Lucinda, Darkly Read online

  Like a sleepwalker awakening, Talon found himself crouched down by her side, reaching for her, pushing Nico aside to kneel beside her.

  “Give her to me,” Talon said, and the dark warrior, Stefan, glanced at him with tears of sorrow and despair wetting his eyes. A man as beautiful and as striking as she. Ivory paleness to her golden darkness. They were like the sun and the moon, had they arms and legs and breaking hearts. He was a fitting consort to her. Not someone like him—small, stunted, weak, with skin an ugly blackness. But tall and beautiful and fair of skin though he might be, this Monère warrior could not save her. And something . . . something inside of Talon cried out that he could. He could, if he dared.

  “Give her to me,” Talon repeated. Demanded. “Quickly, before it is too late.”

  Hope flared in those tear-sheened eyes. Without a word, the warrior passed her into his arms, and Talon felt her for the very first time. Barely. The soft press of her flesh against his arms, the light weight of her resting over his thighs. She had seemed so big before, vibrating with so much power. But now she lay tiny in his arms. So small and light that he could have picked her up and carried her had he needed to.

  “Can you save her, bring her back?” Stefan asked.

  “I shall try.” With his sharp teeth, Talon cut his wrist, brought it down to her mouth, and smeared the dripping blood across her lips. Her eyes fluttered, the lids translucent.

  “Drink,” Talon urged, finding himself saying something he would never ever have imagined himself saying to a demon. Saying something that he meant and yearned for with all his heart. “Drink my blood.”

  He felt her lips brush weakly across his blood-slicked wrist, felt her lips open wider. He pressed his wound eagerly against her mouth. “Drink and live,” he murmured. Willed.

  Her throat moved, a tiny bob up and down.

  “She swallowed,” Nico said.

  She swallowed again and all of them watched, waited, and prayed. Watched as her body grew denser.

  “She’s coming back,” Stefan whispered and took her hand, wrapped it in his. “I feel her more.”

  Talon felt her, too. Not just physically, but with that other sense. That awareness that was always there between them. An awareness that had almost faded into nothingness. It returned now, but weakly. So weak to what it had been.

  Her lips moved more strongly against his wrist, and she drank down more of his blood, not just the liquid that flowed freely into her mouth from his cut, but drawing it out of his veins faster with her own suction and pull.

  She drank and grew more solid, heavier in his arms. She drank and came slowly back into awareness.

  Open your eyes. See me, Talon willed. Her lids fluttered once, twice, then lifted and she looked up at him.

  “Talon.” She pushed his wrist away with sluggish movement. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m bringing you back.”

  “No good,” she muttered. “Oil of Fibara . . . blocks my power. Energy boost gone . . . crashing . . . Tired, so tired.” Her lids fluttered closed. As soon as they did, Talon felt the awareness between them dim, lessen, felt her presence begin to fade away. Her skin grew more translucent, and she began to lighten again.

  “No,” Talon cried and shook her awake. “Keep your eyes open.”

  Her lashes lifted up, heavy, like the slow sweep of a fan.

  “Drink more of his blood,” Nico urged.

  A sad, sweet smile touched her lips. “Won’t help . . . not with oil.”

  “This?” Stefan asked, touching the wet substance on her back.

  “Yes.” A small breath of sound.

  Stefan tore open her cloak, stripped it gently from her, along with her tattered shirt, and wiped the oily substance carefully from her skin as Talon shifted her up against him for easier access.

  “No good. In my skin already,” Lucinda said, her voice thick and muffled with her face pressed against Talon’s stomach.

  Stefan tore off his own shirt, gently slid her arms into the sleeves, and drew the garment around her. Talon lowered her back down, and Stefan buttoned up the shirt, covering her once more.

  “Her skin is so cold,” Stefan murmured, his brows knitting together.

  “Lucinda, how long does the oil’s effect last?” Nico asked.

  She turned her sleepy eyes to him with effort. “Hours.”

  “You just have to stay awake then, until the effect wears off, sweetheart,” Nico said.

