Lover Unveiled (Black Dagger Brotherhood 19)

“I am who I have e’er been,” she said in that voice of power. “Only unleashed, the now.”

Zxysis had somehow known of this power within her, Sahvage thought.

It was clear that the aristocrat had cobbled together the stories from the village and seen the trailheads for what they were. Meanwhile Sahvage, who had supposedly been the closest to the female, had missed the trajectory.

She needed not his protection.

She needed no one’s.

“We shall go our separate ways, Cousin.” Now her voice changed, returning closer to that which he had known. “You have discharged your service unto me, the vow unto my sire, your uncle, fully met. And as I know you shall not leave me, I shall leave you—”

“Rahvyn, where is Zxysis. What did you do to him?”

The smile that pulled at the corners of the female’s mouth terrified him. “What he did unto me. No more, no less. I repaid his attentions by getting inside of him.” Rahvyn limped over to where a black cloak had been thrown over one of the banquet seats. Pulling it around herself, she faced him. “You shall not find me. Do not even try.”

On a reflex, he protested. “My duty unto you is sacrosanct—”

“And I hereby release you of the burden.” Abruptly, her eyes softened. “Sahvage, you are free. Of it all. No more worries concerning me that distract you from your true calling. You shall be the most powerful fighter that e’er have served the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Glory shall be yours, for the race shall ne’er have seen such a protector as you.”

“No! My defense of you is more important than—”

“Not anymore.” She blinked away tears and lifted her chin. “Be well, Cousin. I have so much faith in your future. I urge you to join me in this optimism, even as I depart from your life. This era is over.”

“Rahvyn!” he yelled as he rushed forward.

But she dematerialized from the great hall, leaving naught except her scent . . . and the bloody carnage she had caused.

“No!” he yelled. Even as he knew not what he was denying.

Dragging his hands into his hair, he paced around. And around. And around in a tight circle. But naught changed. Not what his charge had done, not what he had seen with his own eyes. With a curse, he released the hold upon his head and went to stand over the dead. The tangle of bodies and unhanded weapons were layered in a mess, blood glistening on leather togs, on flesh, on stone . . . on bright steel scabbards and gunmetal-gray rifles.

“Rahvyn,” he whispered, “what else have you done?”

Except there was no Rahvyn anymore, was there.

As the realization struck, an urgency called unto him with the clarity of a brass bell, and he took care to arm himself with the weapons of the dead before he hastened down the broad thoroughfare that marked the way unto the drawbridge. As he jogged in silence and with speed, there was much to surmount. A field of debris marked the stone pavers: clothing fragments, foodstuffs in their nettings and pouches, pages from diaries and books littering the way unto the exit.

A flurry of people, fleet of foot and panicked of mind, had of recent rushed forth upon this very route, their objects of secondary import to their very lives.

What had scared them so? ’Twas a question he feared the answer to.

When the fortification’s grand entrance presented itself, Sahvage slowed.

Then he stopped.

The view through the vast opening provided a ready vista of the cleared field surrounding the castle. Trampled rivulets through the grasses illustrated the scatter of the inhabitants who had fled, and the drawbridge, which had remained lowered, was likewise covered with the same detritus trail.

“Whate’er did they know,” Sahvage whispered as he stepped through the great iron-and-steel gates. “Whate’er did they see whilst they abandoned this entirety.”

Drop. Drop . . . drop.

At the soft sound, Sahvage glanced down beside the fall of his robing. There, on the old, worn surface of the drawbridge’s wood, a puddle glistened in the moonlight.

Red. Brilliant red.

Sahvage turned and looked up—“Dearest Virgin Scribe.”

Up above the grand and formal entry, speared upon the iron stanchion that carried the silks of seat’s the bloodline, was . . .

Zxysis the Elder.

And it went without any question that he was deceased.

As if the impaling wasnae a clue.

Verily, his skin had been stripped from his bones and muscles: Everything that had once bound his corporeal form was gone, his intestines drooling out of his pelvis, organs seeping free from under his rib cage. His face had been preserved, however. Those features that defined his identity within the glymera and this household and village had been left untouched, his expression one of utter horror, his lips stretched wide over his bared teeth, his blind eyes staring in terror out over his landed estate.