A strange thing happened as Dani made her way back to her own rooms, using the secret corridors behind the walls to do so. Normally once she was safely out of the Royal bed chamber, she would simply have gone down the mirrored main hall to her own apartments.
This time, however, she chose to take the hidden passageways. There were still wet spots on her gown over her nipples where Ky had sucked her. Even more embarrassing, was the wet spot on her gown, right over her pussy. As the big Kindred had been stroking her with his whisper fingers, her pussy honey had overflowed, wetting her gown and her inner thighs in a most embarrassing display of need and desire.
So it was that she was taking the narrow, secret passage between her father’s chamber and her own royal apartments when she heard voices on the other side of the wall.
“…quite a beauty, Councilor—you were right,” a harsh, low voice was saying.
“Indeed she is. So you agree she’s worth the rights to the mine?”
“I do indeed, though I have never paid so much for a wife before.”
Dani froze for a moment—who was out there? One of the voices sounded disagreeably familiar but the other she had never heard in her life, she was certain.
Fumbling silently along the wall, she found one of the hidden spy holes and slipped the thin slab of wood which covered it aside. Putting her eye to the hole, she looked out, searching the mirrored hall outside to see who the speakers were.
Her spy hole was too close to the speakers for her to look at them directly but luckily, the glass of the corridor reflected them clearly. Dani bit back a gasp when she recognized Warro, Chieftain of the Thuggors and Councilor Tornk standing close together and speaking in low voices.
“I’ll see to it your path is clear,” Tornk was saying. “And in return, I want the deed to the mines in my hand with your own signature upon it.”
“You shall have the mines when the girl is officially my bride,” Warro growled. “And not before.”
“Very well.” Tornk scowled but nodded. “Let us grip on the bargain then.”
He held out his hand, palm up and Warro spat on his own palm and gripped with the other male.
“Now I must go,” he said in that low, hoarse voice of his. “It is not well to be seen together in this way.”
“Agreed. Until the morrow.” Tornk nodded, his bray-bray ears wagging in a way that would have been comical if what Dani had heard hadn’t made her so nervous. Then both men went in opposite directions down the long mirrored hallway, leaving Dani to wonder what they had been talking about.
Tornk means to broker some kind of marriage deal for Warro, that much is clear, she thought. But marriage to who?
The memory of how Warro had stared and stared at Lavi at the banquet table that night came to her mind but she pushed it away with horror. Surely her father would not consider such a match! He must know what a blood-thirsty, savage Warro was. Giving Lavi to him would be like throwing a spoiled pet lap-canis who had never spent a day outside into a den of wild lupines.
Father wouldn’t do that? Would he? she asked herself uneasily.
He had Ky whipped until he bled. A few days ago you wouldn’t have believed him capable of that either, whispered a troubling little voice in her head. Who knows what he might or might not do?
Dani shook her head. No! She would not believe it of her father. It must be some other female of noble birth that Warro was interested in. After all, there was no shortage of lovely females in the courts of the Monarch. Surely he could find one he liked without taking Lavi.
My Lord will have only the best, whispered the ghostly voice of Ahnai, the girl she had sat beside at the feast, in Dani’s head. She remembered the dead gray eye, bisected by the cruel scar and the boundless despair on the other girl’s face…
Stop it! Stop it right now, Dani—you’re working yourself up over something that’s probably nothing. You probably misunderstood what they were talking about. After all, you only heard the tail end of their conversation. It’s probably nothing at all.
But though she tried and tried to convince herself as she made her way along the narrow dark corridor to her own rooms, she couldn’t quite manage it. Nor could she forget the gleam of avarice she’d seen in Tornk’s ugly visage or the hungry lust in the eyes of Warro.
* * * * *
The next day around noon Lavi was called to the throne room. Since females were not meant to be there (Dani had been the exception until she was barred) it caused quite a stir in the women’s quarters.
“Oh! What can my Royal father want?” Lavi exclaimed, flying around, trying to find the perfect gown to wear.
“Now, now my precious one,” Yana said, smiling. “You know there is only one reason the Monarch, may he live forever, would call you in such a way.”
“It must mean he has made a match for me. Oh, Yana!” Lavi gripped her old nurse’s hands in excitement. “It must mean that Jontu has asked for me and has been granted permission to make me his wife!”
