Hidden by the Shadow King

Chapter 1

Sierra

With my back turned, I pour a silvery liquid into a metal canteen, struggling to stabilize my hand against the swaying carriage. 

Outside, a heavy rain pelts the ground and the wooden carriage, as trees dance in the wind. Together, all the noises form a simultaneously calming and unsettling combination of sounds. The effect is unnerving, like the ripping of parchment.

“You shouldn’t be so humble,” the foul dark elf soldier says over the sound of the rocking, roaring wagon. “Your beauty and compassion are known all over Kantor.” 

He’s kind to me but not without purpose. I know what he wants from me. It’s the same thing most elves want from me. 

 “It was nothing you wouldn’t have done for me,” I say matter-of-factly, struggling to lie through my teeth. 

He looks pathetic in the dim, magical light of the moving room, lying helplessly atop a makeshift cabin bed built right into the carriage. 

Internally, I feel like crying. I don’t want to do this, but I don’t have a choice.

You’re too far along now, I think. Turning back now could mean your death! 

I struggle to stand up and find my balance. 

I hand him his canteen as he takes another bite of the bread loaf, grateful that even now he fails to notice the rodan poison spread among the seeds. If he looked through my luggage, he’d find a variety of texts on poisons and dark elf history, all stolen from the club where I lived and worked. 

“Actually, I don’t know that I would have done the same,” he says, with a refreshing bit of honesty. “Does that make me bad?” 

I watch as black specks enter his mouth, and the canteen he drinks slowly weakens him. 

“Not at all,” I lie. 

It has required a good deal of study and diligence, finding the right concoction to bend him to my will while not outright killing him. If I killed him even a moment before now, it would have meant my own head. 

After all, he might be a second-class citizen, but I’m far lower than he is in the social hierarchy. Human women have been killed for much less. 

My eyes shift to the bag and the books contained within it that are slowly slipping out. I know that my brow must be shiny with sweat, and I fight the urge to wipe it away, looking from his eyes back to the bag. Every jostle brings those books closer to thudding onto the wooden floor. 

And then he would know everything. 

“That’s a relief,” he says. “I’m glad to hear you say that.” 

Thankfully, he is a simple elf. He doesn’t question much, and this whole operation has gone off without a hitch. 

I try to calm myself down, reminding myself that I can’t look suspicious. I’ve completed several steps of my plan already. I must keep moving forward. 

I can still see the faint outline of Club Riel behind us as I peer out the back window. A heavy fog punctuates the distance, making that torment seem farther and farther away. Though I know that there is no relief. 

The farther away this carriage gets from Club Riel, the closer I am to a much worse fate. 

“You still haven’t told me much about yourself,” the soldier says. “What’s your story?” 

I remember his name – Januzari. It’s a name I’d rather not dignify. I don’t want to humanize him. 

I smirk. 

“There’s not much to tell.” 

Images flash through my mind like a stage play. At that moment, I’m both sitting in front of the soldier and living through a vivid series of memories. 

“Oh, come now,” he says. “You must have come to me somehow.” 

I remember learning the name of the dark elf who was going to purchase me – Elijayur. It was delivered on an already bleak and terrible day as good news rather than a death sentence. I went up to my room, silent in comparison to the rest of the club, and wept for hours as I recalled his utter brutality.

“I’m going to escape somehow,” I quietly promised myself with a strained voice after hours of crying.

I remember how panicked I felt that they’d find me, as I snuck into Auriel’s room and discovered the guard schedule. 

While I frantically flipped through parchment, looking for any information that might benefit me, the doorknob turned. 

Thinking quickly and spontaneously, I ducked beneath the desk on my hands and knees. But not before I first learned Januzari’s name.

And I remember, in a rare turn of actual good news, when I discovered Januzari, attacked in Club Riel by one of the girls he harassed. While nobody else cared if such a low-ranking ex-convict of a dark elf died, I saw an opportunity.

The room rattles as the carriage rocks over a bump in the road. A loud series of whinnies rattle me from my daydream. 

Outside, the equus are protesting, their coats covered in freezing rain. 

“Tell me, Januzari.” 

He shifts awake, briefly snoring from exhaustion. His name is like poison on my tongue. 

“If you could grant me my freedom, would you?” 

