Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE TEMPLE
“ G od’s balls on an anvil,” Archer cursed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked back up to where the young apprentice stood in the gate tower, doggedly unfazed by the proposed threat on the ground. “Just open the damn gate and go fetch Master Warelow.”
“I told you, Master Warelow is meditating,” the young fae yelled down. “He sees no one during this time.”
“Can I cut his throat now?” Katarra complained at Archer’s side, her blade pressing into the other apprentice’s throat. The male kneeling before her started to cry. “How about this,” she addressed the one in the tower, “Go get Warelow, and I will slit his throat.”
Archer slid his gaze to her. She shrugged. “You’re speaking the wrong language, Commander. The one up there clearly wants one less competitor around this place.”
“Fine,” Archer conceded, turning Solitaire from the gate. “Cut his…” A movement near the forest edge caught his attention. “Wait,” he said under his breath.
Katarra sighed dramatically. “It’s just a villager.”
“Look again,” his words were barely audible .
Her expert ears caught them with ease, though. Her gold eyes glanced discreetly to the dense tree line. The apprentice at her feet saw it, too. He started to open his mouth, his Adam’s apple bobbing, a shout building in his throat.
She slit it.
The surprised gasp from the tower, followed by the sounds of projectile vomiting, neither confirmed nor disputed her competition speculations. Still, Katarra crooned, “You can thank me when we return.”
“We’ll be back in the morning,” Archer called up to the Temple gate. “Warelow can decide if his meditation is worth another sacrifice then.”
Katarra climbed onto Anarchy’s back and sidled up next to Solitaire. Archer had explained Dagan’s implications regarding the Temple wizards on their journey here. Kastor’s involvement in the disappearance of his sister and nephew didn’t make sense. The ancient Grand Master was loyal to his sworn neutrality. Archer couldn’t fathom him breaking those sacred vows.
Warelow on the other hand…
The male hailed from a long line of power-hungry fae. Turncoats that flipped their allegiance with the changing tides. Archer always thought the wily wizard better suited for politics with the way he weaved truth and deceit like a spell.
Warelow had taken his wizard’s oath out of necessity, his father having been found guilty of treason after the siege on Arrowren. He had been offered two choices. He could follow his sire to the execution block. Or bind his soul to the coven, forsaking all personal and political aspirations.
“He’s heading toward the river,” Katarra said, nostrils flaring. “Does your wizard like garlic and stale wine?”
“I have yet to meet a wizard that doesn’t.”
She smiled, and geed her stallion. “Let’s go see who it is, then.” Her midnight-colored steed broke into a gallop.
Solitaire tossed his head, and Archer let him go, giving chase. Katarra had filled him in on the catacombs and how they’d been spelled. At least, how some of the tunnels had been hidden from view. The main arteries were still visible to all. As they had been for thousands of years.
It was the secret passageways that had been cloaked with magic. The original tunnels. Their documentation was destroyed in the fires that ravished Hornhall and Windsong’s great libraries ten years after the siege on Arrowren.
The old scholars had begun work immediately, rewriting invaluable documents from memory. But a series of well-organized assassinations, right on the heels of the devastating fires, halted much of their progress. It was no wonder many of the oldest tunnels had been forgotten over time.
Now they were being used to conceal the coming and goings of the rebels. A network of mazes led directly to the gardens the day his sister and nephew were taken. Archer felt like a fool. Katarra agreed he was.
She didn’t let him stew in it, stating he couldn’t have predicted what would happen in the garden. His only failing was he had been born fae. A deformity she was willing to overlook due to his skillful cock.
Surprisingly, she had left the conversation there, understanding the importance of staying on task. She then explained everything she’d found while exploring the long-forgotten passageways.
Just nothing about how she discovered the vital information. Nor how many rebels she had drained while down there.
Not to be outdone by the other secret she’d been keeping from him; the unknown child she was allowing to squat in her chamber and look after her feral wyvern. The subject was very much off limits. A hard line.
One he wasn’t stupid enough to cross. Lest he end up like one of the drawings she left tacked to her chamber door. A new one every time she went out. Each more detailed than the last.
Give and take. It was the basis of their relationship. Archer had no misconception it would change now. He didn’t want it to. That would involve asking her to change her nature–her untamed and impulsive nature–the wildness in her that called to the wildness in him.
Ahead, she lifted her perfect ass off the saddle and pulled both feet from the stirrups in one fluid movement. A little hop and she was crouched low on the horse’s back, balancing like an acrobat.
