The girl nodded, her desperation creating an aura of dark yellow tinged with red.
“I do not know if they are alive, or where they are,” Shilah murmured, reading her concerns.
The girl started to weep. The sound muffled and ugly but filled with such bleakness her throat hurt. She carefully opened the unique pathway that had been formed. “Lachlan?”
She jerked as he instantly appeared before her. Brilliant, glittering golden eyes with swirls of blue, green, and red ensnared hers. “We cannot leave them,” she whispered, so everyone in their party could hear.
A sigh of relief escaped Kala, and it was then Shilah sensed how much it had pained her sister at the thought of leaving everyone else to suffer. The white light of hope slowly surrounded the girl’s aura, and she gripped the cage harder, pressing her gaunt frame into the bars.
“Why?”
There was something immovable about him at this moment, something harsh and unrelenting, and she hesitated. Then she lifted her chin. “I can feel their suffering, and it is terrible. There are fifty-two prisoners in this tunnel alone, and with just a slight opening of my thought to theirs, their agony is unbearable. I cannot read any horrible crime from their sad thoughts, only that they have angered the empire.”
“You want to show mercy to people you do not know?”
There was a silence, long and empty.
“You wish for me to show mercy?” This time he asked it softly against her mind. Yet she heard the vein of puzzlement. As if the very notion was anathema to him. Worse as if kindness was something foul.
“Have you no heart, Lachlan Ravenswood?”
There was a sudden dark, malevolent feeling in the air, heavy and oppressive. Kamu and Thyon shifted restlessly, and her sister shuffled closer to her. Lachlan did not remove his gaze from hers.
“I do…and it beats only for you.”
Something hot and unknown tumbled inside her stomach. “I see.”
“You will not be weak, mate.”
“Mercy is not weakness,” she said softly, sensing his disapproval, understanding on an instinctual level he would wish her to be as brutal as himself.
He remained silent.
“Am I asking too much?” she demanded softly.
Another cold silence. Desperate to understand, she reached for their mental pathway and read his unobstructed thoughts, going deeper into what he felt. She absorbed his fierce longing for her and the terrible, empty hunger he endured. Shilah was unable to banish the blush that crept over her entire body as she tried to see beyond the lust and the varied ways he thought of fucking her body.
She flared her powers and found his other threads. Even before the shattering of the barrier, Lachlan had never been swayed by emotions such as mercy or love or gentleness. He hadn’t allowed himself to be ruled with emotions. His code was fairness. He’d assess a situation and made the judgment that was fair, and peace was held. He’d never waded in searching for a battle, enough would find him, and it always did. In the five hundred years of his life, he’d fought countless enemies from his realm, had ended many lives. Centuries of being a shadow assassin for his kingdom had honed him into a violent, brutal predator who only understood blood, death, and war. Now his mate asked him to be kind…merciful. She read that he truly did not understand the notion. Blood and death were stamped into his very bones.
There was an empty, hollow ache in Shilah’s heart. How could he have existed in such a life? How could she ask it of him if he did not understand?
“I must see to your happiness always. I will destroy worlds for you, and lay kingdoms at your feet,” he said with merciless sincerity. “I need not understand the things you ask. Just know I will grant them.”
Kala gasped, and Shilah could feel the shock from the guards they had rescued.
“I do not want anyone at my feet. I would only ask for mercy for those imprisoned. I would ask for their liberation.”
“They are weak and broken many of them, and it will be difficult for them to fight, to run.”
“But not impossible?”
“Most will not make it.”
“But some will?”
“You are my main responsibility. While I was bound to rescue the Princess’s blades and the witch, I will not risk your life for anyone. To try and escape the dungeons with at least four hundred more prisoners invites discovery and death.”
Shilah nodded, her throat tight. “Would…would we be able to come back for them?”