Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

8. RIEKA

8

RIEKA

T he sun kissed my face, the warmth as gentle a caress as my lovers. His fingers trailed down my arm, tickling the skin at the dip in my elbow. Soft lips touched my neck and my fist in the grass groped for a firmer hold as his tongue teased in ecstasy.

His hand gripped my chin and I turned into him, my body moulding into his, made for his.

Sunlit eyes gazed into mine in desperation, a craving for what only we could give one another. A strand of amber had fallen across his brow. I raised my hand to move it, to touch him and make his body ignite for me as mine did for him.

His hand moved from my chin, trailing down the skin of my arm, the sensation torturous, like desperate whispers spoken but the words unheard. His hand slowed at my hip, his caress firm when he reached my ass. Then in one swift move, he gripped my leg and moved it, raising it over him, hooking me upon his body. He slid my dress up, his hand moving deliciously lower, my skin sensitive to his very touch as his fingers found their target, the contact forcing me to bite my lower lip in anticipation.

He teased me. One finger moving in achingly slow motions. I kept my eyes open, relishing in the expression he bore. Excited and wild. I stifled a moan, biting my lip as the power his hand held built within me, a well slowly filling.

“Say you love me,” he whispered in my ear, his voice low.

“I love you,” I said breathlessly. He hastened the collapse of my resolve, his fingers unrelenting in their fervour. I sucked in a breath at the sudden surge building within me.

“Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.”

He kissed me, my words absorbed by his lips, consuming them into himself.

The well inside me threatened to overflow, his hand having finally reached my soul and pulled until all I could feel were his lips on mine and the tether between us pulled taut, threatening to snap taking my sanity with it.

“Say my name.”

“No,” I whimpered back, seeing the fire in his eyes aflame at my being so near to the climax he so hungrily wanted to see on my face.

“Say my name,” he pleaded again.

“No.” I smiled, relishing in retaining what little power I had left, forcing him to take me higher, to move his hand slower once again. I was not ready. It wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wouldn’t say his name.

I heard a snap. A branch breaking. Anger. The smell of anger.

I sat up, alert.

A black wolf stood ten feet away in the long grass. Her fiery golden eyes locked on mine.

She took a step towards the picnic basket in the grass between us.

He called my name.

I twisted to face him.

His starlit eyes were wide. His mouth moved, my name on his tongue.

Blood poured.

Crimson.

My name, death on his lips.

There were flashes of steely blue on the bunk wall, ridged tendrils of the moonlit world outside the curtained window, taunting me in this prison. The scent of sweat coated the room in a thick blanket of lust as couples fucked in their bunks, their moans the mumblings of insects in this field of steel burrows. Bright-lights hung from the ceiling as makeshift chandeliers, the motion of the train swaying them, causing shadows to play on the walls in darkened tales of dreams unfulfilled, dreams imprisoned beneath silver collars.

Tira’s soft snores informed me I had not woken her when I startled awake from my dream, from the recurring nightmare that never changed. She shifted on her bunk, nuzzling her head into S’vara’s shoulder like Tiny did to warm his nose in the night.

Like Tiny used to do.

He’d been gone a day, perhaps more and my head felt empty without him, my sight lonely without his spectrals.

I couldn’t recall a day where I had been without him. And now there was one achingly long day.

From his position on the floor as night watch I found Emil staring at me, a ray of moonlight cast across his eyes like a blindfold, a ghostly echo of the one hanging between his pressed fingertips. He noticed my gaze upon it—his Pesai—the symbol of devotion to the ones I no longer served.

“I can’t seem to be rid of it.” Emil lifted the sheer blue eyeshield, the colour indicating his position as an Artisan, running it through his fingers. The sight of the item that my people used to emulate our masked gods made my stomach turn.

I said nothing in reply.

“I know they’ve abandoned me, but somehow, I can’t part from it. As though it were a tether to them and I’ve no way to cut it.” His gaze returned. “How did you do it?”

