Lord of the Abyss

Chapter 6

Liliana woke to the sound of small feet moving around the kitchen. “Jissa?”

“Yes, it’s me. I’m making sweet, sweet chocolate.”

Liliana jerked into a sitting position at once. “Where did you get it?”

Jissa smiled, showing a row of pointed white teeth. “He brought some once. Nowhere, where, I don’t know.”

Astonished at the idea that the beautiful monster with eyes of winter-green enjoyed chocolate, Liliana rose to her feet, reaching back to twist her hair off her neck. “He must like it very much to have searched it out,” she said, heading to the washing bowl in the corner.

“I made him some the first time he brought it, yes, I did. One sip he took and said it tasted not right. Not right.” Jissa poured the liquid into two small cups. “Is right!”

Face washed and dried, Liliana came to take a sip of the rich, sweet liquid that made her toes curl. The only reason she knew and adored the taste was because the cook had had a weakness for it, and the kind man had shared his store of it with her on the days when her father had brutalized her to silence. Violence and chocolate were indelibly linked in her mind, but she refused to let that diminish her pleasure in the treat. “You’re right. This is perfect.” Licking a droplet off her lips, she remembered the cook reaching for something to sprinkle on top. “Unless…”

Jissa, having started to pull together the ingredients for a loaf of bread, wasn’t paying attention. “Shall we make fruit porridge this morning, Liliana?”

“Perhaps we can put the fruit in the bread,” Liliana muttered, putting down her chocolate to rummage through the cupboards. “It will taste lovely toasted.”

“What do you search for?”

“Cinnamon.”

A mournful shake of her head. “No, don’t know. Don’t know at all.”

“I’m sure it must be here.” If the youngest son of Elden had found chocolate and brought it home, then he may well have hunted out the spice that was so very common in his homeland that it was put in everything from casseroles to sweets…to a little boy’s chocolate.

A squeak met her when she opened a lower cupboard.

“Mouse? A mouse!” Jissa turned with rolling pin held high, her face scrunched up into a scowl. “Nasty creatures! Show me, show Jissa.”

Liliana closed the door. “It was only a squeaking hinge. Don’t forget the sugar syrup or the bread won’t taste as sweet.”

“Oh, dear!” Distracted, Jissa dropped the rolling pin onto the table and ran to get the syrup.

Soon as she was far enough away, Liliana opened the door a crack, put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Have you seen the cinnamon?”

Small black eyes gleamed at her in the dark before her little friend darted out and along the edge of the cupboards to the very corner of the kitchen, where it slipped under a set of tall shelves just as Jissa returned. “Oh, you must help me, Liliana,” the brownie wailed. “He won’t, won’t like what I make. I don’t want you thrown back in the cold, so cold dungeon.”

“I’ll help, don’t worry. Just give me a moment.” Having reached the shelves under which the mouse had disappeared, she looked at the rows upon rows of identical dark brown jars, not a label in sight. “Well,” she muttered, then glimpsed a flash of sleek gray run up along the side of the shelving. An instant later, one particular jar was nudged forward a bare millimeter.

Grabbing it, she twisted the lid open to find several long sticks of cinnamon. A bit old, but they had held their scent. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

The mouse twitched its nose at her before disappearing behind the jars.

Turning, she walked over to put the jar next to the small tin of chocolate. Then she helped Jissa finish preparing the fruit bread, made a few crisp pastries covered with jam and churned some fresh butter.

“Oh, but there is no meat.” Jissa twisted her hands. “He will growl and snarl and my bones will clatter, clatter against one another, they will.”

Liliana had heard the Guardian of the Abyss growl, and while terrifying, it had also haunted her sleep in a startlingly different fashion—she’d dreamed of him making the same feral sound against a woman’s…against her skin. And now that she’d allowed herself to recall it, she couldn’t stop the sinful cascade of a lush fantasy that surely meant she was mad—for what kind of a woman would want the dark lord in her bed?

“Snarling and growling.” Jissa continued to fuss. “Meat, he will demand. Meat!”

“We’ll see,” she said through a throat gone dry, and began to grind the cinnamon until it was a pile of dust that she scooped back into the jar. “Now, where’s the milk?”

The Guardian of the Abyss hadn’t slept. He never slept. When the Black Castle went quiet for the night, he walked the halls in the company of ghosts. Sometimes, he went back out to hunt, for that was his reason for being, and sometimes, he went searching beyond the village and to the twilight lands, for those like Jissa and Bard.

He didn’t know why he’d saved the brownie and the big lug. No one had ever asked him, but perhaps his strange storyteller would. If she did ask such an impertinent question, he’d tell her it was because he needed servants. A lie. He wondered if she would know, if she would challenge him. Hmm…

Striding into the great hall with that intriguing thought in mind, he halted.