She tossed a smirk over her shoulder and shouted into the wind. “I’ve got the bastard.” She shot into the sky.
K atarra took the target off his feet before he could get to the rickety bridge. They rolled down the steep embankment and landed in the shallow water. It was too easy.
She yanked the raggedy woolen hood from the fae’s head, as the sounds of horse hooves bore down on them. She wasn’t sure what Warelow looked like, but this idiot fit the bill. Wiry, smelly, corrupt as fuck.
He stopped trying to dislodge her, and was instead, attempting to get a hand out from the tangle that had become their bodies. Successfully freeing one arm, he did some weird-ass-shit with two of his fingers. High-fae bullshit .
The wind picked up.
She pushed his head under the water. The fucker managed to keep those two fingers above it, like a drunk Earth girl in a pool with a plastic cup of beer. She let go of his neck and grabbed his wrist, but it was too late.
Across the river the sky began to swirl. A debris field formed in the vortex, growing faster and broader, it swallowed everything in its path–planks off the bridge, bushes, a stone wall, a godsdamned bear. Spinning straight for them.
It was approaching so quickly Katarra wondered if flashing away could even elude it. She held tighter to the wizard and braced for impact.
It never came. A hot blast of blinding light shot down from the heavens, a laser of competing air and solar energy, right into the eye of the tornado. It obliterated the funnel cloud, forced its rotation off course, and sent everything it had collected plummeting to the ground.
A shadow fell over them.
Archer stood above her, twisting his splayed tan fingers into the palm of his hand. He had extinguished the twister. Using some form of magic far greater than the wizard’s.
She stared up at his handsome face, never more turned on in her life than at this very moment. So much so, she almost forgot she was drowning the idiot they needed to interrogate.
Katarra uncoiled to her feet. “Is this Warelow?”
A muscle in the commander’s jaw twitched as he stared down the fae in question. “Where’s my sister and nephew?”
“I don’t have any notion what you are referring to.” Warelow chose denial.
Bad choice. Archer’s steely gaze turned murderous. “I know about your secret cabin. I know the female and the child you keep there, against Coven rules. I know you care for them.” The commander’s voice was hard as ancient stone. “Can you imagine all the ways I’ll slice them up?”
Archer’s eyes cut to her. “How much fun Katarra Diaboli”–he looked back at the wizard, who had dropped seven shades paler–“will have with them?”
“It can’t be…” Warelow gaped. “She…she…”
“Died. Yes.” Katarra folded her arms and shifted her weight to one hip. “Let’s stay focused on the here and now, shall we?”
The word ‘how’ had already started forming on the wizard’s thin lips, his stupid curiosity about to get him maimed sooner than expected. Realization lit up his beady eyes. And his mouth shut abruptly like a sprung animal trap .
He looked back and forth between them, clearly weighing his very limited choices from the cold water. “If I tell you. You won’t harm them?”
“You have my word,” Archer said.
The wizard shifted to get his feet underneath him. Katarra shook her head. He stilled, the current finding new ways around his body.
“In the catacombs,” Warelow muttered, barely louder than the swift-moving water.
“They’re not there.” Katarra stared down at him. “Your shitty little magic trick doesn’t work on me.”
If he was offended he didn’t show it. “There is a different masking spell where they are. Under the cathedral. A secret room.”
Archer’s gaze slid to hers. She shook her head in answer. She hadn’t found any underground routes that led directly under it.
“How do we find it?” she inquired.
“Only those with a spelled stigmata can see where its doors are located.” Warelow pushed up his sleeve. On the underside of his forearm were two small black crescent shapes, facing each other. Nearly touching, they could have made a circle, if not for the diagonal line running between them. He looked up at Archer. “I can take you.”
“Who else has this stigmata?” The commander intoned with such horrible calm.
“Only the highest ranking rebels.” A tinge of pride coated Warelow’s reply.
Archer’s face was utterly unreadable. “Who crafted the spell?”
“If you let me live, I will–”
“Who crafted the spell?” A hint of the coming storm twisted the commander’s words. Enough so that whatever leverage the wizard thought to achieve vanished from his hopeful face.
Indignant resolution replaced it as Warelow dared to lift his pointy chin. “I gave you what information you asked for. I shall give you no more without another deal. ”
Katarra withdrew the knife strapped to her thigh and dropped to a crouch before him. “Give me your arm.”
He pulled it to his chest. “Why?”