He chuckles somewhat, through fits of rasps and coughing. How he can’t see that he’s in a worse state than when he met me is beyond my comprehension. 

“My dear lady,” he says, clearly not remembering my name. “You are already free! What more do you want?” 

You are already free! 

I smile at the thought. 

As a child, I was paraded in front of dark elves. I was told that when I matured, my main mission in life would be to satisfy them, as a wife or otherwise. I was taught how to please them while keeping my precious virginity intact. 

It was ‘nothing to be upset by.’ In fact, I was told I should be ‘honored’ by what I, as a human woman, was doing for Protheka. 

After all, the chances of a dark elf reproducing with me were much higher than with another female dark elf. Why should I balk at the chance to create more magic for Protheka – to imbue my bloodline with superior genetics? 

I throw up in my mouth a little, and I laugh. 

“I suppose you’re right,” I say. 

He smiles, failing to see that I’m not laughing in agreement but at the absurdity that anything in my life could be considered freedom. My laugh is sarcastic and cynical. 

And he’s just proven, once more, that his life is not worth sparing. 

Maybe it’s time I give him a more lethal dose. 

Behind my back, I grip a vial tightly. I risked everything to procure this, sneaking it through the club and forging alliances with enemies so that people would look the other way. 

The carriage rattles. 

At first, I dismiss it as more road bumps. 

The rattling continues, only intensifying. I realize that something must be terribly wrong.

Looking out the rear window, I see that the trees have grown much denser. 

The equus whinny louder, overpowering the rain.  

But with a savage roar, and what sounds like the slash of a blade into soft flesh, their whinnies are silenced. 

“What’s happening?” Januzari exclaims. He picks up his sword beside the bed. 

I must think fast. 

If I poison Januzari, I could administer a lethal dose, but I’d still need to contend with the driver and the other carriage. 

I look around the cabin, trying to formulate a plan while hiding the poison. 

My eyes glimpse out the back window, and my heart drops. 

Orcs. 

I don’t understand what orcs would want with us, but I realize I have a very small window to flee. If I don’t run now, rather than serving out my life in sexual servitude to an egomaniacal monster, I could simply be dead. 

That’s assuming they don’t use my body first. 

Not bothering to look back at Januzari, I pick up a stray piece of wood, and I begin to heave myself out of the cabin through one of the side doors.

But I am stopped in my tracks. I try to jump down from the wagon, but somebody has my arm. 

“Did you really think I didn’t know?” 

It’s Januzari, but his voice is corrupted and unrecognizable. 

I turn to confront him, and he’s holding one of the books from my bag, an uneaten loaf of bread placed casually beside him. On his face is a sadistic grin, running counter to everything I know about him. 

I try to play dumb. 

“What are you talking about? Where did you get that book?” 

The vial in my other hand slips from my grasp and cracks on the ground, a violet puddle glistening under the falling rain. 

“You didn’t think I was seriously going to hand you off to some rich asshole, did you?” 

He chuckles, this time with a sinister undertone. 

“Elijayur didn’t give two shits when I injured myself in the club,” Januzari says. “He was ready to replace me the moment I died. How is that fair?” 

I let him talk, trying to think of some way out of this. 

“From the moment I met you, I knew that I needed to fuck you,” he says. 

In his monologue, his grasp on me loosens just enough that I can free my arm. 

I drop down from the carriage onto the wet and sloshing mud. 

And I run as fast as I can. Never mind that all my possessions are back on the carriage. I can find new possessions. I can start over. 

I rush through the trees, looking back at the carriage behind me only to see the form of another dark elf in my peripheral vision far too late. 

The thunder roars overhead. In the distance, I see a flash of lightning. 

I collide with the dark elf’s dense body, smacking down onto the hard, wet road. 

“Please,” I beg. “I was supposed to be taken to Elijayur? He’s a noble about a mile that way!” 

I gesture, hoping against all hope that this dark elf might help me for selfish reasons. 

I am completely covered in mud. 

I look behind me to see Januzari approaching with our driver and the other guards. On the ground are several dead orcs. 

“But we must hurry! I don’t have long…” 

I look up at the features of my potential savior and realize that he’s wearing the same wicked grin as the others. 

And I am suddenly surrounded by dark elves. 

I realize how stupid I was to trust them.