My Ruthless Prince Page 4

  He flicked an indifferent glance toward the balcony, as she had suggested, then he looked at her again, cynically, indeed, almost coldly, with pity. And he cupped her cheek, in turn.

  For a moment, he gazed at her lips, as though remembering their kiss of a short while ago.

  Emily wanted another.

  “May you always keep your delusions, my darling,” he whispered. “They might have survived if you had not come here.”

  He started to move past her, but she scowled and stopped him, laying a stubborn hand on his chest and capturing his gaze.

  Then she tried bluffing the truth out of him. “I know the real reason you’re here. Say whatever you like. But Drake, it’s madness. There are too many of them, even for you.”

  “Do you think I care what happens to me?” he breathed.

  “No, but I do. I’m not going to let you die.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” He thrust her aside, reaching for the door handle, as if he could not get out of the room fast enough.

  Emily turned, impassioned. “That’s what you really came here to do, isn’t it? To die?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “And to take as many of them down with you as possible.”

  One hand on the handle, he let out a low, world-weary laugh. “What, a suicide mission?”

  She nodded.

  “You still think I’m some sort of hero.”

  “I know you are,” she said at once from the bottom of her heart.

  “What a fool you are,” he murmured slowly, staring at her. “My blind, beautiful, little fool.”

  Her face fell, but his hardened as he glanced over his shoulder at her one last time. “Stay out of my way,” he ordered. Then he pulled the door shut behind him.

  Chapter 3

  Drake paused outside the door, but although his heart was pounding, he refused to give an inch to emotion.

  He could not afford to.

  He locked her in, put the key back in his pocket, and strove to ignore the panic throbbing in his temples. He could not think of anything worse than Emily’s showing up here. She had no idea what she’d gotten into.

  How on earth she had made it so far alive, he could scarcely fathom; but, of course, the rural setting would have worked in her favor. The woodsman’s daughter could defend herself expertly in the world of nature.

  When it came to the world of men, however, no.

  She had no concept whatsoever of the evil that he faced in this place. She had never been exposed to anything of its kind. Nor should she.

  He stared at the door. He could feel her on the other side of it, but he backed away, shaking his head slightly.

  She spoke of the beauty of trees and sky, hills and light, unaware that she herself was the most beautiful thing in the world, at least to him.

  He shut his eyes. Hating her for loving him. Hating himself for the kind of kiss he had taken from her for the first time their lips had ever touched and the degrading words he had spoken over her.

  But degradation, using a woman, was all the people here could understand.

  He had to get her out of here.

  As soon as it was safe.

  He’d find a way.

  Steely-eyed, he pivoted on his heel and marched down the corridor. Still, his awareness of her clung to him like a playful spirit haunting him every second, teasing him with those unearthly violet eyes. Trying to lure him back toward treacherous things like life and joy and all that pointless rot he had long since given up on. But did she truly think they had ever been apart?

  Did she not know she had been with him all the time in that unspeakable cell, the memory of her sweetness the one slender ribbon tying him to whatever had once been good in him long after pain and instinct had turned him into a demon? The one thing that had stopped him from becoming something far more monstrous than any Promethean.

  Like some silent, healing angel come to comfort him, she had returned to him after every beating, every cut, every broken bone. She could not touch him, but the thought of her had been enough to keep him alive, the bright memory of the sun on her hair, those freckles whose arrangement he knew as well as the constellations.

  The torturers had caused his mind to swallow up many of the details of his old life as a warrior for the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. But even they had never succeeded in making him forget the reason why he fought.

  Because of Emily, and everything she stood for to him.

  When he thought of home, he did not think of the mansion, or his parents, or the lordly stables that were the envy of the shire. He thought of the woodsman’s daughter, roaming the hunting grounds of Westwood Park, wild and free, innocent as some ethereal woodland nymph, untouched by the corruption of the world.

  That was how Drake had wanted, needed her to stay, always. But it was too late. Her blind devotion to him had drawn her there. And after the way the Prometheans’ evil had infected him, he had a terrible cold feeling in his gut that he would be her downfall.

  She had to go. Soon. He could not be distracted by her. He despised and feared how deeply he was drawn to her. It could get him killed in this place.

  He might, by some miracle, still be able to save her life—he had to, or his whole existence would have been in vain. But he already knew that when it came to the crystalline innocence of her heart, it was only a matter of time before it shattered. She would look into the face of evil here, and she would never be the same.

  God knew, he was not.

  He suppressed a shudder and hurried down the stairs, jogging down the white marble spiral. With a grim set to his jaw, he walked toward the dining room where the Council was in session, still utterly refusing to think of the last time he had been a guest at Waldfort Castle.

  He had not stayed on the fourth floor then but in the dark place, far down below. He swept its memory out of his mind once again and kept his face coldly expressionless but for the trace of suffering that never quite left his eyes.

  Approaching the dining room where James had called the meeting, he knew full well that behind that door was a roomful of murderers, every one of them. If he had not penetrated their organization so deeply, perhaps he never would have believed it. Like the rest of the world, he’d have been deceived by their façade of quiet banality.

