Unbound Read online

  Worthy—he wanted to be worthy of her love. He had failed her once—he wasn’t going to fail her again. With a low curse he braced himself and pointed the blaster at his own arm, directly below the titano-silver manacle.

  For you, Princess, he thought.

  Clenching his jaw, he pulled the trigger.

  * * * * *

  The ship landed on a bare field covered with sparse gray vegetation and no other landmarks that Brynn could see except for a huge hole in the ground. She got out, taking the steps from the ship down to the gray, dry ground at the captain’s behest, and went closer to the hole—although she really didn’t want to.

  Standing on either side of the black mouth opening into the earth were two strange sentries. They were tall and thin but the light of the planet was so dim, Brynn had a hard time making out anything else about them other than their size—huge—and their coloring—dark.

  Brynn stopped in front of the hole with her escort of the silent captain and three of his equally silent crew. The captain came out in front of their party and the two sentries lowered their bulbous heads to him. For a moment it seemed to Brynn they were sniffing the captain before allowing him entry but that was ridiculous—wasn’t it?

  What oddly shaped helmets they wear, she thought, watching them. How can they possibly see out of them?

  The two sentries appeared to converse with each other in a high, buzzing language and then finally they withdrew and allowed the captain and his men and Brynn to enter.

  The dusty gray trail led steeply downwards and Brynn couldn’t avoid the feeling that she was somehow walking into a grave. Or worse, an open mouth.

  Nonsense, she told herself sternly. Stop thinking like that. It’s just a strange planet, that’s all. You’re just nervous. But oh, Varin—I wish you were here with me right now! I don’t want to go in here alone. I wouldn’t feel nearly so nervous and worried if you were with me!

  A little sob rose in her throat but she pushed it back down. She had to leave the past behind. There was nothing to do but go on.

  Once inside, the ground underfoot grew first damp, then positively wet. It squished and squelched unpleasantly under Brynn’s slippers and she wished she had on thicker shoes—thicker shoes but a lighter dress.

  She was wearing a ridiculously elaborate pale pink ball gown her Lady-mother the Queen had forced her into after a quick shower following her deflowering. She’d said something about Brynn looking decent for her future husband but Brynn had been too upset to think about it at the time. Now the full skirts felt heavy and cumbersome and it occurred to her that they would trip her up and weight her down if she tried to run.

  She tried to push the thought away as ridiculous. Why would she run from her new home?

  “Where is this place? Is it the entry hall?” She looked around herself uneasily. The long, dark hallway reminded her of somewhere she’d been before, but she couldn’t think where that would be. Maybe the dungeons under the castle?

  But no, even though they were dark and fusty, the dungeons were still fairly dry. And they didn’t have that sickeningly sweet scent of rotten meat mixed with something else—what was it? Some kind of syrup or honey?

  Brynn couldn’t quite place the smell but she didn’t like it. It reminded her of how Sovereign X'izith had smelled. Also, his house didn’t look anything like a royal palace—at least not any she’d ever seen. What kind of man made his home in the earth like this? Was it just the custom of his people?

  She could barely even see where she was going. There was only a little light—a dim, phosphorescent glow that came from gray patches of what looked like mold on the walls and ceiling. But who ever heard of lighting their home with mold?

  Suddenly, something rushed up to her. Brynn couldn’t see it clearly in the dim light but it seemed to be about the size of a large canis—coming just to mid-thigh on her.

  She gasped and jumped back, trying to avoid the thing but it came closer, nosing at her skirts despite her attempts to kick it away. It made a hissing-clicking sound and skittered to one side when her foot connected with its oddly hard body. But then it came right back as though the blow hadn’t hurt it at all.

  “What is this thing?” Brynn gasped, turning to the captain for an explanation. “Please—can’t you make it leave me alone?”

  “Negative,” the captain replied in his slow, halting tone. “You must…be marked…to enter.”

  “Marked? Marked how? By what?” Brynn demanded.

  Her question was soon answered in the strangest way imaginable. The large animal—whatever it was—turned its back to her and sprayed her with a thick, sticky mist.

  “Ugh! What is this? Get it off of me!” Brynn gasped, wiping at the sticky droplets that adhered to her skin and hair and immediately sank into her cloth of her dress, making it stick to her. They smelled like the rest of this place—sweet and meaty and rotten. Having that stench on her skin turned her stomach but there seemed to be no way to get rid of it now.

  “It is…necessary,” was all the captain said. The thing that had sprayed her sprayed him as well and then two of the other crewmembers accompanying them. But when it came to the third, it suddenly seemed to lose interest and scuttled away instead of releasing its fine mist yet again.

  Brynn looked back at the unsprayed crewmember with envy. Why was he so lucky as to escape the rain of sticky, disgusting smelling droplets? Before she could ask, the captain took her by the elbow and started leading her further down the long, damp hallway.

  But Brynn had had enough.

  “I don’t like this,” she said, balking at last and pulling back against his hand on her arm. “I don’t want to go any farther. I need to go outside—I need fresh air.”

  The captain’s grip on her arm became cruelly tight.

  “We must…go,” he droned implacably.

  “Yes, but go where? Where are we going?” Brynn demanded. “This is no proper house—it’s just a long, wet, sticky tunnel and there are things down here. I don’t like it!”

  “The Breeding Chamber…is just…ahead,” the captain promised.

  Breeding Chamber? Is that what they call the bridal suite here?

  Brynn didn’t like the sound of it but there was no getting away. The captain’s grip on her arm was like iron and even if she got loose from him, there were the three other crewmates at her back. Reluctantly, she allowed him to drag her along until at last, the dark, stagnant hallway opened up into a much larger chamber.

  “Oh,” Brynn whispered in a breathless voice because this vast, open space was teaming with…something. What exactly, she couldn’t be sure but she didn’t think the inhabitants were humanoid. Some of them looked like the animal that had sprayed her. They scurried along, clearly intent on their tasks and errands. Others appeared to have wings—they flew through the damp, fetid air making a buzzing/humming sound, causing swirling currents of stench to assault her nostrils.

  Brynn was beginning to get a bad feeling about this—very bad. Though she couldn’t make out the things all around her very clearly, the flying ones seemed horribly familiar.

  Amalthia, she thought, her heart coming into her throat. The thing that carried her away. It was about as big as these…and it could fly…

  No, surely not! She tried to push the horrid thought away but it wouldn’t quite go. Sovereign X'izith had come weeks after Amalthia’s abduction. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it—could he?

  But Varin’s theory came back to her—the idea that the flying insect thing that took Amalthia had been some kind of a scout. A strange and horrible visitor from another planet, checking to see if Galen was ripe for the plucking…

  Could it be that her husband-to-be had sent the creature? Was he some kind of mastermind who could control beasts? Maybe he had learned to control these and now he lived here in harmony with them, bending them to his will…forcing them to do his bidding.

  The idea that Sovereign X'izith himself might be one of these awful crea