Chapter 11
Whitney rushed up to her when she walked into the hall. Reyna held up both hands. “Not now, Whitney. I thought I made my feelings clear to you.”
“I have no interest in changing your feelings, Reyna. We have much bigger problems right now. Rose is missing.”
Reyna spun around. “What?”
Tanner came to Whitney’s side. “First Moira disappeared, and now Rose is lost in the forest.”
Damen stood up from his seat next to his parents. “Rose will be fine. Rohn is out looking for her. He’ll bring her back.”
Reyna froze. “Rohn?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. What happened?”
“Earlier this afternoon, before I met up with you in the passage, I went hunting with Rohn in the forest. We separated to cover more ground when I heard him screaming near the waterfall. I ran to him and found him bent over your friend Moira.”
“Moira! You saw Moira?”
“She was hurt. Rohn said she was struggling with a huge wild pig, and it gored her more than once in the chest and stomach. He didn’t know how to help her, so he sent me back here to get the doctor. I took Rose back to the waterfall, but Rohn and your friend were both gone.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know exactly. I thought Rohn might have gone back to the Keep, so I went to find him. When I got back, he was here telling me and Callan to come and help him cut up a morlock that attacked Rose.”
“A what?”
“It’s a big beast that lives in the forest. He came upon her pinned to a tree by its horns, and he killed it. We passed Rose on the way there, but when we finished butchering the morlock, both Rohn and Rose were gone. We searched, but we have no idea where they went.”
“How can we find them? And we have to find Moira. She could be dead.”
“We’ll mount a search in the morning. We couldn’t find them in this dark.”
“Rose could be killed by wild creatures in the night, too. She could freeze to death.”
“If Rohn is with her, she’ll be fine. He knows everything there is to know about surviving in the forest.”
“What about your brother Rahni?”
Damen stared at her. “What about him?”
“Could we ask him to help us hunt for them? Asya told me he lives in the mountains. Maybe Rohn took Rose to him to find shelter for the night.”
Damen turned away. “If I had to guess, I would say Rahni is already helping Rohn, so we don’t have to go racing out into the night to ask him to do it. If Rohn and Rose still haven’t turned up in the morning, we’ll go out and look. I’m sure Rahni will help us if we need him to.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Very little, except that he shuns company. He prefers to stay by himself.”
“I know that. I mean, what else can you tell me about him? Has he ever married? Has he always been a recluse?”
“No, he has never married. As far as I know, he has never even had a sweetheart. And yes, he has always been reclusive, since he was a young boy.”
At that moment, footsteps echoed down the passage. Everyone turned around to see Rose and Rohn enter the hall. Reyna and her friends mobbed Rose. “Rose! Thank God you’re safe!”
Everyone talked at once—everyone but the Krataks. Rose sank into a chair. “I’m okay. Just let me sit down.”
“Where have you been?”
“Where’s Moira?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Tell us about the morlock. What does it look like?”
“What took you so long to get back? Were you lost?”
“Did you meet Rahni? What’s he like?”
Rose held up her hands. “Slow down, everybody. Just be quiet for a second and I’ll tell you everything.”
They managed to settle down and Rose began her story. “I was sitting right over there, talking to Fay, when Damen came rushing in to tell me Rohn had found Moira in the forest. He said she was hurt, and I should come right away. We ran all the way back to the waterfall, but Moira wasn’t there and neither was Rohn. Damen came back to the Keep to find him and I stayed there to wait when the morlock charged out of the forest to attack me.”
“What kind of creature is it?”
“From what I could see, it looks something like a giant hairy buffalo, only larger than an elephant.”
“Did he hit you? Did he hurt you?”
“He hit me in the chest with the flat part of his forehead. He knocked me back against a tree, and his horns stuck into the trunk. I got trapped in a little pocket of space between his horns and the tree. That’s the only thing that saved my life. He kept tearing his head back and forth to try to get free. He finally broke the bark and swung his head around to gore me, but right at that moment, Rohn jumped out and killed him with a spear.”
Reyna’s hand flew to her mouth. “You must have been terrified out of your wits.”
“I was. Then Rohn came back to the Keep to get Callan and Damen to butcher the morlock. I wandered off again and got lost, but Rohn came and found me. We were.... we were walking along when that red dragon from the mountain swooped down and grabbed me in his mouth. He carried me up to his nest on the mountaintop.”
Reyna rounded on her friends. “I’ve been saying all along that dragon was dangerous. We should get rid of him.”
“That’s not the end of it, though. Moira was in that nest.”
Flurries of excited conversation broke out all over again. “Is she badly hurt?”
“We have to go get her.”
“At least we know where she is.”
“How did she get up there?”
“The dragon must have taken her from the waterfall.”
Rose held up her hand for quiet. “She was hurt, but I think she’s okay now. She was still unconscious, but she wasn’t bleeding dangerously. Anyway, the dragon came back, so I couldn’t take her with me.”
“The dragon came back? Did he attack you, too?”
“Actually, I attacked him first. I started fighting with it. Then Rohn came just in time and scared the dragon away. The rest of the time, we’ve been walking back here. That’s why it took so long.”
“We have to find Moira and bring her back.”
“In the morning, we’ll track down Rahni and get him to help us fight the dragon.”
“He must know everything about it.”
“Callan says the dragon isn’t dangerous.”
“You can’t believe that. The dragon could have eaten Moira by now.”
“Why else would he take her up to his nest?”
“He must have smelled blood when she got injured at the waterfall.”
“I’m telling you, that thing is a menace. None of us will be safe until we get rid of him.”
Reyna caught sight of Rose. She sat very still and quiet. She paid no attention to the team’s excited talk. Reyna followed her gaze across the room. Clan Harkniss stood together at a remove from the team. They watched Rose and her friends with glittering eyes.
