Page 38 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

Waking up next to Rorsyd, it’s worth doing over and over. Even if we are on old sheets with holes in them flung over a mattress that’s seen its best days long ago. The sunlight on our bodies makes me blink and remember last night. We have a shuttered window due to finding out the large bedroom is L -shaped. The hidden part of the L stretches to the rear wall, looks out over the valley.

The etharum-powered lights are still on.

I roll over and nibble on Rorsyd’s arm. Then he rolls over on top of me and kisses down my breasts. When he finds my nipples, I wrap my hands around his head and urge him to keep going.

We have sex in the dawn sunlight, quiet sex with enough gasping and moans and orgasms to make anyone happy.

Panting, recovering, I stretch out my legs and smile up at him. We kiss once more, lazily exploring each other’s mouths. I taste the saltiness of the sweat on his well-muscled shoulder.

“Now, how do we clean up?” I run a finger down his bare chest. We dared each other to get naked last night, though he left a sword next to the bed, on the floor. “That bathroom had faucets? Would there be water?”

Me, I’m armed with my necromancer awareness. I doubt anything can move in this place and not alert my senses.

“I don’t know. I glimpsed a lake outside, or a pool of sorts off the river, buuut it’s a half a mile away. I can lick you clean?” Then he slips down me and buries his face in my pussy to do what he said.

“Nooo.” I push at his shoulder, though he’s insistent and keeps on licking. I’m drowsily sex-brained, amused, and ready to open my legs and let him keep going when he springs off the bed.

“Let’s explore and see what’s on the second floor.”

“Naked?” I scowl. “Filthy and sticky?”

“ Hmmm . Bathroom first then. No, let’s flick that power lever. I want to see what that does.”

I’m sure I’m wide-eyed when he does that, as I stand in the doorway of that little room again. Above us something hums, but apart from that, Slaedorth remains as asleep as it was before. The faucets in the bathroom do work, chugging dark-green water out for ages until it becomes a less-green, somewhat more safe color. So we may have managed to turn on a pump? We sponge off using half-rotted towels that leave cotton shreds on our bodies. Those do brush off. The sheets will have to be tossed but the linen cupboard has tens of them.

Then…

We look at each other. Naked. Armed with swords and daggers. The gheist pistol has no bullets, so it stays with our rucksacks. And we have one etharum torch clutched in Rorsyd’s hands.

“Shall we?” I ask, cocking one eyebrow in doubt. This is nuts.

“Let’s. You seem convinced you can sense whatever is in this place? You’re certain?”

I nod. “Only we and Kyvin are truly dangerous. And Kyvin, as you know, is happy to smite our enemies.”

“Yeah. I trust that undead guy. Which is possibly the weirdest statement I have ever said. Let’s do this. You, first. My whole plan is to watch your butt while we walk.” He grins.

“I should have guessed. Just so you know, the ghosts will eat your dangly bits first.”

“Shoo.” He spins me and smacks my ass.

I prance down the corridor, swaying my hips.

It’s fun until we return to that cross corridor near the Slaedorth foyer and find the stairway going up…and down. Even I feel nervous. Better to die a hero and not a zero, as Andacc once said.

I choose the downward stairs but draw my sword. The lights are on beneath Slaedorth also, but dimmer.

This new corridor stretches away, changing from mildly well-lit to gloom.

I inhale, shakily, my sword at my side, pointing at the floor.

“Want me to go first?” Rorsyd comes to my shoulder.

“No.” I straighten and close my eyes, searching this level of the fortress. Nothing, nothing, then a whole room of…what? Kinda undead corpses? Faith restored in my necromancy, I sheath my sword and stride forward.

A room with a pump of sorts is down here, chugging away, which must be how the pipes are circulating water. And several storerooms, and then a last big room with row after row of corpses on raised tiers, well preserved, pallid. The room is silent when we enter.

Of course it is.

Rorsyd has stiffened. I glance at him. “It’s okay. They’re somehow preserved. Not undead, but not dead-dead. Safe. Not deadiddy-dead.”

He snorts. “Deadiddy dead?”

“Technical necro term,” I snap out and smile at him. “I just invented it.”

