Every passageway of the castle, the courtyards and baileys were manned by armored warriors leaving little room to escape the empire without a fight. The weapons she’d traveled with would hardly aid her, for Amagarie and the Empire of Mevia was nothing like her world with towering castles built from glass and topaz and refined steel. How she wished she had fled with Arrow, her PSI-2.1 friend who knew all the languages of the Omniverse and was possibly stronger than all the warriors she hurried pass. Arrow was skilled in many fighting styles and programmed to understand warfare and clever stratagems. How she missed him.
With a heavy sigh, she pushed open the door to her chamber and entered, closing the door gently when she wanted to slam it. Her current adobe was quite large, regal in its elegance, with several rooms and antechambers allocated for her sole use, including her own bath chamber, yet she knew her apartment for what it was. Her prison.
She made her way through the sitting room, eased open the door to her bedchamber and walked with grim purpose to her desk with its many parchments and inkwell. At least it was a comfortable prison with many luxuries provided. She came to a stunned halt seeing the man stooped rifling through the contents of the secret compartment in her desk. The one she’d believed she had cleverly installed.
Wariness rolled down her spine in a chilly wave.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my chambers?” she demanded.
He rose with animalistic grace and faced her. Her breath caught, he was power, strength, and so incredibly male, and too handsome. He was gorgeous, his face almost savage in its planes and angles. His frame was lithe yet muscled. Midnight hair was held back from his face at his nape, and his eyes were the most beautiful shade of amber, the color of rich, dark honey with bright flecks of gold.
Scanning his lean, lithe length, and striking features, she registered his unfamiliarity. She fought back her rising temper. “I will not ask again, Sir,” she snapped.
Her body hummed in shocking awareness and something wicked pulsed through her at his slow perusal. That look was almost physical. A caress. “I have told the grand general time, and time again I do not require a consort.”
At his silence, she grew uncomfortable. “Speak,” she commanded.
“I am not here for your pleasure.”
She realized that seconds after she made her rash statement. He was not dressed like a consort in revealing silken clothing like the others that had been presented to her. He seemed…predatory? He stirred, a slight ripple of muscle warning of his strength. The power in him was so apparent it clung like a second skin. Shilah assessed him but sensed no aura.
Impossible. She was an imperial—the most powerful in her genesis of telepathy.
That absence of aura, the lack of sense of his true power, gave her the first inkling of fear. She gently flared out her telepathy, fluttering softly against his mind, and the shield that she encountered stunned her. She studied it with her psychic eye, reading its intricate pattern. It was a shield constructed from sheer willpower, and her mind was unable to see beyond its walls. Her heart thumped. “Are you here to kill me?”
“First a consort and now a killer,” he said with such lazy amusement Shilah was almost disarmed. Almost. She slipped her hand inside the folds of her sari and gripped the hilt of her dagger. Her fighting skills were below par for most Amagarians, but she would not be taken without a fight.
The smile that curved his lips indicated that he’d seen her subtle move. If he attacked, even with the force of his shield, she would try and penetrate his barriers, seeking any weakness. She could attempt to trap him into a false memory or implant the suggestion to leave her unharmed or order him to stop breathing.
“Your injury is not my desire, Princess Shilah Symonrah of Dxyriah.”
How deliberate he was with his knowledge. “I am sure that you do not expect me to be assured by such words coming from a stranger in my personal rooms. The emperor did not send you. Who are you?”
“I seek something that you have,” he said with a deceptive shrug.
It occurred to her he desired to seem harmless, the notion ridiculous. Her instincts screamed he was a killer.
“You deliberately let me find you here. What is it I possess that you seek?”
His golden gaze moved over her predatorily curious. “Information.”
“Why would I aid a man who has forced his way into my chambers and intrudes on my privacy?”
The soft hiss of a blade clearing its sheath sounded like a drum in the chamber. He looked distinctly—menacing. Shilah flared out her psychic eye, preparing for an attack even as she trembled. She gasped in raw shock when he gently clasped her from behind, his soft touch belying the cold press of steel against her throat. She swallowed. She had not seen him move at all. Not even the slightest indication of it. How was it possible for him to be so much faster than her eyes had been able to track?
“You will aid me, princess. I do not desire to hurt you, but if I must? I most assuredly will.”
Fear slashed through her. “The emperor will have your head if you bring me harm,” she said with false calm. She punched hard against his mind, trying to break past his mental barriers and met an impenetrable shield wall of will. She had never encountered such resistance. Who was he?
The soft laughter at her ear rasped against her skin like the sweetest caress. Undeniable awareness filled her, and she resented it, the feeling was unwelcomed from someone who threatened her life.
“The dungeons of Mevia, Princess. Tell me all you know about them.”
2
Lachlan Ravenswood, an Archduke of the Darkage, inhaled the unique fragrance of the slight female clasped in his arms. The princess felt sublime resting against him. When Lachlan had spied her earlier, he had faltered, arrested by her stunning beauty. He’d stepped in her shadows, traveling with her for hours, learning and plotting. He’d discovered two things about her. She appealed to him despite being so petite, and the emperor of Mevia was her enemy despite the façade she presented. It was impossible for him to sense negative emotions as his fellow Darkans did, for he’d denied the existence of the malevolent chakra housed inside his body. Even without a demon beast’s essence guiding him, he sensed that she feared the emperor, and, having spent several hours observing her carefully, he could identify the resentment and hatred which had burned in her eyes. It was that spit of fire amidst the fear that stroked his interest, but most compellingly she was a Serangite. Her mind was able to store a vast amount of information, dissect it and unravel its patterns. And also she was a telepath.
Would she aid him? That remained to be seen. The role she played in the empire remained unclear. Earlier she’d had a meeting with the Emperor and his General, but Lachlan had not spied on it, sensing at least three other Darkans in the shadows of the throne room. An icy rage had filled him, for they were not in Mevia at their king’s order. Hence they were traitors to his realm.