Darklis
Darkness... darkness...
Darklis could feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Everywhere around her was in total darkness. Her mouth felt dry, her head aching.
Where am I?
She tried to move, and found she couldn’t. Something was constraining her arms and legs. Blinking, Darklis cautiously moved her head, the one part of herself that didn’t seem to be utterly immobile.
Not that it did any good – she still couldn’t see anything.
Licking her lips, Darklis took a deep breath, fighting down her own rising panic. What had happened? How had she gotten here?
Memories surged up within her: memories from her childhood, memories from the first time she had realized that perhaps her family was not coming to rescue her after all; that perhaps they really were all dead, just like her captors had told her.
It had taken her a long time to piece together what had happened, who had taken her, and what they wanted. The Lukich Clan had kept her as a hostage, hoping to use her to track down any remaining members of her clan.
It hadn’t worked, only because her mother had been foresighted enough to make sure that Darklis’s connection to the other Novak dragons was severed. It had probably saved her brother Stefan’s life, but it had also meant he’d had no way of finding her for all those years.
I can’t... I can’t do that again... I can’t be alone again for so long...
Panic broke in her chest as she struggled.
Someone... please!
Even as she struggled, Darklis felt a spark of hope within her. Even after all her years as a prisoner of the Lukich Clan, she had never given up hope that one day, somehow, someone in her family would find her.
But this time...
Liev!
The name rang out in her head, strong and clear.
Liev – her mate, Liev.
She knew he would stop at nothing to find her.
Just as she would stop at nothing to find him.
The memory of what had happened at the hotel came back to her in a sudden rush.
Liev had been fighting off the men who had ambushed them, his powerful body struggling against the men who were trying to hold him down.
She remembered calling out his name as finally, the largest of the men had brought his elbow down sharply on the back of Liev’s neck – and he had gone still, clearly unconscious, his struggles stopped.
If she had had her dragon she would have shifted on the spot, regardless of the fact they’d been in a room that could not possibly have accommodated her dragon’s size and wingspan, and without care for the fact they were in the middle of a human city. Whoever hurt her mate would feel her dragon’s fire – her dragon’s rage.
Her fury had churned inside her, but it had not been enough to draw her dragon to the surface. She didn’t remember what happened next at all – perhaps they had drugged her somehow, or perhaps the woman with the gun had hit her on the back of the head. Either way, in the next moment everything had suddenly been shrouded in darkness.
And now, she was here.
But where, exactly, is here?
Taking a deep breath, Darklis attempted to rein in the terrible fear that had spread throughout her body like wildfire.
Terror wouldn’t help her now. She had to keep a clear head if she was going to get out of this.
You’ve been in worse situations, she told herself. Think. Think!
“Ah, so you’re awake.”
She stiffened at the sound of the unfamiliar male voice. She still couldn’t see anything at all – everything was black as pitch.
Darklis tried to move again, and now, fully lucid, realized that her hands were bound behind her, rope cutting into her skin. The all-encompassing darkness was due not to a lack of light, but because she was blindfolded. If she had had her dragon form there was no way these bonds could have held her – but she didn’t, so it was useless to think about it. She would simply have to work with what she had: her wits.
But first, I need to know more about what I’m dealing with.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice rasping, though she forced it not to shake.
The man laughed. “You wouldn’t know even if I told you.”
Darklis swallowed. “So why do this? If I don’t even know you, then why –”
“Ha. You may not know me, but I know you. Or rather, I know your kind.”
The bitterness of the man’s tone made Darklis pause. At a guess, she supposed that when he said ‘kind’, he meant dragons.
Well, that wasn’t unusual. Manticores and dragons had been at each other’s throats for centuries. As the two last main groups of mystical shifters left in the world, they had at one time constantly been at odds over power, land, treasure, and anything else they could find to fight about as well.
“I understand that manticores and dragons have never been friends,” she said cautiously. “But I –”
“I’m not a manticore. I’m a dragon. Like you.”
Now that made Darklis gasp in surprise.
She hadn’t been able to sense it – but then, she hadn’t been able to sense that the receptionist at the hotel was a manticore either. Clearly, her ability to sense other shifters was related entirely to her dragon.
Despite the direness of her situation, the part of her mind that was always hungry for more information about dragons and how their magic worked filed that piece of information away – she never knew when something she had learned was going to come in handy.
“A... a dragon,” she finally managed to stammer out, once she felt she could speak again. “Then...”
“Oh, I wasn’t raised by dragons.” The man’s voice was vicious. “I was abandoned by my clan when I was just a child. The manticores found me, and they raised me instead.”
Darklis was silent, honestly uncertain of what to say. How could she argue with that? How could she tell a man who had been abandoned that he should turn against the ones who had raised him, even if manticores and dragons were natural enemies?
