Scorched Treachery – Chapter One

Scorched Treachery

By Rebecca Ethington

Imdalind Series, #3

Chapter One – Wyn

 

It was the same dream. Always the same dream. I had been having the dream since Cail first marked my skin with the curse, the night Ilyan saved me from my father. After about twenty years I began wondering if it was some repressed memory, but I didn’t have blonde hair. My hair was dark, it always had been.

This dream mostly featured a beautiful little girl dancing in a meadow. She danced through the tall grasses with flowers in her blonde hair. I sat and watched with some guy who sat next to me. I would like to say the guy was handsome, but he wasn’t Talon, and no guy could hold a candle to Talon. Talon was tall and built like a football player. This man was sinewy, his coloring lighter. Besides, the mystery guy from my dreams was dressed like Henry the eighth and there was nothing attractive about that, he looked like a peacock. It didn’t look good then, and it wouldn’t look good now. Not like anyone would dress like that now.

The dream always started the same. I sat next to the man in my dreams as he talked, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. But then, the dream would morph. The girl, the man, and I would move from the meadow to a village, then to a marble lined room, and then to the darkness. It was in the darkness that I would begin to hear sound. It was the only sound the dream ever had; the screaming of the little girl as Edmund tortured her.

I would hear the screaming and see the man as he fought to save her, but in the back of my mind I knew I was fighting too. That was the only reason I never believed the girl was me. Because I was watching her, I wanted to save her.

The dream was the reason I never consented to try to have children with Talon. Not only was pregnancy a weird and uncomfortable prospect, but I was scared of what Edmund would do to a child. It was the same reason no one else had children. They were afraid of what Edmund would do to them too. Everyone had seen what Edmund had done to his own children. It wasn’t worth the risk.

The dream had always ended in the dark room, up until a few weeks ago when we first heard the screams of the woman in the tunnels below Prague. The woman yelled and begged and screamed. We could only listen as the woman pleaded, as she fought against those who attempted to make her give away Ilyan and Joclyn’s location.

No matter how hard we looked, we could never find them. The failure in locating them combined with Ovailia’s choice to keep the information from Ilyan, led to her removal as the další v příkazu, placing Talon in the ruling position. Something I was really not happy about.

Now he was gone all the time and the screams of the woman still echoed through the halls.

So the new ending to my dreams stayed. The screaming moving from one person to another before I would wake up and be allowed to scowl at the high ceiling of our room.

Except this morning that didn’t happen. This morning I was rudely awoken by the blasting of Ilyan’s phone playing ‘Hall of the Mountain King’.

Wait.

Ilyan’s phone.

I rolled over and kicked Talon, my magic surging through him. He jerked as I zapped him, my not-so-nice way of waking him up shooting him out of bed.

“Wyn,” he grumbled at me before he settled back into the bed for a moment, only to jump when the sound of the music hit his ears.

Talon’s fingers crawled toward the phone as he sat up, while I chose to stay laying, my eyes focused on him.

Yes, it was the middle of the day where Ilyan was. Yes, he was free to call whenever he wanted. But the fact that it was the middle of the night and he was calling the white phone that was a direct connection to Talon and not his shiny flip phone set my nerves on fire.

Talon grabbed the phone and pressed it to his ear, the skin connection triggering the magic and connecting the call.

“Ilyan?” Talon asked his voice drowsy but still on edge, my mood mirrored in his clipped words.

I waited, unwilling to move, hoping for something exciting – but knowing, absolutely knowing, that nothing positive was going to come out of this call.

“Princess Mudgy.” Talons voice was low, the statement making no sense to me. But I knew it shouldn’t. For all I knew it was a code word and if it was a code word…

I watched Talon as he listened to Ilyan talk, his shoulders knitting together more and more, his body language spelling danger to me. Talon stayed silent as Ilyan spoke, his voice a buzz through the phone before the line went dead. Talon never said anything more after the code words, the silence only knitting my nerves together more. He lowered the disconnected phone to his lap, his movements tense.

Talon didn’t turn to me, he didn’t say anything. He just sat with the phone in his hands, his knuckles white from clenching tightly around the small white box. I watched his wide shoulders flex, the tension never leaving and found my own fears growing.

