BlackMoon Reaper (24 page)

doubled back. Lurking outside his own bedchamber window, he heard the cheating

ones indulging in their sinful pursuit. The knowledge destroyed all that was good

within the man’s friend that day.”

Pain filled Lord Kheelan’s handsome face.

“Fury and betrayal lashed at the man’s friend. In his pain, he called out to the most

evil demon he could conceive and promised himself to the demon’s service if only the

man he had loved and trusted, respected and admired would be punished for the sin he

had committed against their friendship. With him in his punishment, the friend wanted

his treacherous wife to share in the retribution.”

The High Lord’s jaw clenched, a muscle bunching.

“What the friend did not know—or else had forgotten in his grief—is when you

bargain with evil, you give up more than just your soul. Evil wants everything. It wants

all. In exchange for punishing the lovers, the Evil One wanted innocent blood, innocent

lives as well, and because the friend was so stricken with hatred, he agreed to
Yn Drogh

Spyrryd
’s terms.

“‘You will stand at the head of my army’, the Evil One ordered. ‘You will be my

general and command the
Flaiee
.’

“Seeing only the revenge, the retribution he so yearned to have at hand, the friend

signed the agreement in his own blood. This friend—Lesh Spiosyn—became the general

of the
Flaiee
, the demon warrior horde that was unleashed upon his homeworld in a

bloody frenzy that had never seen the like.”

A single tear slid slowly down the High Lord’s cheek.

“Let loose, the
Flaiee
raped and ravaged and destroyed everything in their path, but

these vile entities do not just kill when they fall upon their victims. They annihilate.

They eradicate, obliterate, exterminate, extinguish all living things with which they

come into contact. By the time they were through, other than the general and his

demons, there was no one left alive on Rysalia Prime save one man and one woman. No

field had been left unsalted. No water had been left without poison. Everything was

burned to the ground, trampled, torn asunder. Nothing moved upon the entire face of

the planet nor would for over a thousand years. Thankfully a few dozen inhabitants

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had fled the planet before the destruction. One of those was the infamous hero’s mother

who was pregnant with a sister of the great man.”

Lord Kheelan hung his head, put a trembling hand over his eyes.

“Lesh Spiosyn had his revenge. His wife had been the plaything of over fifty

demons before her body was crushed and broken. Her lover had been brought to

ground, bound to a tree and made to watch as the woman he lusted after was torn apart

before his very eyes. He was forced to watch as the four-year-old child he loved more

than his own life was ravished in front of him, her body fed to the war-hounds. Nearly

insane with grief, he spent two days lashed to that tree with the screams of his people,

his mistress and his child ringing in his ears.”

Morrigunia turned Her face toward the High Lord.

“As his own punishment for what he had helped to bring about, Lesh Spiosyn

changed from a handsome warrior to a hideous demon that fated day. His body became

twisted and pebbled with warts, his hands turned to claws, his feet to paws, his

fingernails to talons and teeth to fangs. All because a selfish man had given in to his

baser side and helped to destroy an entire world.”

The goddess pointed a rigid finger at Lord Kheelan.

“I found this disgraced warrior whimpering like a lost child as he hung from his

chains on that dead tree. He pleaded with me, begged me to kill him, but I refused. That

would have been too quick, too easy, and he needed to atone for his crimes so I made

him a Shadowlord and brought him here—away from the mother and sister who were

the only kin he had left. I did, however, relent and allow him to be reunited with the

sister.”

“But you’ve made him suffer ever since,” Lord Naois said.

The Triune Goddess nodded. “Aye, he suffers, Naois, and he will continue to suffer

for he has yet to learn from his mistake. Even now, he is ruled by
Rouanys
, the

Archdemon of Lust. Even now he yearns for what will never be his. He aches for what

he knows he can not have.” Her green eyes flashed verdant fire. “For what he knows I

will never allow him to have!”

Aingeal flinched when her husband reached out to cover her clenched hands with

his own. She looked at him with tears misting her eyes. “Cynyr—” she began.

