Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Thirteen

Sephara

Empyria, the Imperium

16th of Satimus

Returning to the Castrian Embassy proved to be just as easy as the first time, when she'd scaled the building in search of Nazhira's office. To distract the guards standing vigil outside, she'd hired a couple of street kids to throw rocks at them to lure them away. After ascertaining tonight's guards weren't the same ones she'd already tricked, she found several youths desperate enough for the money—and there were enough of those in the poverty-stricken Slates—and then brought them back to the Embassy.

The building squatted on a wide crossroads, and even during the day was far quieter than most of the rest of the city. Sephara knew in the coming days this part of Empyria would overflow with the Castrians Nazhira had agreed to bring in to help investigate the most recent assassinations. That was why Sephara acted now, before sneaking into the Embassy became impossible.

The children she'd paid put on a rather alarming and convincing show; after barrelling down the road shrieking at one another, they fell to blows in front of the two guards. Though the fight was feigned, it deceived the guards, who jolted forward to intervene. When the scrap escalated and one of the guards caught a bony elbow in the neck, Sephara drifted towards the Embassy's decorated face.

Once on the balcony she knew led to Nazhira's office, she paused at the door with her ear pressed to the wood. She didn't want to be caught out, like she'd almost been when Dexion and Khian had interrupted the first time.

Kesa had given her the name of a refutable forger following their conversation a week and a half ago. She now carried in her coat pocket perfect copies of all the documents she'd stolen during her first visit, just before she'd uncovered Dexion as an Arisen. The originals were still in her father's possession, to be used at a time he deemed most opportune.

Using the Caesidi-marked key she'd stolen from Dexion's bunch, she unlocked the hidden compartment in Nazhira's bookshelf and slotted the replica pages inside. That done, she made short work of the descent down the Embassy's sheer front and used the street kids' continued distraction to slip away into the side-streets.

On the walk back to her father's sprawling estate in the Exalt District, she mentally congratulated herself on a job well done, using the lengthy trek to dissect her actions in search of assailable gaps, just in case she'd overlooked something. All evidence of her thievery, and her role as the one who'd given Endarion cause to defect, had been erased. Though there was still the matter of Dexion's key and the Caesidi dagger she'd stolen from his archives, she thought she'd covered her tracks well.

All the confidence that had inflated her on her jaunt home evaporated when she spied a figure waiting on the smooth, marble steps leading up to her father's front door. He rose to his feet when he spotted her, and any hope of remaining unseen and sneaking away fled as quickly as she'd failed to.

"Ah, there you are," Dexion Mendacium said as she mounted the bottom step. He flashed a warm smile in welcome, but thankfully didn't move to embrace or kiss her. Despite the fact they'd slept together several times already, they weren't yet secure enough in their relationship for such casual affection.

"You were waiting for me?" she asked as she joined him at the top.

Two of her father's house guards stood stony sentinel on either side of the immense double doors, pointedly refusing to look at Dexion, who must've ignored them in turn to have been sitting so comfortably on the higher steps. No doubt her father had given orders not to permit anyone but him or his children, though Dexion boasted enough authority to force his way in if he wanted to.

To maintain the pretence of her position within Valerian's ranks, the two guards saluted to Sephara when she gestured for the door to be opened. Silvia Barum was, after all, their superior in the chain of command.

"Well, I certainly wasn't waiting for your employer," Dexion replied. He followed her in after clapping the two soldiers on the shoulder, knowing they couldn't retaliate, and waited with his hands clasped behind his back as she locked the door behind her.

She noticed, for the first time, his trademark sabre was strapped to his hip, and not the plain arming sword a Praevin officer would be expected to wear in public. He also lacked his blue coat of office, instead sporting a plain, dark coat. It was strange to see him out of uniform, as if the Dexion Mendacium she'd courted didn't exist beyond it.

Unsure what else to do, she directed him through the atrium into the kitchen's hollow expanse. Usually, her father kept a small army of permanent staff on hand, and the kitchen was where they all congregated. In recent days, since Endarion's defection, Valerian had been permanently based in his suite towards the peak of the Empyrian Tower, and had therefore temporarily dismissed his domestic staff. All the Imperium's noble families owned a suite within the cloud-scraping Palace District, but Valerian's, as the Caetoran's cousin, was located almost directly beneath those of the Caetoran himself. In a further effort to remove himself from his brother's defection, he was staying as physically close to the Caetoran as he could in a show of sycophantic loyalty. Fortunately, her older brother, Kaeso, stayed with him, leaving Sephara with all the privacy of her father's empty estate.

