Release Page 5

  The sound of a throat clearing behind him.

  Keirth twisted.

  Risciter was sitting on a trunk behind him. He was smiling. In the scant light, he looked like a grinning demon. “She won’t wake up for a while. She had a good deal more of the champagne than you did.”

  “Why drug her?” Keirth asked. “Isn’t she your girlfriend?”

  Risciter just kept smiling.

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  Risciter stood up. He walked around Keirth’s body to stare down at Ariana. He nudged her with his toe. “Oh, you’ll see. I haven’t done it yet, because I want you to watch.” Risciter clasped his hands behind his back and strode over to another trunk. “I had a long time to think while I was traveling in hyperspace to Kush. Seven years, you said. Rilla Alley, you said.” Risciter traced the outline of the trunk with a forefinger. “Now, I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent in Rilla Alley, so you’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t remember you right away. But then...” He turned his grinning face on Keirth. “How old were you then?”

  Keirth gritted his teeth. “Fifteen.”

  “Ah. I remember you were scrawny. I remember the look you had in your eyes. I thought that knock I gave you on the head finished you off.”

  Keirth shook his head. “I’ve been looking for you. Waiting for you.”

  “That’s adorable,” said Risciter. He smirked. “It’s really very cute. I have to congratulate you on being alive at all, of course. Good job.” He raised his hands and brought them together four times. Four sardonic claps. “I guess you wanted revenge, then, didn’t you?”

  “I’m going to kill you,” said Keirth, even though he had to admit he wasn’t sure how.

  Risciter threw his head back and laughed. “No, you’re not. I’m going to kill you. Properly, this time.” He heaved a huge sigh. “I’m really quite disappointed that I did such a shoddy job the first go.”

  Keirth tested the ropes that held his wrists together. They were tight. Strong. He was trapped here. After all of this, Risciter was going to get the best of him. He couldn’t believe it.

  Risciter crouched down next to Keirth. “I want it to be perfect this time. So, we’ll start at the beginning. We’ll each play out our roles like we did that night seven years ago.” He pointed at himself. “I’ll be me.” He pointed at Keirth. “You’ll be you.” He pointed at Ariana. “She’ll be...who was that woman anyway?”

  “My mother,” Keirth growled.

  Risciter put a hand over his mouth. “Oh. Really?” He laughed. “How terrible. How pathetically and horribly terrible.” He pointed at Keirth. “You’ve been trying to avenge your mother for all these years only to fail miserably now.” Risciter rose to his feet. “You were nothing but a street rat then, boy, and you might be bigger and older now, but you’re still a street rat.”

  Keirth wanted to rip his face off. He struggled against the ropes.

  Risciter laughed at him. “You can’t do a thing to stop me. You’re so angry at me, but you’re helpless.”

  He was helpless. His attempts to get revenge on Risciter had all turned out badly. And when Risciter called him pathetic, he couldn’t help but agree with him. To make matters worse, he’d brought an innocent girl into it. He hadn’t meant to involve Ariana, of course, but it had happened. And now she was in danger. “You don’t have to hurt the girl. I’m the problem. Why is she part of this at all?”

  “So gallant,” said Risciter. “Also pathetically adorable.” He wandered over to Ariana again. He knelt next to her and brushed her hair away from her face. “But you don’t understand. Before you interfered, I wasn’t allowed to hurt her.”

  What was he talking about?

  Risciter was still smiling down on Ariana’s body. “You see, there are people who are actually people, like her, and there are people who aren’t really anything.” He looked at Keirth. “Like you. Like your mother.” He turned back to Ariana. “But then you took her away. You compromised her honor—”

  “I never touched her,” Keirth said. Was that what this was about? Did Risciter assume his girlfriend was ruined? Was he punishing Ariana for some kind of perceived affair? It was twisted, but Risciter wasn’t a good person.

  “But you could have,” said Risciter. “You could have touched her all kinds of places. You could have done zillions of nasty things to her pretty skin. No one knows any differently. And so now...she’s not a person anymore either. So I can hurt her if I want.” He surveyed Ariana eagerly. “And I want to. I want to very much.”

  Keirth was horrified. He knew Risciter was a terrible person. But this naked expression of delight in causing pain was more disturbing than anything he’d ever seen or heard of. Risciter liked it? He wanted to? Keirth’s stomach churned. He’d underestimated the duke, thought he was a pretty rich boy who didn’t care about his actions. Thought he was careless. But the duke was calculating and cold. He was some kind of monster. And Keirth didn’t know if he would be able to stop the duke, but he knew that someone had to do it, because evil like this shouldn’t exist.

  It wasn’t just about revenge anymore. It wasn’t just about his mother. It was about removing Risciter from the earth, before he could inflict anymore damage.

  “My mother wasn’t the only one, was she?” Keirth asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Only one?” Risciter laughed again. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done it.” He stood up, kicking Ariana carelessly. “Give me a yell when she wakes up, okay?”

  Chapter Six

  “Wake up,” said a voice urgently.

  Ariana’s eyes fluttered open. Risciter had drugged her. Why had he done that? “Where am I?”