“Shush,” Cynyr said. “You’ve no reason to apologize.”

“No, she does not,” Morrigunia said, “for she has done no harm. She can not help

what this weak, pathetic man feels for her. But he is not the only one suffering. If he

hears the screams of his people dying around him, his baby girl crying for him to come

to her aid, his mistress pleading for her own life, he also hears the piercing phantom

shrieks of the wife he betrayed each time Lesh Spiosyn impaled her upon his thorny

shaft before she died!”

A pitiful sound escaped Lord Kheelan’s throat and he shot up from his chair. He

skirted the chairs where his Reapers and their ladies sat, running as he made for the

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High Council chamber doors. Neither Penthe nor Giles opened the portal for him, but

he didn’t seem to notice as he jerked it open to flee the room.

The Reapers and their wives had turned to watch the High Lord’s departure in

stunned silence. Slowly they turned around in their chairs to look at the goddess.

“He is a good man,” Lord Dunham said.

“Aye, he is a good man, but he is a man still in need of atonement,” Morrigunia

agreed.

“How much longer will that take,
Mo Regina
?” Naois asked.

“When I am satisfied he has atoned,” She replied. She looked at Cynyr. “Do you

trust your lady?”

“With my life,” Cynyr answered.

“Then go to him, Lady Aingeal,” the goddess told her.

That said, the Triune Goddess vanished in a puff of pale orange smoke.

Aingeal’s face crinkled. Her hands were beneath her husband’s.

“It’s all right,
mo shearc
,” Cynyr said. “He needs you.”

She searched her lover’s eyes. “He’ll never have me. You do know that, don’t you?”

Cynyr smiled. “Aye, I do know.”

She found him curled up on the floor of the solarium with his hands tucked

between his knees. He was sobbing like a child, his shoulders heaving. The tiles beneath

his cheek were slick with his tears. The sounds coming from him tore at her heart.

Sitting down beside him, she lifted his head to place it in her lap, smoothing the

dark hair back from his high forehead.

“Hush now, sweeting,” she said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

She said nothing else, just let him cry himself out because she realized he needed

the release of all the hurt and anger that had been building up in him for so long. At last

his hitching breaths ceased and he lay quiet—one hand hooked around her knee.

“You can tell me anything, Kheelan,” she said. For a moment she didn’t think he

was listening but then he began to speak.

“I have begged Her to let me die but She won’t allow it,” he said. “I want to die,

Aingeal. I am so gods-be-damned tired of living!”

She stroked his back. “Don’t say that, Khee,” she said.

“No one would miss me if I left this place,” he said. “No one!”

“That’s not true,” she said in a reasonable tone, but a tone that she knew she would

one day reserve for her young son. “I would miss you.” She cupped his cheek. “I would

mourn you, Kheelan Ben-Alkazar. Outside my husband and son, you are the most

important man in my life.”

“Yet you can’t stand for me to touch you,” he accused.

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She was silent for a moment then stroked the tears from his cheek. “I think I know

how that woman felt,” she said. “Your friend’s wife.” She pushed his hair back from his

temple. “You are an easy man to love.”

Bitter laughter erupted from the High Lord and he pushed out of her lap, crab-

walking his way to the wall, pressing his back against it, drawing his knees up. He

wrapped his arms around his chest as though he were freezing.

“Oh aye, I am a fucking lovable old bastard, ain’t I, Aingeal?” he snarled, wiping

the back of his hand under his chin where tears were dripping then hugging himself

again. “People are standing in line to visit with me, to invite me to sup with them.”

Another sour laugh came forth. “My card is so fucking full I don’t know who to ask to

dance first!” He wiped his palm along the edge of his jaw. “Shit, I’m just the beau of the

ball is what I am!”

Aingeal sighed and drew her knees up to lock them within the circle of her arms.

“You can be a son of a bitch when you want to and I think that’s most of the time, but

you know what?” She canted her head to one side, watching him.

“What?” he snapped.

