Okayo shouts.
Kiandah does, but she pushes him hard so that he falls backwards, tripping over the carpet, the red poker in his hand flying from his fist. “Ha!” she exclaims and then runs to retrieve it.
“Don’t touch it — ” Okayo warns just as my flesh jolts under the shredded barrier of my skin. I prepare to lunge for her, worried about her burning herself, but when she grabs the poker, her hand is engulfed in flame. She takes the firebrand easily into her fist and as the blue flames licking at the outside of her palm retreat, so too does the red color at the burning end of the tine.
She tosses it aside when it shines black once again. “You will listen to me next time, Okayo. I know what I’m talking about…” She returns to the bed to lean over me and inspect my back, but as she draws close enough to touch, I launch my right arm out and snatch Kiandah around the waist. She yelps as I drag her onto the bed. In a seat, I lay my head against her lap, nuzzling my nose into her belly. “Dorsten, you are dismissed. Kiandah, would you like to tell me why you are fighting my best healer?”
Kiandah huffs out a laugh and cards her fingers through my hair. “He’s going to burn you horribly if he uses that tool. I have a better idea.” I don’t care what it is, so long as she keeps touching me.
“Okayo, the Lady has dismissed you. Be gone.”
He scoffs, and it would be hilarious if it were accompanied by the sounds of him gathering his equipment and leaving, but it is not. “Okayo,” I growl in warning.
“I am not leaving you bleeding all over the place like this. Why did you take so much of that fucking venom again, my Lord?”
“To make a point,” I say sleepily.
Kiandah and Okayo both scoff. “You made a point, that cannot be denied.” The stupid satin pants she wears now are in the way of me burying my snout between her legs, the sweet scent of her pussy ensnaring all of my focus. I’m distracted by that, so I simply snuggle closer while she and Okayo discuss something…important.
“Okayo,” I have the awareness enough to ask, “did you drug me?”
“I’m listening to Lady Kiandah, my Lord.”
“Okayo…” I start to lift up, but my arms are heavier than they should be and Kiandah is easily able to wrangle me back down while her fingers pick carefully over my back.
“My Lord, I think I can cauterize your wounds myself…with my hands…”
“Your gift is remarkable…but it still seems risky,” Okayo butts in at the same time that I snarl, “Don’t call me Lord, Kiandah.”
They both ignore me. As if I’m not Lord of this castle at all. It’s a rather jarring sensation. I’ve never been ignored. And in another way, it’s quite liberating.
“Nothing can be as bad as that machete you were about to scald him with. Let me try.” She sounds insistent and sure. Her alternate personality is showing and I’m pleased. Normally, she reserves this personality for protecting her family, or ordering me to my knees.
Okayo grumbles, but relents. I feel a cool breeze against some of the skin on my back near my right shoulder a moment before warmth douses it. Warmth. Not scalding heat. Warmth free of pain. I relax against her thighs and close my eyes. Sleepily, I offer, “It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work, Kiandah. Let Okayo butcher me with his machete. He’s done worse to me than that.”
But Okayo is silent. For once.
“Hm?” I say, rolling into the fleshiest part of her thigh and pinching it between my teeth. She swats the back of my head with her other hand and hisses. “You do that and the scarring will be even worse. Hold still, Yaron. Don’t be a baby. It can’t hurt that badly.”
I’m confused and not able to think clearly with whatever Okayo gave me running through my system. Piecing her words together, it almost sounds like she’s suggesting that what she’s doing with her fingers is working…
“It’s working, my Lord,” Okayo says breathlessly. “It’s incredible.”
“It’s working?” I ask.
“Yes. It seems to be,” Kiandah mutters. “But shh. It takes concentration.”
“Do you even know what you’re doing? Or how you’re doing it?” Okayo fires.
Kiandah doesn’t sound as incensed by the question as she should. “Err…”
“Of course she does. My Omega is a creature of many talents.” I close my eyes and settle against her, hoping she’ll keep on touching me like she is.
“Am I hurting you, my Lord?”
“Not at all. The sensation is heavenly.”
Okayo is firing off questions feverishly now. “What does it feel like?”
“Like fucking a cloud.”
Kiandah barks out a laugh, which she follows up immediately with curses. “Gods of the shadows, Lord Okayo, what did you give him?”
“That’s uhh…not important.”
“Okayo…” I grumble, though I meant to sound more menacing than that.
The two chat over the healing properties my Omega wields with her fingertips while I loiter on the boundary line between drowsiness and ravenous contentment. Whatever she does takes forever and I’m fine with that. I hope it will never end. I haven’t felt so at ease in a long time. I don’t doubt that every ounce of tension has fled my body. That I didn’t get up and immediately flay Dorsten for having had the privilege of making her laugh should have been my first indication that I am completely and utterly stoned.