The silence was painful. I wanted to hear, I wanted to pry, but I knew it wouldn’t be right. I placed my hand on Talons back, almost willing him to turn, to smile, but knowing it wasn’t going to happen.

“Meet you in my dreams,” Talon said, still not looking at me as he lay down and pushed his body against mine.

I was seriously on edge now. Whatever happened was huge enough that neither he nor Ilyan were going to put voice to it where they could be overheard. I lay down next to Talon and closed my eyes, letting the magic of the Tȍuha take me away to meet with him. My mind pulled right into his, the large expanse of the Münzenberg Castle Courtyard surrounding us.

Wispy projections of people walked around us, as Talon’s memories fueled the Tȍuha. The castle was whole and intact as it once was centuries ago, the cobbles of the road pristine. I was never alive in this castle’s time, but this was Talon’s mind, what he envisioned our Tȍuha to be.

“Talon?” I asked as he wrapped his arms around me from where we stood in the middle of the courtyard. His tense muscles strained against me as he held me, the movement not helping to ease my stress.

“They were attacked.” My body froze, my eyes flying open in shock. The stress that flowed between both of us was too much to contain and the people around us zapped into vapor, colors floating through the air as they disappeared, leaving us alone.

“Are they all right?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer, I didn’t. I didn’t need to hear of injuries or brutal battles. I could already feel what hearing this had done to Talon.

He had reacted the same way a few years ago when Ilyan was captured by Edmund’s men. Talon had felt like a failure. Talon had been raised to guard Ilyan. It was his job, but Ilyan had dismissed him when he took me as his mate. No matter how much he tried, Talon could never move past what had been his entire life up until a hundred years ago. I knew he was doing it now, putting the words of blame into his own head, even though there was nothing he could have done.

Ilyan was far more powerful than even Talon. If Ilyan couldn’t protect himself than there was nothing that could be done. Except now there was Joclyn too, and I had no idea if she was capable of protecting herself or not.

Talon shook his head no in answer to my question, and while I felt my stress lessen a bit, Talon’s only increased. His muscles tensed, his arms pressed uncomfortably into me as he lifted me off the ground to his eye height. I wasn’t surprised to see the sparkling gloss in his brown eyes, the threatening tears trying to escape from him.

“It’s not your fault,” I said before he had a chance to let the words become a weight against him. He nodded once and held me against him again, his hold tight as his breathing slowed before he lowered me back down to the ground, releasing me.

He pulled away, the wetness gone from his eyes, his composure back. While it was nice to see Talon’s true emotion at times, more often than not I really wanted my big strong guy around. That was my job, build him up when he is down, and always love him. And I would always do that.

“Does he know who betrayed him?” I asked as Talon moved away from me, toward the large carved stone bench we always sat in. I followed him, my bare feet slipping against the slickness of the cobbles that lined the courtyard before sinking into the hard unrelenting seat next to his.

“No,” Talon answered simply.  His hands bringing my feet onto his lap as he began to trace the dark marks that graced my left foot, their jagged swirls matching the ones that ran along the entire left side of my body.

“He wants me to watch for signs that someone might know what happened before we announce it. It’s probably our best chance at tracking them down.”

I nodded, not knowing how to respond. It was a great plan, but it also re-affirmed that someone was inside of our perfectly protected shelter, that someone had gotten past Ilyan’s protective shield.

All it would take was one.

Get one of Edmund’s men inside and then, like ants, the rest will follow. They would place themselves in dark corners and hide where no one else would go, waiting until the time was right. Then they would jump out and attack, and in only a moment the last of the Skȓíteks would be gone. I had seen it happen before, there was a reason there were so few of the Skȓíteks left. It was probably the sole reason I wasn’t fully accepted. I had marched against them once upon a time.

I jumped at the thought, for once actually wishing I wasn’t so morbid.

“Are you okay?” Talon asked, his voice worried.

I ripped my eyes away from the blob of mud on the cobblestone path that I had been unwillingly staring at to smile at him, my smile more like a grimace, but it seemed kind of fitting so I didn’t try to fix it.

