The Warrior Priestess: Book Two of the Warrior Midwife Trilogy Read online

  “M-My parent’s house,” stammered Tembry boldly. I looked at her in surprise and then remembered her parents had a large farming property. “They’re in the northeastern fields. We have horses and supplies there.”

  “But where are the demons coming from?” Helena asked. “We don’t want to walk straight into a trap.”

  “No indeed,” said Osring darkly. “I do believe they are coming from the quarry. There have always been old stories of demon sightings around there. That has to be it.”

  I had to agree that was the most likely story. The quarry was deep and vast, a perfect way for subterranean creatures to muscle their way up here.

  We stood in the dark, only the sound of the trees rustling and human voices screaming— and then the sound of a demon roaring as if it had been skewered in the gut. My heart beat rapidly with excitement.

  “The demons will be focusing on the city proper,” I said. “If you hurry to the farm now, you’ll have a chance.”

  “Lead the way, young lady,” boomed Helena to Tembry. The other royals had no choice but to agree.

  “You go on,” I said to them as I handed Derrick my sword. “I’m going back to the city.”

  “You can’t!” cried Tembry. Her newborn squeaked from her back.

  “I’m going to make sure you are not followed,” I said calmly. “And I need to see if Saraya is okay. I am sure they are here for her.”

  “And Eldon,” Osring said. “Your king will be who they want.”

  I gave him a short bow as Tembry kissed Opal on the forehead. “Opal, protect Jerali. And you be careful,” she murmured.

  “I’m coming too,” said Blythe firmly. “I can fight, Jerali. You know I can.”

  Tembry began crying, but Lucy pulled her into her arms and began whispering about her parents in her ear. I nodded to Blythe. The girl was strong and determined, excellent with a sword to boot. She had a craving for adventure, something we’d long spoken about while training. She wanted to paint the world, she said. And that gave her an eye for detail. I could very well use her.

  I gave her a grin and beckoned to her as I strode off. She kissed Tembry and Lucy on their cheeks and ran after me.

  But we were too late.

  We arrived at the palace, crouched in the shadows of the trees lining the palace wall. Saraya, the fae commander Drakus Silverhand, the sergeant Lysander, and King Eldon were being carried, magically paralysed, in a morbid sort of procession. In the lead was Queen Glacine, now bearing a strange black tattoo on her neck.

  I quivered with rage. She had been tricking us all along, that turncoat!

  “Opal, listen to me,” I said. “We’re okay now, but Saraya is not. I need you to follow and help her. Do you understand me?”

  From my shoulder, the tiny creature gave out a sad, crooning noise, sort of like a cross between a bird and cat. Her small tail flicked irritably.

  I plucked her from my shoulder and commanded her as I would any of my soldiers. “Stay hidden, eavesdrop where you can, and help her get out of wherever they are taking her.” I looked up at the palace. “Blythe and I are going to stay here and make sure these bastards don’t ruin Lobrathia. Do you understand me?”

  Opal looked me in the eye, nodded, and leapt from my hand into the lawn, becoming invisible under her own illusion.

  I beckoned to Blythe to follow me. Keeping to the shadows, I snuck up upon a dawdling demon. I grabbed him and snapped his head to the side, breaking his neck. I took his demon blade and wiped the human blood off it using the creature’s pants. We needed to find what happened to our men. I listened intently.

  “There’s fighting at the back,” Blythe whispered, wiping her own sword.

  That’s where our people needed help. “Let’s go.”

  We skirted around the side of the palace and found ourselves in a melee of demons and fae warriors.

  Blythe let out a battle cry I was proud of, stabbing at a smaller demon. I covered her back, knowing that as skilled as I had made her, a melee was a different skill set entirely. As I ducked and swung at a demon warrior, severing his femoral artery, I came up to find one of the fae sergeants, the massive dark-haired brute, fighting alongside me.

  “Where is Drake?” he called to me in that deep boom of his.

  Never mind that this was one of the fae who’d imprisoned me— I supposed we were fighting on the same side for the darned moment.