The table was set with toast and pastry and fruit. But that wasn’t what stopped him. It was the scent in the air, sweet and spicy at the same time. Aware of Liliana standing with suspicious meekness by the table, he crossed the black stone of the castle to take his seat, picking up the cup of steaming liquid at his elbow.

Rich and dark, he recognized it as chocolate. But that scent…

Drawing it in, he felt his mind spark, tumbling him headlong into memories that couldn’t be his own, but that he found himself loath to repudiate.

A woman’s laughter. Soft hands on his brow. Contentment.

“Drink.” The whisper came from beside him. “Drink.”

Looking up at his prisoner, who was most certainly a sorceress, someone he should not be listening to under any circumstances, he nonetheless lifted the cup to his lips. Sweet and wicked and wild, the taste seared his senses, took him to places he didn’t know, showed him a kaleidoscope of faces he’d never seen in the Abyss.

The woman’s face was the strongest. Eyes so bright and green, hair the color of sunlight, and a face of such beauty and grace it hurt him to look at her. But she was laughing, this being formed of purest magic, leaning forward to press her lips to his forehead.

Stubborn, so stubborn, my baby boy.

“What sorcery is this?” he asked, slamming down the empty cup and rising to glare at the woman who had likely poisoned him.

Liliana didn’t flinch as she should. “No sorcery, my lord. It is merely a spice named cinnamon.”

Cinnamon, he can’t have enough.

Shaking his head to erase that haunting voice that made things in his chest tear and break, he stared at Liliana, spoke in the gentle tone that made the villagers tremble. “Where’s my breakfast?” He ran the sharp tips of his gauntlet along her jaw. “I do not smell meat.”

“Your breakfast is right here,” she said, her face going white…but she didn’t back down. “And it’s quite delicious, as you’d know if you’d stop trying to terrify me.” Reaching out, she touched him, her hand curving over the black armor of his upper arm. “Please sit.”

He was so startled that anyone dared touch him, he obeyed without realizing what he was doing. When he would’ve snarled, she seduced him into silence by serving him bread studded with fruit and sprinkled with honey and sugar and…cinnamon.

This time, when the scent threatened to ensorcel him, he fought it.

Liliana laughed, the sound an invisible stroke that caressed him through the armor. “No one ever told me the Lord of the Black Castle was so stubborn.” Her father, Liliana thought, hope a jagged pulse within her, had likely not realized the indomitable will within the child this dangerous man had once been. Far more of the prince might have survived his entrapment than anyone realized—though she’d have to be careful how far she pushed him. He might have allowed her instinctive touch, but he remained the Lord of the Black Castle, powerful and lethal.

“Speak to me with respect,” he growled at her, but his lips were dusted with honey and sugar, his hair falling across his forehead. For an instant, he looked unbearably young, deliciously approachable, his mouth a treat for her to suck on.

Feeling her cheeks burn at the scandalous thought, her breasts taut points against the thin black material of the tunic, she went to pull away from the table.

A strong hand clamped down on her wrist, his palm hot and rough, the brush of the razored points extending from his gauntlet an unnamed threat. “Where is Bard?” It was a silken question.

“Outside the door,” she said, realizing he was pulling her down.

She resisted.

He compelled.

Until her lips were on a level with his.

Her heart pounded hard enough to bruise against her ribs, but she couldn’t take her eyes off those sugar-sweet lips. “My lord?” Her voice came out a croak.

His mouth curved, as if he could read her thoughts, and she held her breath, waiting to see what he would do. Right then, she had the sudden, shocking realization that she might permit him any liberty, no matter how darkly wicked, if he would only allow her to sup at those lips, to taste his mouth.

“You smell, Liliana.” He released her wrist. “You must bathe.”

Face so hot she knew she must be a dull, angry red beneath the brown of her skin, she stepped away from the table. “Bathing facilities are rather limited in the dungeon and the kitchen,” she snapped, wanting to slam the candlestick in the center of the table on his beautiful head.

He glanced at her as he bit into a pastry, and she could’ve sworn there was laughter in his gaze, but of course, the Guardian of the Abyss didn’t know how to laugh. “You remind me of a creature in the village,” he told her as he gobbled up her pastries like some greedy, ill-mannered child. “The baker keeps it as a pet, though the kitten is forever spitting and clawing at everyone she meets.”

Taunted, she was being taunted. “This spitting kitten is your cook,” she said, unable to sit back and allow him to get away with it, though no sane woman would have argued with the Lord of the Black Castle. But then, as evidenced by her sinful fantasies, she was in no way sane. “I beg you don’t forget that, or I might forget which is the salt and which the chili.”

Ignoring her threat, he waved her forward. “Pour me more chocolate—” the order of an emperor to his concubine “—then you may go and bathe.”

She really wanted to smash the teapot over his head, but she poured the luscious liquid into his cup, watched his eyes glaze over for an instant as his mind tried to drag him into the past. It was the truth she’d told. She hadn’t ensorcelled either the cinnamon or the chocolate—but some sensual memories were strong enough to act as spells on their own. “Now, may I go?”

