Oh, he still didn’t trust the bastard completely. He was magical and used to manipulation to win his way. But at the moment, he knew Bram’s priorities matched his own.
Afternoon rolled into early evening. After dark, the dragging, sweating men headed inside for a break. Massive amounts of food were consumed in moments.
“You poor nonmagical bastards.” Ice rolled his shoulders, working through the soreness. “You did this every day for years to master this rubbish?”
Duke groaned. “This makes waving a wand look damn easy.”
“Hell. I don’t know if I’ve got legs anymore,” Shock complained.
“You will feel them tomorrow,” Marrok supplied helpfully. “The lot of you is pitifully out of shape. You look fit…”
“We aren’t meant to lift fifty-pound swords for five hours or knock off one another’s heads with our fists.” Lucan grimaced, stretching his tightening shoulders.
“Think of how much better prepared you will be to meet the Anarki,” Marrok replied.
“It’s the only thought that has kept me moving for the past two hours.”
Shock snorted. “Precisely. I’m quite motivated by not allowing some soulless, flesh-rotting bastard to whip my arse.”
“More, gentlemen?” called a husky female voice from the far end of the obscenely long dining hall. Sabelle lifted a platter still laden with food.
Duke and Lucan both thanked her and declined. Shock followed suit, rising to his feet very slowly—with a vicious curse.
“No more for me,” Marrok added. “My thanks for a wonderful dinner.”
“Just a wave of my wand…” She shrugged. “I have it pretty easy.”
Bram merely shook his head and tried to shoo her out of the room. Instead, she looked at Ice, who stared back with the intensity of a laser beam.
Sabelle approached him. “We haven’t met. I’m Sabelle.”
He rose to his feet, and his green eyes burned. “Isdernus Rykard.”
The smile fell from her face.
“Most people call me Ice.” He tried to gentle his tone, Marrok could tell. Even so, his voice rattled with a growl.
She took a step back. But Ice just kept coming for her and stuck out his hand.
Glancing between his outstretched palm and his bright, fixated eyes, Sabelle slowly held out her hand.
Before they could shake, Bram stood, huge footsteps eating up the distance between them in a blur of speed until his big body shadowed his sister’s. “Sabelle, you have done your duty as hostess. Go.”
At her brother’s words, she glared at Bram. “I am a woman, not an obedient dog.”
“You are still my sister and my ward. I decide whose hand you shake. Out. Now.”
“You are straining my affection,” she warned.
“And you’re pushing your luck.”
Bram’s expression morphed into unbendable fury. Sabelle heaved a sigh of frustration, then stomped out of the room.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Bram turned to Ice. “I need you as a fighter. I will provide instruction and feed you at my table. Do not ever touch my sister.”
“I’m not trying to shag the perfect princess.” Hatred spit from Ice’s cold eyes.
Bram ground his teeth together and got right up in Ice’s face. “You will not use my sister and ‘shag’ in the same sentence or I will kill you. Are we clear?”
Ice snorted as he sat again and dug into the last of the food on his plate. “Hold your shotgun. I have no designs on Sabelle. Talk about nightmare in-laws.”
Marrok watched the exchange end. Whatever feud lay between Bram and Ice, it was bad.
“This cannot go on,” he warned. “You must work together, build trust, know that every man has the other’s back—at least on the battlefield. Or you will fail to vanquish Mathias.”
Ice and Bram shared a quick glance but nodded. And mercifully shut up.
As a unit they left the dining hall. Night spilled in through the manor’s huge windows. At the end of a surprisingly long hallway, Bram threw open some double doors. What had once been a ballroom had been converted into their evening training facility. Every light in the expansive room burned brightly. Someone—servants?—had moved all of their equipment inside. Weapons and protective padding littered the elegant carpet.
And in the center of it all, Olivia stood talking to her father.
How had the sneaky bastard known where to find them? Who had invited him inside?
The older man held her hand, patted it, but there was an urgency to his carriage. Even at a distance, Marrok discerned a rush of mumbled words. Then Richard saw him. And fell silent, his face closing up.
Ah, guilt. It was so strong, he could almost smell it. Acrid. Annoying.
Every protective instinct rumbled to the surface, as Marrok tore across the room in long-legged strides. When he reached Olivia, he wrapped an arm around her and brought her close. Marrok glared at the unwelcome intruder. “Richard Gray, you were not invited here.”
“Actually, he was,” Olivia cut in. “By Sabelle and me.”
So she let Judas into their lair. Was this indicative of a deeper betrayal designed to win the bastard’s approval?
“Olivia called me to make certain I had survived the Anarki attack. I was glad to be assured that my daughter was unharmed.”
Marrok’s eyes narrowed at his mate. “As you see, I protected my mate. While you…what? Disappeared? Were you simply willing to let the Anarki capture your daughter?”
“Stop it! He helped thwart the Anarki by tricking Mathias into exile—at great personal risk—because it was the right thing to do,” Olivia protested. “I read about it.” She grabbed a book off a nearby table that had been shoved against the wall. “Why don’t you do the same?”
“I know how events must look to you,” Richard began. “But I swear, I have no alliance with Mathias. Do you realize how badly he wants me dead?”
Marrok grunted. “I suspect they would keep you alive long enough to lead them to the Doomsday Diary.”
“I deeply regret that I was ever a part of the Anarki. All I want now is to know my daughter. Please see reason. Mathias will look for her here. He knows exactly who fought beside you, so he will deduce where you hide.”
