He sketched me a bow. “And now I’ll finish what I started. Happily, even. The sight of your naked body has haunted my dreams for many a night.”

“Yeah? The only thing I remember about you is how easy it was to kick your ass.”

Rurik grinned. “You’ll remember a lot more before I’m done.” Behind him, a few of the other men regarded me with renewed interest. I felt myself go rigid, despite my bold words.

The black-haired woman eyed Rurik distastefully. “If you think I’ll let you give in to your…perversions here, you’re wrong. You’re as bad as them.”

“Stop being so prim, Shaya. You know who she is.”

“It doesn’t matter. You can have her later if the king says so, but you’re not doing anything while we’re on patrol. My patrol.”

I didn’t quite take that as female solidarity, but it was better than nothing. I’d come expecting a grisly death, not a gentry gang bang. Wil might be a lost cause, but if I fired on one of the guys, my minions could probably do serious damage to the others. I tensed, ready to fire.

“Stop,” Volusian suddenly said, moving forward. “Don’t touch her.”

“We don’t take orders from you,” replied Shaya.

Volusian was unfazed. “No, but you do take orders from your king, and my mistress has business with him.”

I saw the men freeze. So did I. Business with their king? Ah, right. We were in the Oak Land where Dorian ruled, the king Volusian had originally wanted me to see. Suddenly I wondered if this winding way we’d taken had been a ploy of his to get us to Dorian after all. If so, I wondered if he’d imagined capture as part of the plan.

Shaya regarded me coolly. “King Dorian has no business with her.”

A few of the men looked like they doubted this, and I jumped on it, as well as what Volusian had said about Dorian earlier.

“Are you so sure?” I smiled, portraying the same smug confidence I used with the minions, even as my heart pounded in my chest. Too many eyes on me. It was like public speaking. “I’ve come a long way to talk to him. How do you think he’ll react if he finds out you’ve killed me before I’ve delivered my message?”

“Tell me your message,” she said impatiently.

“I talk only to him. Alone. I don’t really think he’d like you getting the gossip before he did. Or not getting it at all if you kill me.”

“We won’t kill you,” said Rurik cheerfully. “We have plenty of other things we can do. You’ll still get to the king…eventually.”

Volusian fixed his red eyes on Rurik. “And how do you think Dorian will feel when he learns you’ve been at her before him? The king’s tastes are quite…particular.”

In another situation, I would have decked Volusian. Whose side was he on anyway? Stupid question, I realized a moment later. He was on his own side. As always.

The gentry all appeared put out. They looked like they really wanted to kill someone. The woman verified as much.

“They’ve killed our people. We cannot let that go unpunished.”

One of the other female riders strode forward. “No, actually. Everyone’s still alive. Some just barely…but if we can get a healer out here fast enough, they’ll live.”

All alive? So much for Team Eugenie. I’d known gentry were stronger in their own world, but this…It didn’t bode well for our gallant attack on Aeson and his people. Next time I’d aim for the face. I doubted they’d come back from that.

“Let’s kill the weak human anyway,” suggested one of the others, “just for fun. We can still bring her to the king.”

“The king’s going to offer me hospitality,” I informed them, still talking out of my ass, “for my whole group. He’ll be pissed if you kill one of them. It’ll make him look bad.”

I was lying, and Shaya looked like she knew it. “You seem very sure of yourself, Odile, but I’m less convinced.”

The other woman crossed her arms. “We have to get a healer. We need to go back for help now.”

Shaya thought about this and then gave a sharp nod. She delegated people to stay with the wounded and others to escort my party back. Before she did, she ordered me disarmed. Rurik made a great show of this, touching me a lot more than was really necessary as he took away the athames-handle first, of course-and wand. When he wrapped his fingers around the butt of the gun, a look of shock crossed his face and he recoiled.

“Damn it!” he swore, cradling his hand. “It’s…I don’t know what it is. But it doesn’t feel…right.”

I smiled sweetly. Thank God for polymers. Almost as effective as iron.

The commanding woman’s eyes flashed. “Someone take it from her.”

No one moved.

“All right, then, one of you spirits. You take it.”

My minions didn’t move.

“They don’t take orders from you,” I said, parodying her earlier words.

“They do from you. Order one of them to do it now, or I will have the life squeezed out of your friend, regardless of King Dorian’s anger.”

I studied her, trying to decide if she bluffed. Wil suddenly made a piteous sound as the golden aura around him tightened. God, I hoped Volusian was right about this Dorian ridiculousness.

“Nandi,” I said simply.

She strode forward and removed the gun from me. One of the riders offered up a cape so she could bundle it up. When it looked like a smothered baby, he reluctantly took it.

As for me, I was hoisted onto Rurik’s horse for the trip back to Dorian’s. The spirits needed no such transportation.

He wrapped his arms around me, ostensibly to reach the reins, but I was pretty sure he didn’t need to touch my breasts to do it. His hold tightened.

“I wouldn’t want you to fall off,” he explained.

“I’m going to cut your balls off the first chance I get,” I informed him.

“Ah,” he laughed, urging the horse into motion. “I can’t wait for you to meet the king. He’s going to love you.”

The keep was like a cross between Sleeping Beauty’s castle and a gothic church. Towers jauntily sprang up to impossible heights, creating black patches across the evening sky. We’d lost our light now, but I could still see that a lot of the windows looked as though they contained stained glass. I imagined they’d be beautiful in full sunlight. And framing everything, of course, were those brilliant, yellow-orange trees. Volusian had told me that the kingdoms’ seasons were dependent on their rulers’ whims and could last for extremely long times. This was beautiful, but I couldn’t imagine living in a place that was perpetually autumn. I knew some claimed Arizona was perpetually summer, but, then, the people who said that didn’t actually live there. The seasons were subtle, but they were there.

I had to keep reminding myself I wasn’t in some kind of wacky movie as Rurik and his gang led us through twisted hallways lit with torches. People passed, giving us curious looks as they went about whatever one did in a medieval castle. Churning butter. Flogging peasants. I really didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of there.

“Wait here,” Rurik told us when we reached a large set of double oak doors. “I will speak to the king before you’re shown into the throne room.”

Wow. An honest-to-goodness throne room. He disappeared behind the doors, and a couple guards watched us but kept their distance.

“Volusian,” I said softly, “did you purposely lead us here?”

“My only purpose, mistress, is to keep you alive. Being here will increase your chances.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“You will also increase your chances,” he continued, “if you are nice to King Dorian.”

“Nice? They just assaulted me and threatened to rape me.”

He gave me an exasperated look.

“The king will see you now,” said Rurik dramatically, returning from inside the room. He held the door open for us. Trumpets wouldn’t have surprised me.