Nukpana’s lips curled in a smirk. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“You don’t want an opportunity,” Kesyn spat. “You want an excuse.”
“After tonight I’ll no longer need either.” Nukpana’s smile was relaxed and genuinely happy. It was creepy as hell. “You’re an old man who is content to live in the past and reject progress. Both are burdens you will not have to bear for much longer.” His smile grew. “Guards, prepare him for the altar.”
I didn’t scream or struggle. Instead I viciously embedded my elbow as far as I could in Sarad Nukpana’s gut. I gave it everything I had, and a lot that I didn’t. I was a dead woman walking anyway, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to take as many pieces of Nukpana as I could with me. The Khrynsani guards had been careless enough to chain my hands in front of me and I was only too glad to make their leader pay.
My elbow earned me the reward of a pained gasp from the goblin.
An instant later, I was on the bottom of a pile of Khrynsani. Now I couldn’t breathe, either, but knocking some of the hot air out of a baby demigod was worth it.
Nukpana wouldn’t kill me. Not yet. He also wouldn’t let his goons beat the crap out of me. Hopefully. He wanted me able to stand up next to that altar, or chained to it, and he wanted me fully aware and whole when it happened. Then he’d carve my heart out with a spoon. But until then, he wouldn’t want a mark on me.
“Raine, no!”
It was Kesyn.
“When you see it—” The old goblin’s last word was stopped by a fist. Nukpana wouldn’t care if his teacher got roughed up before his turn on the altar.
I knew what he’d tried to say. A chance. When I see it, take it. I hadn’t forgotten. I didn’t have either the breath or a lack of sense to respond. Kesyn knew I’d heard him. Though Deidre had taken a chance when she saw it, and look what it’d gotten her.
Nukpana straightened up with a ragged hiss. “Take her to my quarters.”
One of the guards in the pile decided clubbing me on the head was an appropriate response to that order.
Everything went black.
Chapter 18
I had certain expectations to waking up in Sarad Nukpana’s bedroom.
Chained to the wall was one of them. Having a white-robed, wide-eyed goblin lady staring at me like I was one of the dragons downstairs was not.
As my vision cleared from the head clobbering I’d gotten, I realized that she wasn’t wearing a white robe. It was a white gown, shimmering with tiny pearls and what appeared to be diamonds.
I did the math: white gown, young, beautiful, bejeweled. I was going to take a big leap here and guess.
“Princess Mirabai?” I said, then winced at the pain in my skull.
She was startled that I knew her, but she didn’t jump back. Though I couldn’t exactly jump forward since I was attached to an iron ring set in the floor by a three-foot chain linked through my manacles. The area around where I was chained had absolutely nothing within reach, not even a chair to sit on. I felt like an unruly dog that had done something extra naughty. I guess elbowing Sarad Nukpana in the gut in front of his lackeys qualified. And to top it off, I couldn’t stand up; the chain was just long enough to let me get to my knees. I didn’t even have to wonder if Nukpana had done that on purpose.
“You’re Raine Benares.” Princess Mirabai’s voice was rich and cultured—and surprisingly calm. Her eyes told me she was no longer afraid of me, but was still cautious. Smart lady.
I nodded and immediately regretted that, too. “Right now, I wish I weren’t.”
“Right now, I would gladly trade places with you.” The girl sounded sincere enough; maybe she’d been hit on the noggin, too. “You get to die tonight. I’m to be married and mated to a monster.”
“When you put it that way, I do have it better, don’t I?” I didn’t mention that her monster groom was also technically a reanimated corpse. The poor girl had enough problems.
I took a good look around at what Sarad Nukpana called his quarters. The room was filled with sensual comforts. There was a low bed covered with silken pillows. A plush chaise upholstered with fabric that looked too soft to be real. An elaborately carved and inlaid table with two chairs, set with the remnants of a meal, mostly uneaten. The floor was covered in rugs, mostly of thick, soft fur. Except where I was, of course. I got to sit on cold stone.
It was familiar.
It took me a minute, but I remembered. Soon after I’d arrived on Mid, I’d done something well-intentioned that turned out to be well-intentioned but ill-advised, and had gotten my soul temporarily dragged into the Saghred, where I’d had a nasty encounter with Sarad Nukpana’s newly disembodied soul. The goblin had used magic to shape his prison more to his liking. From what I was seeing now, it looked like he had turned the inside of the Saghred into his own personal version of Home Sweet Home.