Bram snorted. “I would love to see him try to invade.”
“He knows better,” Richard assured. “He’ll find a more subtle way in. But rest assured, he will find it. He needs the book and believes that he must have Olivia to open it. Let her come with me. I know how to protect her. She should not be—”
“No!” Rage roared through Marrok. As long as Gray was determined to separate Marrok from his mate, he didn’t owe Olivia’s father any modicum of politeness.
Marrok grabbed Richard by the throat and carried him across the room, slamming him to the wall, then snarled, “You dare come here when your very presence is a threat? When the Anarki could be right behind you? You are a fool if you think I would let her leave with you, even for a second.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“She is my mate. Try to separate us again, and I will break every bone in your body and smile while doing so.”
“If Gray wanted to,” Bram whispered, “he could rip out your entrails with a spell.”
“Not before I knocked a few screws loose in his head.”
Not too far to his right, Shock laughed. “Pound him. I know all about Mr. Gray from my brothers. Smarmy bastard who tossed the Anarki over when the shit got too deep. After betraying his boss, the coward ran and hid like a rat in a hole.”
That sounded accurate to Marrok. He had disliked Richard Gray on sight.
“Let go of my father’s throat, Marrok,” Olivia insisted. “Right now.”
She was one furious mate. The fact that she refused to see the potential threat the man presented infuriated him all over again. Still, Marrok sighed and let up on her father’s neck.
Gray cleared his throat and rubbed his neck, milking the injury for all it was worth.
“He’s trying to protect me in his way, just like you are,” Olivia shouted. “And this is my choice.”
Surprise at her words scalded him. “Do you wish to leave with him?”
“No, we’re safer here. I know that. I just want you to listen.”
“As soon as he stops trying to part us.”
“He’s talking to me about the diary. He knows stuff that might be helpful, and you dismissing him isn’t helping your cause.”
Marrok turned a furious glance to Gray.
Richard said, “The diary is locked, yes?”
He considered the shifty wizard. His gut told him the man had information. If he wanted it, he was going to have to play Gray’s game. “It is.”
“Because, according to my great-grandmother’s writings, the diary has keys and requires someone special to open it.”
“Who?”
Gray shrugged. “As with all things, Morganna was mysterious.”
“One of my history professors called the diary an object of feminine reverence. I read something today that made me think it’s more powerful in a woman’s hands,” Olivia said to her sire. “Is that right?”
“Morganna’s writings never say explicitly, but it would be like her to create a powerful object only for the fairer sex. And it’s possible it might be more powerful for a le Fay woman.”
“Like me?”
“Indeed.”
“Are there any other le Fay women?”
Richard shook his head.
Olivia whistled. “That explains a lot.”
“Tell me about the keys,” Marrok barked at Richard. “Do you have them?”
“When I was a young man, my mother died. You saw her painting?”
Marrok knew when Olivia’s eyes went wide that she recalled the painting of the woman with the symbol around her neck, which was echoed on the Doomsday Diary.
She nodded. “That was your mother?”
“The painting was done before her mating, long before my birth. But upon her death, she left me that thing around her neck. As I said before, it’s actually in two parts. Together, they comprise the key that unlocks the diary.”
Just as Bram had said Merlin’s writings indicated.
Olivia frowned. “Where are the keys now?”
Gray swallowed. “One half I—I gave to Mathias.” At the collective gasps and growls, he explained, “It was years ago. He demanded a show of fidelity and—”
“And like the sniveling yes-man you are, you gave him half the key to the end of the world,” Ice cut in.
“I believed in equality. At the time, I didn’t think he’d actually hurt people—”
Marrok sneered. “Rubbish! How did you think Mathias was going to enforce his will, if not with blood?”
“I was young and idealistic and—”
“Incredibly daft.” He itched to put Richard Gray out of everyone’s misery. The man smelled like a stinking heap of trouble. “What happened to the other half of the key?”
Again, Gray turned his gaze to Olivia. “I left half with your mother for your protection. I told her why it was important and that if the Anarki knocked on her door, she should give it to them to save you.”
“Wh—what does it look like?”
Olivia’s voice shook, and Marrok turned to her. She’d gone impossibly white. He dashed from Gray’s side to Olivia, in case she sank to the floor.
To his surprise, Ice came behind him, lifted the older wizard by his shirt front and shoved him against the wall again.
“You might be able to zap our immortal friend if the mood struck, but no such luck with me. I’m an Anarki-hating bastard from way back.”
Bram might not like Ice, but at the moment, Marrok appreciated the hell out of him. Menace rolled off the green-eyed wizard. Only someone suicidal would cross him. If Gray was smart, he would heed Ice. Marrok hoped Gray remained daft.
“All right?” Marrok wrapped his arms around Olivia and supported her.
“Let him answer.” She looked to her father in expectation.
Drawing her closer to his warmth, Marrok glared at Gray.
“The piece hangs from a chain of twined silver and gold.” His voice wobbled, violet eyes latched onto Ice with all the fear of someone looking at an ax murderer. “It—it’s half of the symbol. The top half. It’s an ornately scripted L with rubies.”
If anything, Olivia blanched even paler.
Marrok’s guess was that his mate had seen the key, perhaps even had it among her possessions. Was she broadcasting that very thought? If so, the last thing he needed was for Richard Gray to “hear” it.
If Gray did, Marrok had a terrible suspicion the Anarki would know it. Within seconds.
“This conversation is over.” He picked Olivia up, tossed her over his shoulder and ran for the ballroom’s door.
