Page 12

Chapter

Six

Rumi

I had been so ready to pick up a sword with minimal training and join a war for a cause I believed in just a few hours ago.

But now, as I stood with my brothers, attempting to figure out what was going on in the mad swirl of activity around us, all I wanted to do was stay away from the heat of the battle and protect the egg I could feel growing inside me.

Being a papa changed everything. As I’d followed Emmerich through the fight to where our brothers were congregated around Osric, I just wanted everything to end.

I didn’t want to take any risks, despite still feeling as if deposing my father was the most important goal of my life so far.

Another goal was rising up within me, though.

I wanted to bring my baby safely into the world, then raise it and its siblings, and I hoped there would be many, to be healthy and happy adults .

I almost laughed when Emmerich and his brothers cast the spell to pause everyone around us. It was as if my mate heard the inner cry of my heart to make the battle stop so that my baby, not to mention my brothers, would be safe.

But it wasn’t the people all around us who had stopped that grabbed all of our attention. It was the one person aside from us who kept going.

“Help me! You have to help me!” Lady Saoirse cried out as she raced toward us, hands outstretched pleadingly.

I felt Emmerich’s surprise at the sight of the woman along with my own shock.

I only barely remembered her from the brief moments she had been in my father’s court, attempting to overthrow him.

My and my brothers’ memories of that afternoon had been wiped, along with the memories of everyone else who had witnessed the ill-fated power-grab, but Emmerich had told me all the details of what had happened later.

It felt like finally meeting someone in person after seeing their portrait on the walls for years.

Only Lady Saoirse wasn’t in any condition to sit for a portrait.

Her plain dress was filthy and tattered.

It even had a few blood stains across the skirt along with the mud.

Her face was smudged with grime as well, and her long hair, which had once been beautiful and fine, was coming out of a single, thick braid down her back.

“Please, you have to help me,” she said again, breathless from running as she reached our group and sank to her knees. “You have to get me out of here.”

For a moment, no one answered her pleas. I checked with my brothers, most of whom were baffled, before looking up at Emmerich for answers.

Emmerich was as confused as I was, which I could feel through our bond. He shrugged as well, and we both turned our attention to Lady Saoirse.

“You were banished to this world deliberately so that you would live a quiet life, Saoirse,” Gildur said, stepping forward with a frown, Selle keeping close just behind him. “Why are you here now, involved in a war for the crown, clearly not susceptible to a powerful pausing spell?”

“I don’t know!” Saoirse shouted. “I swear, I have nothing to do with the spell. I haven’t felt so much as a whisper of my powers since being banished to this Goddess-forsaken place.” Anger twisted her face, outshining her fear for a moment.

I didn’t believe it for a second. “You’re here, aren’t you?

” I took a half step closer to her, though I could feel Emmerich’s desire to hold me back and keep me out of the center of things.

“Why would you be in the middle of a battlefield in the fight to depose my father if you didn’t still have intentions of overthrowing him and taking his place yourself? ”

Saoirse turned to me, then burst into laughter. “You think I want to be here, boy?” she asked, enraging both me and Emmerich with the way she spoke to me. “You think I want to involve myself with all this dirt and risk accidentally being run through by a spell-crazed soldier?”

Along with being deeply offended, I was curious about her questions. If she wasn’t here willingly, then why was she here at all? Unless she was attempting to play innocent so that we didn’t suspect she was the traitor in Osric’s camp.

Another thought hit me, and my heart started to beat faster with alarm. Saoirse hadn’t been a part of Osric’s camp. No one had seen so much as a sign of her until just now. She couldn’t be the dark sorcerer responsible for everything.

I wasn’t the only one to make the connection.

“If you aren’t the one responsible for my men turning, then who is?” Osric asked, striding up to Saoirse and standing towering above her. “Who are you working with? Who sent you here?”

“Nobody sent me here,” Saoirse said, glaring up at Osric with loathing.

“I don’t want to be here at all. But he promised to restore my powers if I helped him by serving as a magnifier.

He promised to give me back the life I had before and to return me to the magical world, and all I had to do was be present so he could use me. ”

I frowned, no idea what she was talking about.

Emmerich and his brothers seemed to know, though. Even Osric, who had yet to explain himself as an obsidian dragon and to tell his own story of power, seemed to know.