"I wasn't sure you'd even be here, and your guards outside didn't want to speak to me," Dexion continued as Sephara busied herself with conjuring a snack she could offer the man. "I expected you to be up in the Tower, guarding your employer."

There was a hint of challenge in his tone, as if he wanted an answer without having to ask the question. He waited behind her as she skimmed the shelves, and her back prickled. All she could think was, Arisen. He's an Arisen. He knows you know. He can read minds, probably. He'll accuse you in a minute, then kill you.

"Corajus Boratorren wants me down in the city proper, keeping an ear out for these new killings. And also… you know…" She turned to face him and offered a shrug.

He nodded. "The Iron Wolf's defection. I know. That's part of why I came to see you."

Something in her chest seized; he was here to question her. After all, he was Praevin Captain-General, and she was affiliated with the traitorous Endarion Boratorren. She was only lucky he didn't know she was Endarion's niece, rather than the commoner bodyguard Silvia Barum.

"I haven't heard from you for a while. I suspected it was to do with the Iron Wolf's antics."

She leapt upon the escape he unwittingly offered. "Yes, Corajus Boratorren has had much work for me since we learned of it. I wanted to seek you out, but I was worried there'd be backlash. I'm one of them, and you're—."

"—One of the Caetoran's," he finished with an exaggerated eye roll. "I wouldn't be worried about that. Even if the Caetoran cared, he can't touch me."

Because you're killing his allies, and he's implicated in what you've already done. She wondered how powerful Dexion truly was, to be able to boldly kill off members of the Caetoran's allied houses and then stare down his nephew in the Prodessium. She also wondered what purpose this new direction served, and why Dexion seemed to have turned on his former employers. A part of her was tempted to come clean to him now, if only so she could bluntly ask these questions without having to enact the delicate search she'd thus far relied on.

She braced herself against the counter behind her and sighed. "I thought there was more food about. I've got nothing to offer you."

In truth, she'd known that already. Floundering for an offering had been more to buy time to compose herself. Since her father had taken himself off to his Tower suite, Sephara had been relying on food bought from the market stalls and street vendors, an arrangement that satisfied her for the most part.

Half of Dexion's mouth tilted upwards in an amused smile. The gesture was so innocent, so human, so warm on his handsome face, it shattered Sephara's focus. For a moment, she saw him as the man she'd once thought him to be, not the ageless tyrant she now knew he was.

"That's okay," he said, nodding down to his sheathed sabre. "I was going to suggest we spar. I've always found it helps me when things around me are going to shit."

Because she'd previously displayed a willingness to fight with him, back when she'd watched him at work in Traian's Arena, she could hardly deny him now. She pushed herself off the kitchen counter and headed for the main atrium again. Dexion didn't move aside as she passed, forcing her to brush up against him. A soft wave of his clean, bookish scent swept her, and she felt an impression of his honed, well-muscled physique beneath his coat.

No, she told herself. He's a monster, not a man. Don't be fooled by the disguise he wears.

It was more difficult than she cared to admit to breeze past him as if unaffected by his closeness. The fact of the matter was, she still felt attracted to him. He was, she admitted, a striking individual, with his youthful features, stark blue eyes, and strong-boned face. If she hadn't found him alluring, if she hadn't at least liked him, she never would've fallen into bed with him. She would have found another way of gaining access into both his confidence and his archives.

But it was too late for that. Far too late.

Her father's training hall branched away from the atrium. An empty space, any noises made within—the clack of footsteps, the smack of blades, her brother's angered bellows—were projected tenfold in the echoes. She shucked her coat and watched as Dexion did the same, feeling stupidly self-conscious. He made to pull free his curved blade, but she wagged a finger at him and paced over to the rack of blunted training blades her father kept for her.

"You forget I've seen you fight. I'd like to keep all my fingers, thanks." She selected two matching blades, plain and straight and unadorned, and threw one to Dexion.

He caught it adeptly with one hand even as he set aside his sabre with the other. "I'd like you to keep all your fingers as well," he said with a suggestive wink.

A blush she was helpless to smother heated her face, and she ducked her head away. She needed to be smarter than this, more mature.

Having seen him in Traian's Arena and watched with some amusement as he'd thrashed her brother and his two guards with ease, Sephara appreciated Dexion's skill with a blade. So she knew, as he surged forward and forced her to engage, that he held back. Not that she could complain. As much training as she'd received in her youth, her preference for avoiding conflict meant she wasn't as great a swordswoman as she could've been.

