“Without the Healing Lattice? I don’t think so.” Ellilah frowned at him. She had a stubborn look on her lovely face that told Roke his pleas were falling on deaf ears, but still he had to try.
“This beast sounds genuinely dangerous,” he pointed out. “And I was sent by the Goddess to protect you.”
“And I was sent to get a piece of that Healing Lattice and this is the only way to do that,” she said firmly. “So I’m sorry if you don’t like it, Roke, but you’ll just have to deal with it. The same way I’m dealing with wearing trousers for the first time.”
She nodded down to the black riding trousers Roke had bought her and insisted that she wear during her first training session with Demon. They looked remarkably good on her, hugging her lush curves and emphasizing her full hips and behind in a way that would have had Roke drooling if he hadn’t been so worried for her safety.
A men’s white shirt and the sturdy but stylish riding boots he’d bought her completed her outfit. All in all, Roke thought she looked every inch the “Royal Zorel Entrancer” she was purported to be. He just wished he was as sure of her skills as Ellilah seemed to be.
They walked through another walled-in courtyard and out into the open area behind the castle. There, over a short rise, they finally saw the royal stables and paddocks. Directly in front of the stables was a fenced-in training ring and in the ring was the hugest, fiercest looking zorel Roke had ever seen.
The beast was pure, midnight black from its feathered forelock to its long, tufted tail. The only breaks in the black hide were the long, twisted ivory horns—each sharpened to a murderously fine point—which rose from the massive skull, and the sharp ivory fangs visible at the end of its long muzzle.
The fangs were visible because the huge creature had opened its mouth to roar—a deafening warning claxon of sound which appeared to be aimed at the two Tenebrian grooms who were dancing around it with sizzling pain prods. One of them had gotten a rope around the animal’s thick neck and, using the rope and the prods, they were trying to push the immense creature back to the stables.
But Demon apparently didn’t want to go back to the stables, because he was snorting and pawing the ground with his long foreclaws. His eyes were burning red and warning puffs of black smoke were coming from his dilated nostrils.
“Get back, y’great beast!” one of the grooms shouted, pressing the electrified end of his pain prod to the huge zorel’s side. “Back to the stable w’ye!”
“Somehow I don’t think he’s going to listen,” Roke remarked dryly. But when he looked down to see why Ellilah hadn’t answered him, he saw that the curvy little priestess was gone.
“Ellilah? Where in the Seven Hells are you?”
Then, looking up again, he saw her.
She was racing for the training ring and, as Roke watched—frozen in horror—she crouched low to slip under the tall fence and slide inside.
Twenty-Seven
“Stop! Stop that right now!” Elli shouted angrily, grabbing for the arm of the nearest groom. “How dare you shock him like that?” she demanded.
The Tenebrian groom looked down at her in obvious surprise.
“Why, Crown Prince says he’s got to get back in the stables, on orders of the Royal Zorel Entrancer—whatever that might be. Only the bloody great bugger don’t want t’ go, does he?” He shoved the sizzling prod in Demon’s face with one hand and yanked on the rope around his neck with the other. “You’d best get outn’ the ring lest you want to get killed, Miss,” he added. “Whoever you may be.”
“I’m the Royal Zorel Entrancer!” Elli snapped. “And I say stop shocking him!”
She grabbed for the man’s arm but just at that moment Demon reared and sounded his claxon cry again. Then, bending his head, the angry zorel blew a solid stream of fire from his nostrils right at the groom—and at Elli, since she was directly beside him.
It’s coming right at me—I’ll be burned to a crisp! Elli barely had time to think before a strong arm looped around her waist and yanked her to safety, just as the fiery jet descended.
She didn’t escape unscathed—the fierce pain of a fresh burn raced along the top of her forearm and the back of her hand. But she knew—in a rush of dizzy dread—that if she hadn’t been pulled away at that exact moment, she would have suffered a worse fate.
The only proof she needed was the Tenebrian groom, now wreathed in flames, as he screeched and screamed and ran madly about the training circle like a living torch.
“Put him out!” shouted Roke—for it was he who had grabbed Elli and whisked her away in the nick of time. “Throw water on him, someone—the water trough is just there!”