The Warrior's Fate - Book 3 of the Amber Aerie Lords Series

The last time Adda had opened her eyes, the world was a very different place.

She blinked. Firelight danced on the wall before her, the small flicker the first brightness she had seen in weeks. It hurt her light-sensitive eyes, and shot sharp pains into her head. Fat, rounded logs faced her. They were gray with age, except the spots where moss clung to them. It was no Aerie chamber, that was certain.

Still, it was hard not to see her situation as an improvement; there were no dripping walls, no moans, no cries of pain, no stench, and, best of all, no creatures.

The only problem was that she had no idea how she came to be there. And given her recent experiences, she worried a little that her situation wasn't as happy as first impressions would lead her to believe.

She was in a cabin...sort of. The walls were all of the same sort as the one she had inspected: rotted, with a soft, almost melted look about them where the roof sunk into their structure.

Beneath her, a pile of soft-ish furs lay, the stiff hairs of a black deer hide poked at her backside. At least it didn't smell bad. That was something, right? Especially with a Shifter's nose. Actually, the bed smelled good, a pleasant musk that reminded her of the forest, with a slight hint of something more...cedar? It was familiar, too, oddly, and definitely not the smell of the skins themselves….the scent of the bed's owner.

Which brought her back to her study of the room. Okay, positives. It was dry. She was covered with...yup, that was another deer pelt. She decided being covered meant whoever brought her there did not plan to rape her. A small fire flickered over against the wall in what could be labeled a hearth, if one was feeling generous. But, best of all, there was not a single hint of Quatori in the air.

The mere memory of the scent drove a spike of panic through her senses, one that made it difficult to believe she was truly safe, for the moment. So she did the practical thing and buried the memory, focusing, instead, on the present.

A foolish ideology. One can learn a great deal by recalling and reliving the past, despite your perception of its pleasantness.

Adda froze. Suddenly, it was hard to swallow, her throat working heavily at the effort. That voice.

Did you think it a dream? Hide the memory away so you didn't have to worry about it? It does not change the circumstance, foolish Shifter.

Something inside Adda sunk. Hope, maybe. If that voice was still present, then the negatives outweighed the positives by far. She knew with certainty that she had not been rescued, as she had hoped. She had been released.

Clever girl.

Shut your muzzle, demon. She needed to think. How was it that she could be possessed and still feel very much the same? Aside from the masculine voice intruding in her thoughts, that is.

Oh, do not worry. My strength will grow and yours weaken. It is the way of things. A smart woman would cede control now, save herself the suffering. I can remove your awareness, Shifter. It would be a pleasant and peaceful solution for you.

Right. Hand over my body and actions to the evil thing invading my head.

For your information, the Quatori are not evil things. I see your people have forgotten much of the old lore, to your own doom, I am afraid.

Noises beyond the cabin door, voices that alerted Adda to the fact that she had been laying around uselessly, arguing with a voice in her head. She sat, the muscles of her body sore and bruised. It felt as though a mountain had fallen on top of her.

It did...Your sister has interesting friends.

Her sister? Lisrith was out there? She shook her head trying to clear the fog of unconsciousness. She still wasn't thinking straight. The last thing she remembered was the necklace, the one she had managed to drop when Bakkus betrayed her. The sniveling, lying, shit eating bastard. But the necklace had seemed to be important to him and it was a small victory that she had lost it without his notice as he handed her over to the creatures.

But somehow the Dragon Lord...or what once had been a Dragon Lord, had found it. And that was when all hells had broken loose, and the voice had entered her head.

She had been possessed.

Lisrith was part of the disturbance, the chaos that swarmed the cavern before Adda lost consciousness. Yes, she could see her satchel, next to the pile of skins. Lis had been busy trying to cure her, no doubt.

Adda sighed. She doubted even Lis could fix what was wrong with her now. Adda had witnessed enough possessions that she knew that no herbs and tinctures could change an illness of the soul.

Best decide on a course of action. At least one of those without plans to kill you. No doubt the others will agree when they discover what you now are.

Kill me? That hardly seemed fair...or likely, given what they must have endured to rescue her.

Unless rescue was not their main goal. Your sister is soft, but not all of her companions are so foolish.

Adda frowned. Lis had been called many things to her, but foolish was not one of them. She was the smartest woman Adda knew, the smartest woman anyone knew. They just didn't understand her.