  “Taken.” I stabbed another demon and stopped one from coming in behind Blythe. “Along with the blonde one, Saraya, and the king.”

  The fae oaf swore and tore through another three demons in quick succession. I was impressed. I had never seen fae fight before, but this was something to behold.

  Blythe cried out as, from nowhere, a swarm of demons jumped into the melee, surrounding us and the fae. As I cut, stabbed, beheaded, and ducked, I tried to carve a path to the outside of the mess. I pulled Blythe away from a demon’s downswing just in time. She was sweating, covered in demon ichor. I was proud of her, but this was not a fight we could win. There were too many. I caught the fae brute’s eye.

  “We need to get out of here!”

  Blythe grunted, going one on one with another demon. I let her for the moment, but I could see her strain.

  The stomping of boots made us all turn. It was a contingent of demon warriors, all bearing a scorpion crest.

  The fae brute roared in anger and began chopping and slicing his way through them, alongside his remaining warriors.

  But we were overcome. No less than six demon warriors pinned the fae brute to the ground and got out a set of glowing black shackles. A dark snake wound its way through my heart.

  “Blythe, run!” I cried.

  This had been a mistake. I should have let Blythe run with the others. I had come to terms with death years ago, but Blythe had more to live yet. Except the raven-haired girl was not listening to me, instead she grunted as she skewered another lesser demon.

  “Blythe!” I cried. We were now separated by fifteen paces. I needed to get her out. I needed to drive the attention away from her.

  Blythe suddenly let out a cry as a demon blade pierced her arm. She fell to her knees. My heart twisted.

  I had worked my way to the outskirts of the melee. Behind me, the dark night awaited. I looked back at the horde where Blythe was now surrounded by those scorpion-bearing monsters.

  Never in my life had I run from a fight. I wasn’t going to start now.

  I let out a cry and lunged towards them.

  2

  SARAYA

  “Wake up, human.”

  Cold water struck my face, and I came to with a start.

  Gasping in the darkness, blinking the droplets of water away, I tried to make out my jeering tormentor. But my vision was too blurry. I’m guessing a residual effect from the potion my stepmother—no, she was not family to me now—Glacine had shoved down my throat.

  My hand flew to my neck only to find a cold, hard band of thick metal around it. Chain links were attached, leading away from it, and someone yanked on the end.

  I jerked forward, my face hitting wet stone. Guttural laughs assaulted my ears from above.

  They had collared and chained me by the neck like an animal.

  Clawed fingers dug into my skin where my mother’s purple Ellythian wedding silks had been torn and shredded. The smell of blood, decay, and sulphur filled my nose. I gagged as I was roughly pulled to my feet. My own hands were useless, shackled in glowing cuffs that cut me off from my magic. A dark, oily curl of despair wound its way around me.

  My father. Drake. Lysander. Tembry, baby Delilah, Opal. I had no idea where anyone was—if they were okay. If they were even alive.

  “How long was I out?” I managed to choke out.

  But they did not deign to answer me. Instead, they dragged me forward as if I weighed nothing, the sound of the metal links rattling like defeat in my ears.

  These were the warrior demons, I knew, as I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them to find some semblance of focus. The scorpion-bearing fighters that had come to overrun us. To take my father, the king of Lobrathia, and me away. But they had also taken Drakus Silverhand and Lysander, the commander and sergeant of the elite forces of the Black Fae Court.

  All this time, I had thought the fae were sending the demons to steal human magic at birth. We had never suspected the demons themselves were doing it of their own voilition.

  Demons, much like the fae, were a fairy-tale to most humans. They were supposed to live their subterranean lives, separate and content, away from us.

  Luminous quartz light shone beyond me and I made out the forms of multiple man-sized demons. Luminous Quartz. The demons had come into the human realm from the quarry where we mined the precious, light-giving, magic-collecting crystals. We’d never once suspected this could happen. How could we have been so stupid? How could I have been so incredibly stupid?