“I... I understand why you’d be loyal to them, then,” Darklis finally managed to get out. “Why you must prefer them to –”
“Preference has nothing to do with it,” the man snapped. “I don’t have a choice. Do you think they let me forget for a moment what I am? How lucky I am that they didn’t strangle me when they found me as a baby? How fortunate I am to be alive?” He let out a low, bitter laugh. “I’m not doing this because I want to, though I admit the idea of getting revenge on dragons has its appeal. But even if it didn’t, it’s not like I could say no.”
Darklis’s head was in a whirl as she tried to absorb everything the man had said. So the manticores had raised him – but clearly, he didn’t think of them as his family, nor they as his.
Maybe they just see him as something... useful, Darklis thought, though her head was pounding too much to understand just what that use was at the moment. Even if she had been able to sense that he was a dragon, the last thing she would’ve suspected was that he was helping the manticores who had stolen from the Drakos Clan’s hoard.
“Then all of this has just been a setup?” she asked, trying to sound as calm as possible. “The manticores stole from the Drakos hoard in the hope that someone would follow you, and you could take them hostage?”
The man snorted. “No, of course not. That would have been ridiculously far-fetched. We wanted to steal the scepter. You and Prince Liev were just... welcome extras.”
All right, all right. Keep him talking, Darklis thought to herself. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t doing... anything else. And the longer he talked, the greater the chance he might reveal something she could use.
She bit her lip. The scepter.
Apart from opening up a portal through which it was clear someone could travel, was there something else it could do? Something that the manticores might want?
Well, obviously, it had taken her and Liev’s power to shift away from them. That was clearly useful. But had that been intended, or was it just an unfortunate side effect?
“I could help you,” Darklis said impulsively, before she could give herself time to second-guess. “Liev and I both could. You say you don’t have any choice but to help the manticores. But it doesn’t have to be like that. You already know Liev is a Drakos prince, so you know how powerful his clan is. They could protect you. We could –”
“Stop talking!”
Darklis cut herself off at the sound of the man’s harsh, whispered words. His voice had not been loud, but it had been vehement.
She swallowed, wondering if she should try again – after all, what else could she do? And she had spoken the truth: if this dragon would free them, she knew that Liev would protect him, from both the manticores and his own parents’ anger. And she knew Stefan, her brother, the leader of the Novak Clan, would do what he could for him as well.
Nonetheless, there had been something else in the way he had hissed out the words that gave her pause. He hadn’t just been telling her to shut up, Darklis realized suddenly. He had been warning her as well.
The question of what he had been warning her against was answered in the next moment, as she heard the sound of a door opening somewhere to her left, followed by the sound of footsteps.
The man must have been able to sense this newcomer as they approached, in the way she, deprived of her dragon, could not.
She froze. Had the newcomer heard what she’d said? If he was a shifter – and of course, he would be – then almost certainly. Resisting the urge to bite her lip, she swallowed, hoping her fear wasn’t obvious.
But then, in the next moment, all thought of trying to pretend she wasn’t frightened left her head completely.
“Now, now, Dante. I hope you haven’t been talking out of turn.”
Darklis’s breath stopped in her throat, her heart constricting within her chest. A feeling of horror crawled up her spine one vertebra at a time. If her hands had been free, they would have started shaking.
No, it can’t be... it can’t...
But even as her own brain tried to convince her it wasn’t possible, she knew it was. She would have known that voice anywhere. She’d heard it every day of her life before her brother had rescued her – and then far too many days after that, in her nightmares.
Erik Lukich.
The man who had ordered her family to be killed, and had held her prisoner for years.
The man who had made her childhood a living hell, who had taken everything from her, and made her believe that there was no one left to save her.
Darklis didn’t consider herself a very hateful person, but she hated Erik Lukich. He had wiped out her clan for no reason other than that his daughter had fallen in love with a Novak dragon, and he had not been able to deal with his fury.
He was pure evil.
And now, he was here.
But how? How can this be??
“Surprised to see me again, Darklis?” Erik said, his voice ice cold. “Well. Not see, I suppose, but I know you must recognize me nonetheless. I’d hate to think you had forgotten me, after our many long years together.”
Darklis flinched away as she felt fingers against the back of her head, but managed not to make a startled cry. The blindfold that had covered her eyes fell away, and she blinked in the low light, looking frantically around her.
She froze once more as her eyes locked onto Erik’s. He looked just as she remembered him: tall, sleek and muscular, his dark blond hair neatly parted. If a human had seen him on the street, he would simply look like a neatly dressed businessman in an expensive suit – except for the fact that his eyes, even in human form, were an unsettling shade of dark red.
And as a dragon, those eyes turned the color of blood, and glowed with power and fury.
Staring, Darklis couldn’t bring herself to say a word. Her heart was still pounding, her head blank of everything except complete and utter terror.
