A Warrior's Quest (20 page)

He thought for a moment. His mother had kept him just as long as she had to, then sent him to the father he had never met before. He had seen her maybe a dozen times in the nearly two thousand years since. “Not even obligation; not to me. But to our people, no.”

“Your people? You are Warrior, but you were raised Incubus. Why do you still claim your mother’s people as yours, when it is to your father’s that your true loyalty belongs?”

Because his skills, his strengths, were those he had been raised to cultivate. He was not glib, or smooth-tongued, able to charm anyone of any Kind
like his more Incubus brothers. He was Warrior, and had been bred to fight, to defend.

To protect.

“To protect.” She looked right at him, and those green eyes read every thought, every emotion he had ever had. “You were born to protect, Renakletos. Your destiny is such, if you seek to meet it.”

“
My
destiny?” Ren didn’t believe in destiny, not fully. Yet the Wolf god’s words of Aureliana’s future filled his head. “I have no destiny.
Time
denies destiny for ones such as us.” Probably more so for the Laquazzean.

“Does it? I shall have to think about that.” She sat her drink down and it disappeared, mug gone with barely a notice. “Aureliana had a
destiny.
You know about it.”

“Yes. I do.”

“You did not tell her about it. Why?”

“Because her goddess feared it would bring about her death.” Yet wasn
’t that what had happened anyway? Grief unlike any other hit him; was she gone? Had he come here only to lose her anyway? “And that fear came to be.”

The Laquazzean looked at him, wrapped her hands around his. “When we seek to run from our fears we often bring those very fears to fruition. We must meet all things with courage. And honor. And obligation. And…love, Renakletos Arenus Malickus. Because
love
is the basis of true courage. Not strength or skill with as sword.
Love
is
courage.
”

She held out her hand and he studied the palm. Her flesh was marred in a way he could not identify. What injury had been so grievous to scar a creature like her?

That was the last thought he had.

When next he awoke he was on the grass where he
’d fallen. Dead
rhacshas
surround him.

Him and the
Warrior girl.

She was not moving. Her eyes were closed, her skin too pale.

Had the Beansidhe, the Laquazzean or whatever she actually was lied to him?

He scrambled over the grass and pulled his
Warrior girl into his arms. Her name was a whispered prayer to gods and goddesses he would never truly believe in. Her head lolled back, and her body was limp in his embrace.

He checked for a pulse. Nothing.

Her heart was still.

Hands were pulling at his shoulders, tiny hands. Hands of a female. He growled and looked at who tried to separate him from his
gamata
.

Clouded yellow eyes, flooded with tears, met his. “Let me see her!”

The healer Bronwen, filthy and battered, but alive. The girl of barely fifty that
his
female had had a hand in raising. She was like a daughter to his Aureliana. She would grieve like a child mourned a mother. He allowed some space between his chest and the woman in his arms.

The healer wrapped both her hands around Aureliana
’s left.

The healer glowed when she healed, but that glow was dim now. “She
’s nearly gone.”

Nearly?
Nearly? “She isn’t gone yet? She is so cold.”

“She needs blood. Give her blood.”

“Every drop I have.” But how? The previous times she’d bitten
him,
taken what she wanted, needed, for herself.

The girl healer seemed to understand what he had to do. “Bite your wrist; get a good steady flow of blood. Hold it over her lips…if…if she
’s still
in
there she’ll do the rest instinctively. If…you are her true
Rajni
she will recognize you.”

He sank his own teeth deep in to his wrist. His blood, strong, healthy green Warrior blood, welled. He held it over his female
’s lips.

Nothing.

She was not drinking.

“You sure she lives?” Rathan asked the question from somewhere behind Ren. Ren did not look at his brother, all of his focus aimed at the woman in his arms.

“For now.”

“Where did the Beansidhe go?” He refrained from calling her a Laquazzean in front of the others. There were some things he needed to mull on before sharing. And now wasn
’t the time. Not now, with her so pale, so still. So gone. “Help her…please…”

He didn
’t know who he asked.

But the voice came again, this time much warmer than before.

Several surrounding them screamed as a woman emerged from the back of the courtyard. “Tell me, Renakletos Malickus, did you mean your words spoken to me earlier? Would you go in her place?”

He looked at the people who mattered the most to him. His brother nodded; Rathan understood. His sister, sound and whole and safe near the
Warrior Twin King who’d been caught unawares in the latest attack. Her sadness was in her face, but so was her understanding.

His daughter, still hidden under the stone bench, the spawn Thas held in her arms like baby doll.

She
would be his one regret.

But Aureliana would care for her. See that she was loved.
And that was what Cerridwen truly needed.

“Gladly. Without hesitation.”

“Sacrifice.” The Laquazzean walked to the spawn and brushed a loving hand over Cerridwen’s black curls. “You understand it, then? She has sacrificed much for who she is. And she met her fate willingly, putting her own needs second to the needs of those she cared about. And those she had never faced. Can you say you would do the same?”

“Yes.” Sacrifice took more than just courage. It took heart.

Love.

Like the love he felt for the woman in his arms.
  “For her, I would do anything.”

The Laquazzean smiled, a beautiful light that had
his
eyes burning. “Would you give me an oath, Demonkin son of King and Queen?”

