Guarding the Goddess Read online

  What a joke!

  Only it felt like the joke was on him. What in the Seven Hells was he doing, leaving Ellina like this?

  I’m doing the only thing I can do, he reminded himself. The only thing that makes sense.

  Then why did his departure feel so damn senseless?

  Ty had no answers. He looked down at his feet as he climbed the long, narrow passage which led up and up. When he had first come to Helios Beta, he’d thought it would be hard to get used to living below ground. Now it felt strange to be going to the surface. Strange to be leaving Ellina and Tisa and Lor…

  “Ouch!”

  He was pulled out of his morose thoughts by a sharp stinging pain in the side of his neck. Reaching up automatically, he felt something hard and sharp buried in his flesh.

  Pulling it out hurt even more but Ty managed, with a muttered curse. He examined the small, barbed thorn with a drop of his own blood still clinging to its sharp end.

  “What in the Seven Hells?” he muttered. “Where did this come from?

  Looking around, he saw a narrow tunnel leading off the main corridor. Just inside it, a dark shadow moved. But when Ty tried to see who it was, he found his eyes didn’t want to focus. That was strange.

  “Hey! Who’re you? Whadayou wan?” he asked. But why were his words coming out slurred?

  He tried to take a step closer to the blurry figure in the tunnel mouth, but his knees buckled under him. Falling heavily to the floor, his brain sluggishly informed him of what must have happened.

  Drugged…I’ve been drugged!

  Ty fumbled for his blaster, determined to take out whoever had shot him with the poisoned dart. But now his hands weren’t working right either. They couldn’t seem to grasp his weapon and everything was getting more and more blurry…

  Can’t talk, can’t see, can’t walk or reach my blaster. This is bad…very fucking bad, he thought. But even his thoughts seemed sluggish, moving through his brain like slow-flowing mud.

  The blurry figure came to stand over him. Ty tried to focus but he still couldn’t see who it was—just a jumble of deep blue skin tones and the muted gleam of gold.

  “Who…wha…?” he tried to ask but his tongue was like a lump of lead in his mouth.

  “Good—he’s nearly out,” a familiar voice said above him. “Take him to the dungeons—I have plans for our brave Lan’Glaver.”

  Ty tried to protest, but now his mouth wasn’t working at all. In fact, nothing was. And then everything around him blurred into blackness and he knew no more.

  Thirty-Eight

  After Ellina cried herself out, she sat curled in a ball on the couch, feeling horribly lonely. She knew she needed to get up and wash her face and get on with the business of governing, but somehow she couldn’t make herself move.

  I’m too tired, she thought, feeling like someone had draped a lead blanket over her head. Too tired to move. I’m just going to take a little nap…

  * * *

  She woke up, some hours later, to a knocking at her door. It was Captain Kiyda again, asking if she was well.

  “Fine,” she croaked, and then cleared her throat and tried again. “I am perfectly well, Captain,” she called through the closed door. “Do the ministers still expect me back in Morning Court?”

  There was an awkward silence and at last the new captain of her Royal Guard answered.

  “No, Your Majesty. It is evening now. The ministers all left some while ago. I was merely asking if Your Majesty would like your supper served to you in your apartments or in the Dining Hall?”

  “Oh…” Ellina put a hand to her head. How could she have slept the day away like that? What must her ministers think of her now? And worse, what rumors might be flying about the Court? She was only too aware of how the nobles loved to gossip. Who knew what nefarious reasons they might assign to her absence in Court that day?

  Well, there was nothing to be done about it now, she told herself grimly. Except be certain she showed up to Court bright and early the next day and did her royal duties to the best of her ability. Nothing to do but carry on and act like everything was normal, even if she felt like she was falling apart inside.

  And the first normal thing she could do was eat dinner. Or at least pretend to eat it.

  “I thank you, Captain Kiyda,” she called through the door. “You may have my dinner sent here to my apartments tonight.”

  No matter how much she needed to save face, she felt she couldn’t bear to go to the formal dinner in the Dining Hall. She would go on with the business of being Potentate tomorrow. But for tonight, she wanted to stay in her apartments and lick her wounds.

  “Yes, oh Goddess in the Flesh,” Kiyda answered. “It shall be as you say.”

  He went away and in due course, her silver dinner tray arrived.

  Ellina sat at the table by herself and looked at it sadly. The food looked and smelled delicious but she had no appetite. All she could think of was Ty tasting a bit of everything to make certain it wasn’t poisoned or drugged and how he wasn’t here to taste for her now and keep her safe with the essence from his fangs.

  Of course, she reminded herself, he wasn’t needed now. The poisoner had been caught—it was the same male from the Southern Continent who had planned the attack during the Grand Promenade. The same male whose head Lord Kikbax had blown off with his blaster…

  But the memory of that—of the bright spray of blood and brains all over the wall of the dungeon interrogation room—turned her stomach. Ellina pushed the tray away without tasting it. Ugh—she couldn’t eat a thing tonight. She just wasn’t hungry.

  She sent the tray away, back to the kitchens, and settled disconsolately on the couch again with her legs curled beneath her. She wished she had someone to talk to besides Lor and Tisa. The two chewchies were curled up together on the back of the couch, comforting each other. They were considerately not mating, though Ellina wasn’t certain how she would handle it when next they did. After all, she didn’t have Ty to take the edge off the intense sexual lust the two chewchies generated now. She was probably going to go crazy with need the next time they decided to get together. If only Ty was still here…

  Ty, Ty, Ty—stop thinking about Ty, she told herself angrily. He left you and he’s not coming back so it’s time to forget about him! He—

  “Oh my child—you are in turmoil. I can feel it through Shel.”

  Her grandmother’s voice, coming from Lor’s mouth, interrupted Ellina’s train of thought abruptly.

  “Grandmamma?” She looked up, as though she might see the old woman standing in front of her. Her grandmother had still been ill—too ill, Ellina had thought, to bother or frighten with the news of the latest assassination attempt. She’d been checking on her two or three times a day but usually she only got her lady’s maid, who informed Ellina that her grandmother was on the mend, but slowly. Now, she found she was very glad to hear her beloved voice.

  “Grandmamma,” she said again, smiling. “How are you? I’ve been so worried about you!”

  She expected the older woman to say she felt perfectly well and that Ellina shouldn’t worry about her. So her next words came as a terrible shock.

  “Ellina, child,” Lor said softly in her grandmother’s voice, “I’m dying.”

  Thirty-Nine

  When Ty woke up, he couldn’t tell where he was. It was so dark that at first, he couldn’t even tell if he had his eyes open or closed. And even more frightening, he couldn’t move.

  Be calm, he told himself sternly when he wanted to panic. The first thing to do is to figure out where in the Seven Hells you are. Everything else can wait until you do that.

  Closing his eyes—he thought, anyway—he took a deep breath and held it, listening.

  From somewhere near, he heard the slow drip…drip…drip of water. It echoed as though in a deep chamber, like beads of moisture were falling into a stone throat. Next he became aware of the smell of dampness and rot. His nose wrinkled—where had he