I must drift off to sleep because when I wake, it’s dark, the room is quiet and Kiandah is with me in bed. The sheets are fresh and I feel oddly clean, lying beneath them as I am. I can feel the bandages pull on my back as I reach for her, wrapping my hand around her leg above the knee.
She’s staring at my face wearing a small, cryptic smile and I can’t figure out if she killed me, and momentarily I am concerned that I’ve died and entered a blissful afterlife. It occurs to me on the next instant that I’m also okay with that. If this is the afterlife and Kiandah is here, there is nothing else for me to do except enjoy it.
Suddenly, she smiles bright. She has a slight gap between her front teeth. I have never noticed any other woman with this feature and I have never adored a feature more in a woman than I do this one, right now. “What are you thinking, Yaron? You have the strangest look on your face.”
“I’m not certain I’m not dreaming.” Or dead.
Kiandah laughs and it ricochets through my skull. It scars everything it grazes, changing the chemistry of my makeup irrevocably. “Did Okayo really give you so many drugs? You’re looking like a fat, sleepy housecat.”
“How about a lounging lion, satisfied after a kill?” I reach for her and she doesn’t stop me from wrapping a heavy arm around her waist and pulling it flush to mine. I’m immediately annoyed by the tunic she’s wearing and start picking at the dull black buttons.
“You do know that female lions do all the hunting for the pride, don’t you?” she says, but she doesn’t stop my fondling.
“Perhaps I’m a rabid lion, then.”
“That I could believe. Yaron, what are you doing with my shirt?”
“I want it,” I growl irritably, incapable of getting the buttons free with my claws. Why do I have claws again? My head is still lost in the fog.
“You want my shirt? Well, it is your shirt, so I suppose…”
“I don’t want your shirt,” I growl, irritated with my progress. Regaining control of my hands doesn’t improve my work with the buttons. Finally, I just tear the whole thing apart. “I want it off.”
“Yaron,” she says on a laugh, trying to cover her breasts with her hands. I can’t see them as well as I’d like without my beast’s eyes and I’m not in control enough to access a single aspect of him without the rest. Curse Okayo… “You’re not supposed to roll onto your back,” she chastises when I lean over to do just that. “You’re not well enough to have sex,” she adds, which is a pity, because I’d been about to drag her body over mine and beg her to ride me to the sunrise.
I groan out my concession, sighing heavily as I sag back into the mattress.
Kiandah laughs lightly, but she doesn’t move to retrieve her tattered shirt or any other. She just sits there, torturing me with the sight of her perfect breasts hanging heavy on her chest, tipped in hard nipples that, in this light, look like black diamonds.
“You’ll stay until morning, yes?”
“I already promised you I wouldn’t leave your side, didn’t I?”
“Did you make that promise?”
“Maybe.” She shifts a little closer to me. “So I’ll stay. If you’ll have me.”
“I want to have all of you.”
“You’ll be begging soon enough, Lord Yaron.”
I growl but it comes out as a puff of air. “I’ll beg now.”
“You can’t even keep your eyes open.”
“I would for you.”
“You’re lucky that I wouldn’t ask you to. I want you to heal. And I need to rest.” Her expression twists a little bit then, the shine of her humor dulling. “It wasn’t as easy as I hoped it would be controlling the heat in my hands. I don’t really understand the power. It seems to only work when I’m desperate, and when I saw Okayo with that barbaric wand he was going to use, I panicked. The flames came easily then. But as you got more relaxed and I did too, it flickered in and out. I…” She glances away. “I’m sorry. Okayo had to use his machine on some small sections of your back. I wasn’t able to keep it up. I would…”
“Shh. You’re learning, Kiandah. That you wanted to help me at all is more than I could have asked for.”
“You are Lord of the Shadowlands. I’m yours to command.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that. You set a different precedent. One I’m happy to obey and abide by.”
She snorts. “You are such a man.”
“Am I? I thought I was a Lord.”
“You’re a brute, using your whip to try to win my hand.”
I grin. “But it is working, is it not?”
“Let me go fetch Okayo to bring you more drugs. You’re clearly delusional.” She pretends to roll out of the bed only to have me easily pull her back. I laugh when she giggles wildly, and for a moment we simply laugh and are and exist.
She settles back on the pillows, looking down at me, letting me breathe in her smoky silhouette. I drag her very close until I can feel her breasts against my chest and her long, warm legs tangled with mine. She’s hot to the touch. An echo of the flame that lives inside. I press a lingering kiss to her forehead and smooth my hand over her very short hair around the curve of her head. She’s so perfect.