“Who do you think it is?” I asked, avoiding his question and moving to snuggle into him. He welcomed me in, his arms wrapping around me as he held me tightly to him.

“I don’t know Wynny.”

I didn’t know what else to say, I didn’t know how to phrase it. I wish we could find them, and fast. I wished I could rip their arms from their sockets and torture whoever of my kind they had let into the halls of Prague. It was my sanctuary now too, my home after my father had exiled me, after my brother had tried to kill me. I felt my magic surge in eagerness beneath my skin, my heart thump erratically in either excitement or fear, I wasn’t quite sure which.

“I will keep you safe, Wynifred.”

I froze, my breathing caught in my chest, my heart lost between beats. I would have screamed at him, yelled a bit and clocked him upside the face, I didn’t need him to protect me. But I heard what he said between the lines and so my frantic heart beat continued. I listened to the sound of my full name on his tongue, the promise of my safety heavy on the air.

“You promise?” I asked, not needing to hear the answer, not caring if he said no, but asking because I knew that he needed to know that I heard him, that I cared what the answer was.

“I will protect you above all else.”

“Even Ilyan?” I asked, unable to help the question, and the accompanying laugh, from seeping out of my lips.

“Even Ilyan. I took a vow to protect him the day he was born, but that vow was broken the day I sealed myself to you. It is the vow I made with you that is the most important bond to me. I will honor and protect that before all else.” His voice was serious, his tone so true and honest. I felt it melt into me, breathe a new love through me and our magic surged side by side.

Our magic seeped into our souls, and everything inside of me caught fire. I felt a dulled version of this connection in our reality outside the Tȍuha. But here, inside of it, everything was heightened, I was needy for it. It was a feeling we could only get here.

I was not sure how long we spent in our garden, but before either of us was ready we left only to find ourselves in each other’s arms in the flesh, the door already being banged off of its hinges. I sighed as Talon left me, his další v příkazu charges already in full force, just as I assumed they would be.

He was gone most of the day, leaving me alone to attempt to clean the huge mess I had made when I had attempted to make Talon dinner, something I never do.

Talk about a nightmare. I had cut my finger off when trying to chop carrots. Yes, off. Luckily I was magical or I would be walking around reverse flipping people off. As it was, I just reattached it. But, after the soup became inedible, and I had burned the Galder – I was promptly reminded why I never heated food. It was better cold anyway.

The whole experience was a great reminder as to why I hated human food. It’s gross and the texture is off. I don’t know how, but any human can take a simple tomato and turn it into a slime covered bit of goo. I mean, just leave it alone. Don’t touch it. Just put it in your mouth and eat it.

Humans eat weird food.

After I had cleaned the house it became quickly evident that I needed to wash the lace table cloth. After the finger loss induced blood letting, it was required.

Unfortunately the dratted thing was made with something bearing the label of ‘hand wash only’.

Hand wash only!

Whoever had created such stupid fabric needed to be shown a washing machine. There was a reason that washing machines were created, and that was so hand wash only items need no longer exist. But some fool decided to make an un-natural fabric that needed to be hand washed only. And another silly fool (ah-hem, Talon) decided to buy a bright white tablecloth for his lovely wife (that would be me) made out of said abhorrence of natural fabric.

I had taken the table cloth down to the old guard’s chamber where the freezing cold water of the underground spring ran. The dark grey stone of the cavern was jagged, unlike the rest of the tunnels we called home. The roughly hewn walls arched high above my head, the only light source a small collection of magical orbs that floated and bobbed amongst the shallow cavities of the stone ceiling. The green light that blossomed from above gave the room a dark glow that cast hundreds of eerie shadows around me.

This large chamber was only used as a water source now. The underground spring ran through the lowest level of the tunnels below Prague, well the lowest level that anyone dared to go to anyway.

This room, and the ancient dungeon below, were old relics of when Edmund had first declared war on all magic. In the beginning, the dungeons were used to house traitors and Edmund’s men that Ilyan had captured but refused to kill. There had been at least ten of the Skȓítek army in here at any time, guarding the prisoners in the rooms below and keeping their mates safe from them.