  A wry, twisting smile. “Sweetheart?” she whispered.

  “Only right I call you sweetheart. You called me darling before,” Nico said, his voice light but his eyes tender. Darkened with the worry that haunted them all. They were losing her again.

  Her voice grew fainter, until it was the barest wisp of sound. “Not one of your . . . human harem.” Her dark cinnamon lashes fluttered down, as if the weight of them was too heavy for her to bear up any longer. “So tired . . .”

  Open your eyes! It was a screamed mental command. A strong urging of will blasted out from Talon.

  Her eyes blinked open, like a sleeper rudely shaken awake. She looked up at Talon. “Let me go . . . leave here.”

  “No,” a soft reply echoed internally by a much harsher one. No!

  A couple more blinks and then her lashes drifted down again in that fanning sweep, like a floating feather inevitably pulled down by gravity. And Talon knew she spoke true, that she could not last that long. That his will could not sustain her. Not without a greater bond. A bond he knew and yet did not know how to create.

  Talon took the next step. He lifted up her forearm—so light, so delicate, such a fragile thing—and sank his sharp teeth into her skin. Blood, sharp and acrid, almost stinging, filled his mouth, and he swallowed it down. And with that blood bond, Talon knew more of her thoughts, her feelings. Instead of repelling him as it had with Derek, it drew him closer. He knew now that she had chosen to save their lives when she could have tried to save hers instead. And he knew that his choice—her—was the right one.

  Lucinda’s eyes flew open. She gasped in pain, in shock. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m binding us.”

  “You cannot drink her blood,” Stefan said, his voice tense. “She said that you would die if you took her blood.”

  “I am demon kin, of that other realm. I have taken their blood before and it does not hurt me,” Talon said. And then with that part of himself that he had always held so tightly closed before—that yearning, attracted part of himself . . . He didn’t just loosen it, let it go where it wanted—he thrust it sharply into her. He felt that part of him enter into her and found that flicker of power, the element of her that had reached out once to him. He twined around her beast, so weak now, barely there.

  Merge with me, that other demon Derek had demanded, time and time again. But no matter how terribly he had hurt Talon, punished him, beaten him until bones had broken and flesh had split open, Talon had held that part of himself back. No longer.

  “No . . .” Lucinda moaned, shaking her head, mentally trying to push him away. Too weak to do so. “No . . . you will die when I die.”

  “Then we go together.” His face was utterly tranquil, peacefully calm. How wonderful it felt not to be afraid. With that inner serenity, Talon wrapped himself around the fading power within her that was her beast. With a blissful shudder, he sank into it. Became a part of it. Merged wholly with it.

  A kaleidoscope of colors, of powers, of feelings and emotions, tastes and sounds. Echoes of a heartbeat. The fertile earth, the vibrant wind. The sun, moon, and stars. An explosion of feeling, a shaking within as if the realms themselves moved.

  And then the emptiness and totality of darkest night.

  SEVENTEEN

  THEY WERE AS still as death. Even when they carried them on that long trek back to the car, the two of them together, their bodies touching, they did not move. But the ghosting had stopped . . . as long as they were touching. All it took was that one time when Stefan had lif
ted Lucinda up into his arms, only to find her quickly growing lighter in weight and density, so startling fast. And not only her, but Talon, too. Both of them fading almost completely in the brief moment it had taken to lower Lucinda back to the ground. Back to Talon. The moment they had touched again, black skin to gold, they solidified once more.

  The illusion of dark mocha skin that Lucinda had coated Talon with before had been stripped completely from him the moment he tipped over and sprawled limp and unconscious on top of Lucinda, leaving him a creature of darkness, of blackest night once again. But the darkness could fade, too. And black skin could ghost as easily as fairer skin of gold.

  They did not make the same mistake twice.

  “I’ll carry them both,” Stefan had declared. And he’d done so while Nico stood guard with Stefan’s sword in his hand, the thin handcuffs at his waistbelt. Charcoal black handcuffs that Nico had found lying on the ground, almost lost among the leaves. The demon alloy felt oddly warm against Nico’s skin as they made their way slowly back to the car, as if it still retained heat from that other realm.

