Jissa, who'd been looking over her shoulder ever since Liliana started ranting, shifted her empty basket to her other arm and used her free hand to squeeze Liliana's hand. "You know who he is, Lilia - "

"He knows who we are, too!" Turning, she glared at the looming hulk of the castle before returning her gaze to the path that led into the Whispering Forest. "And we aren't his slaves!"

Jissa didn't say anything.

Liliana slowed her stride, anger transforming into a sickening lurch in her stomach. "Are we?" Had the youngest Elden royal been tainted by the evil that lived within the Abyss in the most subtle of ways?

Jissa shook her head. "Oh, no. Oh, no." Her distress was apparent on her fine features. "He was very, very sad when he brought me back to the castle after...after."

After you died again, Liliana thought, trembling as the lurching settled. "Will you be safe in the village?"

"Oh, yes. Just can't stay all day and night." Taking a deep breath, she began walking at a brisk pace through the Whispering Forest, touching her hand to the trees as if in greeting.

The tree branches shook, the leaves murmuring, Jissa. Jissa. Friend. Jissa.

"The lord," Jissa said, patting the trunk of a sapling, "told me he wished he could send me back to my people, but that my people were gone. All gone."

Liliana felt her heart twist. Her father had decimated the brownies, stolen their power too fast for those small, sturdy bodies to recover. "Do you believe him?"

"I do." A sad, sad sound. "He doesn't lie. Never, ever."

"No, he doesn't." Yet he was not naive. He was simply without corruption - arrogant and spoiled, but without corruption. "Why did you go quiet at my mention of slaves?"

"The lord said he didn't wish to make me a slave. I could just stay, he said, do nothing." Jissa made a scowling face. "I told him, I will cook. That is fair."

"I can't imagine why you bothered," she muttered, trying to work up her old ill humor. "Bad-tempered creature that he is."

"Hush, Liliana." A chiding look. "He is alone, so alone."

Yes, but he was also a possessive beast. "Is the lord very rich?" she asked, to take Jissa's mind off her sorrow. "Will we be able to buy any ingredients we need?"

Jissa nodded. "He has treasures. I saw once, after I woke. Sparkly jewels. He gave me." Her eyes lit. "For me to keep, Liliana!"

Liliana's throat thickened. The Guardian of the Abyss had been trying, in his own way, to return Jissa's happiness, make her forget that she'd die after she left the protective magic of the Black Castle. "Will you show me your jewels?"

"Oh, yes, so pretty, pretty." Jissa chattered about her treasures until they hit the village. "We are about to turn into the market square, busy, busy." Even as the last word left the brownie's lips, they found themselves in a bustling marketplace filled with stalls holding green beans, carrots, pumpkins orange with health and so much more.

Chapter 11

"Ye be from the Black Castle, then," said a red-cheeked man wearing a crisp blue apron over his clothing.

Liliana looked at Jissa to answer but the brownie had ducked her head. "Yes," she said to the man. "I'm Liliana and this is Jissa."

"I knows Jissa." He patted his large belly. "Wee thing doesn't say much, then, does she?"

Liliana touched a protective hand to her friend's shoulder. "She speaks when there's something to say."

A booming laugh. "Wish my missus would do the same." Picking up a small, ripe peach, he put it in Jissa's basket with a wink. "Enjoy now."

The friendly comments continued as they shopped.

"Are they not afraid of the Black Castle?" Liliana asked Jissa when they stopped to examine some hard green fruit that Jissa said made a good jelly. "After all, it is the gateway to the Abyss."

"At night, yes, oh, yes," Jissa confirmed. "Doors shut. Windows locked. But the lord protects the village, too. Very well, he protects."

"And he's not like them others," the stall owner said, having obviously overheard.

Liliana looked up at the raw-boned woman with the mass of twisting black curls and skin of ebony silk. "The others?"

"Heard stories, we have," the woman said, "of the far-off realms. Past the plains and the bubbling lakes, beyond the mountains of ice, on the other side of the Great Divide."

"What do these stories say?"

The woman folded her arms, lowered her voice. "That there's them lords that come into a man's house and steal his daughters away. And if she be comely, his wife, too."

Liliana gave a small, quiet nod. Murdering, forcing carnal acts on those who could not defend themselves, abusing old and young with impunity, her father's men were monsters clothed in flesh. "Yes, I've heard the same."

