Keir

  Cover Copy

  Outcast. Cursed. Dying. Is Keir beyond redemption?

  For Keirlan de Corizi–the legendary 'Blue Demon' of Adalucien–death seems the only escape from a world where his discolored skin marks him as an oddity and condemns him to life as a pariah. But salvation comes in an unexpected guise: Tarquin Secker, a young woman who can travel the stars with a wave of her hand.

  But Quin has secrets of her own. She's spent eternity searching through space and time with a strange band of companions at her back. Defying her friends' counsel, Quin risks her apparent immortality to save Keir. She offers him sanctuary and a new life on her home world, Lyagnius.

  When Keir mistakenly unleashes his dormant alien powers and earns instant exile from Quin's home world, will she risk everything to stand by him again?

  WARNING: Contains sweet romance, some violence and plenty of adventure.

  Teaser

  As she raised her hands in defense, he grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her back, pulling her against him and sending them both crashing to the ground. Pinned beneath his weight and with one arm trapped, Quin went limp. The fight was over. They lay face to face, hearts pounding in unison and panting from their efforts.

  “Nice move,” she said, a smile curving her lips. “Now you’re learning.”

  “Thank you.”

  Keir stared down at her for a moment. With his own arm trapped beneath her, they lay locked together in a tight embrace, Quin acquiescent in his grasp. The sparring had added a warm flush to her skin. The heat and softness of her body beneath his crowded into his awareness. Even through the coarse fabric of their combat gear, he felt the rapid flutter of her heartbeat.

  Keir

  By Pippa Jay

  Keir

  9781616503741

  Copyright © 2012, Pippa Jay

  Edited by Danielle Fine

  Book design by Lyrical Press, Inc.

  Cover Art by Renee Rocco

  First Lyrical Press, Inc. electronic publication: May, 2012

  Lyrical Press, Incorporated

  http://www.lyricalpress.com

  eBooks are not transferable. All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America by Lyrical Press, Incorporated

  Dedication

  For those that I have loved and lost.

  Acknowledgements

  With thanks–

  To my family–especially my husband–for putting up with the insanity, the constant scribbling and the hours spent hogging the computer.

  To my friends–for their endless support and encouragement, without which I couldn’t have made it here.

  To The Rasmus–for the music that inspired me, took me through to the end and carries me still.

  Also, a big thank you to my publisher and to my fabulous editor for all their hard work.

  Chapter 1

  In the darkness and the silence, Keir sat with teeth gritted against the pain racking his body. With each ragged breath he sought to shift his focus from the agony of ribs that were surely broken. He tried not to feel the ache in his head where his hair lay matted with blood against his scalp. The cell’s damp seeped through his rags and into his skin until he throbbed with the cold. He clenched his fists against the shakes that possessed him and wished he could force them still.

  Wordlessly he raged against the injustice of it all, as though the anger could keep his life burning when all it really did was waste his energy, hastening the end. Sudden tears stung the cuts on his face. He would have screamed his fury and terror if he had the strength, if it would not have been such a futile protest.

  The iron door of the cell clanged open, shattering the silence. A sickening jolt of fear punched into his chest.

  “Get your hands off me!”

  The voice, unmistakably female and strangely accented, carried clearly through the small space. Keir started. It was the first speech he had heard in uncounted nights and he longed to move out of his shadowed niche for a clearer view of the door. He was loathe to betray his presence, however, so instead willed himself to utter stillness and let his ears do what his eyes could not.

  Loud scuffling indicated that the woman was not taking her imprisonment lightly. A dull thump was followed by a man’s pained grunt.

  “Damn witch!” a guard wheezed. “Get her in there.”

  Another thump, then the door slammed closed leaving nothing behind but a draft of smoky air from the torches that lit the outside corridor, and the muted footfalls of the guards.

  After a moment, faint rustlings and light footsteps crossing the flagstones told him the newcomer was on the move.

  “Damn it! This wasn’t the plan.”

  Keir puzzled over it. The woman sounded amused, and educated, despite the coarseness of the exclamation, but no lady of rank would have been thrown into his cell–or used such language.

  Sudden light scorched his vision, blinding after the long hours of darkness. He closed his eyes, but it continued to glow blood-red through his eyelids. Pain spiked through his head. He raised an arm to shield himself from the glare, hoping he was still safe from sight in his niche.

  Once his eyes had adjusted, he squinted into the light and saw a moving figure draped in heavy robes, styled–like his own–to be all-concealing, though they were not as threadbare and ragged. The dark, luxuriant material shrouded her from head to toe without managing to disguise the slightness of her figure. Her hands explored the walls, and as she reached up the hood fell back, revealing thick, reddish hair unlike anything he had ever seen. It gleamed a fiery orange in the torchlight, like a halo of flame.