The sequence of parries and blocks Dexion directed her through was more dance than battle, and she felt the tension melting from her weary bones as they progressed around the hall in a wide loop. It didn't take long for her mind to drift with her body, for her feet to follow the steps without thinking, for her sword arm to respond to Dexion's flourishes without her considered input. Her instincts responded for her, as they'd done during the later years of her training, when she'd been freshly honed.

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For the first time in a long while, she relaxed, unburdening herself of the concerns of her family and this newly launched insurrection, and both her and Silvia Barum's roles in it all. She was just a young woman trading playful blows with the man she courted, and nothing else mattered beyond the walls of her father's estate.

All too soon, reality jostled for supremacy. She let Dexion spin her blade from her hand and aim the blunted tip of his weapon at her exposed throat. With a sly grin she leaned forward, daring him to hold his sword in place even as it pressed more firmly into her skin. He relented with a chuckle, pulling back to bow over it at her.

He was sweating, she realised. Come to think of it, so was she, and her muscles ached with hot exertion. She'd lost all sense of time, and they must've been duelling for a while.

"So," she huffed, swiping at her forehead with the back of her hand, "do I have what it takes to be an arena duellist?"

He raised a brow at her. "A few more years, maybe. You don't yet have that necessary showmanship, that confident swagger."

"Ah, that's what they call it?" she mused. "Most people just refer to that as arrogance."

He slapped a hand to his chest, feigning hurt. "Is that why no one likes me?"

Automatically, she replied, "I like you." Another treacherous blush crawled spider-like across her face.

Before he could respond, she held up a forefinger and paced over to her discarded coat. It was a reckless idea, this she knew even as she reached into her pocket and retrieved the key she'd stolen from him the night she'd interrupted Iana Mallian's assassination. Placing the forged documents back behind the panel this key unlocked had been a safety precaution, just in case there were other keys, but Dexion knew she'd stolen the key from him; she'd overheard him tell Khian as much. And he'd yet to challenge her on this, though she started to suspect this was less to do with her not being one of his targets and more with how he felt about her. As much as he might claim to Khian that he was immortal enough not to fall in love, Sephara wanted to believe otherwise. He had, after all, insisted to Khian that she wasn't to be touched despite the valuable information she, as Valerian's guard, might harbour. He had no reason to do that if he truly didn't care for her.

She presented the key to him in an extended palm. He glanced at it, then met her eyes, expression unreadable.

"I stole it from you," she said. "Obviously. I also stole the dagger used to murder Novissa, but I don't have that on me right now."

"Why?" Not a threat or an accusation. Just a genuine question.

She'd already decided to tell as much of the truth as she could, lest she get her lies crossed. "Paramount-General Boratorren wanted to know who killed his aunt. My employer… loaned me out, shall we say. Neither of them believed the Baltanos's envoy was responsible, and I decided the quickest way of finding answers was stealing whatever evidence the Praevin had already found."

"So, that day on the Path of Triumph?" he prompted, still giving nothing away.

He referred to the day they'd met, when Valerian sent her to the Path to confirm his aunt Novissa's death. Novissa had just been assassinated beneath Endarion's statue, the first of the Caesidi's—of Dexion's—victims. Dexion had been overseeing the crime scene at the time, though Sephara now suspected he'd been there to try and conceal his assassin's evidence.

She nodded, the regret real and sharp. "I was sent to find out about Novissa's death, and when you showed up, I decided it'd be a good idea to get on your good side."

He huffed a breath and shook his head. "And then beneath me, I presume. Or on top of me, if you want to be accurate."

Dexion hadn't reclaimed the key so, feeling foolish, she lowered her arm and took a step back. "I'll admit that's how it started." She clenched her fist, letting the key's jagged teeth bite into her palm. "But I meant what I just said; I like you. I didn't expect to like you, but there it is."

That was the truth. If she didn't like him, it shouldn't hurt to see the betrayal softening his features. Even now, when she should be viewing him as an immortal menace, a man she should sever herself from as soon as she could, she couldn't look past Dexion Mendacium. Couldn't see beneath his handsome face, his aquiline nose, his expressive mouth that even now twitched with the ghost of a smile.

"If it makes things better, I didn't find anything. Other than the dagger, I mean. That's the reason I haven't sought you out for a while. I was feeling guilty about what I'd done, and worried you'd find out."

Still he offered no reaction, no indication about which way he leaned. Would he annihilate her with whatever fell powers the Arisen possessed? Or would he simply walk away? She reached out, daring to take his hand in her free one. He didn't recoil at the contact, instead lacing his fingers through hers and squeezing gently.