“It must be so.” Yana smiled, happy to see her favorite charge so excited but Dani wasn’t quite so sure this was cause for celebration. She would have liked to slip out of the room and get to her spy hole behind the throne. But Yana’s niece, Geora—a nosey girl who had been hired as a companion to Lavi—was there. Though everyone else was caught up in Lavi’s good news, Geora was keeping a watchful eye on Dani.
They got Lavi ready to go as quickly as possible and then she left with the escort of guards who had been sent for her. Apparently this was to be a very solemn and formal occasion.
Dani felt another surge of misgiving. This couldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if Lavi was only being given to a courtier, no matter how highly placed he was in the court.
Something was going on and it didn’t bode well for her sister.
Dani tried several times to leave the room on various pretexts but Geora was always right beside her, asking where she was going and what she was doing. She wouldn’t let Dani leave without going with her—it got so bad Dani wondered if the girl had been paid to watch her.
At last, just when she was deciding she would try to break away from the other girl at a dead run and then dodge around a corner and hide in a secret passageway, Lavi returned.
Gone was her joy, bubbling up like an unquenchable fount. Gone was the gleam in her eyes. Her face looked flat and shocked. In fact, Lavi’s blank expression reminded Dani uneasily of the dead, lifeless look on Ahnai’s face at the banquet the night before.
Yana saw there was something amiss at once.
“What is it, my precious one?” she asked, flying to Lavi’s side, her wrinkled features twisted with worry. “What’s wrong? Are you not to be married after all?”
“I am to be married, all right,” Lavi spoke in a shocked whisper which was difficult to hear. “But not to Jontu.”
“Oh dear, my sweet!” Yana fluttered around her, wringing her hands in agitation. “Oh my—that’s too bad. Too bad!”
“Who then?” Dani asked, dread filling her. “Who are you to marry?”
Lavi’s face worked as though she could barely get the words out.
“I…I am to be given to…to Warro,” she whispered at last. “I am to be one of his wives—his most treasured wife, or so…so he tells me.”
Then she burst into tears.
Dani felt like someone had dumped a bucket of icy water over her head. So Lavi had been the female Warro and Tornk were bargaining over last night. But how had Tornk gotten her father to agree with such a plan? What could he have said to convince a loving father to give up his youngest daughter to a monster who hit and cut and abused his wives? Who beat them for his own amusement and killed them if they didn’t conceive?
“Now my sweet…my pet…” Yana was saying, trying to ease Lavi’s tears. “I know it is a far distance away but I’m certain Warro will be good to you.”
“I don’t care how good he is,” Lavi sobbed. “He’s not Jontu.” She looked up at Dani, appealing to her with wet eyes. “I know I’ve had a lot of crushes in the past, but Jontu is the one for me—the only one. If I can’t be with him I’d rather die.”
Dani thought grimly that her sister was likely to get her wish if Councilor Tornk’s plan worked. But she refused to give her sister to that monster Warro without a fight. And there might yet be time to stop it.
“Did you sign the articles of engagement, Lavi?” she asked anxiously.
“The…the what?” Her sister sniffed, her black eyes huge and unhappy.
“The articles of engagement! A paper saying you are officially engaged to Warro and he is your prospective husband. Think! Did you sign anything?”
“I…no.” Lavi shook her head. “No, I just stood before the throne and that awful Councilor Bray-bray read out a proclamation about how I would be given to Warro in a week’s time.”
Dani felt a surge of relief. If nothing had been signed, the deal might yet be voided.
She turned to sweep from the room but Geora was suddenly right beside her.
“Where do you think you’re going now, Princess Dannella?” she demanded, her narrow face pinched into a nasty expression.
“To the throne room,” Dani said shortly. “Out of my way.”
She pushed the other girl aside and strode out the door and down the long, mirrored hallway. She had to stop this now before Lavi’s life was ruined. Her little sister might be a brat and a tattle-tell sometimes but Dani loved her fiercely—she wouldn’t allow her to be taken by the evil, abusive Warro as the latest in his long line of conquests!
“Not if I can help it,” she muttered to herself as she marched through the long mirrored corridors. “Absolutely not!”