  Curiosity overrode his pain-fogged senses and he leaned forward. She turned toward him, her gaze skipping across his hiding place as she lifted her lamp higher–the strange light a wand of white fire clenched in one hand. She had a slim, elfin face with a small nose wrinkled by a slight frown of irritation, and translucent skin dusted with freckles. Pretty, in a strange way, perhaps, but not beautiful. The color of her hair alone marked her as an oddity. Was that the reason the Corizi had taken her prisoner? She seemed too frail a thing to justify sharing his punishment.

  She moved toward him and his old suspicions flooded back.

  “Another step,” he growled, “and I will kill you.”

  The girl stopped and squinted into the shadows. After a moment, she raised the light over her head. “That isn’t very friendly.” Her tone was calm and even, but the way she held herself told him she stood braced for any sudden movement, the lamp a weapon should she need one.

  “I am not friendly. I am dangerous.”

  Even as he made the threat, he knew his chances of proving it were remote. In his frail condition she had a fair chance of fending him off, possibly even killing him, and it seemed she knew it. Perhaps his voice had given away his pain and exhaustion. Perhaps she found his seated position less than intimidating, but in truth he could not bring himself to stand. Her posture relaxed a fraction and she took another step forward, her light invading his niche.

  Wincing, he turned his cloth-covered face away.

  “You don’t loo
k very dangerous.” She held her torch like a sword as she drew closer. “You look sick.”

  He kept his arm raised as if to ward her off, though he shook with the effort of it.

  “My name’s Tarquin Secker,” she offered. “But my friends call me Quin. Who are you?”

  The words escaped him before he could call them back. “I am Keir.”

  As if she had mistaken their exchange of names for permission, she crouched before him and held up her empty hand, palm outward.

  Keir shied away as she reached out to him. Fear and anger gave him strength and he knocked her backward. “Do not touch me!”

  The blow had not been as heavy as he could normally manage but Quin landed on her back with enough force to knock the breath from her with a pained grunt, though she kept her grip on the light-stick. She rose and approached him a second time, slowly and with evident caution, but Keir’s strength had failed him at last and he sagged against the nearby wall, an action he knew would reveal him incapable of further attack.

  “Are you wounded?” She knelt down next to him and reached for him again. He shrank from her touch and she stopped just shy of his arm. “I don’t want to hurt you, Keir. I thought I might be able to help.”

  He said nothing, could not bring himself to unbend, and after a moment she sat back on her haunches with a sigh. “All right, so you don’t want my help. Why are you in here anyway?”

  “What does that matter?”

  Quin shrugged. “I’m curious and there’s not much else to do.” She tilted her head. “Did you hurt someone?” When he remained silent, her expression darkened. “Did you kill someone?”

  “They caught me stealing food.”

  “Just a thief, then.”

  The accusation, however true, stirred his resentment. “What choice is there when you are penniless and starving?”

  “True enough, but you did just threaten to kill me...” Quin fiddled with the light wand in her hand.

  Keir held his silence, tired of the discussion. What did it matter now?

  “Look, I just want to get out of here. Interested in that?”

  There was a long silence before Keir muttered, “There is no way out.”

  “I can always find a way.” Her mischievous grin sparked a flicker of life in him.

  Standing up, she moved farther down the passageway, the walls of which were lined with a number of archways akin to the one in which he hid.

  Again, a fragment of curiosity drew him forward to watch as she assessed their surroundings. The chamber’s original purpose was storage–though the door could be locked and barred, it had never been intended as a dungeon. A gutter ran down the center of the passageway, trickling dirty water from elsewhere in the fortress. At the far end, a heavy iron grid set into the wall sealed off the human-sized archway, beneath which the gutter ran before widening into a deeper channel for waste. Slow-moving, foul-smelling liquid filled the trench, with no indication of how deep it was or how far it ran. Quin’s lightwand only cast shadows across it and revealed its unpleasant, oily green color.

  She returned her torch to a cord around her neck. The wand threw broken light down the length of her dark-green robes, causing random flickers of brightness across the dirt-encrusted floor as she rolled up one sleeve to the shoulder. She wrinkled her nose, no doubt at the smell, and braced herself as she knelt to plunge her arm into the channel.

  The murky liquid reached the edge of the fabric as she groped in the mire, seeking something below the surface. It seemed she did not find it, for she soon withdrew her arm with a sound of deep distaste. Muttering imprecations under her breath, she rose and shook off as much of the sludge as she could, then rubbed herself dry with one corner of her robes.

  “Is this a sewer, do you know?”

  “Can you not tell?”

  “I’m not an expert,” Quin returned. “For all I know, the water here always reeks like things have died in it.” She pushed her lightwand through a gap in the grid, extending her arm as far as she could reach. It revealed little more than greenish-tinged brickwork and deeper shadows beyond. “Do you know where it leads?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm, helpful.”

  A twitch of anger at her apparent rebuke spurred him into responding despite his lethargy. “A river runs under the city from west to east and then out to sea. I think all the sewers feed into it.”