“It’s all an act,” she said. “It’s a way to keep people at arm’s length because you’re

afraid they’ll get too close and either they’ll hurt you or you’ll hurt them.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “Aye, well, look at my fucking track record, wench! That

seems to be what I do best! Hurting people, destroying them. Hell, I fucking destroyed

a whole gods-be-damned fucking planet!”

“One more fucking and I’m going to get up and leave,” she told him, chin in the air.

“I mean it.”

The bravado seemed to go out of him like air out of a balloon and his shoulders

slumped. He let out a small, frustrated moan.

“I hate myself, Aingeal,” he said, lowering his head. “I fu…” He pursed his lips,

frowned then ended by saying, “I hate myself.”

“Hate the man you were if that makes you feel any better, Khee, but don’t hate the

man I know you really are.”

“You don’t know the real me, Aingeal!” he yelled at her. “If you did, you’d get the

hell out of here and never look back!”

“Then tell me who the real Kheelan Ben-Alkazar really is,” she said. “Make me

understand the man you think you hate.”

“There’s no thinking about it,” he growled. “I do hate him. I hate him more and

more every day.”

“And I grow fonder of him more and more every day even if he is a mean-spirited,

arrogant, haughty, overconfident, self-centered, self-absorbed, egotistical, pigheaded,

conceited know-it-all with a god complex.”

“Hey, don’t hold back now, wench!” he snapped at her. “Tell me how you really

feel!”

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“Are you going to stop blubbering like a little girl?” she countered.

Kheelan made a rude noise, flung out a dismissive hand, top lip quirked with

disdain. “If you don’t stop insulting me, wench, I swear I’m going to blow snot on you.”

Aingeal grinned. “Now that’s the High Lord I’ve come to know and love.”

The Shadowlord slowly raised his head to give her a piercing look. He searched her

eyes. “Don’t say what you don’t mean, Aingeal.”

Her grin slipped away. “All right, Kheelan. We’ve danced around this for months.

Let’s talk about it. Tell me what you want to, what you need to and I’ll listen then we’ll

never bring it up again.”

“And that’ll make it easier?” he countered.

“No, but it will be out in the open. Everyone in the Citadel knows how you feel. It’s

not a secret.”

He banged the back of his head against the wall once, twice, three times then shook

it as though clearing it of treacherous thoughts. “By the gods, I’m as evil as Morrigunia

paints me, aren’t I? Sitting here lusting after another man’s wife. You’d think I’d learned

the first time what harm that can do.”

“Where is Annwn?” she asked.

Kheelan’s forehead furrowed at the sudden change of subject. “What?”

“Where is Annwn?” she repeated.

“Rysalia,” he bit out. “Why?”

“And Rysalia is divided into how many actual worlds?”

“What has that got to do with…?”

“Humor me,” she said. “How many worlds constitute Rysalia?”

He rolled his eyes. “The Federated Moons of Rysalia are in the Cairghrian galaxy of

the Aduaidh Quadrant of the megaverse. There are three sectors of planets among the

Federated Moons. The Northern Sector is Rysalia Prime, the Southern Sector is Basaraba

and the Middle Sector is Annwn.”

“From whence came Lord Arawn.”

“Aye, though he was born on one of the moons, he is not really a Rysalian. Only

those born on Rysalia Prime are considered true Rysalians.” He narrowed his eyes at

her. “What does it matter?”

“I once heard Arawn, Cynyr and Phelan talking about famous warriors. They were

discussing the heroes of…” She frowned. “I can’t remember the name of the capitol on

Rysalia Prime.”

“Asaraba,” he supplied, looking away from her.

“Aye, that was it. Arawn brought up the Battle of Asaraba and how the two co-

commanders of the Rysalian Fleet almost single-handedly destroyed an entire armada

of Diabolusian ships. Cynyr asked the names of the co-commanders and Arawn said

that was well before he was born but he remembered one of the men—Lesh Spiosyn. I

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remember that name because all three men shuddered. I asked them why that reaction.