"I do understand," he murmured. "I'm the Caetoran's and you're the Boratorrens'. We serve opposing superiors, and that was bound to set us at odds at some point."

"I didn't want it to," she said. It took little effort to inject contrition into her tone. She knew that he knew she'd stolen the key, yet he was unaware she'd overheard him that evening as he'd spoken with Khian. As long as he thought she'd come clean of her own volition, because she genuinely liked him, he might be more willing to trust her. Keep the key, force him to keep secret his knowledge of it, and the distrust would fester.

"I'm done with it all, though," she added. "Since the Paramount-General is a defector, it serves Corajus Boratorren no purpose to have me continue investigating on his behalf." She freed her hand from his, then wrapped it around his warm, damp neck. "I want to continue our courtship, if that suits you."

A pregnant pause, as if he contemplated rejecting her, then his mouth split into a boyish grin and his blue eyes sparkled with delight. "Oh, that suits me just fine," he said, letting her draw their bodies together in a firm embrace.

―

Though the bed in Sephara's room was designed to match her lowborn persona, and was therefore thin and narrow, Dexion had no complaints. It served its purpose well enough, and they lay wrapped within one another's warmth until just before dawn, sated and spent, when Dexion begrudgingly rose to tend to his duties within the Praevin. Sephara resented his absence more than she should, and the lingering scent of him on her bedsheets taunted her enough to force her up.

She'd expected to harbour fear, being so close to him, sharing herself with him, knowing what she knew about him. You've slept with him before. But she hadn't known he was an Arisen, then. Last night, she'd knowingly had sex with an immortal godking and somehow hadn't crumbled beneath the ramifications.

But he hadn't felt like an immortal godking. A part of her had been surprised by that, expecting her knowledge to taint the experience, to poison the gentleness with which he touched her, to banish the affectionate way he'd cocooned her afterwards, lulling her to sleep with the heat and pressure of his muscled body around hers.

He's immortal, yes, but he's also a man. Just a man with a godking's power.

Her father and brother arrived unexpectedly an hour after Dexion departed, shattering the estate's calm quiet, and she was glad Dexion had already left. Though her father knew of her continued relationship with the man, he wasn't happy about it.

"What's going on?" she asked as her father breezed past her, Kaeso in tow. They were still supposed to be up in the Empyrian Tower.

When Valerian angled for the spare room in the far corner of the ground floor, she remembered that one of Palla Hasund's regular visits was scheduled for this morning. With everything that had happened in the previous few days, and with the many distractions Dexion provided last night, she'd forgotten.

Her uncle's recently promoted first-general, Palla Hasund, was an unregistered worldstrider and, like the Caetoran's' cabal of messengers, able to skip the vast distance between the city and Endarion's army in a matter of minutes. She kept the brothers updated and had been the one to carry news of what Sephara had discovered to her uncle. Given that the Iron Wolf was now the Imperium's nemesis, any officer of his would be seized and executed if found in Empyria.

The spare room had been stripped of all decoration save a painting of a great, lupine stonehound on one wall, which Palla used as an anchor for her magic. Sephara followed her father and brother in and waited by the door, tension locking her shoulders up around her face; this was only the second time Palla had met with Valerian since she'd come to tell him Endarion had defected.

The woman appeared without fanfare, a ripple in the air and a brief flash of light the only heralds of her arrival. Sephara didn't know what she expected of a renegade officer, perhaps a dishevelled appearance, a tattered uniform, some signs of hard living, but Palla Hasund was as perfectly composed and cold-faced as she'd ever been.

"First-General Hasund," Valerian greeted with a nod. Kaeso's only welcome was a sneer. "What news do you have for us?"

"We continue to march south without issue," Palla reported, hands clasped behind her back. Her rigid pose reminded Sephara of Endarion. "Though we have just reached Dujaro, we have yet to encounter any opposition beyond a token attack in the Sidians, which your brother defeated. Not much has changed since I was last here."

"I assume Dobran and his lackeys are pulling back to Aukruna," Valerian mused. "What of Elerius? Does she still march with my brother?"

Palla inclined her head in affirmation.

Valerian scoffed. "Of course she does. I hope Endarion is pleased with himself. We are already losing support from even our most stoic allies. If he ever makes it as far as Empyria, he will find a city already poisoned against him."

"I don't think that concerns him," Palla said.

"No, I do not suppose it does."