“You are right, though. I did have an ulterior motive in taking the lashes for you and your kin.”
“Did you now?” she says slowly. She still sounds so relaxed, but I can feel fresh tension thread her limbs.
“Yes. I need your family’s help.”
“With what?”
“Finding the undead.”
She freezes and I immediately curse Okayo and his horrible, wonderful drugs. They’ve loosened my tongue. I never meant to tell her any of this. The deal I brokered with Owenna was meant to stay between us. “You would use us for the very purpose you once condemned us for?”
I grunt rather than answer, sensing the moment sliding violently away from me like an avalanche.
I lock her legs to the bed with my own and dig my fingers into the curve of her waist, preventing her from leaving if she does not like what I’ve said or what I have further to say. “Yes.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment, my Lord,” she sneers.
I growl and look up at her. “I’m out of options.”
“There are plenty of options.”
“I want to wed you under the blood moon knowing that you’re safe.”
She stills…and softens, rubbing her hand down her face. “I will help you, but you cannot involve the rest of my family. Promise me.”
I am backed into a corner. Because I cannot make that promise. Owenna is already on the hunt. “I need rest. You need rest,” I say. “We will talk about this further tomorrow. I want to take a trip to the ports…”
“Not tomorrow. No way will you be well enough — and not during the day…”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can’t very well search for creatures of darkness in daylight, can you?”
The way she says it, so simply, makes me shudder. We’ve done some exploring at night, but not enough. There is a knowing in her gaze that compels me to say what I do next. That, and the drugs Okayo has me on. I offer her a confident, dare I say, cocky smirk and suggest, “You are already helping, then, Kiandah. Why don’t you make up to me these scars I took by remaining in your rightful place in my bed and, when we’re well enough, joining me to vanquish the undead at nightfall?”
She is silent for far too long before finally, harrumphing in a petulant way that makes me smile because it lets me know I’ve won. Again. She settles again beneath the covers, drawing them up over us both, and I revel in the feel of her warm body next to mine. It’s like drinking a forest fire. Incinerating and painful and consuming. I bite down on her shoulder and she swats at my cheek. “You are incorrigible.”
“Thank you.”
She laughs begrudgingly. “You do not take insults well.”
“I didn’t hear an insult.” She laughs harder and I use the opportunity to say, “Your brother will have to join us when we go hunting for monsters.”
She opens her mouth, shuts it, then nods. “Because you gave him a red cloak to protect me?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for that. It is an exceptional honor.”
“It was an obvious solution to the problem of the Crimson Rider who assaulted you.” She shudders. I pull her closer on a growl. “You need a bodyguard that I trust not to touch you. Your brother fits the bill. He’s got the same fire you do. He’ll make a good Rider.”
“It’s…” She bites her lower lip. “He used to dress up in red capes all the time when we were children. He always wanted this. You…you don’t know how you honor my family with this.”
I hope she feels the same when she discovers Owenna’s new rank, but I cannot share that with her until we are wed. Owenna’s rank will remain what it is only because so few know of it. If she becomes compromised, her colors are lost, so only Lord and Lady of the Shadowlands can know, along with the other Black Cloaks operating with her in the darkness.
“Once you become my Lady and the undead army has been vanquished and I am certain that there will be no threat to you among my people, he will be absorbed into the Riders’ regular ranks. Until then, I want him shadowing you anytime you move beyond these castle walls. No exceptions.”
“And my brother was okay with this?”
Her surprise surprises me. “Of course. He wants to keep you safe.” I growl as I nuzzle into her very short hair. Her curls are barely regrown, but are so soft against her scalp. Her head is so small and perfectly shaped. I open my mouth to tell her how much I love her hair and the smoothness of her skin and see if she wouldn’t mind a quick fuck, just to help the both of us go to sleep, but she spares herself — us both — by speaking first.
“If I stay all night, my Lord,” she says teasingly, in a way that annoys me and makes me smile at the same time. “Then there will be nothing you can say to stop me from coming with you to look for the undead when you’re clearheaded and no longer in pain.”
“Make it every night and we have a deal, my queen.”
She reaches her way around my body and awkwardly takes and shakes my hand. I smile. “Deal, except if I’m cross with you. I reserve the right to kick you out of your bed — our bed. It’s mine now if I’m being invited to share it indefinitely.”
I smile, feeling lighter than I ever have, and breathe in her wonderful scent. “Whatever you say, my queen. Whatever you say…” And I drift off to the sweetest dreams I can remember having in all of my long days.