  My vision slowly returned as they guided me down a low-ceilinged earthen tunnel, the walls lined with luminous quartz crystals that shone brilliantly like they were brand new. They must have been mining them from under the earth only recently. Luminous quartz needed to be charged with solar light to give off light. That, or magic.

  Demons had been prowling the earth for hundreds of years in their astral form. A transparent, ghost-like version of themselves, collecting the magical seed from human infants at birth. Stealing magic from humans so that we’d never come into our own powers. But when they had stormed my palace the night of my wedding to Prince Daxian of the Black Court, they had been in their very real, physical form. That had to mean that they had only recently opened a portal into our realm.

  I would have to find out the truth. Because wherever they were now taking me wasn’t likely to be for my own benefit. Why they wanted us, why they wanted my father, and why Glacine had tricked us and planned this marriage to him and then progressively poisoned him so that his brain became permanently addled, was beyond me. There were things at play here that I clearly knew nothing about.

  I wondered how much of this my mother knew. She had been training me in preparation for joining the order of warrior midwives from infancy, and I’d had no idea. How much more had she known? But it was useless thinking about that now because she was long dead, and here I was, in the demon realm, under the earth, probably going to meet my death. I wanted to vomit, scream, and flail about. But I was tired, I had fought a hard battle and at every turn, my efforts to save my kingdom were thwarted.

  They tugged me up a series of stone steps, and I had my wits about me enough to observe these demon warriors. These were stronger, elite versions of the pesky, easy-to-kill beings that I’d been hunting these past few months. They were all over six feet, riddled with heavy muscle, and clearly trained to hunt and kill. They wore a light type of fighting armour, black and brown, with that black scorpion on their chests. But I knew nothing about the demon kingdoms. I had no idea whose house bore the scorpion sigil.

  We were joined by a contingent of demon guards when I was led outside, and I only knew it was outside because of the foul wind that rustled my wild hair, long since come loose from my bridal hairdo. The sky above us was a completely all-black void, but of course, this realm had no sky at all. That made sense seeing as the demons lived under the earth and could not suffer sunlight for long, if at all. The land beneath my sandalled feet was a yellow sand-like substance that I was sure had no fertility to it. I wondered what the demons ate and shivered.

  One of the demons came forward, a captain by the way the others parted to let him through and took over the thick black chain leading from my collar. He gestured to another demon, and this one carried a second chain, roughly fastening it to the shackles on my magic snuffing handcuffs.

  “If you fall, girl,” the captain snarled, his red eyes taking in my barely covered form, “we’re draggin’ you.” His breath smelled like rotting fish and I suppressed the urge to gag, instead meeting him solidly eye to eye.

  They began walking at a fast pace, pulling me along by my chains. It was only sheer adrenaline that kept my tired body hobbling fast enough to keep up. There was a gash in my thigh, as well as other sharp pains of the bruises and aches in my body. But pain was something I knew. So, I distracted myself by making observations of where I was.

  We seemed to be on some sort of military compound where one-story buildings were set in neat lines. But then we rounded a corner and I almost stumbled in my step.

  In the distance, looming before us like some mysterious jewel in the dark, was a magnificent palace of gold and silver, lined with black. Luminous quartz lights of all colours shone from the windows, the turrets, the spires, and towers. It was larger than my own palace in Quartz and larger indeed than any palace that I had seen in the human realm.

  They dragged me through black curling gates and up a circular drive, where a fountain depicting a lewd scene between a man and multiple women made me raise my eyebrows. But that fountain was nothing compared to what waited for me inside this demonic palace.

  The entrance was no less than twenty feet high, flanked with black metal doors and guarded by seven-foot-tall monsters—black, rotund, powerful creatures with snarling mouths full of yellow, serrated teeth. It was made all the worse by red luminous quartz light glaring from behind them.

  I cringed as we passed these guards, and they leered down at me before my breath was taken away by the black and marbled entrance hall. But drenched in the garish, red quartz light, the effect was rather sinister and anxiety-provoking. Something, I suspected, that was done on purpose. It reminded me of Glacine, how in her rooms, she preferred to use the red quartz light. That realisation made my stomach churn. She really was from here after all.

