Chapter 30 #2
Red blood from my palm blooms, mingling with his, dark under the evening sky, and I stare, caught.
Pain, bright and sharp .
The blade’s tip is embedded in the table, our hands bound together in a macabre union of flesh, silver, and blood, Old and young.
The creature that momentarily inhabited my body jumps ship. My chaotic temper collapses into bleached bones, leaving me to deal with the fallout.
I've made my point. And in making it, begin to unravel.
As our blood mingles, static rips up my arm again. This time it crawls inside, infiltrating my bloodstream. My power rises, avatar purring, feeding off the crackle of energy.
Dazed, I lift my gaze to his.
His expression sharpens, the veil hiding the leviathan in his ancient eyes gone, his air of lethal sensuality unfurling as if the scent of our mingled blood excites him.
I brace myself—then the feeling eases. I've been one second from death before. Disaster.
Something worse.
That, halfling, was foolish.
I almost hear his words in my mind, try to force myself to believe I’m imagining them—maybe I am. Maybe I’m reading them in his eyes. Big eyes. Sapphire eyes that grow and grow until they are big enough I can slip into their slitted pupils, drown in the blackness.
You have no conception of what you offer me.
What. What did I offer.
Much more than your life.
I didn’t mean to.
Intent counts for nothing. I will not refuse the gift. I have never been an ascetic god .
Saliva floods my mouth, mingling with blood as I reflexively bite the inside of my cheek.
All these imaginary voices in my head. I’m supposed to be working on this. My therapist is definitely overpaid.
The therapist, says one of the voices, biting off each word, should be executed.
“Nyawira,” Baba says in quiet Kikuyu, his voice grounding. I think this isn’t the first time he said my name.
Forehead creased, I slowly turn my head to look into his dark, calm eyes, blinking mine clear. “Baba.”
“Tell me something you see.”
“The wine bottle.”
He winces a little. “Tell me something you hear.”
“Renaud. He isn’t breathing.”
“Now,” he says, “tell me something you feel other than the pain.”
Hands. On me. “I want to go home, Baba.”
He is utterly still. “Soon, bébé. Do you think you should apologize to our Prince?”
“Yes, Baba.”
“Stand down,” Renaud says, the command glacial.
The command isn’t for me. He also doesn’t look away. Everything fades except for cruel blue and distant gray.
Why. Why me. Why this. What did I do.
A flicker of movement. I turn my head to meet pale blue eyes too icy to be steel, but too flinty to be soft. The veiled White Guard standing an arm’s length away, blade in hand. They aren’t the threat; I turn back to the Prince.
No one moves in the absolute silence, not even my inscrutable father who stares at the Prince. Renaud's guard is not nearly so copacetic, but merges back into the shadows.
I bite back a cry as the Prince yanks the knife out and puts it right back in its place.
At least I'll die defending my honor, and the dignity of Faronne.
Death?
Wild laughter in my mind. Wild, and dark, and chaotic. An ancient maelstrom.
Death? We cannot die.
The wildness rises, snapping to be let out. To meet the leviathan in him.
Our blood formed a pool beneath our joined hands and a sinuous stream slithers off the side of the table. It’s mostly red; he’s already stopped bleeding. Only my wound still weeps.
Gaze still not leaving my face, the Prince lifts my wet palm and places a soft kiss over the wound, his pupils blown wide, gaze and steel grip holding me trapped as I feel the delicate, almost erotic probe of his tongue.
I make a noise—the tongue dipping into my hole is painful, but to anyone else it would appear he’s offering gentle pardon.
Kissing the boo boo all better.
Pain, obscenity, his complete control over me and the situation tightens those silken strands that wrap me round and round until I’m nothing more than the bound doll dropped at his feet, to be spread for his pleasure.
I count to ten. Over and over. No one else understands what’s happening.
No one will help. I stabbed the Prince of Everenne at a peace banquet after hours of his gracious solicitude and no one will understand it was desperate self- defense, or care.
They don’t see the Dark web he weaves, and I am alone.
Continued defiance, in this moment, will do nothing but seal my deserved death in the Courts’ minds. The stupid rabid halfling.
I don’t curl my fingers and try to pull away. The Prince takes what he wants, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. Yet.
One day.
Not in a month, or a decade. Not in a century.
But one day.
If I truly am immortal like my mother I have time, and nothing but time, stealth, strategy, plus all the power I can muster will defeat the son of two awake and ruling Ancients.
I need to reach my abyss.
We stare in silence, his expectant gaze patient, amused, that indolent spider watching its fly flail.
Shuddering, I prod myself to focus, and lower my head. “Forgive me, my Prince.” I whisper because I want to scream at being forced to say those words. “I am barely Low Fae, and accustomed to companions of like power.” I moisten my bottom lip, pressing my teeth into it. “I reacted.”
The factual truth is the best public plea for mercy I can offer—even though it makes me sound like some vapid trembling sickening fragile mortal—and hope it’s enough.
He knows we understand each other very well and he won’t believe any show of penitence or submission whatsoever, but the proper forms must be upheld.
Renaud’s curving lips are smeared with my blood as he picks up a brilliant white dinner napkin and binds my injury. He ignores his. It healed in minutes. Mine won't .
“My fierce little warrior,” he says, speaking Ninephene accented Everennesse warmed with rich, affectionate amusement.
“I understand you’ve had scant time and interest in pursuing liaisons, either physical or of the heart, outside your limited caste.
I’m not entirely displeased, as I wish you to be my own.
Of course you are frightened; the gulf of power between us is vast and you’re trained to respond without thought to any encroachment.
” He half lids his eyes. “I suppose I did tell you I desire a Consort with talons—perhaps it’s my fault for not being more delicate with so tender a shoot. ”
I don't dare respond to the insult, condescension, and unwanted possessiveness in that little speech despite his outward nonchalance. With those delicate verbal slaps he calls me a stupid sheltered jumpy child, weak and too inexperienced to handle so powerful a male, so he’ll graciously dial it down a notch — and his preference is for as malleable a ball of clay as possible, with no competing lovers waiting in the wings he must bother himself to kill.
I’m too worn down for anger. Right now I just want this to be over.
“Prince Renaud,” Baba says. “The Lady of Faronne is weary.”
The webmaster releases my hand and settles back in his chair, regarding me. “Lady Aerinne, you may be excused.”
I push back my chair and stand, step back and sink into a flawless bow, too numb to tremble. Then rise, meet my father’s inscrutable gaze for a brief moment and turn, leaving the courtyard one foot painstakingly in front of the other.
The gaze on my back spurs my steps.
The wildness keens, and the maelstrom roars.
He’d looked into my eyes, and the night I saw in his is the same I feel in mine. I don’t know if that will make it easier to control me, or harder.