  How polite the gentlemen could be, taking tea in aristocratic drawing rooms, playing chess at White’s or other clubs for the well-connected, strolling on a Sunday afternoon with their already-tainted grandchildren. But there was another side to them, a terrible secret at the core of who they were.

  Their elegant friends and royal connections would have been horrified to witness their warped ceremonies, like the one in which Drake had forced himself to participate recently. The black candles, the hooded robes, the weird ancient chants full of blasphemies, the blood that ran from the slit throats of sacrificed animals and dripped from the places where they pierced themselves to glorify the cruel images they worshipped.

  Their strange system of belief was based on occult scrolls of the Magi found by Crusader knights in a desert cave hundreds of years ago. They had blended it over the centuries with many other sources of hidden ancient knowledge, but essentially, their creed placed them at the center of the universe and rejected all authority in life and on earth except their own.

  To them, Prometheus, the Titan of Greek myth who had given fire to humanity, and Lucifer, the light-bearer, had become one and the same. But in their view, Satan was not the monstrous enemy of God and man but a rebel prince, wronged, powerful, and heroic.

  The Prometheans’ willingness to pursue their goals in a manner worthy of the Father of Lies made it difficult for the Order, constrained by the knight’s code of conduct, to defeat them.

  But Drake was no longer, technically, a knight of the Order. His hands were no longer tied by these noble ideals.

  The time had come to fight fire with fire.

  He had come to destroy the destroyers, deceive the deceivers, to infiltrate the infiltr
ators, and to murder the murderers. To fight evil with pure, black evil. He no longer cared what lines he crossed, for he had nothing left to lose.

  At least, not until Emily showed up.

  But she wouldn’t be there long. He would not allow it, for he understood the danger she was in. The very innocence that made her so powerful, such a treasure to him, was the very thing that could sentence her to her doom.

  The Prometheans hated goodness wherever it appeared. They could not stand to be around it. They were fascinated by it, but every instinct they possessed urged them to destroy it. If they were to realize that the virginal young beauty was much more to him than some servile sexual plaything, he shuddered to think what they might do to her.

  Get this over with. Letting himself quietly into the room, Drake returned to his post behind James’s chair.

  The old man sat at the head of the table, for it was he who had called this secret summit of the leaders.

  Count Septimus Glasse, the owner of the castle, a fiery, bearded German, eyed Drake warily as he took his place. “The security breach has been handled?”

  “Yes, my lord. It was of no consequence, merely a servant,” he added, bowing his head in deference.

  “Your servant, we hear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That is rather peculiar.”

  Drake just looked at him.

  “James, are you quite certain we can trust your head of security?” asked the olive-skinned cardinal, their robed representative in Rome. “After all, he was once numbered among the enemy.”

  “Drake is one of us now, Antonio,” he replied. “He has proved his loyalty by saving my life on numerous occasions. Surely it cannot seem such a shock to you that even a former agent of the Order could finally come to see that it is our vision that is best for Mankind, not theirs. Besides, gentlemen,” James added in mild amusement, “there is no greater zealot than a convert. Go on, Drake. Tell them of our creed.”

  “With pleasure, sir.” He stood square, his hands loosely clasped behind his back, his chin high. “Mankind is base and savage, my lords, barbarous, stupid, and cruel. For his own good, he must be tamed, managed, by those who have humbly sought and acquired the true enlightenment. If man will not submit to reason or just authority from the enlightened, then his will must be broken first, through force.”

  The Austrian general who served as corrupt advisor to the Habsburgs gave a low laugh. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  James smiled with pride in his student. “Go on, m’boy. What of God?” he encouraged him.

  “If the vile creature, man, is indeed made in the image of God, then this is a childish, tyrannical deity to whom no man of reason owes his allegiance,” Drake replied. “If God exists at all, he is our enemy, for it was he who gave us life, and life is only pain. All else is delusion.”

  “You speak of the subject of pain with some authority, monsieur,” said the suave French duke, swirling the brandy in his snifter.

  The Prometheans had situated him well, anticipating the chance of Napoleon’s downfall. The French duke had gone into exile with King Louis as a loyal friend during Napoleon’s reign, but now that the Little Emperor was jailed at Elba, the Prometheans had already planted their man close to the Bourbon throne.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Drake answered his question in a low, dull monotone. “This technique was how I came to understand the truth myself.”

  “Tell me—” Septimus Glasse spoke up again. “Do you resent your treatment at our hands, Englishman?”

  “No, sir, I am grateful. Now the rest of my life won’t be wasted in the folly of the Order’s lies and illusions. Better to suffer and see the truth than to remain blind.”

  “Indeed,” the cardinal murmured. “I imagine that with all the weapons training the Order must have given you, you would be very good at making more converts for us.”

  “Yes, sir, I believe so. If I am found worthy of that privilege.”

  “What about your previous life as an agent of the enemy?” the Austrian general pursued.

  “I remember very little about it, sir.”

  “And what he has remembered, he has entrusted to me,” James replied, “to be used at my discretion, at the appropriate time.”

  Glasse shrugged. “Obviously, he is a valuable asset.”

  James nodded. “His perspective will be crucial in our quest to defeat the Order once and for all.”