He bowed his head. “Yes.”

“An oath to protect, defend, cherish, and love the woman in your arms, and any spawn the two of you may
create
or be
given
. Would this be a vow you could and would make, Renakletos Arenus Malickus?”

“I swear to do all of those things. To protect, to defend, to cherish, to honor, and to love her. With everything I have been given, this I vow thusly. And the same for any spawn.”

Pale blue light surrounded all in the courtyard. The cold that had arrived with the Laquazzean in Beansidhe-form turned to immense, intense heat.

Aureliana was yanked from his arms.

He grabbed for her, screaming her name.

Had the Laquazzean betrayed him? Why? Had he not met her demands? Did she not know he would do
anything
at this point?

Aureliana rose above the crowd, still so achingly silent, limp. He scrambled over every obstacle, every person, in his way as he tried to get to her. “Give her to me!”

She spun.
He
spun. The entire world around them spun, still surrounded by that ethereal blue light. The Laquazzean laughed, then sang something in a language probably far older than the world itself. The singing grew louder. Ren wanted to cover his ears; every note made him feel like a monster, unworthy of everything—especially of the woman he so desperately wanted to get to. He wasn’t fit to touch so much as a single hair on her head.

No one was.

The spinning increased until Ren doubled over and vomited. Aureliana still hovered above the crowd trying to reach her. But they couldn’t. She was at least fifteen or twenty feet in the air.

Ren felt sick, worthless, and useless.

But he would
never
stop trying to get to her.

The spinning doubled, tripled if possible. Ren couldn
’t keep up; the screams around them were louder, more shrill. The grass beneath his feet was drenched; somehow the blue light had turned to blue rain unlike any he had ever seen before.

He fell, then pushed himself back up on his feet. He kept going; Aureliana was moving away from him, away from everyone. Just…floating. Floating above them all.

He fell again. Cursed the skies and cursed the Laquazzean, cursed himself.

Never once did he curse the
Warrior girl.

He kept going. The singing grew louder. Louder. Intermixed with the laughter of a thousand voices.

The world spun in reverse, flinging him to the center of the rose bushes his sister-in-law had transported from Gaia. He ignored the thorns. “Stop! I will give you what you want. Just give her back to those who love her!”

The singing stoppe
d. “Do you love her, Renakletos Malickus? Really, truly love her? Will you treasure her until the day one—or
both—
of you depart this earthly place?”

“Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times
yes!
You can have my
soul
if it brings her back!”

“Then so be it.”

Darkness surrounded the courtyard; the screams of some came again. Ren ignored it, trying to get to where he’d last seen Aureliana. Maybe, maybe he could climb the balconies overlooking the gardens and reach her that way. Somehow.

The sounds next were of bells or voices or a combination of both. A thousand, ten thousand harmonized over the castle. Beautiful. Ren stopped his mad pursuit of Aureliana. Beautiful. Had he ever heard anything quite as beautiful?

He knew he hadn’t.

He fell to his knees in the blue rain, his soul hurting from the imperfections and weaknesses of his heart that had consumed him for so long.

For the first time in his two thousand years of life, Renakletos
wept.

He
didn’t deserve her. He knew that now. Why had he ever thought he did; ever thought that he was doing
her
a favor by offering her
gamata
? He was not worthy of a Laquazzean. No demon was.

But that was exactly what he had been given.
Aureliana had changed.

She was no longer Dardaptoan. She was
more.

She was one of
them.
And he had been tasked with protecting her.
He had never felt more humbled.

She had shifted, though she remained in the air. Her eyes were open, and it was if she were walking through the skies, through the blue rain.

She and the Laquazzean met a foot off the ground. Grasped hands. Stared at each other. Sisters, now.

Ren stayed on his knees.

He could see those surrounding them in the courtyard now. It was his brother’s people, his. The
rhacshas
demons were dead; their bodies dust as was their way. It would take months for the yellow and red ashes to be worked into the courtyard soil. All that watched what was happening were friends, loved ones, of Aureliana.

There was significance to that, but he wasn
’t the kind of male to focus on
significance.
He’d always had the here and now. But this…this was something he would never be able to comprehend. He understood that.

His warrior girl still held the
other’s
hands. Did they realize they resembled each other now? He started to stand, to go to Aureliana, but hands held him back.

The blind prognosticator, his own tears on his cheeks
stood next to him. “This is for Aureliana now. You have both passed what the Laquazzean required of you.”

“But what happens now?” Ren whispered the question, too in awe of what he saw for regular speech.

“That’s up to
them,”
Theo nodded toward the females. “No one can ever know what a Laquazzean’s future holds. Or what they will do on this world. In any realm.”

“And that is what the
Warrior girl is now?” Was
this
finally the destiny the Wolf god has spoken about? “
Why?”

“
That is something we cannot know. But I do know that
she
will not be the last. There are more to
begin
. More to come, if our
worlds
are to survive the upcoming Wars.” Theo clapped him on the back, and Ren struggled not to fall face first into the still-blue mud at his feet. “We can only do our best to help and guide them. For their fates carry all. Go to her. She’ll need you now. Go, my
Rajni
and I will tend to your babes. And Ren, the deities have blessed you now, including the Laquazzean. You are blessed.”