  “Ah.” Quin seemed to consider his words. “Well, trekking through the bowels of the city isn’t really my idea of fun, but then, neither is being a guest of the Corizi, so…”

  She reached inside her belt and removed a small package concealed within, handling it as though it were made of something infinitely more fragile than glass.

  “There’s going to be a lot of noise and light shortly,” she called to Keir, flinching as her voice sparked discordant echoes, “and there might some stone and metal flying around, so stay where you are.”

  With delicate fingers, she peeled the wrappings off her package to reveal two flattened slivers of something like colored clay then began to knead the sections together. After a few moments, she tore the mixed clays into several small pieces, pressing them into the joints between the metalwork and masonry with nervous haste before scuttling back into the niche opposite Keir.

  A long and empty silence followed.

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked.

  “A door.”

  Keir snorted, coughing when the effort hurt his throat. “I do not think your key works.”

  Quin frowned at him, seeming to consider his words, then tilted her head as if expecting to hear a different opinion elsewhere. Nothing but the odd drip of water and the faint raggedness of Keir’s breathing filled the damp silence of the dungeon.

  With sudden decisiveness, Quin stepped out from the protection of the archway and returned to the grid. A sizzling noise greeted her, followed by a rapid shower of brilliant purple and red sparks that struck her full in the face. As she cried out and staggered back with her hands clutched to her eyes, Keir struggled to his feet, heart thumping as the hissing became a roar.

  Instinct sent him leaping at Quin, bearing them both into the opposite archway as a huge detonation shattered the grid and most of the surrounding stonework. A cascade of red hot metal and stone shards tore at the walls and filled their niche with burning dust and debris, spattering them both. Ominous creaks and groans followed the explosion, with chunks of mortar tumbling from the ceiling as great cracks raced across the chamber.

  Stunned and winded, Keir could do little more than roll aside with a groan as Quin scrambled out from under him. Agony raged through him, more immediate and overwhelming than the sensation of the foundations ripping beneath him, more terrifying than the resounding crash of falling stone. With no resistance left, he lay still and waited for the fatal crush to come.

  Quin tugged at him, urging him to his feet with insistent hands he had no strength to refuse. She dragged him up then wedged herself under one arm to support him, and he submitted to her aid without protest. Sudden warmth, like a draft of strong spirits, flushed through him and stole his breath as she held him. Stumbling and swaying, they made their escape through the plummeting debris and destroyed archway into the water-logged darkness beyond. The chamber collapsed behind them.

  * * * *

  Quin fought to keep Keir upright as a swelling tide of filthy water chased them deeper into the cavernous passageway. He hung on her, his dead weight and her sodden robes dragging her down. The water surged around their legs, overrunning them. Behind them, walls and ceilings were still collapsing, forcing the water higher and faster until the archway fell in on itself, sending a putrid crest sweeping over them. Quin struggled as their world became one of choking water and blackness, hands clenched in Keir’s clothing to prevent him being swept away. Finally, her head broke the surface and she hauled him up with her. Swamped by the dark water–without light or knowledge for guidance and her strength spent on just keeping them both a
float–swimming was out of the question.

  Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tidal wave subsided into sludgy waves. Soon Quin could touch the bottom again and stood on shaky legs. She collapsed against the side wall, finding a ledge to rest on as she drew Keir out of the water. He lay against her, limp as a thing dead, but she felt the shallow heaving of his chest before he fell forward, retching.

  Quin forced down her urge to gag in sympathy. The stench was overwhelming and her skin itched at the thought of what might be covering it. After a few moments he stopped, spitting the foul taste from his mouth. With a shake of his head, he tried to rise. Quin made to grab the back of his robes and help him back up, but he swatted her hand away and levered himself up next to her. For a while, neither said a word as they sat gasping in the fetid atmosphere.

  Quin stared at her companion. However ironic, it seemed her first instinct about Keir had proven correct. Whatever else he might be, he had just saved her life.

  “Thanks,” Quin managed at last, her breath rasping in her throat.

  Keir said nothing, but his head turned toward her as if in acknowledgment. In silent agreement, both rose and followed the sluggish water as it flowed along the sewer at the same lethargic pace.

  * * * *

  Time lost all meaning as they trudged through the water, chilled and exhausted. Quin’s head throbbed with pain as she stumbled onwards, too numb with cold to care about their destination. Her companion seemed oblivious, laboring through the sludge without a word, as if powered by clockwork.

  A pale light ahead etched out the contours of the sewer and reflected off the oily water. Quin hurried forward. A sharp turn in the passageway revealed the sewer’s outlet as its contents cascaded from the end of the slime-coated tunnel and splashed into the mire below. Hazy sunlight and a blast of cold wind greeted her. The surface underneath her feet became treacherous where time and effluent had worn it away, leaving it dangerously slick. Water pushed at her in a relentless flow. Once she’d reassured herself it was only a short drop down, she took a gamble and jumped, jarring her legs on landing. Keir seemed hesitant to follow and lost his grip as he tried to lower himself.