  “Unless all this is a trick,” the Russian novelist chimed in. The highborn writer’s books and plays had enchanted the young, impressionable Czar.

  “I am not that brave, sir.” Drake gazed at him, allowing the fashionable leader of Russian intellectual circles to stare into his eyes, as if to probe his motives for himself, boring into his very soul.

  “You see?” James murmured proudly at length. “I told you, my friends, it would be a waste to kill him, that I could bring him round. Drake is on the true path now. Besides, if my bodyguard has proved his loyalty to me, then nobody else has cause to question him.”

  “Very well, old friend,” Glasse murmured to James. “If you are satisfied, then so are we, of course.”

  The cardinal shrugged in agreement. “Better he should be for us than against us.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So, tell us, Falkirk, why have you called this gathering of the Council?” the Austrian general inquired. “You indicated it was a matter of the utmost consequence.”

  “Ah, but we are missing someone,” the French duke interjected with a faint, sly smile.

  “Indeed,” James answered with a low laugh. “No doubt you all are wondering why Malcolm isn’t here.” James looked around at them for a long moment.

  Meanwhile, ever so subtly, Drake’s hand moved closer to the hilt of his weapon. If any man objected to James’s scheme, he was ready.

  “The truth is,” James admitted, glancing around at him, “our dear leader Malcolm wasn’t invited. I didn’t feel he was ready to see the wonder that I have called you together to show you, my friends. Drake—the box, please.”

  Drake stepped back, turned around, and retrieved the ancient kingwood case from where it sat on the nearby sideboard.

  He brought it over and set it on the table, then glanced at James in question. The old man nodded, and Drake dutifully opened the box.

  James stood, tilting the box so that the others could see inside. “Behold, gentlemen. The lost scrolls of Valerian the Alchemist, the greatest of our forefathers.”

  “The Alchemist’s Scrolls!” the men exclaimed, rising from their seats to lean closer, staring at the yellowed medieval documents.

  “Are these truly the authentic—?”

  “But where on earth did you find them?”

  “It’s a treasure trove . . . is there anything in these scrolls to help us now?”

  “Much.” James looked around soberly at them, and the men settled back in their seats, amazed. “Gentlemen, allow me to be blunt. The current head of the Council has failed us. Badly. We must face the facts.

  “Malcolm pays no more than lip service to the old gods. He thinks the dark wisdom is no more than fairy tales. He mocks the princes of the air and the unseen powers of this world, the very forces that sustained Valerian and have inspired our forefathers since the Middle Ages.”

  James planted his hands on the table and looked around at them. “If our so-called leader were truly one of us, we would not have met with our recent bitter failure. Look at the priceless opportunity he let slip through our fingers.

  “Napoleon’s empire gave us our greatest opportunity since Charlemagne to bring all the peoples of Europe together as one. Think of the chance that is gone. One language, one currency, no more wars, no more hunger. Who can say? In time, we might have extended our rule across the Mediterranean to overtake the Ottoman Empire, and across the water, as well, to the Americas.

  “For decades we worked, spent untold fortunes inserting our loyal believers into every royal court,
patiently, carefully, waiting for our moment. And then it came. In the person of the brilliant Napoleon Bonaparte, that muse of fire, a perfect tool wrought for us by the hands of the gods.

  “We were useful to him, but he was even more useful to us without even knowing it. We just let him keep on conquering countries, aiding him where we could, and kept on putting our people into high places throughout his ever-growing empire. He had no son. That meant we only had to wait for him to die. Then all that he had built, the whole globe, perhaps, would have fallen naturally, easily into our hands like a ripe plum.

  “What step did we overlook?” James asked them in cold anger. “Nothing. What price did we shrink to pay to bring about our vision on earth? We gave our all, down to the last drop of blood of that which was most precious to us. We were so close! But it all crumbled. Why? Why, I ask you?” he demanded.

  “Eh, because of the Order,” the Frenchman murmured.

  “No. It would be nice to think so,” James shot back, “but the fault, I’m afraid, lies closer to home. The enemy could not have vanquished us if we had not chosen a leader who makes a mockery of the gods. This feckless fool Malcolm threw away the chance to establish our dream of a new order in the world merely to fulfill his own greed.”

  “These are dangerous words, James,” Septimus warned fondly.

  “Yet I must speak them, if our brotherhood is ever to rise again. These are the facts. Napoleon is fallen. Our chance is lost. It will not come again in our lifetimes, perhaps not for a century or more—and the fault must be laid at Malcolm’s feet. But still he remains as head of the Council? How can this be?”

  They were silent, mulling his points.

  James shook his head. “I can no longer be silent. Not after all the blood we shed, the risks we took. The sacrifices that every one of us made,” he reminded them bitterly as he scanned their faces.

  The Promethean leaders dropped their gazes, lowering their heads with pained expressions as James gazed at each one.

  “We gave as Malcolm never did. You know what my words signify,” he added darkly. “No wonder it all came to naught. Our very leader refused the gods their sacrifice. We parted with what we loved and watched Niall grow up from a spoiled boy into a dangerous and ill-tempered man.