“My lord,” he said, licking out his tongue to capture a drop of chocolate on his lip.

Her entire body hummed. “What?”

“You forgot to add ‘my lord.’”

She grit her teeth and put down the teapot with extreme care. “May I go, my lord?”

He took a sip of his chocolate, paused for a second. “No.”

“No?” Her vision was starting to blaze incandescent red.

“I haven’t finished breakfasting yet.”

Suddenly, she could see the spoiled princeling all too well—except that she was also certain there was a cackling imp riding on his shoulder at this moment. No, not a spoiled princeling at all. More akin to an adolescent boy pulling the pigtails of a girl to annoy her.

It should have been a ridiculous thought when faced with the black-armored Guardian, his hands tipped with bladed points, but this man had grown up in a cage of sorcery that had turned into a solid wall of armor. As she had never had a chance to be a child, he had never had a chance to be a boy, never had a chance to do mischief. The fact that he might be doing so now, with her—it created the beginnings of a terrible weakness inside of her, one she knew she should fight, but couldn’t.

Several long minutes later, he finally finished his meal and stood. Picking up a piece of toasted fruit bread, he closed the small distance between them. “Try it. It’s very good.”

She took it with a bad-tempered scowl, attempting to hide the vulnerability within. “I know. I made it.” Eating it though she wasn’t that hungry, having snacked as she cooked, she narrowed her eyes when he continued to loom over her. “Now what?”

“My lord.”

Oh, she just wanted to—

“My lord.”

“You don’t mean it.”

Smiling because it wasn’t her imagination—he was teasing her—she finished off the bread, then dropped into a ludicrously ornate curtsy. “Oh, my lord,” she simpered, fluttering her lashes. “What would you have of this poor wee maiden?”

A rusty sound, harsh and rough. Startled she looked up—and realized the Guardian of the Abyss was laughing. He was even more magnificent than she had believed.

“Why do you stare?” he asked suddenly, stopping midlaugh.

“I didn’t know you could laugh.”

A hush fell over the room, as if the ghosts themselves were holding their breaths.

Lines formed between his brows. “I don’t remember laughing before.”

“Did you like it?”

He considered the question. “It’s a strange sensation.” Not giving her any more of an answer, he said, “Come, I’ll show you where you will bathe.”

Will, not may or even can.

Gritting her teeth against the impulse to call down nasty curses on his golden head, she followed him as he walked to the back of the great hall. Once they were through the door and in a gloomy corridor that went on to a nothingness so deep it seemed impossible that light existed, he led her up a flight of stairs barely illuminated by a small window on the landing.

“Why must it be so dark in here?” she muttered. “A maid could fall and break her neck.”

“This is the Black Castle.”

“I realize this is the gateway to the Abyss, my lord, but surely you don’t intend to harvest souls here on your staircase.”

He turned and looked at her, then at the tiny window now at her back. “I can see in the dark.”

She startled. “Can you truly?” But she knew it was no lie. How else would he hunt in the pitch-black of night?

He started up the stairs again without answering, his armor gleaming even in the muted light. Staring at it, she had another thought. “How do you bathe?”

“Mistress Liliana, you ask the most peculiar questions.” Turning, he pinned her with a darkly intrigued look. “Do you wish to share a bath?”

“I meant the armor,” she said, cheeks burning. “It doesn’t come off—does it?” If it did, that meant her father had made a mistake. Please.

He paused, his hand on the railing. “It must, for I am clean.” But he didn’t sound too certain. “I don’t remember bathing, but I know I do.”

It was a puzzle, she thought, one she’d have to stick close to him to figure out. No hardship, that. And it wasn’t because the Guardian of the Abyss was a monster most beautiful. She’d seen beauty in her father’s castle—the Blood Sorcerer himself was an ugly man, but he surrounded himself with the most exquisite courtiers male and female. It had only taken a few overheard pieces of mockery, a sneer here and there, for her to learn that outward beauty was no measure of the person within.

But the Guardian—there was a strange charm to him, a wildness that was as innocent as she was not. He truly appeared to have no comprehension of the impact of his looks, trapped as he was in the Black Castle and regarded with fear by both his prey and the people of this realm, but he knew his own intelligence very well. And Liliana was discovering that a lethally fascinating mind was a temptation as sinful as those lips she wanted to lick.

“Surely you don’t wish me to expire before we get to the bathing chamber,” she said in an effort to derail the thoughts that had a sumptuous warmth uncurling low in her body. She couldn’t afford to feel anything for him, for even though he would never look at her the same, that way lay distraction and failure. Her task was to awaken and return him to Elden so that his kingdom could breathe again, its people no longer crushed under the steel boot of the Blood Sorcerer’s brutal reign.

“So weak, Mistress Liliana?” Stopping at the top of the staircase, he held out a hand, his green eyes intent. “Come.”