"Well, then," the stall owner said, "the Guardian is plenty better than that even if we don't like as to be in the castle too much. Ghosts there, you know."

As Liliana followed Jissa to a stall filled with exotic spices, she couldn't help but wonder how the man who was the Guardian had managed to retain his honor, though he lived in the Black Castle, handled evil night after night.

A memory of ghosts, watching, listening...perhaps guiding?

" - big nose."

"Told you she isn't his mistress."

Jerked back to the present by the hissed comments of two passing women, Liliana felt her face begin to color. Though she wanted to run, she pretended she hadn't heard, and waited until the women were otherwise engaged before looking at them.

Tiny and dainty and doll-like, the golden-haired one was a princess dressed in the clothes of a prosperous shopkeeper's daughter. Her friend was taller, slender, more elegant. Lush black curls swept back from her face with shell combs, her eyes sparkled with the confidence of a woman who knew she was not only stunning, but sensually so. "Liliana."

She turned to Jissa. "Are there many beautiful women in the village?"

Her friend's eyes filled with an unexpected fierceness, the rhythm of her singsong voice wiped away. "Don't listen to those spiteful wenches. You're the one he speaks to, not them."

Only because, Liliana thought, her heart heavy, their parents likely didn't allow them to consort with the Lord of the Black Castle. No, they'd only allow that when he was ready to make an offer. So she was his only choice, a big-nosed, ugly thing with a limp and no grace.

She'd always known that, been willing to swallow her pride to steal a few moments of happiness, but faced with the village women, women of beauty and sensual sophistication, women who had to have crossed his path, she realized he must know it, too.

Her heart broke with an audible crack.

Standing on top of the highest parapet of the Black Castle, its lord watched Liliana walking up from the village, laughing at something Jissa had said. He scowled. "Why does she laugh?"

Bard lumbered to his side, opened his mouth, sighed. It was as close as he ever came to a diatribe. The Guardian of the Abyss waited, knowing the other male had something to say, but Bard took his time; Bard always took his time, until most of the village thought him a big, dumb mute. It was to both their advantage to let that misapprehension continue.

"Women," he said, his voice a deep rumbling thing akin to the heart of a mountain, "laugh. Jissa laughs."

He'd never thought of Jissa as a woman. She was simply sweet Jissa, who jumped if he talked too loudly and smiled when Bard's back was turned. He tried not to scare Jissa, but she was so timid that, sometimes, it happened by accident. Bard always looked at him with accusation in those deep, dark eyes when it did.

But Liliana...yes, she was a woman. His body heated within the black armor as he thought of how she'd felt against him in the kitchen, all soft curves and warmth. Exploring the luscious shape of her while she was naked had become not only an erotic desire but a raking hunger. Glancing down, he flexed his fingers and watched as the armor retreated from the backs of his knuckles, coming to a stop at his wrists.

"Armor." Bard's bass voice. "Moved."

"Yes." He couldn't touch Liliana with the armor on his hands - it might scratch her. And so it had retreated. "They've reached the castle gates."

Liliana stopped and looked up right then. He was too far way to read the expression in her eyes, but there was an odd stiltedness to her walk when she began to move again, her shoulders hunched in.

There was no more laughter.

He hadn't spoken to many women. The village ones squealed and giggled when he came near. It irritated him. When he got irritated, he scowled and scared them. He liked that - it made them keep their distance. And if they huddled as they walked, that was fine with him. But those women weren't Liliana. "Do you see?"

Bard said nothing, his eyes on Jissa.

Liliana managed to avoid the Lord of the Black Castle that night only because there were too many shadows in the dungeons and he had to open the gateway to the Abyss. Ordered to lock herself in the upstairs room that had become her own, while Jissa and Bard did the same in another wing, Liliana didn't argue. Magical energy could be highly volatile. And when it came to the energy of the Abyss, its lord was the only person who could control it.

"Where did the old lord go?" she muttered, the house shuddering with waves of magic unlike any she'd ever before felt - heavy and brutal and cold - as the gateway was opened.

When the old lord is ready to retire, a new lord is chosen.

"Oh," she said, heart thundering where she sat on the bed. "Thank you."

The boy was strong, already sleeping below the Black Castle.

A ripple in the air on the right-hand side of the bed, a formless face that came and went. You carry blood sorcery in your veins.

All at once she knew this ghost understood exactly what - who - she was. "I mean him no harm," she said. "Please, you mustn't tell him. He's not ready."