  The demon warriors veered towards the right, and immediately, I recognised the tall doors of a throne room. I knew that I was going to meet some sort of king. Though I knew nothing about the nobility in the realms below the earth, I suspected that the vile creature I had known as Stepmother for five years would be in there. Anger unfurled within me, fresh and bright.

  I knew I looked awful. My mother’s bridal silks were torn around my lower half, showing more leg than was proper. The blouse that bared my upper midriff now had one sleeve hanging off my shoulder, showing the curve of my breast on that side. My clothes and arms were stained with my own blood and that of the demons I had killed during the melee at my own palace.

  I was in no state to meet a king, but I would do it with all the pride of a princess of the human realm. I straightened my spine and pushed my shoulders back, the glowing cuffs on my hands clinking. The demon beside me growled in warning but I paid him no heed as we headed straight through the second set of double doors.

  The throne room was like none I’d ever seen before.

  All matte black walls, and a long black carpet that was wide enough for a group of people to walk through, led up to a huge golden throne, haloed by an ornate gold panel. It wasn’t just this that had me surprised. A further six thrones lined the long walk—silver inlaid chairs, each on their own dais. In each sat a demon male, some type of nobility from the looks of their rich dress and sparkling jewels. Behind them, taking up the rest of the hall, no less than a hundred lesser demons milled about, murmuring in low voices as I came into view.

  But as we walked down the long carpet, I saw who were standing by the smaller thrones, and my blood ran cold. In each seat sat a demon lord, but standing next to them were a number of women in sheer dresses. While the number of women ranged from two to six, the way they were chained did not. Each woman bore a black metal cuff around her throat, black metal links adjoining it to a matching silver, gem-encrusted cuff encircling the lord’s wrist.

  My fingers twitched in a habit that, if I didn’t have on these Goddess damned magic cuffs, would have me summoning my astral sword in a flash. But as it stood, I had no magical ability right now. All I could do was clench my fists so tightly that the blood stopped flowing to them. Because as I walked down the carpet, minor demons crowding around the thrones to jeer at me, the lords’ gazes sat heavily on my body, weighing me down. The gazes of the women seemed latent, dazed, their faces pale and drawn.

  Yet again, I could do nothing.

  I was powerless.

  And no amount of rage or anger would help me. But I would be damned if I let them do to me what they wanted. I would fight it every step of the way. Fight it like they’d never seen a human woman fight before.

  Because no matter what they did to me, I was now an initiate of the Order of Temari. Touched by the wild and ferocious Goddess Umali, whose sign I bore, hidden on my forehead.

  So as I looked up at what awaited me on the main throne, I repeated the oath I’d made in the ruins of the ancient temple of the seven goddesses in the Temari forest.

  I am the sword in the night. The protector of human potential. The shield against all that is evil. I accept this pledge.

  My eyes found my stepmother first. She was standing next to the throne, in a new slinking dress of black, a strange green tinge to her skin, and that awful dark tattoo on the side of her neck. She had hidden her true self from us for five whole years. At that time, she had flogged me every other month, and as a girl of thirteen when it started, I’d had no idea what to do except protect my younger sister. So I had done nothing and borne her abuse.

  Little had I known that she was a demon through and through.

  And looking at her now, my shame and hopelessness were magnified, creeping through my core like a suffocating poison.

  Breathe, I bade myself. Just breathe. I would get through this because I had no choice. Just as I had gotten through the years of her torment.

  Despite Glacine’s dark presence, the being who sat on the throne dwarfed her completely.

  He sat on his gold throne, exuding a malevolent presence—a thing of nightmares. He was a large demonic male with a face made by the devil himself. Corpse white skin, frightening alabaster irises, and low cheekbones. He was completely bald and black tattoos marked his entire skull, neck, and arms. His lips were black in a jarring way, and a crown of black sat atop his hairless head. He was huge, full of hulking muscle that didn’t look quite real.