Even through the room's closed door and the hallways between them, Sephara heard a violent knocking at the estate's entrance. It sounded less like a hand striking wood and more like the angry thump of a sword hilt against the front door, and the four of them froze.

"I'll answer," Sephara said. She'd made it as far as the door itself before realising she didn't have her sword at her hip.

The knocking redoubled, the sound now distinctly that of several sword hilts pounding the wood. With no time now to arm herself, Sephara unlocked and eased the door open, her mind a whirlwind of possibilities. Was Dexion here to arrest her for stealing from him? Did someone know Palla was here? Had there been another assassination?

At first, the cluster of purple uniforms confused her, until she looked up into the sun-darkened faces of half a dozen Castrian soldiers. Not the Praevin, then.

"Is Corajus Boratorren present?" the foremost of the soldiers asked. He was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man whose heavy blade was still raised as if to knock again.

Something about their demeanour set off instinctual alarms. They all bore weapons, for one, and were as stern-faced as if they'd come here already resolved for violence. When she glanced to the side, to where the Boratorren guardsmen from yesterday had stood, she glimpsed slumped forms propped against the wall. She slammed the door in the leader's face but didn't waste time fumbling with the lock before tearing back to her father's meeting room. She whipped the door shut behind her and pressed herself against it, as if someone of her build could ever hold a barricade against the brutish lead Castrian.

"Soldiers," she stuttered when her father looked to her. "Castrians. Here for you."

Valerian rarely displayed emotion, and never panic, but the glance he threw at Palla came worryingly close. Sephara's heart skipped a beat; her father was afraid.

"I can take you back to Dujaro with me," Palla said. "Only one at a time, though, and it will take me a moment to return here."

Valerian shook his head, steel returning to his features. "No, take Kaeso. We cannot risk the Castrians knowing my brother has a worldstrider."

Sephara didn't expect her self-centred brother to challenge the verdict, but he did. "Father, they're here to arrest you," he said. "They'll kill you."

Valerian shook his greying head. "They cannot kill me; I am a Corajus, the Caetoran's cousin. There is no proof I am involved in Endarion's defection." He turned to Palla. "If they have come for me, they will already have the rest of our remaining allies secured. Let my brother know."

Kaeso glanced to Sephara, saying nothing.

Valerian noticed. "As far as anyone is concerned, your sister is my bodyguard. Even if she is arrested, I doubt she will be charged." Valerian motioned his son over to Palla's side. The younger man looked ready to argue when the door behind Sephara shifted and an angry shout erupted from the hallway.

"Go, now," Valerian hissed.

With as little flourish as when she'd emerged, Palla vanished, taking Kaeso with her. For a strained second, Valerian and Sephara stared at one another, and she felt as if they perched on opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm, about to be separated forever.

"It will be okay," he said, his voice gentle, as if he comforted a child.

She stepped away from the door and took up a defensive position in front of him. Unarmed though she may be, she was still her father's bodyguard.

The well-built lead Castrian barrelled in, the hilt of his sword aimed outwards, for clubbing. They wanted to take her father alive, at least, and perhaps Sephara could use that to her advantage.

She ducked beneath the large man's guard and rammed her elbow into his stomach, his fine purple coat doing little to protect him. He bent over her, his breath knocked from him in a gush, and she used his discomposure to lock her leg around his and throw him to the ground.

The other five soldiers who'd been at the front door dodged around their fallen superior, and Sephara knew the fight was lost. Knew it, yet didn't let it dictate her surrender. She had to fight, because there was nothing else to do now, not cornered as she and her father were.

She threw herself at them, heedless of where their weapons were aimed. Even before she'd gotten her first good punch in, her skull exploded with white noise and whiter pain, and she toppled to her hands and knees. The man who'd struck her loomed over her, and before she could shift away, he'd planted his steel-capped boot into her flank, flipping her onto her back. She was dimly aware, between the pain in her head and the continued assault of the guard who'd struck her, of the other four apprehending her father, who put up no resistance.

Too late, she remembered she was, to these soldiers, not a Corajus's daughter, but a commoner. A commoner who'd just felled their superior. They wouldn't be reprimanded for beating her, and her attacker surely knew this.

The next kick glanced off her ribs and stunned her. She saw the boot coming for her head again, aimed to swipe across her nose and break it. She turned away, tried to move, failed. The boot collided with her ear. Sensational agony. A transcendent eruption of shrieking, ringing, screaming in her brain. A blanket of darkness draped over her eyes, heavy enough to drag her down to blessed unconsciousness.