Here I am today, being flippant about death. Yesterday…

I pull myself past my moment of remembering yesterday and Landos lying still and cold in the bag.

Life goes on.

“I figured it was so.”

“I think I could turn them into undead.” I walk up to a man and stare down at him. “Or not? I’m not sure.”

The etharum lights on the walls give me enough illumination.

He’s dressed in pants and shirt, average age, no tattoos or markings. Not a shifter. Dead about thirty years. I check a few more. Most are male. Some appear intact. Others have gaping wounds in all sorts of areas—legs, arms, heads, torsos. A few are missing their brains. Disconcerting. Have they been harvested for something? “Let’s go see upstairs. Next floor above ground level.”

“No. You need food, so do I. And where is Kyvin?” Rorsyd looks at the ceiling, as if he can see through it.

I let myself relax, absorb my surroundings, then expand my awareness, going floor by floor. “He is outside.” Curious. “Sitting near the rear door.”

“That man…that undead, is behaving oddly here? Though we never saw what he did at the library when we weren’t there.”

“He remembers his past, somewhat.” I shrug at Rorsyd. “Just a notion. I can’t prove it.”

“Makes me wonder who he was. How he died.” He shakes his head, inhales. “It cannot be nice being him, not if he recalls life.”

I grimace. “No. Though I imagine he doesn’t quite understand. Their brains don’t usually work well. Minimal function.” And how do I know this? I just do.

“So Kyvin is an undead genius.” Rorsyd looks thoughtful.

It’s an interesting way to think of him. An undead genius. Why though? Why is he thinking more than the others?

After getting dressed, we eat some of our rations outside, with Kyvin. The valley makes for a better vista than Slaedorth’s interior. Then we continue.

Our exploration of the other floors almost becomes routine. Room after empty room. One room with desks and tables and an actual blackboard broadcasts its role as a teaching place. Another is a dormitory. Another seems a hall for something else, like maybe eating meals? We’re guessing but Slaedorth definitely had a large number of living people here…once upon a time.

“I never knew this existed before your parents.” Rorsyd leans on one of the tables in the huge dining room. “Why was this such a secret?”

And that is something I cannot answer. Someone else may have built Slaedorth. Someone not my parents. And it was a school of some sort, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.

“The books?” I venture. “I need to see what they say about Slaedorth.”

The desks in the library are stacked with books. I will start with those since the spines of the books in this library have odd titles, and only some of them make sense to me. Esoteric Necronormalcy ? I mean what the ever-knowing gods is that?

A three-volume set with the longest title ever tempts me. A Detailed and Dramatic History of the Wars of the Monsters . I decide to ignore it until I’ve learned more about necromancy and set it aside.

I’m going through them one by one, stacking them anew. If they seem promising, they go in the Good stack. If not, the Bad stack. Then I have the Urrr What stack, too, for the books with titles that baffle me.

I spend the next five days diving into the books in the one library we have found. Rorsyd spends them growing ever more restless, hunting a few sheep for us to smoke and store away, as well as berries and whatever else he finds in the valley. I try not to watch as he brings them in and deals with them. My squeamishness amuses Rorsyd. I know he thinks a necromancer should be tough. Tough-er? I am tougher than I was before the raven.

The compass it brought. Whatever is it for? Yet another problem to solve.

And then, I heal him, and he shifts to dragon in the forecourt behind the gate. He wants to visit Orish’s grave, and there seems no good reason to stop him.

I want you here is selfish, so I do not say it.

We open the gate to the expected view of a thousand undead. They’re not pretty, but they are our very special Slaedorth guardians. The enforcers’ camp is still manned, though they pulled back some distance and haven’t dared to advance any closer. We’ve been checking them daily, to be careful.

Rorsyd sprints along this strip of land before the wall of the actual fortress, clawed feet thudding down as he accelerates and leaps high, thrashing his wings. He rises into the blue. It’s a nice day, gorgeous and full of butterflies dancing over the heads of the undead. The sun is shining brightly.

Suddenly, I’m scared. For him, not for my pet undead. Why? He’s a big bad dragonshifter with enough power to fly there and back easily.

I shake off my fear and go back inside to where Kyvin is trying to read a book.