Scarlet Nights. Lucinda Betts

      KENSINGTON BOOKS

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      For WTT, always.

       For SKK; her red pen is as wicked as her wit.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      1

      As Axel de la Couere leaned forward in the saddle, exhilaration poured through his veins. He finally had the slavers cornered. Finally! Mountains blocked them on the west, and city walls blocked them on the east. A band of his men waited for them in the caves ahead.

      “Go!” he shouted to his mare. White foam from her shoulders splattered across his face as he squeezed with his calves. After all these years, he would finally bring the slavers to justice. He’d deliver them to the monarch’s feet. This foreign land would make him a hero—but that didn’t matter. He was about to save his brother.

      For a fleeting moment, he wondered if Solstice would see his success. Would she be in court? No matter that she’d sold out to the harlot goddess, she might be the only person alive who knew what this victory meant to him.

      His bay’s legs churned beneath him, but he asked for more speed. “Run!” He slammed his calves into the animal’s barrel as he yelled. The mare responded, lengthening her stride. Like him, she’d trained every day of the last five years for this moment. She lay her ears flat against her head and extended her neck—she gave all she had.

      Her efforts bore fruit. He could see the outline of the slavers’ horses now, could count their number: ten.

      He hoped Kamir and the others were keeping up behind him. But Kamir wasn’t his second-in-command without reason. Axel knew he could trust Kamir’s quick wit and fast horse.

      He watched the rear rider in the slaver band look over his shoulder twenty nalps ahead. Like Axel and his men, the slavers were disguised in flowing traders’ robes, and blue linen fluttered behind their mounts like odd horsetails.

      The slaver must not have liked what he saw. Axel watched him kick his horse, and even through dust Axel could see the man’s lips move as he shouted something to his party.

      Try whatever you want, Axel thought as his mare slung her ears forward. Her speed did not relent. You won’t escape this time. The slavers were heading right into his trap.

      Except they didn’t.

      From the middle of the fleeing pack, a rider split away, his dun-colored Barbarian horse difficult to see in the flurry of sand. The main party continued on their mad gallop toward the caves.

      “Pus and puke,” Axel muttered. He hadn’t thought any of the slavers would split. Was the leader getting away? What if the leader had the information? Before he could consider a course of action, his mare turned and bolted after the lone rider.

      “Fair enough, horse.” He kept his balance over her withers. The One God knew he’d counted on less-informed intelligence in the past. His second-in-command could follow the main group of slavers and herd them into the trap waiting in the caves.

      In the dust ahead, the rider sped past, away from his comrades—but he didn’t veer northeast into the desert as Axel expected. For a heartbeat, he felt relief. Barbarian horses were difficult to spot in the sand.

      The relief didn’t last long. When the slaver turned toward Marotiri, Axel’s gut churned. What was he doing?

      Axel urged his mare forward, even as he kept his eye locked on his prey. He expected the man to veer again, make a desperate bolt toward the desert. No slaver in his right mind would enter Marotiri City, not since the white-skinned queen had taken her place next to King Kalief as coruler of the land.

      The bandit galloped past an arching inselberg, and Axel stood high in the saddle, trying to see through the plumes of sand. His desire for justice left an acrid taste in his mouth. No one should have to lose a brother to slavers. White skin shouldn’t doom a man to a life of servitude.

      As if sensing his determination, the bay kicked her speed up another notch—but her valiant efforts were wasted. The slaver didn’t take cover in the desert.

      Instead, the man galloped toward the ungated road leading to Marotiri City. Axel rubbed his eyes. Surely the sand was blurring his vision. But, no. When he looked again, he saw it clearly. The slaver was going to the city.

      Axel clenched his teeth. If the slaver thought he could hide there, he knew something Axel didn’t. Not good.

      White-skinned queen or not, the last place Axel wanted to go with his blond hair and pale flesh was the city. Dark eyes would measure his strength and imagine him as their property.

      He pushed away the thought. No time for it. Maybe the slaver fled to the city in desperation, not as part of a plan. Maybe he thought he had no place else to go.

      That was a thought worth hanging on to. “Run!” he urged his mare again.

      His bay’s hooves clattered as the animal left the sand for the road—and then men’s angry shouts overrode the noise of hooves on brick.

      Holy nomads blocked the road. Thousands of sheep and goats filled not only the cobbled path, but the sand-covered shoulders on either side of it, too.

      The slaver paid no heed. He bolted into the middle of the holy flock. Sheep screamed and tried to flee, but they had no place to go.

      The nomads bellowed in rage and pointed at the fleeing man with their canes. The slaver urged his horse through the terrorized sheep. The earsplitting bleats and scent of goat piss wafted through the hot air. The coppery odor of blood mingled with it.

      The holy nomads began to ululate. Fury and anger laced the sound, and the high-pitched wails echoed off the rocky walls.

      Axel sat back, knowing he’d caught his prey. He couldn’t see past the sheep into Marotiri proper, but he knew its citizens wouldn’t welcome this fake trader—not covered in sweat and blood, not with the nomad’s ululations clinging to the air around them.

      He was wrong again, though.

      By the time Axel edged his horse around the periphery of sheep and into the city, the slaver was gone. Had someone helped him, or did he have a plan? A single horseman on a sweat-lathered and winded mount couldn’t just vanish in a city square filled with people.

      For a moment, rage rushed though him. How had he lost his quarry? But he pushed the anger away.

      Focused now, Axel scanned the ground. Well-laid cobbles provided roadways, but Marotiri sat in a desert, and sand lined the street edges. Cobbles wouldn’t hold a track, and neither would dusty sand, but wet sand…

      With a start Axel found a clue just near his mare’s hooves: the arc of a hoofprint in the dry sand. Had his own horse made it? He bent over her neck and looked. No, her feet were as dry as the surrounding dust.

      Pausing