“Mother removed your power and banished you,” Gildur said, “but she didn’t and couldn’t change the fact that you are still of the magical realm.”

“Does that explain why she didn’t pause with everyone else when the spell was cast?” Selle asked with as much curiosity as if we were all sitting peacefully in the dragon castle library instead of panting and aching on the edge of a battlefield.

“It does, my sweet,” Gildur said, smiling at Selle, then hooking him around the waist and pulling him close to kiss him.

Saoirse made a sound of disgust, which seemed to focus all of us back on what mattered.

“Are you trying to convince us that you were dragged here against your will to serve as a dark sorcerer’s magnifier?” Osric asked, crossing his arms.

Saoirse’s eyes went wide. “Not just any dark sorcerer,” she said. “Nazeing.”

The name didn’t mean much to me, but through our bond, I felt Emmerich flinch. More than that, he was suddenly flooded with emotions of dread and anxiety and…embarrassment?

I glanced at him with a curious frown, but instead of answering my unspoken question, Emmerich narrowed the bond between us so that his emotions felt more distant to me.

That only made me frown more. Was my mate trying to hide something from me?

“Who is Nazeing?” Tovey asked, looking around at the rest of us for answers.

Obi gasped. “Nazeing!”

Everyone turned to him in surprise, even Argus. “What do you know of the sorcerer Nazeing?” he asked.

Obi practically bristled with excitement.

“He’s the one who made the chain that Father used to sap your powers,” he said.

“Rottum mentioned his name when he dragged me off and tried to…well, that never happened, so we don’t have to worry about it.

But Nazeing is the name of the sorcerer who is working with Father to win the war.

I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection sooner. ”

“You have been distracted of late,” Argus said, sending his mate a saucy look.

“Yes,” Saoirse confirmed, clearly impatient with Argus’s flirting. “And woe betide anyone who attempts to challenge Nazeing. You will all be dead before you know it if you cross him.”

Another confused pause followed Saoirse’s dramatic statement .

“I still don’t understand who this Nazeing is,” Tovey said, appealing to Rufus.

“He’s one of the darkest sorcerers who has ever lived,” Rufus answered him. “He was a powerful and promising magician in his younger days. Very clever and studious. Many people thought he would become an advisor to kings, or perhaps some sort of leader in his own right.”

“He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he, Emmerich?” Azurus asked, sending my dragon a puzzled look.

“Er, he was,” Emmerich said. Even though he’d narrowed our bond, I could still feel sheepishness well up in him. He blushed as well, which made him look surprisingly vulnerable instead of powerful and in control, as he usually did.

I studied my dragon with curiosity, trying to guess what sort of connection he and this Nazeing had had.

“What does Nazeing want in this world?” Azurus asked, turning back to Saoirse. “Why would he support King Freslik in his attempt to stay on the throne?”

That was not the question I would have asked at all. I would have asked Emmerich what had happened to turn someone with so much promise into one of the darkest sorcerers of all time.

As it happened, my question might have been answered by the answer Saoirse gave to Azurus.

“He wants power,” she said, nearly weeping her answer as she sat back on her heels.

“He wants to sow chaos so that he can feed off of it to become more powerful himself. All he cares about is being the most powerful omega in existence.”

Omega? A rush of surprise swept through our confused and restless group.

“The darkest sorcerer of all time is an omega?” Obi asked .

“I would hardly say that he’s the darkest of all time,” Emmerich said, downplaying the danger.

“Whether he is or not,” Osric said, his tone indicating he was ready to take charge of the situation again, “I fully believe that the man is after power. It makes perfect sense that he would aid Freslik. If Freslik stays on the throne, this entire kingdom, possibly this whole world, will be filled with strife and misery. Nazeing could very well feed off of that and use that power to conquer other worlds, possibly even to challenge Queen Gaia.”

“What can we do about it?” Obi asked.

“We have to stop him,” Leo said, tightening his grip on his sword.

“We have to find him first,” I said with a frown. Something told me it would be more difficult to do than it seemed.

“What should we do with her?” Leo asked, pointing his sword at Saoirse. “She can’t stay here, where she’ll be a magnifier for Nazeing’s power.”