Nalini Singh - Night Shift

“And the weight,” Kavik said. “It couldn’t move you.”

She glanced up. “You moved me. But can I—”

Striding forward, she tried to lift him. Then again, wrapping her arms around his waist and grunting with the effort. When she made a sound of frustration and stepped back, Kavik gripped her waist and lifted her easily, bringing her up to his mouth.

Smiling, Mala slipped her arms around his neck. “She also said ‘when you most need it.’ I apparently don’t need it against you. Or the revenants.”

When she’d been thrown from Shim’s back. Kavik could still see the revenants swarming over her. “No,” he said roughly.

Her hands cupped his jaw. Softly she kissed him, then slid back to the ground. She turned toward Shim. “You’re all right?”

The horse responded with a stamp of his foot. Yes.

“He’s limping,” Kavik said and the stallion pinned his ears back and bared his teeth at him.

Mala stroked the stallion’s neck, soothing him. “Can you call the other horses? We should stay through the night and make certain all of the revenants are dead.”

Through the night. Sudden overwhelming emotion filled Kavik’s chest, and he turned away, staring at the demon’s body. He’d thought this would be the end. But there would be a tonight. A tomorrow.

It hadn’t been the end. At least, not his end.

And what Mala had assumed Vela meant wasn’t what she’d received at all.

His gaze moved to the ivory shard embedded in the demon’s eye. In that temple so many years ago, when he’d sought Vela’s help, he’d asked for the strength to defeat Barin—or the knowledge to do it.

Mala had received strength. And Kavik had been a fool about many things. He would not be a fool about this.

VELA looked fully upon them when Mala rode with Kavik to the citadel gates. Unlike the first time she’d come here, the gates were closed—but Selaq had already told them they would be. With eyes closed, the innkeeper had looked beyond the fortress’s walls and told them the citadel guards waited in the courtyard, two hundred strong.

When Barin had learned the demon was dead, the warlord should have hired ten thousand.

She dismounted. Of heavy blackwood and reinforced with iron, the gates were a formidable barrier, built to withstand battering rams and armies mounted on tamed tuskers and three-toed beasts. But she thought that a demon tusker could have probably broken through it alone. And so could she.

Raising her foot, she slammed her boot into the gates.

The barrier exploded open with a shriek of iron and rain of splinters. Mala strode through with axe and sword in hand and met the stunned, fearful faces of the citadel guard.

“If you know what is good for you,” she shouted, “you will move aside and create a path!”

The guards shifted uneasily, looking to each other. Mala spotted Heddiq mounted on a horse at the opposite end of the courtyard. With a grunt, she whipped around and threw her axe.

The heavy weapon flew end over end, spinning above the heads of two hundred guards and smashing through Heddiq’s face. With a thunk , the blade embedded in the stone wall behind him—with Heddiq’s helm pinned between. His body toppled from his horse.

Two hundred guards moved aside.

There was only silence as Kavik joined her, and together they walked to the keep. Mala opened the doors with another kick.

More dedicated guards waited inside. Kavik met them with his sword, and Mala didn’t need her strength now. She fought beside him until the last guard fell to the floor, and walked with him to the great hall.

Mala didn’t have to smash those doors. A tall, wiry man stood outside them, keys in hand and tears in his eyes. The marshal, she remembered.

She strode into the great hall and called, “I have brought my beast, Lord Barin!”

In his robes of yellow and gold, the warlord stood at the center of the hall. No courtiers sat at the tables now. More guards waited—but Barin held his hand up to them, and his smile was still amused.

“Did you think killing the demon tusker would be the end of me?” He laughed and looked to Kavik. “Come and see. There is still no sword that can harm me.”

Mala glanced at her warrior. When she had first encountered him at Selaq’s inn, just after he’d learned of his taming, Mala had thought she’d never seen such cold hatred and rage directed at her.

She had never seen him look at Barin. Vela had gifted her with the strength of ten thousand warriors, yet if ever Kavik had looked at her like that she would have fled for her life. He was death itself, not silver-fingered Rani come to gently carry a warrior into Temra’s arms, but ragged screaming death, contained within sheer muscle and bleeding from his savage stare.

Yet Barin did not flee. Not as Kavik stalked toward him, his steps fluid and strong, his sword held loosely in his grip. The warlord even spread his arms wide, robes falling open and baring his tattooed chest.

When Kavik set his blade against the side of the man’s neck, Barin looked into his eyes, grinning. He didn’t look down to see the ivory shard in Kavik’s left hand—until blood spilled from his mouth. Then he glanced down to see it embedded in his heart.

Cruel. But Mala thought Barin deserved it.

The warlord looked up, and she thought that now he saw what Kavik was. His end. His death. It was the last he saw. Kavik yanked the shard from his chest and shoved it through his eye.

Barin slid to the floor. Unmoving, Kavik stood over him with head bowed, and when Mala went to him he was staring at the man’s dead body, his chest heaving with harsh, ragged breaths. She touched his arm and he caught her against him, burying his face in her hair.

“It is done,” he said hoarsely. “It is finally done.”

Mala held him tight. Around them, chaos was exploding. Some of the guards shouted with fear, others with joy. Near the entrance to the great hall, the teary-eyed marshal was unfastening the collars of men and women tied by their leashes. Someone spoke a word, and soon it was repeated, louder and louder.

King.

So he was. She drew back and looked up at him. “Your work has only begun, warrior.”

Later that night, her warrior followed her. When she’d left the chaos of the citadel below and climbed the stairs of the northern tower, Mala had known that he would.

She didn’t want to be inside, not this night. Instead she cleared the guards from the northern tower’s battlements and laid out a soft bed atop the stone. When Kavik found her, Mala stood at the parapet wall, looking over the city below. Barin’s fall was still being celebrated and fought over within the citadel and beyond its walls. Yet there was no one who argued with the name they were calling him now. Kavik, the king of Blackmoor.

He was still her beast.

His arms circled her waist from behind, and she leaned back against a chest as strong as these stone walls. “There is still much corruption to root out,” she said and shivered as his warm lips found her neck. “And Stranik’s passage is likely full of revenants.”

“We will root those out, too.” His gentle hand cupped her throat, holding her still as his fingers untied the side of her cuirass. “And I will return with you to your home, which will soon have far more than your strength available when they need it. Change will come to both our lands when others hear of this pass through the mountains. Everyone will be traveling this route—including more warriors. Perhaps even ten thousand of them.”

Bringing trade, riches, and trouble to both sides. Mala looked forward to it all.