Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Keeran ran, his legs easily carrying him away from the baying hounds behind him.
He kept his pace slow, making sure they caught up to him, that they got him in their sights before they scented Aelia hiding in the garden.
He heard them round the corner, their baying picking up as they spotted him, and he picked up speed.
He was still holding back, running no faster than a regular artemian, slow enough not to arouse suspicion.
He picked his turns carefully, taking him in the general direction of the busier part of the city, where the restaurants and taverns would be open and heaving until the early hours.
He could still lose them, he could still get Aelia out.
There were enough dark corners in this city for them to hide until the coast had cleared, even if they had to lie low until the tide was out. All he had to do was lose them.
The streets became steadily busier, the smell of alcohol and smoke wafting amongst the partying artemians. They didn’t have time to move out of his way, but he didn’t need them to. He skimmed past them, little more than a rush of air between his skin and theirs, before he was gone.
He heard the thud of music and sprinted towards it, picking up the pace until he rounded a corner and ploughed into a square crammed full of dancers.
He skidded to a stop, apologising to the grumbling artemians he’d nearly slammed into, before edging past them deeper into the thrum of people.
He dropped Aelia’s jacket from around his waist and slouched his shoulders to help him blend in with the crowd, stooping so his head wasn’t sticking out over everyone else’s.
He doubled back rather than going the obvious route directly across the square, positioning himself immediately next to a street vendor cooking skewers of meat.
The succulent aroma made his mouth water.
For a moment, he wished he could find out what the chunks of chicken had been marinated in, wondering if he could replicate it for Aelia, but the baying of hounds snapped his attention back to the present.
The crowd scattered as the Dogs charged into them, closely followed by the Astraea.
They shoved anyone who wasn’t quick enough to the floor and screams quickly broke out as people rushed to move out of their way.
Keeran waited until they’d ploughed right past where he was hiding behind the strong-smelling meat, then ducked out and pushed his way back the way he’d come.
He broke into a jog to keep up with everyone else around him, his heart in his throat as he forced himself to keep the pace slow, but as soon as he was a few streets away, he broke into a sprint.
He tried his best to follow the route he’d taken, trying to overlap his scent as best he could, just in case the Dogs came back this way.
When he was a couple of turns shy of the garden, he ducked into an alley.
Breathing heavily, he risked a glance into the street.
All was quiet, no one was giving chase, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him.
He hung back, hugging the wall as he waited for guards to come tearing past. No one did.
Still, he waited. He couldn’t risk leading them straight to Aelia
Aelia. The moment he’d seen the flash of light from inside the warehouse, he’d known it was her.
The power of it had been electrifying, charging down the pair bond like lightning.
Keeran dropped his head back against the wall, breathing heavily from both exertion and shock.
He should have known Aelia wasn’t artemian, he should have recognised it sooner.
She couldn’t Shift, was phenomenally strong, and they’d pair bonded.
He closed his eyes as he remembered seeing the silver light in her eyes; he’d been so stupid for disregarding it.
Keeran pushed off the wall. This was no time for retrospection. He hugged the wall to peer around the corner, only leaving the alley once he was sure he had lost them, his gait much calmer than his erratic heartbeat.
Get her out, get her out, get her out, it seemed to pound.
The garden was only a few turns away, with no sign of an armoured pursuit behind him, and he felt a little of the tension ease from his shoulders.
Something caught his eye, and he jerked his head skywards to see a Bird circling over him. His heart sank into his boots. It was a mark.
He’d felt someone watching him and he’d just sat tight and waited. He cursed his stupidity as a band of soldiers rounded the corner. He turned back the way he’d come, only to find a second band closing in from behind.
There were no side streets, no exit points, nowhere for him to run.
Keeran looked at the sky and felt the lure of freedom it offered.
Instinctively, he reached for the magic that hummed at the base of his skull, ready and waiting to transform him into the stuff of nightmares.
The soldiers closed in, but it didn’t matter.
In mere moments he would wipe them all from existence like the insects they were before vanishing into the sky.
Then his chest tugged uncomfortably, and the magic stilled, his hand pressing to his sternum. If he Shifted now, the city would be on red alert, and the only road out would be closed off. Aelia would never get out.
The pair bond was silent, even when he reached for it, and for the first time, he wished they’d cemented it so it was less fucking unreliable. He would have done anything to have felt her, to know she was still safe.
In that moment, brief as it was, his mind was made up. Without a shred of remorse, he let the magic slip from his grasp.
And then they were upon him.
He didn’t draw his sword. No mortal man would be able to kill so many soldiers, and that’s what he must be in their eyes if Aelia stood any chance at escaping—a mortal man like any other. It didn’t mean he was going to go easily though.
A grim smile played on his lips as he dropped to a crouch.
The guards did their best to restrain him, and for the most part, he let them, allowing them to take him to the main gates of the Inner City for the relatively meagre price of a little payback.
“Pack it the fuck up,” the guard to his immediate left said, his voice notably more nasal since Keeran had head-butted him square on the nose.
“Make me.” Keeran grinned through the blood on his own face, not all of it his.
They’d put him in manacles, so tightly bound in front of him that his wrists screamed every time he moved, but he couldn’t resist having a little fun.