  They were so still. Oddly still.

  Without their consciousness animating them, Nico became fully aware of their complete lack of sound and movement. Living creatures were noisy things, never silent. Within them, always, even in sleep, was the rush of blood traversing vessels and the pumping of that blood, the swish of air moving in and out. Not so with these beings from Hell. And yet, even now with that silence, that eerie stillness, Nico did not truly think of them as dead. Just different from living things.

  Jonnie was waiting for them in the car, and the relief on the young man’s face when he glimpsed them was echoed in Stefan’s. Such a close bond between those two, Nico noted with a pang of envy. He wondered briefly what it would feel like to have a son, then shook his head at his own whimsy. He would likely never know. Few Monère ever did.

  “What happened?” Jonnie asked as they lowered Lucinda and Talon onto the back seat, Talon’s light body sprawled on top of Lucinda. Nico scrunched in beside them, keeping the two of them touching, together, while Stefan pulled on a clean shirt he took out of his backpack. Dressed once more, he slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Lucinda started to ghost,” Stefan said as he pulled onto the road, driving fast. “Talon bound himself to her somehow. As long as they touch, he keeps them from completely waning.”

  “Why is Talon so dark?” Jonnie asked.

  “That is his true color,” Nico explained. “What you saw before was just a thin coat of illusion to help him blend in more naturally among the humans.”

  “Is Talon a demon, too, Stefan?”

  “I don’t know, Jonnie. I thought at first that he was, but he called himself demon kin.”

  “I don’t think even Talon knows what he is,” Nico said sadly. “A demon brought him as a babe to Mona SiGuri and she has kept him in secrecy all this time. His existence here in this realm surprised Lucinda greatly. She called him a Floradëur, a flower of darkness. Their blood seems to greatly enhance a demon’s powers.”

  “Derek,” Stefan said. “She named the demon Derek. Is he the same demon who stole Talon here to this realm?”

  “If it were a different demon, it would surprise me greatly,” Nico said. “Demons are not that common. Quite rare, in fact. I doubt Mona SiGuri dealt with more than one demon. And she had to be the one who warned him, sent him after us.”

  “I’d like to kill her,” Stefan said flatly. And though Nico felt that way himself, it was a jarring shock hearing it said aloud. To hear put into words one of their greatest taboos—killing a queen. A sacred lady of light.

  “I think that’s what the good Queen had in mind herself,” Nico said. “To kill us. To get rid of all the witnesses, recover Talon, and then all would be as it was. The demon’s goal, as well. He tried to stop the greatest threat to him first—Lucinda. He will come after her again when he has recovered. And then us.”

  “Lucinda injured him. Badly enough to send him running,” Stefan said, then asked that next all-important question. “How quickly can demons heal?”

  With a light finger, Nico traced the burn wounds along Lucinda’s wrist. The illusion had fallen away from them the same moment Talon’s illusion had dropped. “They cut her wrists to drain her blood. She burned her own flesh to stop the bleeding. It has not healed in any discernible way that I can detect.”

  A light muttered imprecation as Stefan turned and caught sight of the charred flesh Nico traced. With an angry tightening of lips, Stefan turned back once more to face the empty road they sped along.

  “I don’t know how fast they heal. But based on Lucinda’s wounds, my guess is not at all in this realm,” Nico said. So much they did not know. But what they did know was enough to shake his world. In a low voice that reflected the stunned awe he felt, he murmured, “She said her brother was Prince Halcyon.”

  “Prince Halcyon?” Jonnie asked, craning his head over the front seat to peer down at Nico. “Who is that?”

  Nico gave a sharp bark of mirthless laughter. “Just the High Prince of Hell. The ruler of that other realm. Someone that every Monère knows and fears.” He caught the flash of Stefan’s eyes in the mirror. “Does Jonnie even know about it, that other realm where some of us go after we die?”

  “I told him after we met Lucinda,” Stefan said. “I did not tell him much before of the Monèrian world I left behind.”