  “We’re in the bottom of Risciter’s ship.” Keirth was lying next to her. He was tied up. Ariana tried to move and realized she was tied up as well. “He’s going to kill us both.”

  “Risciter?” Kill them?

  “He drugged you and tied you up. What’s it going to take for you to realize he’s not a very nice person?” Keirth sounded frustrated.

  “I...” Ariana didn’t know. Everything was too confusing. She’d been kidnapped. She’d rescued Risciter. He’d turned out to be a pervert. She’d consented to marry him anyway to save herself from scandal. And now she was tied up with the man who’d kidnapped her. She couldn’t take this. She was going to lose her mind. “Why would he drug me? Why would he tie me up? He said he wanted to tell everyone we’d eloped to save us both from scandal.”

  “And then he drugged you and tied you up,” said Keirth. “He obviously didn’t mean it.”

  “But why?” It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense, of course, but this little thing. This tidbit of senseless action. If she could unravel it, make it clear to herself, maybe then she wouldn’t go completely insane.

  “It’s not important,” said Keirth. “We have to get out of here, before he kills us both. I thought that maybe if we lie back to back, we could untie each other’s hands?”

  “Why would Risciter want to kill me?”

  “Risciter’s insane,” said Keirth. “Will you try this?” He was already scooting around on the floor, positioning himself with his back to hers.

  She did want to be untied, she supposed. And it had to be Risciter that had tied her up. Keirth wouldn’t have done it and then tied himself up too. Ariana didn’t think people actually could tie themselves up. But she knew Risciter. She and Risciter had been on countless strolls through the gardens of three planets. They’d spoken of politics and society and of their own desires for the future. She knew what kind of duke he wanted to be. She knew what kind of father he wanted to be. He didn’t kill people.

  Of course, before today, she would have said that he didn’t sleep with three women at once or drug champagne or tie people up either.

  She felt Keirth’s hands on hers.

  “I can feel the knot on your wrists,” he said. “Can you find mine?”

  She felt blindly a little bit until she d
id. “Yes, I’ve got it.” Her fingers dug into the rope, trying to untie it. The knot was impossibly tight. “I don’t think I can untie this.”

  “Keep trying,” Keirth said.

  She could feel Keirth’s hands on the knot at her own wrist, and she did her best to work at the knot on Keirth’s hands.

  “I think I’ve got it,” said Keirth, sounding triumphant. “Stop trying to get my knot for a minute.”

  She relaxed her hands. In a few seconds, her hands were free.

  “Untie your feet,” said Keirth.

  Ariana sat up. She felt for the knots at her feet. They were so tight. But if she calmed down, she could...yes! She managed to loosen the knot a little. And then a little more. She was free! She turned back to Keirth. “Let me try to get at your knot again.”

  But Keirth was shaking his head. “No, don’t worry about me. He’s going to kill me quickly. What he’s going to do to you...” Keirth rolled over so that he could see the door to the bay they were in. “Get out of here.”

  What was Risciter going to do to her? Ariana didn’t understand. She was so confused. She looked at Keirth, still tied up, and then at the door.

  “Go!” he said.

  She got to her feet and went to the door. She hit the button to open it. It blinked red at her. “It’s locked.”

  “I know a universal override code,” said Keirth. “Pull the control panel protector down. There should be a key pad there.”

  “There are universal override codes?”

  “How do you think repairmen fix stuck doors?” Keirth asked.

  She’d never thought about it before. She felt a little uncomfortable, though, knowing that locks didn’t really mean much of anything to anyone who had an override code. She removed the control panel protector. Sure enough, there was a key pad underneath. Number keys stacked in rows. “Okay, I see the key pad.”

  Keirth told her the sequence of numbers.

  She tried to keep up, but he was going too fast. She turned away from the door. “Let me try to untie you.”

  “What? You can’t type in numbers?” Keirth sounded disgusted.

  She hurried back over to Keirth and started on his knot. “I’d rather you do it. Once I get out there, I don’t know how to get out of the ship. What if I run into Risciter?”

  “Haven’t you been on his ship before? How do you not know the way out?”

  “I’ve never seen this part!” She wasn’t having any luck with the ropes at his wrist. The knot was too tight. She couldn’t get her fingers into it to loosen it.

  “Try untying my feet,” said Keirth. “If I can walk, we can get out, and we’ll find something to cut the rope with.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. She’d never been so confused and so frightened before. Her heart was pounding. She turned her attention to the knot at Keirth’s feet. It was much less tight. It took her a few tries, but, like the knot on her own ankles, she was able to untie it.

  Ariana helped him to his feet. His hands were still tied behind his back. The two of them went back over to the door. Keirth told her the override code, more slowly this time. She punched it in, and the two halves of the door slid open diagonally.

  “Okay,” Keirth whispered. “Now, be quiet.”

  They crept through the door into a dark passageway. Keirth nudged her forward. She really had no idea where they were. She’d never spent time on the lower level of the ship. As they kept walking, though, she recognized the engine room on her left. It was silent. The ship wasn’t moving.