The guard snarled and went to ram a gloved hand into Keeran’s stomach, but he came a little too close, just enough for Keeran’s knee to slam into his groin.
The others holding Keeran yanked him roughly back by his manacled wrists, his hands threatening to fall off altogether, but he forced himself to smirk through the pain.
“Ah, don’t worry too much, it’s not all that bad,” Keeran said as the guard doubled over, groaning. “Now you have a matching pair, a squashed nose and a squashed—”
Keeran saw the fist coming from his right, but he let the punch land.
A mortal man wouldn’t have been able to avoid it, and so, as far as these idiots were concerned, neither could Keeran.
The guard who had thrown it smiled smugly, though the gap Keeran had created between his teeth ruined the effect somewhat.
“How’s that for making you?” he leered. “Now fucking walk.” He shoved Keeran, knocking him forward a few steps.
“Would be a whole lot more impressive if you could say it without a lisp.”
Keeran did walk, though, escorted by his whole bleeding entourage through the gates and into the tunnel to the Inner City.
A small part of him was elated at being taken into the belly of the mountain. He hadn’t expected to see the Inner City whilst he was here and the thought of laying eyes on his home, his true home, set something ablaze in his chest.
What he didn’t understand was why they weren’t taking him to Llmera’s commoner’s prison; to the cells that dimpled the mountain peak like a well-made Gouda, only nowhere near as savoury.
They couldn’t know what he was, no fool would have sent so few men to bring him in if they did, so where were they taking him?
They reached a blockade of guards that had never been necessary when the Dragons ruled.
It appeared that the new King liked to keep the Inner and Outer City divided, however.
They were let through with a few raised eyebrows at the state of the guards escorting him.
Keeran smiled, a dark, cruel thing, and they quickly averted their eyes.
The tunnel, polished and beautiful as it was, became more so with each passing step.
Columns erupted from the floor, each with a colossal dragon perched atop it, supporting the weight of the mountain on their backs whilst their outstretched wings connected tip to tip to form the vaulted ceilings.
Keeran walked between them and felt his pride awaken, ugly and demanding, as he was reminded of all his ancestors had been.
Walking obediently in the shackles of mortals wounded that pride, and the beast it belonged to snapped at his control, urging him to kill them all for their insolence.
The statues glared at him from their posts, but he ignored them, just as he ignored the Dragon within him. Aelia had to have a chance to get out; once she’d had time to leave the city, he could make his escape. Until then, until she was safe, he would play the prisoner.
The moment Aelia crossed his mind, the beast within him settled, and with far less resistance than he was used to. Keeran huffed a breath through his nose. The pair bond wasn’t even formed yet, and there it was, tamed into behaving itself by one fleeting thought of her in danger.
The tunnel opened into the enormous chamber that formed the main portion of the Inner City, tiered and sprawling and glorious.
Every single building was one with the stone, bricks flowing into the rock face as if Mother Nature had created them herself, each one as magnificent as the last as they spiralled around the mountain’s largest cavern.
By day, light would pour from channels that allowed access to the surface, some of them Keeran himself had flown through all those years ago, but the Dragons were not ones to accept the limitations of the sun’s benefaction.
The Inner City at night was exactly as Keeran remembered, with every inch illuminated by flames.
It flickered in the open mouths of the dragon statues that balanced on every corner of every building, a testament to the mastery the Dragons had over fire.
The statues drank the oil the Dragons had invented, their bellies filled with it every day by designated servants so that Llmera never had to sleep.
Even the plants that climbed over almost every surface had come alive in the absence of the sun, glowing lights streaking through the dense foliage with ethereal bioluminescence.
The vibrancy of the city hit Keeran with a shock of nostalgia, and he would have given almost anything to stop and take it in, just for one moment. Music and laughter and the smell of food he hadn’t dared to remember filled the air around him, the best parts of home so nearly within his grasp.
The guards had other priorities though, and he was shoved roughly on.
They tried to keep him out of the way of the artemian aristocracy, lest the sight of him offend their more delicate sensibilities.
They might not have seen much of him, but he saw enough of them to realise the city wasn’t the only thing that hadn’t changed.
He had always hated the superiority the people of the Inner City wore, and he could see it still, the condescension draped over them like another layer of their self-indulgent clothing. Fortunately, he didn’t have to look at it for long.
Dragged, jostled and pushed, he was taken via the backstreets to an innocuous townhouse.
Tall and towering, it bled into the cliff of the cavern, no doubt extending far back into the depths of the mountain.
It was into this that Keeran was finally deposited, the old guards handing him over to the new with a word of warning.
Rather unnecessary, Keeran thought, as he watched them limp away, each of them bleeding from one orifice or another.
He had already had his fun though, and he went quietly with the wary-looking replacements, more interested in where they were taking him than the guards themselves.
The marble floor gleamed in the light cast by the chandelier in the hall, and a wide staircase swept up and around to meet the galleried landing that loomed over them.
This was not his to explore though, as he was taken through a comparatively ordinary-looking door tucked into the far corner of the entrance hall.
The humble doorway turned out to be entirely misleading. Despite being far from the most grandiose aspect of the hall, it turned out that the reception room behind it housed one of the most powerful men in the country.
Keeran bit back a snarl as he came face-to-face with Beserkir.