That’s what the Skȓíteks were after all, an army. An army with the sole purpose of guarding the wells that sat in the lowest point of this cave.

The wells of Imdalind, the center of magic.

Ilyan and Edmund were the last ones alive who knew the way through the labyrinth of tunnels that led down to the mud, which is why it was so scary that someone could be in here. If Edmund got in, he could stroll right down to the wells like he was walking to a Denny’s.

Now, the dungeons were bare, the room below and the guard chamber I now stood in only a reminder of how the war had started and how many magical beings there had once been.

I scrubbed the fabric before letting the majority of it trail away with the flow of the water. My hands were a nice red color, although I couldn’t feel the burning tingle of the cold. If my skin was threatening hypothermia, I had no idea.

My hands heated against the stone of the floor I kneeled on, my magic surging. Even through the cold of my skin the stone awakened my magic. I had always reacted to the stone of this cave this way. It was like my magic sensed the deep magic of the world that was hidden somewhere far below me. As far as I knew I was the only one who did that, but there weren’t many Trpaslíks around to ask. It could be perfectly normal, and I would never know. Besides, it definitely had its benefits. My personal explosion factor increased by ten. Not like there were many things to explode around here, but it was still cool.

“NO!”

I jumped, like full on jumped, at the disembodied voice that leaped into the air around me. The high pitched scream shot through my body with electricity that peaked every hair on my arms to full attention, my heart rate accelerating with the speed of a twenty thousand volt reaction.

“P-please, n…no,”

The woman was back, which meant that whoever was torturing her was back too. And they were close. Close enough to find me. Close enough for me to find them. I didn’t know why my heart was thumping so wildly. It was either fear of being found or excitement for the battle. I narrowed my eyes in expectation, definitely excitement. I dropped the wet wad of lace down to the stone floor and peaked my ears toward where I could only assume the voice was coming from.

I took a step forward without thinking, my nerves on high alert, eager to attack. I needed to find her and end this.

“I…I…w-won’t t-tell you!”

My head spun, the voice seeming to have moved from one area of the cave to another, this time the voice echoed down a darkened hallway that led toward the dungeon. I looked at the dark cavern, my nerves mingling into fear. No way was I going down there alone. No way. For all I knew, that was exactly what they wanted. Last thing I needed was to run into someone in the dark and then accidentally collapse the cave. Yep, that would be just my luck.

Why did this voice, this woman, only seem to appear when everyone else was busy? It didn’t make sense. I needed to get Talon, we needed to find her.

“L-leave me a..alone,” her voice broke and stuttered as she once again begged for her life.

The timber of her voice was so close to the little girl that haunted my dreams that my heart tensed in a reflex reaction, the contents in my stomach spinning uncomfortably.

I left the table cloth on the ground and took off toward the sparing hall where the pull of Talon’s magic told me he would be. My wet Chuck Taylors squeaked on the stone a little loudly on the first step and I froze waiting to see if the noise would alert whoever was down there to my presence, but the crying remained. Last thing I needed was to scare her off again before I could get Talon and we could investigate.

I began walking again, moving slowly until the volume of the crying had lessened enough that I was out of earshot, allowing me to take off in a dead run toward the training hall. The sounds of battle hit my ears before anything else, the grunt and explosions mixed with laughter as everyone enjoyed the spectacles of combat.

I entered the large hall at a dead run, weaving my way through the small groups of sparring Skȓíteks, each group covered by the shimmering orb of a shield. I bobbed and weaved through them, looking like a fool when I jumped at an explosion that rocked against a barrier near my head.

I smiled at the two Skȓíteks enclosed in the fighting space and made my way toward Talon.

“Hi, baby,” Talon said softly when I came up beside him. His face dropping at the look in my eyes, the panic I am sure he felt infiltrating him through our bond.

“I heard her again. I think she is in the old dungeons.”

Talon said nothing more before dragging me behind him, right out of the training hall and towards the underground spring.

His feet moved quickly, his gait and cumbersome shape loud as we bounded through one dark tunnel and then another before arriving in the same large cavern I had just left, the dark entryway to the dungeon staring at us hauntingly.