It did not surprise me Emil knew I was a fellow countryman. My former vocation made it impossible for my face not to be recognised, at least by some. But perhaps his shame, the scent palpable in this confined space, had given him enough sense of propriety not to pry into why I was no longer employed in it.

And since I did not possess a pesai any longer, the eyeshield that if not upon my face, was expected to be visible on my person, he had assumed I had relieved myself of it.

My reply was as cold as it was honest.

“I burned it.”

Three days.

Three days of living on this godsforsaken train.

Three since Bennic had been murdered. For his collar was the only explanation I’d managed to ascertain from our fellow passengers as they’d gossiped amongst themselves.

Three days since we learned the train never stopped and three days since I had eaten anything. I had slept on occasion, but only when one of the others was on watch. Emil had suggested it when Tira had refused to go to sleep after Bennic’s murder. He and Farox had first night watch, S’vara and I took the second night, whilst Hentirion had volunteered for the third. Saska had agreed simply because we refused to let Tira do it. She’d been too afraid to leave the bunk that first day, so none of us did either.

We’d spent it talking, an attempt to get to know one another since we appeared to not be capable of doing anything else. We spoke of where we came from, and how we came to be here. Tira’s island was raided; Hentirion was kidnapped on the road on a research expedition for The Great Library where he was employed as a scholar's assistant; Emil was banished and sold for breaking Deogn laws though he never said which one; and S’vara, who claimed to be a merchant woman from the largest port city in the Shadow Sea said, her ship was stolen and she was sold. Farox who seemed oddly amused by his own words had claimed to have pissed off the wrong guard at a bar who happened to be a Kensillan soldier who’d crossed the border secretly and cornered him in an alley with five others. Saska was the only one whose arrival details were kept short. Betrayal was the word he had used. The Pazgari didn’t elaborate any further.

When it was my turn, I contemplated lying. But there was no point, too many details to make up and keep track of so I told them of my desire to work in a bakery in Prea, of choosing to venture there through The Hetra, of my employment with the inn, and how the day I was to leave, my friends were kidnapped by Kensillan slavers and I’d been captured in my attempt to save them.

“Brave,” Farox had said, equating my actions with the folkloric shield maidens of Torvian myth. A tale his three younger sisters regularly requested. I called it naivety.

How else could I explain my situation? I thought myself smart enough to take on slave traffickers, and now I was stuck in a box. Why didn’t they just kill us and be done with it?

We spoke well into the night, not one of us inclined to dwell on the memory of witnessing Bennic’s death, and not quite prepared to tempt anyone else into taking our collar. The topic of the collarless passengers only broached once to see what our theories were. None were positive.

“Trauma bonding,” my father called it. Guards stationed on the Mesali Coast would often return to the Capital Garrison, unable to form attachments with anyone other than the guards who fought alongside them against the Pirate Queen’s armada. “ An emotional connection formed over a shared traumatic experience.”

I honestly just didn’t feel like getting out of bed. And if I had to continue talking to these strangers to achieve that, I would. Though the extent of what I shared of my life—well, only I knew what line of honesty I was willing to cross. I never outright lied to them. I just omitted details.

Since none of us felt inclined to eat elsewhere, Hentirion had volunteered to see if he could bring the meals back to the bunks but he had returned empty-handed, regurgitating some rule about rat prevention in the sleepers. I’d found Engar’s smoked meat still in my coat that first morning, so I shared it with them over the next few days.

During my watch the second night, the real rat prevention system made itself known. Cats. Lots of stray cats that wandered about the train at night. A large tabby, female by her smell, meandered into the alcove of our bunks, and made herself comfortable on Tira’s bed, causing S’vara to startle awake and volunteer early for our watch. She wasn’t fond of cats it seemed.

I didn’t sleep during her watch though. I couldn’t. Ever since Tiny—

But my waking thoughts were no better. Images of Taren and his wings seemed to taint the nightly shadows, Kris and her smoke pipe, and the pouch it was likely I would now never get to give her. I promised Taren I would find and rescue him but how was that even possible now? I’d dug myself a deep grave and willingly crawled into it.