  From above them, there was a noise. Footfalls above their head on the upper level of the ship. And whistling. Risciter was whistling.

  Keirth nudged her forward. “Keep going.”

  Within a few more feet, Ariana realized they were near the loading ramp. There was an incline that led up to the upper levels of the ship—the bridge and living quarters. And the loading ramp was right next to it. She hit the button that lowered it, holding her breath in case Risciter heard.

  But he didn’t appear, so she and Keirth ran down the ramp.

  They were back out in the strange forest. Still on the planet Kush, then.

  “He hasn’t moved the ship,” said Keirth. “Your ship is close.” Keirth backed into a tree, hooking his tied-up hands over a branch. “It’s just on the other side of this group of trees. It’s covered by some vines, so look for something that looks like a vine-covered rock, okay? Go inside and lock up.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Keirth snapped his bonds and flexed his newly-freed hands. “I’m going back in after Risciter.”

  Ariana shook her head. “No. You can’t. Let’s just go.”

  Keirth clenched his teeth. “Go to the ship.”

  “I don’t want to go to the ship. I’ll be trapped in there. I’ll have nowhere to run.”

  “Then hide in the woods somewhere,” said Keirth. “Just get out of here!”

  Okay. Okay, she’d hide in the woods. She took one last look at Keirth, and then took off into the woods, running as fast as she could.

  It was dark. She could hardly see where she was going. This planet had one tiny moon high in the sky. It filtered down blue-green light over everything. Branches slapped into her face, tearing at her skin.

  She was so confused. Why would Risciter drug her? Why would he tie her up?

  Her breath came in gasps. She took daily exercise like everyone else in the nobility, but that mostly amounted to easy strolls in gardens. She wasn’t used to running like this.

  Her feet pounded against the forest floor. Why had Keirth said Risciter wanted to kill her? Risciter wouldn’t do that. She didn’t think—

  But she had no idea, really. Everything was so horrible. She couldn’t understand how the entire world had been turned inside out so quickly.

  She ran, crashing through the foliage, tripping over roots, pushing thorny vines out of her face. She ran until her side ached and sweat was pouring out of her pounding forehead.

  Then she slowed to a walk, sure she’d gotten far enough away. She tried to steady her breathing as she continued forward, glancing about at the woods around her. Shouldn’t she have come out in the town again by now? But she didn’t know what direction she’d run in. Maybe she’d run in the opposite direction of the town.

  And then, with a growing sense of horror, she saw Risciter’s ship between the trunks of the trees in front of her. The loading dock was down. It was haphazardly covered in branches and vines. But it was definitely his ship, just from the opposite angle she’d seen it when she’d started running.

  She’d run in a circle.

  She’d thought she was getting far, far away, but her traitorous legs had taken her right back where she’d started. Should she try to find her ship, as Keirth had told her to?

  “Miss Gilit,” said a silky voice.

  She turned. Coming at her through the woods was Risciter. He was smiling a horrible smile, and it twisted his boyish good looks into something monstrous. His blonde curls glinted in the scant blue-green light. He looked so unlike the man she’d been nearly engaged to that Ariana screamed.

  Even though she’d barely had a chance to catch her breath, she started running again, away from Risciter, away from his ship. She crashed back into the undergrowth of the forest.

  And she could hear Risciter behind her, his footsteps close.

  She didn’t get far before Risciter tackled her.

  They both fell onto the ground, branches from trees tearing into her skin as she fell, tangling in her hair.

  Risciter was on top of her, his face at the back of her neck. He was laughing.

  He sounded like an imp from hell.

  “Let me go,” she sobbed, because tears were streaming down her face now. She forced an elbow back into Risciter’s rib cage as hard as she could.

  He grunted and moved some of his weight off of her.

  Ariana scrabbled forward on her hands and knees.

  Risciter’s hand came down on he
r neck, pinning her to the ground. “Shh, Miss Gilit. Where do you think you’re going?”

  Ariana whimpered. “What’s going on, Risciter? Why are you doing this?”

  His grip on her neck softened into a caress. His hand traveled down to her shoulder, and he turned her over. Now she lay on her back, gazing up at Risciter, who straddled her. Risciter ran a finger over her jaw. “Well, we can’t get married now. Not if you told the authorities in Ossile about being captured. It ruins that whole plan.”

  “But why tie me up? Why drug me? Why chase me?”

  “Oh.” Risiciter made a sympathetic face. “Everyone always wants to know why, Ariana. I can call you that now, can’t I? You’d want your last moments to be intimate, wouldn’t you?”

  Her heart stopped. Her last moments? He was going to kill her. She thrashed, clawing at him.

  Risciter calmly grasped her wrists and pinned them above her head. “Shh. There’s no real point in struggling.” He leaned close to her. “I don’t know why, Ariana. But I have to do it. Usually I have to use prostitutes and beggars so that no one will notice they’re gone. I’ve always wanted a real woman. Someone like you. I wonder if it will be different.” And then his lips were covering hers and his tongue was sweeping into her mouth.