Carpathian 20 - Dark Slayer

soul? To the high mage?― She felt a little idiotic repeating herself, but who did that? Who would be that . . .
    â€œAt the time, I had been tortured severely. He had left Lara’s mother’s dead body to rot in front of us, and I could not bear for Lara to be tortured. In truth, I was not thinking clearly.― He shook his head. “I cannot remember facts accurately anymore. Time has blurred together for me. But you cannot trust me. He can take this body at any time and force me to do unspeakable things to those I love. I have betrayed everyone who ever meant anything to me.―
    â€œAnd yet you fought him. You still fight him.―
    â€œI am my father’s son. Xavier killed him as well and tried to possess my sister. I would not let him have her. I traded my life for hers and then my soul for my daughter. I have nothing left for you.―
    Those piercing eyes never once left her face, and if there was regret or remorse in his confession, she didn’t hear it. He had traded his life and was willing to die this day, as the sun came up, to protect everyone else, Ivory included.
    â€œHe cannot have you,― she said. “I am sorry, but if what you say is true, then I have no choice but to render you unconscious so you do not know the way to my lair.―
    For the first time his expression changed. “You cannot take me there, woman. I forbid it.― Both hands came up, and she felt the beginnings of the spell he was casting, one to force her compliance.
    She was faster. Palms out, she shattered his spell so that small sparks clashed between them. She whispered softly and he blinked and fought for a moment, but starved and weak, his head slipped to one side as his eyes closed.
    Ivory didn’t hesitate once she’d made up her mind. She slung the Dragonseeker over her shoulder and took to the sky, racing the sun as it climbed toward the higher peaks. She streaked up through the driving snow, scanning the trails leading into the mountains for tracks of human vampire hunters, rare now, but still a menace to her kind. She let her senses flair out, seeking signs of the undead who may have taken refuge near her lair, or a stray hunter, one of the Carpathian males she was careful to hide her existence from.
    In midflight, she found herself rolling her eyes. A fat lot of good that had done her when she’d stumbled across her lifemate, just lying out in the snow, so thin and drawn, so emaciated from starvation and suffering that she couldn’t be heartless enough to leave him there.
    â€œO
    jelä
    peje
    terád— sun
    scorch
    you,
    päläfertiilam— lifemate,― she hissed aloud.
    It had never occurred to her that she would find herself in such a predicament. A male. She was bringing a sodden male to her home. Her haven. She should have told him terád keje —get scorched—and been done with him, but no, she had to be a simpering female and take the blasted man home with her.
    She made for the gap between the two tall, towering columns of rock rising like horns above the mountain. The rock seemed solid and no one, in all the years she’d been residing there, had ever found that thin crack in the left rock that ran from the inside around to the base, where the tower met the mountain peak itself. It took a moment to disable her intricate mineralogical alarm/protection system so she could pass through with the male. She blew gently into the wind, stirring the snow into a mini-blizzard, covering her drop as she entered vaporized, pouring like fog into the crack and making her way down through the inside of the mountain.
    Passing layers of rock, crystal caves and ice, all the while using the small crack that ran from the highest point to deep beneath the ground, she moved steadily lower until heat began to warm her and the pressure on her body increased. It always took a few moments to adjust to the depth beneath the earth, but over the years her body had adapted. If the Dragonseeker had been held prisoner by Xavier, then he’d been underground in the ice caves where Xavier ruled and his body would be somewhat acclimatized to the depths.
    She continued down, past the caves where bats dwelled and even lower beyond the depths of the ice caves, where no Carpathian she knew ever slept. She’d found rich soil and a hollowed out cavern. Over the centuries she’d enlarged her