S’vara having detected I wasn’t sleeping chose to amuse herself out loud with theories as to why we were aboard the train and not on land.

“Why do you think they threw us on the other train before this one?”

I had my theories. Sadism, perversion, entertainment, hate, sport. Each one was worse than the next, too unbearable to contemplate—because of hope. Because if Taren and Kris weren’t here, then there was only one other possibility. I’d seen Taren shackled and thrown on another train. For all I knew he had been thrown on the death train before me, and since he wasn’t here—The thought made tears well in my eyes and I rolled over in my bunk.

I kept my theories to myself because voicing them meant putting those thoughts out into the world. Tempting fate to prove me right. And oh, how I wanted to be wrong.

S’vara took over the watch and sat the rest of the night on a blanket on the floor of the alcove, tying knots into a piece of rope she had around her waist.

This morning, the third day aboard the train, Saska announced he was going to breakfast. Insisting that if he was to go on watch tonight, he was going to do it on a full stomach. I’d volunteered to stay with Tira, however my efforts to remain in bed were crushed when she asked if she could join him.

“No offence Rieka,” she said sweetly, finally able to meet my eyes. “But I’m a little tired of eating smoked meat.”

With Tira leaving, and everyone else willing to accompany her, I no longer had an excuse to stay behind.

I distracted myself with their conversations on the walk to the mess. Somehow our group was carrying on two discussions at once. The first one led by Hentirion was regarding the fact the train had slowed down for a short period before sunrise and he and Emil were theorising why. The other was about Lantern Town, the village built into a cliff face we’d heard other passengers in our sleeper discussing late last night. A mountain village that the train visited for three days annually, a place the passengers were excited about. Which I found intriguing given our circumstances. Another sadistic game by our wardens no doubt.

We reached the Mess Hall during what looked like peak meal hour. All three of the long tables that stretched the length of the carriage were full. We were lucky enough to find a space on the far left table big enough to accommodate all seven of us, our arrival garnering remarks and looks from the passengers already seated. No one made an effort to converse with us, which was fine by me. We took turns going to the serving trolley in pairs. On the way back to the table, my mind enticed by the prospect of eating fried eggs and wondering how they even got the poultry onto the train if it never stopped, I caught the scent of fresh pine.

And damp soil.

Then I heard a laugh and frantically gazed around at the tables.

A flash of red caught my eye.

Sitting on the far-right table, conversing with a woman with hair the colour of mulled wine sat the Bloodhound.

“YOU!”

He looked across the room, his eyes locking on mine, and I saw red.

The red on my hands. The red beneath my nails. The red on the snow. The red on Tiny’s fur.

The red of his coat.

I ran at him, plates shattering on the floor, breaking beneath my feet as I jumped over the table separating us and onto his, launching myself at him. We crashed into the floor, my body pinning him to the ground, my hands gripping the leather of his coat as I tried to contain my fury.

“Well hello there darlin’,” Rhydian said, his tone annoyingly calm and smooth. It made my blood boil.

“WHERE IS KRIS?!”

A single brow raised.

“Far from here.”

The edge of my vision began to darken, my grip slackening on his jacket.

“Someone get her off him!” a husky female voice demanded.

“No she’s fine, Eleen,” he said, a cocky self-assured smile emerging on his face.

“You know her, Rhydian?” Confusion was evident in the brunette’s voice. My knees suddenly gave out, the muscles finally failing me after days without sleep. I fell, crashing into his chest.

“She’s my wife.”

A muffled sort of laugh escaped me at his words . “We fucked one time and suddenly I’m your wife! A Bloodhound and a lair.”

As my vision finally faded to black, the last thing I remembered was his face. His gods’ blessed face. With his perfectly sculpted nose and his perfectly shaped lips and his eyes that were just the right shade of eggshell blue and how I wanted to rip them right out of his pretty head.