“You will enter that door on pain of death,” a voice called. A man's voice, one Adda didn't recognize.

She was going to assume that the only door around was the one that led to this cabin. To her.

She will kill you if she finds you here. Quickly, you must escape.

The urgency of the demon's voice bothered her. Why would he care that she should live? Wasn't he just suggesting she forfeit her life to him?

Because, Shifter, if you die, then so do I.

She hesitated. She didn't expect a demon, a Quatori, to be honest with her. But she could probably count on them being self-serving enough to preserve her, should it mean their own existence.

Escape how? There was only one exit and that was blocked by the very danger he warned her of.

There is a loose log, near the hearth.

Adda scrambled off the furs and toward the fire. Desperately working her fingers between log chinks hoping for something that would give.

“Can you not see, even now that there is no help for those exposed?” a woman's voice answered the first. Even Adda had to admit her words sounded damning.

To the left. There.

She moved her digging leftward, and found the log he spoke of. It was loose, and with a little prodding she had it worked from the wall, along with a good chunk of the one below it. Just large enough she might fit through.

Go.

“We cannot win this war through compassion,” the woman's voice continued. “We must cleanse every advance they make, or we will be swallowed whole.”

Adda flinched. The voice was right. This one definitely wanted to kill her.

Nex.

What?

My name is Nex. The voice is hardly an accurate description of me. You will soon find out that I am much more than simply a voice.

Right, but can we escape now and argue about nomenclature later?

As you wish.

Silence filled her head and, for a moment, it was as if she was back to normal, that she could be normal. Perhaps her trials in the cavern had driven her slightly mad. Sadly, the cold, slime-like thing that slithered through her mind disillusioned her immediately.

She pulled her upper body through the hole she had created. The logs were wet, and soft. They gave beneath her grasping and pulling, making her departure a little more difficult than she had planned. Bits crumbled beneath her fingers, but, at last, she managed to dig in deep enough to haul herself through.

“And is that the fate that Harvok faced? Freed from the chamber and Grim's imprisonment to be killed by your hand when I wasn't looking?” the man asked.

Adda fell to the ground, knocking the wind from her lungs. Black spots danced before her eyes. There wasn't much grace in that move, but she had made it through. She wanted to lay there and recover. Her limbs still felt weak as a pup's, but it would not take them long to discover where she had gone.

The new words, too, were ominous. Harvok. Her cell mate. They had suffered through so much together. So he hadn't made it, after all. Toward the end of their time, they had grown close, and his death hit her like that of one she might have known far longer. He had known, too, what the possessions were, had explained it to her when she was first lost in the terror of the place. It was what his Alpha, leader of a pack from beyond the western mountains, had sent him to scout for, he had said.

A pack with secrets, too. Because, in his sleep, Harvok spoke frequently. He muttered about an orb, hidden for a thousand years. One he knew would turn the tides of evil. One, if Adda had any understanding, that might reverse a possession, might get rid of the Quatori inside. She had decided the first instance he spoke of it that, if she ever escaped the cavern, she would seek the thing, that the Quatori's evil had to be stopped. Now, it looked as though she had no choice.

“He was uninjured,” the man snapped. “You have no right to decide life and death, Illaise.”

Adda pulled herself to standing. She would have to run, and to escape, it would have to be fast. It took more focus than usual, mostly because of her injuries, and partially due to the cold presence in her mind, but, at last, she stood in wolf form. Scents invaded her muzzle, the first, and saddest of which was that of her sister. Lisrith. She was there.

Something was different about her now. Adda inhaled again. Mated. And to a Dragon Lord, too. If she still had human lips, they would have pulled upward. It wasn't conventional, but neither was Lisrith. It would have taken a man of exceptional strength to win her. She must have found her match. Adda prayed he was a man worthy of her, for she would not be around to ensure it was so.

She wished she might say goodbye, or thank her, at least. Lis had come for her, after all, but she dared not linger. Instead, she bolted into the night, letting her nose and her instincts guide her ever west and northward.

Harvok might not have survived, but, possessed or not, Adda had. And she was going to complete her vow. She was going to get the orb, and use it.

The voice said that her people had lost their knowledge of the Quatori. Well, she was going to get it back. She just hoped the orb would provide her with the solution to her problem, would cast the demon from inside her.

In the depths of her mind, the coldness flinched.

Didn't like that, did he?

Good.