“Are you sure you heard the voice from down there?” Talon asked, his voice shaking as he looked wide eyed into the abyss in front of us.

I could only nod. Talon was scared, that alone was enough to freak me out. I had never been down there, but Talon had, hundreds of times I was sure. The place was probably full of more haunted memories than crazy flesh stripped skeletons. Although, I was sure there was a few of those too, there always were in dungeons after all.

“You’re sure?” he asked again, and I felt my confidence waiver.

“Of course, I’m not sure Talon. Her voice echoes around like an Olympic game of ping-pong. She could have been a mermaid in the water for all I know.”

“Don’t be silly,” Talon said his voice still shaking, although less than before. “Mermaids don’t exist.”

Talon took a step away from me, toward the cavern and I could feel his magic surge as he put on a small shield. Dude, he wasn’t thinking about going in there was he?

“Talon?” I asked from behind him, my own voice catching at the petrified anger on his face. “Baby, let’s go.”

I pulled on him, but he didn’t move. I waited but he didn’t respond; his eyes stayed glued to the dark opening as if they had been sewn there. It was creepy watching him stare at something so intently. My heart rate began to accelerate to match Talon’s, the quick pick up triggering a warning inside of me. I didn’t know how much I could take. My heart was beating too fast and even I was starting to feel some creepy vibe from whatever was down there.

“Talon?” My voice was weak with the heavy vein of fear that Talon’s stare had given me.

I couldn’t do it. I shook off the anxiety that was trying to take hold of me like a wet dog and grabbed the sopping tablecloth from where it still lay on the ground and threw it over Talon’s head, the wet fabric covering him with a loud smack.

It did the trick. He howled out and pulled the cold thing off of him.

“Let’s go Talon,” I said before he could rebut my actions.

His jaw hung heavily for only a moment before his brain clicked back into place, reminding him of what had just happened. That was the problem with being married to such a big guy, sometimes their brains moved a bit too slowly.

Talon nodded and put the tablecloth over his arm, only to freeze at the angry sour face that had appeared over my shoulder.

“What are you two doing here?” Ovailia spat with as much icy venom as she possibly could. She stood before us with her feet moving back and forth as if she was walking in place, her long arms folded over her slender torso. I instantly moved back into Talon, content to let him take the lead and thankful when Talon squared his shoulders defiantly against her.

I guess that was the one good thing about growing up with Ovailia, he was used to her. When you can think of someone as a tantrum throwing toddler with a stinky diaper their fits as an adult don’t really bother you.

“That is no longer your concern, Ovailia.” Talon said simply, his voice making it clear he didn’t feel the need to elaborate.

“What?” Ovailia said, her voice airy with surprise. Why she was surprised I had no idea. I had always assumed it would take pigs standing and walking to surprise her.

“I do not need to remind you of Ilyan’s proclamation regarding who is acting in his stead do I?” Talon wrapped his arm around me, pressing my shoulder into him.

“No, I quite remember,” she said snottily, the airy confusion in her voice gone now.

I stared at Ovailia intently, the nerves in my spine jumping sporadically. Something about the way Ovailia shifted her feet was freaking me out. Her whole body was screaming liar! Run! But I couldn’t tear my eyes from the icy blue of her eyes, and the way her lips curled in warning.

“Speaking of Ilyan,” Ovailia asked, her voice hesitant, “How is my dear brother?”

“Wonderful,” Talon said his voice pinched.

Ovailia smiled, but said nothing. She ended the conversation with one scowl and Talon began to lead me out of the large room, the basket perched on his hip.

“Oh and Wynifred,” Ovailia sneered the moment we had passed her, “I wouldn’t go poking around corners if I were you.”

“Is that a threat?” I hissed, my body pulling away from Talon as my magic surged angrily.

“Of course.”

I wanted to lunge at her, but instead I let Talon’s strong arm around my waist serve as a warning as I let him drag me out of the roughly carved chamber and into the smooth stone halls that would take us to our room. I didn’t feel comfortable just leaving her there, but something in Talon’s body language begged me to.

So I complied, choosing instead to stick my tongue out at the stone wall that stood between us.

Yes, sometimes I was just that childish.