It was a place to relax and enjoy the peace of the day.
At least, it would have been if not for the woman sitting on the top of a square sculpture made of a red-and-black stone. There were two other men with her, but Caelan kept his eyes locked on the woman as she slowly smiled at him.
She didn’t move from her perch, seeming comfortable. Her form-fitting black pants were tucked into dusty black boots, while her red-and-gold top fit loosely over her slender figure. The wind stirred, blowing her red-streaked black hair about her face. From a distance, he couldn’t tell if her pupils were the thin vertical slits he thought he’d seen in their first brief meeting on the New Rosanthe ship. After so much time, he’d begun to wonder if he’d imagined it.
But those large, luminous eyes watched him now with catlike intensity, as if muscles he couldn’t see were coiled up and she was ready to pounce on him.
“Safa,” one of her companions spoke sharply in a low, warning voice. “The High Aspect said no fighting.”
Safa? Was that her name?
Caelan glanced at the man who spoke to find that he had the same warm, brown skin and captivating eyes. Both men, in fact, were somewhat feline in nature, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was about them that made them that way. Their high cheekbones? The hard slash of their eyebrows? No, it really was their eyes. As the afternoon sun slanted through the park, their pupils narrowed against the brightness. The effect was both haunting and alluring.
Safa’s eyes didn’t move from Caelan’s face, but her smile widened to reveal those pointed canines. “But the High Aspect is not here.”
“And our orders come from the Emperor,” the other man pointed out.
Safa snorted, her nose wrinkling slightly as if she couldn’t care less what Emperor Suen wanted or didn’t want.
“We don’t have to fight. We can just talk,” Caelan countered. He held his hands out to his sides, showing that he wasn’t concealing any weapons.
“Enough time has been wasted on talk,” Safa snarled just a second before launching herself off her perch. She pulled a pair of short swords from her back, clearly aiming to slice Caelan into bite-sized pieces.
He dove to his left, hit and rolled, and came to his feet with his own sword in his hand. Eno roared and barreled toward her two companions, tearing the air with his great sword. As Safa turned in his direction to strike again, Caelan dug deep for the power of the gods locked inside of him. Tula shied away, slipping from his grasp. There was no plant life to call upon in this park, just cold and unyielding rock.
And the minds were beyond his touch as well. Angry, blood-drenched power soaked into the trio, making them utterly unreachable. It was understandable for Safa, but why were her companions immune to him? Unless they were already under the control of the Goddess of the Hunt.
He didn’t have time to contemplate that dilemma as Safa raced to his side, her movements little more than a dark blur edged with silver blades. His heart jumped into his throat as he narrowly blocked an attack with a brittle clang of steel on steel. His teeth rattled in his head and his feet slid a bit across the grit-covered stones.
Safa was definitely stronger than he would have guessed. The woman was tall, maybe a few inches taller than himself, but she was all lithe, slender muscles that she somehow managed to direct into incredible force. Caelan deftly blocked two more slashes before getting in a couple of his own that had her retreating.
“We’ve never had a chance to talk. To discuss what you want with the godstones,” Caelan said between clenched teeth as he dodged a blow that nearly sliced across his midsection.
“What I want?” she repeated as if it were the most asinine question she’d ever heard. “What I want is power.”
“Naturally,” Caelan muttered. Safa overextended, giving Caelan an opening to slam his foot into her knee. Unfortunately, she didn’t crumple like he’d hoped. She dodged the worst of the blow, rolling away from him and popping up to her feet.
The park rang with the sound of grunts and the heavy clang of swords as Eno continued to keep her other companions occupied. But they needed to wrap this up quickly. Eno was outnumbered, and Safa had yet to use the power of the Goddess of the Hunt, which would not be a good thing.
“Oh, I see,” Safa started in a snarky tone as sharp as her blade. “This is where you want me to deliver a ranting diatribe about how all the other gods and goddesses need to pay for what they’ve done to my goddess. That all of Thia needs to bow at the feet of Zyros. Oh, look at that. I did it, while chopping your head off!” She leaped into the air and brought both blades down as she spoke.