“I thought you must have some questions for me,” Erik said as he stood before her, his arms crossed, a smirk on his lips. “After all, it’s been a while. And after I took you in, cared for you all those years! I’d have thought you’d be concerned for me.”
“Took me in?” Anger finally loosened Darklis’s tongue. “You murdered my family!”
Erik’s eyes blazed a moment as he looked down on her. “Murdered? Don’t insult me. It was a blood feud, declared and conducted under archaic dragon custom. Or do you think we dragons need to become even more similar to humans, and start adhering to their silly laws? Dragons have always fought for dominance – that is what we are. That is what has made us strong. All this stupid pandering to human morality will only make us weak.”
Darklis stared up at Erik, so furious that she couldn’t speak.
He is crazy.
She had always known that. Erik Lukich had always thought dragons should go back to being the bloodthirsty, medieval beasts they had once been. But even so...
“Even if that were true, and I could accept the idea of blood feuds,” Darklis snarled, “that’s not even what happened. You told your clan a Novak dragon had killed your daughter – when in fact the two of them had fallen in love and run away together. You lied!”
“She was as good as dead to me!” Erik roared suddenly, his fists balling at his sides, eyes blazing. “To form a mated bond with a Novak! I could not have it. No, it was just the same as if he had killed her. In some ways, that would have been better.”
Darklis shook her head, disbelieving. How could he wish death on his own daughter...?
“You’re crazy,” she said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Erik didn’t respond to her words. He only continued to look down at Darklis, his mouth twisted into a snarl.
“Well, in any case. Perhaps it is just as well she didn’t die, since apparently I raised my dear daughter Landra to be far too soft-hearted.”
Darklis blinked. “Soft-hearted?”
Erik shook his head, almost as if in disbelief. “She only exiled me, after all. She really should have killed me.”
For the fifth time in as many minutes, Darklis’s blood ran cold. She didn’t think it was in her to wish for the death of anyone. But in that moment, she wondered if mercy truly was the right decision when it came to Erik Lukich.
Clearly, he was not going to stop until he achieved his aims – and in taking her, she was certain she knew what his goal was.
Revenge.
Revenge on her brother Stefan, of course, for defeating him in battle. Revenge on her for escaping. Revenge on her cousin Isaak for surviving the blood feud. Revenge on his daughter, presumably, for being merciful enough not to kill him, and revenge on her mate, Marko, for having fallen in love with her.
Darklis had no illusions as to what Erik Lukich was capable of. What he would do, if only he had the power.
If only he had the power...
Suddenly, things started to come together in Darklis’s mind.
The scepter has the power to take away a dragon’s ability to shift... so perhaps it can also give it back?
And if Erik Lukich has been exiled all this time, he must have lost his ability to shift. Dragons need their hoard to maintain their power. Without it, they get weaker, and shifting becomes impossible...
“Oh, very good, Darklis.” Erik’s voice was sardonic. “I can see you’re puzzling it all out. Why I need the scepter from the Drakos hoard. Why I’ve brought you here today. And why I have to work with these truly disgusting manticores in order to bring about my revenge.”
Darklis looked up in surprise. Of course, if she’d had any time to think about it, she would have realized that for her to be here, Erik must have been working with the manticores. But she was still surprised that Erik would partner up with their centuries-old enemies, even in the name of getting revenge.
Maybe he wasn’t as big a purist as he liked to pretend. He’d still break his own rules if it meant getting his way.
“Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work,” Darklis said, though she could hear her own voice shaking. “Stefan beat you before, and he can beat you again.” She stopped, shaking her head. “No. No, he won’t have to. I’ll stop you. Liev and I – we’ll do whatever it takes to –”
Erik’s cold laugh cut her off.
“Liev? Oh – you mean that pathetic prince. I wouldn’t concern yourself with him. I’ve no interest whatsoever in that. I’ve let the manticores have him. They can have the ransom money, if his clan will pay it. Or maybe they’d prefer to do something else with him. Dragon’s blood is a highly sought-after and very expensive commodity, after all.”
Fear clutched at the pit of Darklis’s stomach.
In her mind, she groped wildly for the mated bond – the shimmering golden ribbon that should connect two mates, no matter where they were. She had seen it for a moment when they had joined – why couldn’t she find it again now, when she needed it?
Liev! Liev, where are you?!
“Where have you taken him?” she asked, her voice rising in terror.
Erik looked down at her, bemused. “I haven’t taken him anywhere. And what the manticores have done with him is anyone’s guess.”
Slowly, Erik began to kneel down, his bemused expression giving way to one of complete and utter malevolence.
“No, I’m afraid it’s just us here,” he spat, hissing directly into Darklis’s face. “That stupid prince won’t be riding in to save you. And when your brother does... well, let’s just say I’ll have a surprise waiting for him.”