“Only those that bear the marking can see through the spell.” She touched the tip of the blade with a finger and rotated it between her hands, watching the silver catch the fading light. “I’m going to use yours.”
Aghast, Warelow yanked away before looking frantically up at the commander. Archer said nothing. The wizard’s round, bloodshot eyes landed back on Katarra.
“Your arm.” She reached for him again.
“I’ll tell you!” Warelow squawked and flung himself back onto his elbows in the water. His pleading gaze shot back to Archer. “It was your father.”
Archer reached across his body for his sword. Warelow held up both hands, his next words blurting from his mouth with an excess of spittle. “Your father created the stigmata. He spelled it with Pure Magic.”
The sound of steel on steel was a sonnet, a tender lullaby to Katarra’s ears. The wizard didn’t share her appreciation for art, apparently. The clear spring water around his crotch turned a murky yellow.
Katarra’s blood thrummed faster through her cold veins, the thrill of slaughter an accelerant to the predator within. Her canines elongated and she smiled.
Warelow crawled backward on his elbows and haunches like a crustacean seeking sanctuary in the river’s depths. “Ask your uncle,” he begged in a rush. “Ask about the wolf pack. Why they serve him. Why they would serve you, if you ask.”
Katarra looked at the commander. His fingers flexed around the hilt of his sword unsheathed at his side. His voice a whisper of shadows, Archer said, “Don’t you dare speak of my father.”
The fool in the river didn’t listen. “He kept it a secret, all of it. But your father was smart and gifted with sight. He created two separate lives for himself,” the wizard persisted. “He knew the conflict was coming. He spelled himself into another form; the dark-haired, unassuming male you and your sister knew him to be.”
Archer warned, “Your wife and your child will never see tomorrow, Warelow.”
“Your uncle is sworn to secrecy. Until the day comes that you asked him yourself.” The wizard’s words were growing more desperate by the second, but still he continued. “You can kill me here. You will kill me here. But spare my family until you speak with Dagan.”
Archer stilled. Katarra glanced from one male to the other, then back to Warelow. “What story will Dagan speak of?” she asked.
“He will tell you that when his brother would leave his family for long periods of time, it was to travel to his birthplace. He would change back to his given body, hair and eyes the same as his sons.” The wizard looked past her to Archer. “Your father would go there to serve his uncle, the rightful ruler of Ventus. The King of Arrowren.”
The current of the river quieted. The trees stopped swaying. Katarra looked around. This place knew. Ventus knew that title–respected it.
“What you speak of is treason.” Archer’s lips curled.
“To the ones you now serve, it is,” Warelow said. “But for those of us loyal to the Astamere bloodline, it is an unwavering allegiance.”
Archer shook his head, hair falling around his face, the silky strands shining like molten ore in the setting suns dwindling light. The look of him…the clear conflict he was undergoing… Katarra stood.
“Your powers,” Warelow started again. “Where do you think they came–”
She plunged the short blade into the water, embedding it in the river stones, right between the wizard’s legs, missing his balls by an inch. The bastard’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, but he kept his trap shut.
“Cut the tattoo off your arm,” she ordered, leaning in until they were eye to eye. “If you fuck it up and hack it to pieces in the process”–she looked at that inch separating her blade from his junk, before flicking her gaze back to his–“I will slice off your dick. A half inch at a time.”
She straightened and turned back to Archer. “This oily fuckwit has certainly been entertaining, but we have the information we need. Everything else will be answered later.”
The commander’s eyes met hers. For a long moment he said nothing. Then he nodded, and the weight of the wizard’s proclamation eddied off his broad shoulders as if he had willed it away.
Warelow hissed in pain behind her. She reminded him, “Make it pretty.”
Archer stepped around her and into the water. She pivoted to watch the wizard hand him the bloody scrap of flesh. The commander inspected it, then turned and held it out to her.
She nodded her approval. “You’re an artist, Warelow.”
“Do any of the other coven masters bear this same tattoo?” Archer asked, though his eyes remained on Katarra.
“Those cowards are only beholden to the gods,” the wizard hissed through clenched teeth. “They had no part in–”
He didn’t get the chance to finish. Archer rotated back so fast Katarra could only track his movements as a blur–a gleaming blur of slashing steel.
The wizard’s body sat headless for an impressive amount of time, as if gravity itself was still processing the speed with which the commander had just moved. Then it toppled sideways into the water.
Archer turned back to her. “Seems I need to have a conversation with my uncle.” He strode toward the horses. “After we get my sister and nephew back.”