  “Wise, perhaps. Perhaps even wiser to keep it that way and part company here and now. Not only him but you as well,” Nico said to Stefan. “A demon hunts us. He will come after Lucinda first. You may have a chance to escape.”

  “And run where, pray tell?” Stefan asked. “No, I will stay with Lucinda.”

  “And I will stay with Stefan,” Jonnie said.

  “Then so be it. We all go to High Court.” Stefan watched with amusement as Nico paled at those two frightening words. Smiling grimly, Stefan turned his attention back to the road. “And we seek out the Queen Mother and Lucinda’s brother, Prince Halcyon.” Two names that represented the highest powers among their people. Names that struck both fear and reverence among the Monère, and sheer terror in any rogue’s heart.

  “I’d almost rather take my chances with the demon,” Nico muttered.

  In truth, so would Stefan, had it been only he. But it was not. “It was our lady’s last order that we go there.”

  “Our lady.” Nico sighed the words, savored them, though frank amusement tinged his next words. “So you’ve decided to share her with me, old man.”

  “I decided nothing,” Stefan said. “Lucinda made that choice. I can only accept it.”

  “And with such grace,” Nico said dryly.

  “Does that make her a princess?” Jonnie asked Stefan.

  “What?”

  “You said her brother was a prince, a ruler. Does that make Lucinda a princess?”

  It was a stunning realization, echoed in the brief look Stefan shared with Nico.

  “Yes,” Stefan answered. “That makes her a princess.”

  “Our Princess,” Nico amended. “For as long as she continues to exist.” And they would do their best to see that she did.

  There was no sign of Mona SiGuri’s men at the airport, and the small jet lifted from the ground without mishap. The pilot was an older man, a human who eyed Lucinda and Talon’s unconscious bodies with obvious concern but asked no questions. All he had said when Stefan told him of their destination was, “I know the coordinates,” and disappeared into the cockpit.

  They laid Lucinda down in the narrow aisle with Talon’s small dark body lying atop hers. They were almost the same size, funny to realize that. Lucinda had seemed so much bigger, her presence so powerful it had made her seem a foot taller than Talon, rather than the mere inch that separated them in height. And tiny thing though she was, Talon was even smaller, light and slender where Lucinda was lush and full.

  They were still. Totally unmoving. Nico knew because he
watched them closely. They both did, Stefan and he. They sat on the floor, Stefan on one side of the aisle, Nico on the other.

  Then movement came and surprised them all. Blood scented the air. Flowed bright and scarlet, trickling down between black and gold skin. Nico cursed and rolled Talon’s body half off of Lucinda, so they could see their bellies. Dark rivulets of blood ran from a gashing wound in Talon’s right side. Talon’s blood, not Lucinda’s.

  Talon’s eyes flew open, and the black void of his eyes stared up at Nico with panic and desperation in their depths.

  “Nico, help me,” Talon cried, reaching for him. Nico grasped the black outstretched hand.

  The moment their skins touched, he pulled Nico in.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE PLANE, THE seats, the narrow aisle, the bright lights all disappeared, and Nico found himself in twilit darkness. In air hotter than he had ever felt or breathed in before. Motion came at him, striking at him, stopping just before it hit him, slicing open fabric but not skin. A clawed hand with nails long, sharp and deadly, hovered there, trembling above his white skin. A startled gasp drew Nico’s eyes up.

  Lucinda stood before him.

  Crouched behind him, he felt Talon, the creature’s small, sharp nails digging through the fabric of his pants.

  “Nico. What are you doing here?” Lucinda asked, a shocked look on her face.

  “Talon brought me here.”

  “No!” she cried and stumbled back, so weak that her legs collapsed and she sank to the ground. Anger and sorrow swirled in those dark bittersweet eyes.

  “Take him back,” she commanded fiercely, looking at Talon, her voice, her will, still strong though her body was not. “And go yourself. Leave me.”

  Talon shook his head. Crawled cautiously to where she sat sprawled on the ground. “No, mistress. I will not leave you. We are halfway bound already, can you not feel it?”