Page 10 of Into The Rift

I stepped away from him and shook my head. “No. Listen to me—I’ll take your offer under advisement, but you need to go back inside your cell now. Guard, escort this young ‘princeling’ back. And bring me the other one.”

“No!” Jago shouted and began struggling against both me and the guard like a wild thing, his long, silky hair flying around his face. I started to reach for him so he wouldn’t hurt himself, but before I could, he suddenly went limp and sagged to the ground in a crouch. His hand slipped under his robe, and he bent over from the waist so that the long curtain of his hair concealed what he was doing. When his hand came back up, he was holding a wicked looking dagger, and he brandished it at us with lightning speed before leaping forward and plunging it in the shoulder of the guard standing beside me, snarling and cursing.

How many blasted daggers did this boy have on him?

I quickly disarmed him, trying not to hurt him too much and then gave him to a guard behind me. “Hold him! Good gods, didn’t it occur to anyone to strip him and see if he’d concealed anymore knives?”

I turned back to the guard he’d stabbed, who was now sliding down the wall, leaving a wide streak of blood in his wake. Blood was spurting out of his wound, which was deep but not life-threatening, so I tore off a large strip of his shirt and pressed it against his shoulder.

“Take him to the infirmary,” I told another one of the guards and then turned back toward the others before they hurt Jago. The way he was resisting it wouldn’t be long if he kept this up. They had him stripped completely down to his porcelain-like skin, which angered me more than I could say, and one of the guards was getting overly zealous and choking him by leaning his whole weight on the hand that was holding him down by his little throat. Jago had one hand over his groin trying to shield it from view, and the entire situation infuriated me.

I shoved the soldier off him, perhaps using a bit too much force as he smashed into the wall. I was feeling oddly possessive and pushed down the urge to kill the man for laying hands on the boy—though I suppose maybe I’d told them to in the first place. I helped Jago sit up, putting a protective arm around him to prevent the others from touching him. As it was, he’d be covered in bruises by morning. I’d like to put a few on his little backside myself.

“Get back!” I snarled at the soldiers and reached for his robe. “Here,” I said, thrusting it back in his hands. “Be sensible. Put this back on and stop all this fighting. There’s nothing you can do to prevent us from doing whatever we want, so stop it.”

Those intensely amber eyes snapped at me again as he jerked his robe back on and glared at all of us like he wanted to gut us. Which I’m sure he did.

“I won’t separate you from your friend in there if you stop all this foolishness right now. Otherwise, I’ll take you into a separate cell and throw you inside as naked as you were a moment ago.”

“No,” he gasped, pulling at my hand and looking at me imploringly. “Please don’t do that! I’m sorry.”

“I won’t, as long as you behave yourself.” I disengaged my hand and glanced back over to the guards, who were muttering among themselves. “Go get the other one,” I snapped at them. Turning back to Jago, I leaned in and spoke urgently against his little ear.

“Calm down. You’re not doing yourself any favors, you know. I realize this is upsetting for you, but you can’t fight your way out of here, and there’s no place for you to go if you could. You’ll only hurt yourself and get your friend hurt too.”

He muttered something I couldn’t understand.

“What’s that?”

“I said that he’s not just my friend, he’s my uncle.”

“Your what?”

“My uncle. Though we’re almost the same age.” When I still looked at him blankly, he made an annoyed face. “My uncle…my father’s youngest brother.”

“Oh. Your dashall. All right. That’s all the more reason to stay calm and not upset him. He’s going to have a child, you said?”

“Yes. Very soon now. You really need to let him go with Colonel Tariq. He’s been ill.”

“I’ll think about it.” I nodded at one of the guards. “Take the prince back inside and bring me the other one.” I looked down into Jago’s beautiful little upset face. “Do not hit him anymore no matter how annoying he is.”

He was furious as the guards dragged him back inside, but at least he didn’t resist. The very pretty yellow-haired one came out, passing him on the way and touching his hand. He gasped when he saw Jago’s bruises. His dashall, huh? Then why was there so much touching between them? It was entirely unnecessary, in my opinion.

“Tell me your name,” I said when he came out in the corridor.

“I am Prince Rakkur, son of King Davos and the Royal Consort Blake.” He said the words proudly, and he had reason. Davos was the leader of the entire Axis and rumored to be wealthy, powerful and quite fierce.

“Why do you look human?”

“You know about humans?”

“We do.”

“I resemble my bearer, the Consort Blake. He’s a human.”

“A male bearer? Like you? Are all of you able to bear children?”

“No. There are procedures that have to be done—drugs that have to be injected. It’s a whole process. Some use female surrogates to produce children, but Tygerian males prefer this method.”

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