“Have you seen Prince Chigaru?” Princess Mirabai was asking.
I blinked a few times to refocus my eyes on her. Jeez, even blinking hurt. “Uh, not for a while.”
“But you have seen him?”
“Yes.”
“He was unharmed?”
“He was the last time I saw him.” I didn’t mention that the last time I’d seen him was also the same time that Khrynsani black mages were thundering down the stairs at our backs.
Tension visibly drained out of her. “Thank you.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not being hunted. It’s just unlikely he’s been caught.” I decided to keep “yet” to myself.
“When they brought you, Sarad told me that there would be more new prisoners before sundown—”
“Sundown? It’s morning already?”
“It’s just after midday.”
I blinked. “How long was I out?”
“Nearly an hour.”
A knock on the head didn’t usually put me out for that long. My body probably took advantage of the fact that I’d stopped moving to fit in a nap. We must have been in those caves and tunnels longer than I thought. As a result, I had less time than I wanted to think of a way out of this mess, and—if I was lucky, blessed, and a miracle magnet—still manage to take out the Saghred as well. Though all three of the above were looking less likely by the second.
“Would you have any way to know if anyone’s been caught in the hour I was out?” I asked.
Mirabai shook her head. “This room is soundproof.”
Of course it was.
“Sarad told me when they were captured that I wouldn’t see them until the ceremony. He wanted it to be a… surprise.” The princess bit her bottom lip in a vain attempt to stop the tears welling up in her eyes.
I waved my hands as much as I could while wearing chains. “Oh no. No, no. I don’t need that. You don’t need that. Besides, you’ll ruin your makeup.”
Mirabai sniffed and tears ran down both flawless cheeks, cheeks that would probably be just as flawless without makeup.
“I don’t care!” she yelled.
Whoa. Big voice from a little girl.
She started to cry, then tried to stop, and ended up hiccupping. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you. It’s just that everything has gone wrong, and anything I did to stop it hasn’t gone right.”
“Welcome to my world.”
Her words came in a rush. “If I’d stayed hidden, I wouldn’t have been caught, and Chigaru wouldn’t be… be…”
Uh-oh, here come the waterworks again.
“He’s going to be killed and it’s all my fault.” Her last words rose to a teary squeak.
I gave her a flat look. “Do you command this pack of black-robed wolves?”
Mirabai sniffed. “No.”
“Are you the one with a big psychosis and an even bigger megalomania?”
“No.”
“Then none of this is your fault.”
“Maybe if I make myself ugly enough, Sarad will not want me.” She eyed a knife on the small table.
My hands went from waving to placating. “Hold on, Mirabai. Let’s not do anything rash.” I stopped and sat up straight. “Is that knife sharp?”
“No,” Mirabai huffed and plopped down on her chair, full skirts poofing around her. “It’s just a butter knife. Sarad makes certain that I’m not given anything sharp. The servants are Khrynsani guards. They inspect everything that is brought in for me.”
“This chain anchoring me to the wall; do you know where the key is?”
“Sarad took it with him.”
Of course he did. I knew of another item Nukpana had to be carrying around with him. I paused and almost smiled. That is, he would be carrying it around if Carnades was still being a generous and accommodating guest. “Mirabai, by any chance did he have a small silver dagger with him? It would have been one you haven’t seen before.”
The princess’s eyes went to the wall above my head, her brow creased, concentrating. “Sarad had no daggers in his belt. He was wearing his meditation robe. It’s very simple, so I would have noticed if he had been carrying anything.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “Meditation?”
“He has been in seclusion since sunrise, meditating, to prepare himself for the Saghred ritual.”
Resting up for a long night of slaughtering.
“You’re sure he didn’t have the dagger?” I asked.
“Positive.”
Interesting and potentially useful. It appeared that Carnades hadn’t given Nukpana the Scythe of Nen, or even told him that he’d taken it from me. Carnades knew full well what the Scythe was and what it could do. If Carnades had told Nukpana, the goblin would have taken it; therefore, Carnades hadn’t told him. Sarad Nukpana couldn’t afford to have the one thing that could cut into and empty the Saghred in anyone’s hands except his own.
“Mirabai, could you find something I can use to pick this lock with? A thin piece of metal or wood, doesn’t need to be sharp—”