No one volunteered to go out and slay the dragon. No one seemed at all concerned with bringing Moira back. What were they thinking right now, listening to Rose tell her story?
Reyna glanced up at Damen. A wicked glint sparkled in his eyes, and he sidled over to next to her. He murmured into her ear so no one else could hear. “You’re coming to my room later.”
She glanced up at his face, but he kept his expression neutral. No one would know what he was talking about.
“I have something I want to show you.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll never know if you don’t come to my room.”
What would she do when she left this hall? Should she ignore his summons and go back to her own room to sleep? His words worked into her heart and soul so she couldn’t fight them off. He told her to come. She had to do it.
How could she ignore his command, when she’d already made herself available to him? He could claim her body whenever he wished. She would never resist him. She wouldn’t even try. He knew that as well as she did.
Rose’s eyes skated around the room. Her son Ben sat side by side with Asya in another corner of the room. He leaned close to whisper in her ear. They shared a secret smile between themselves. He hadn’t heard a word his mother said. He didn’t even come over when she entered the room. He was so wrapped up in Asya, he probably never knew his mother was missing.
Rose continued her survey of the room until her eyes lit on Reyna staring down at her. Damen murmured into her ear, but something passed between the two sisters, something unnatural, something Reyna never experienced before.
Something happened to Rose out there in the forest. Reyna put the puzzle pieces together. Whatever it was started here, in this Keep, probably when Rose examined Rohn in her room. Did she find something strange in the Krataks’ physiology? Did he do something to hurt her in that room, something to rob her of her presence of mind and the equilibrium that made her one of the most respected commanders in the service?
Rose returned Reyna’s gaze with stubborn determination. Whatever happened to her, it stood between the sisters like a brick wall. Something preyed on Rose’s mind, and she couldn’t tell Reyna. She had a secret. That secret separated the sisters from each other as nothing else had since they were little girls.
Rose dropped her eyes, and Reyna turned toward Damen. “What do you make of that story?”
“Which story?”
“The one about Rose finding Moira in the dragon’s nest.”
“I’m sure it’s true.”
“Everyone I talk to says that dragon is harmless, but he doesn’t act harmless. Why don’t you get rid of him for everyone’s safety?”
“You heard your sister say he didn’t attack her. She attacked him first. That’s how the fight got started. He would never have attacked her first.”
“What about Moira? Why do you think he took her up to his nest?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess.”
She turned away. Whitney and Tanner left the room, and Rose made some excuse to go back to her own room. Ben and Asya went off together without saying anything to anybody. In the end, none of the team remained but Reyna.
Then the Harkniss family made their excuses. Rohn went one way and Fay and Rowan went another. Damen said nothing. He inclined his head toward the passage where the men stayed and slipped off.
Reyna wandered around the hall. Her mind wandered with her feet and beyond over intractable territory. Moira was out there right now, on top of that mountain with the dragon, if she wasn’t dead already.
What did Rose really see up there? Reyna never doubted her word before today. Now she couldn’t trust her own sister. At any other time, she would have marched off to Rose’s room and demanded a full breast of the facts. Rose couldn’t stand up to Reyna when confronted head on, but another voice pulled Reyna in a different direction.
One thing she knew for sure. She couldn’t spend the night, alone in her room, knowing Damen was waiting for her somewhere else. Would he lie awake all night and hope she showed up? She found that hard to believe.
He didn’t really need her. Did she really need him? She might not need him, but he fulfilled a deep longing in her soul for something more. When she thought back on her life, he was the first and only man she could remember that she really wanted. No other man made her weak in the knees and wet between her legs the way he did.
She never would have stood outside another couple’s door while a man fucked her. She never would have gotten excited at the sight of another couple doing it right in front of her if Damen hadn’t wanted her to see them.
She didn’t understand her own behavior. She understood only one thing. She had to go to him. He wouldn’t come to her after giving her a direct order to come to him. She knew military commands when she heard them, and she was his to command.
She headed down the passage. She stole past rooms with closed doors. She passed one open door, and when she glanced in, she saw Asya sitting on the bed. In front of Reyna’s eyes, Ben came to the door and shut it in Reyna’s face. Did he wonder what she was doing in the men’s corridor?
She went on to the end of the passage. Another window looked out eastward over the endless mountains. Stars studded the clear night sky, and a few purple clouds drifted past overhead. She gazed up at the vastness of space. Her own home and her own people waited for her up there.
She found the last door on the right closed. Damen wouldn’t make it any easier for her to come to him. He wouldn’t come out and get her. She had to do this all on her own.
In that moment, she hated the Allies and everyone connected with them. She hated Rose and Whitney and Moira and her commanders. She hated anyone who stood between her and Damen. She hated them all for taking her away at the end of the year. She hated them for putting her in this situation where she had to choose between them and a man she couldn’t live without.
She turned her back on the vastness of space. What good was it to her? What good was a career and the respect of people she didn’t care about? Of everyone on the planet right now, Ben could understand her situation best of everyone on the planet at this moment. He gave himself with all his attention to Asya. He didn’t care what his mother or anyone else thought. If Callan or Haya or anyone else threatened him to stay away from her, he paid no attention.
The sight of him in his bedroom door galvanized Reyna’s resolve. He had Asya in his room. Nothing would stop him from doing his level best to win her. He wouldn’t hold back.
She walked over to Damen’s door and knocked. This was it. Her whole life led to this moment.
The door swung open on a pitch-dark room. He didn’t come to meet her and throw his arms around her. She had to enter that room of her own free will, but she didn’t hesitate. She stepped into the dark, and the door swung closed behind her.