“I will take you from here, and no harm will come by my hands.” Lachlan could not allow the emperor to have her, even if it meant abandoning his mission to rescue the Princess’s Queen’s blades.
Hope burned brightly in her eyes. “Will you swear on your king’s life you will take me to safety?”
“I do.” He did not add that he would be taking her to the Darkage and to Ramiel, that would likely start a fight, and she would end up hurt.
She closed her eyes briefly, relief evident in every line of her body. “When do we leave?”
“After.”
She frowned. “After what?” Then she sucked in another sharp breath. “You go to kill her, the Serangite.” Disapproval throbbed in her tone.
Lachlan stared at the witch. “Can the emperor procure another Serangite for his army?”
“No,” the witch whispered shakily, cleverly sensing the direction of his arguments.
“Then she is integral to him?”
Another slight hesitation, then a reluctant, “Yes.”
“If the Serangite disappears from the palace will the emperor command his army to scour Amagarie for her? Leaving death and destruction in his path?”
The witch closed her eyes and then snapped them open. Such sorrow for a woman she perhaps hardly knew. “Princess Shilah is powerful. I…I believe her to be an imperial.”
An imperial, the most potent level there could be to a Serangite’s power. “Then tell me, witch, if I cannot allow the emperor to control her, and if I take her from here, he will send his army after her...what is left?”
“She needs to be removed from the board,” the witch whispered, her blue eyes dark with sorrow. “I do not believe she willingly serves him. The princess is but a pawn in the emperor’s game and must not suffer for it.”
“She’ll not see death coming.”
There it was again, that peculiar feeling of loss, a sense of wrongness at the mere idea of taking the princess’s life. He deliberately filled his mind with a lifeless image of her. Even without the chakra of his beast, he was capable of immeasurable cruelties, especially when it came to protecting the vision of his king to lift their people from the political and economic slump they resided in as a kingdom.
Gidon had created the seven orders of law for the Darkage and had a bold plan to lift their realm from the blackened stain over them. Their society had been a less barbaric one because of him, and trade within their walls had flourished, and their kingdom had grown. Yet there were those of their kind who preferred the anarchy and plotted to overthrow him. And Lachlan along with Drac and Talon, two of his closest friends, had vowed their friend and King would not fall while they lived.
The princess threatened that, so he would remove her.
However, something unrecognizable to Lachlan, somewhere unfamiliar inside burned with denial at the thought of her death. He brushed it aside. Personal feelings must never come before duty to his realm and king, and he hardly understood what he felt for the Serangite. He did not know her. Perhaps it was merely lust, and that was no reason to hesitate.
The witch held out her hands tentatively. “I am Amirah Ky’San.”
He did not take her hand, not liking her sudden ease. She was too trusting. Clearly, she thought he would not harm her now since she carried a Darkan child. And she was right. He lowered his gaze once more to her gently rounded stomach, an odd arrow of yearning piercing him. For years he had been endlessly alone. A choice he had never felt regret for until now. Strange. He did not hunger for love or for a mate so why did he feel this odd twisting through his heart?
She took a deep breath for control, then let it escape slowly. “When do we leave, tonight?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“The Emperor.” And with that cryptic statement, he allowed the shadows to swallow him. Before he stepped into the abyss, he spoke, “If there is anything you need to take with you, have it on your person at all times. When I come for you, I will come with the shadows, and we will disappear from the empire.”
She pressed a hand to her chest. “There are other Darkans in the shadows,” she warned. “And they work for the emperor.”
“Be ready.”
Then he shiktred—using the shadows to travel—through the palace, covering hundreds of rooms within seconds, searching if any of his kind lingered within the palace walls. He sensed no other, and he relaxed slightly. His cold and calculating mind worked, as he assessed how he would find what he sought. It was rumored the emperor only took his most treasured prisoners to the dungeon. Those he did not deem valuable were sent to work in the crystal mines of Mevia or executed in the arenas in close quarter hand to hand gladiator taijui battles.
Lachlan would leave this place with the witch, but he must first complete the task to which he had committed. Princess Saieke, the mate of Drac El Kyn, waited with hope that her loyal Queen’s blades would be found alive and rescued. Time was currently against Lachlan, for the place he needed to be most now was by his king’s side.
All evidence pointed of an imminent attack against his king to remove him from his throne. When that attack arrived, it would be brutal and all-consuming, for the betrayers would need to succeed on the first wave. In that wave, they would need to kill him and all the enforcers and captains that were loyal to the dark king for their coup to be successful. And he now had a good idea how they planned to succeed.