The Priestess and the Thief Kindred Tales 30 - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,50

easier if he was still in his stall when I first meet him,” Elli said quickly. “I need to be able to get close enough to look him in the eyes and let him know I’m not a threat.”

“Oh?” The Crown Prince frowned. “Very well then, I’ll have them put him back. But do be certain you’re at the paddocks by ten.” He shook one stubby, beringed finger at her and then swept away in a swirl of velvet and lace.

Twenty-Six

“I don’t like this,” Roke growled as they strolled through the open courtyards down to the royal stables located behind the palace. “Don’t like it one damned bit. We should leave while we have a chance, Ellilah. My ship isn’t parked that far from here. We could circle around and be there in no time.”

“Without the Healing Lattice? I don’t think so.” Ellilah frowned at him. She had a stubborn look on her lovely face that told Roke his pleas were falling on deaf ears, but still he had to try.

“This beast sounds genuinely dangerous,” he pointed out. “And I was sent by the Goddess to protect you.”

“And I was sent to get a piece of that Healing Lattice and this is the only way to do that,” she said firmly. “So I’m sorry if you don’t like it, Roke, but you’ll just have to deal with it. The same way I’m dealing with wearing trousers for the first time.”

She nodded down to the black riding trousers Roke had bought her and insisted that she wear during her first training session with Demon. They looked remarkably good on her, hugging her lush curves and emphasizing her full hips and behind in a way that would have had Roke drooling if he hadn’t been so worried for her safety.

A men’s white shirt and the sturdy but stylish riding boots he’d bought her completed her outfit. All in all, Roke thought she looked every inch the “Royal Zorel Entrancer” she was purported to be. He just wished he was as sure of her skills as Ellilah seemed to be.

They walked through another walled-in courtyard and out into the open area behind the castle. There, over a short rise, they finally saw the royal stables and paddocks. Directly in front of the stables was a fenced-in training ring and in the ring was the hugest, fiercest looking zorel Roke had ever seen.

The beast was pure, midnight black from its feathered forelock to its long, tufted tail. The only breaks in the black hide were the long, twisted ivory horns—each sharpened to a murderously fine point—which rose from the massive skull, and the sharp ivory fangs visible at the end of its long muzzle.

The fangs were visible because the huge creature had opened its mouth to roar—a deafening warning claxon of sound which appeared to be aimed at the two Tenebrian grooms who were dancing around it with sizzling pain prods. One of them had gotten a rope around the animal’s thick neck and, using the rope and the prods, they were trying to push the immense creature back to the stables.

But Demon apparently didn’t want to go back to the stables, because he was snorting and pawing the ground with his long foreclaws. His eyes were burning red and warning puffs of black smoke were coming from his dilated nostrils.

“Get back, y’great beast!” one of the grooms shouted, pressing the electrified end of his pain prod to the huge zorel’s side. “Back to the stable w’ye!”

“Somehow I don’t think he’s going to listen,” Roke remarked dryly. But when he looked down to see why Ellilah hadn’t answered him, he saw that the curvy little priestess was gone.

“Ellilah? Where in the Seven Hells are you?”

Then, looking up again, he saw her.

She was racing for the training ring and, as Roke watched—frozen in horror—she crouched low to slip under the tall fence and slide inside.

Twenty-Seven

“Stop! Stop that right now!” Elli shouted angrily, grabbing for the arm of the nearest groom. “How dare you shock him like that?” she demanded.

The Tenebrian groom looked down at her in obvious surprise.

“Why, Crown Prince says he’s got to get back in the stables, on orders of the Royal Zorel Entrancer—whatever that might be. Only the bloody great bugger don’t want t’ go, does he?” He shoved the sizzling prod in Demon’s face with one hand and yanked on the rope around his neck with the other. “You’d best get outn’ the ring lest you want to get killed, Miss,”