Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

15. RIEKA

15

RIEKA

T he work rotation had S’vara on Bathhouse duty for the next week. So obviously I swapped my laundry shifts with her. Not because of what Farox had said, but because Eleen was the shift supervisor, and what better way to learn what kind of woman Rhydian liked than observing the woman who used to share his bed.

It wasn’t entirely surprising she was his former lover. Rhydian did have a way of making you want to punch his gorgeous face in. And Eleen struck me as the type of woman who took what she wanted and didn’t give a fuck who she pissed off doing it. Not the type of woman I wanted standing between me and the man who could offer me my freedom, or at least a semblance of freedom that I would find in this place. I still had to work out how to escape this train, but that was tomorrow’s problem. Today I needed to learn about my competition.

I hated that word, but I wasn’t naive enough to think women didn’t fight over men. I’d done it plenty of times, circumstances notwithstanding to know some women fight nasty for the men they want. Love didn’t even have to be a factor. There were two kinds of women in these fights. Those who love the man and those who love what he represented. I just needed to know which one Eleen was.

She didn’t look pleased to see me when I turned up in the bathing carriage upon the ninth hour. Rhydian excused all the collared passengers from the work roster thirty minutes earlier, including herself, so when I arrived she assumed it was because I was lost.

“Reporting for duty,” I’d said with a smile, to which Eleen simply mumbled a word to herself in her native tongue, wrote something down on the notebook she held and instructed me to join the woman at the back of the carriage.

Every time someone mentioned The Bathhouse, my mind would automatically wander to those back home. Private rooms with moulded ceilings and the most exquisite tiled floors, inground baths that smelled of herbs and scented oils. Kindlings who carried hot basins of water between partitions to refill your bath when it started to cool.

One giant inground pool that was a third of the size of the carriage was not what I’d expected.

I’d passed through this carriage once on the day of my arrival and I hadn’t been back since.

The footbridge I remembered crossing was a direct path over the water towards the carriage exit, the wet timber beams a perfect match for the flooring of the rest of the carriage. Not dissimilar to the steam rooms in the Spa Houses of the upper district in Aronbok where the Celestial Guards were known to frequent.

I passed a young woman bathing, a child no older than three sitting on her lap. In her hand was a wooden jug, the purified water—it had a distinct smell—pouring from the spout over her giggling collarless child. As I walked the bridge, I passed three more young parents with collarless children in their arms.

My stomach churned with the memory of Ghena’s words. I tried to refocus. On the Organically-made wooden pouring jugs that lined the edge of the bath, and the bristled wooden brushes that hung from racks on the timber-covered walls.

The woman Eleen had directed me to stood at the rear of the carriage pushing a giant trolley, humming to herself, her wings rippling down her back like a white cloak as she swayed. She turned when she heard my approach, and I instantly recognised her. The teacher from Ghena’s class.

She smiled when she saw me. “All Steady?”

Since every passenger we’d encountered after we’d arrived had greeted us with the phrase, I’d finally asked Hentirion for the translation before the party last night. It felt impolite not knowing what the phrase meant since I’d receive many crossed brows when I hadn’t reposed.

“Steady,” I replied.

The teacher cocked her head slightly as she surveyed me through dark almond eyes. Freckles danced across the bridge of her nose as her eyes widened in recognition. “You’re Rieka, Rhydian’s wife.” As she spoke, her wings shifted out behind her, stretching wide as though she hadn’t moved them in hours. I’d never heard of an Echo possessing white wings before.

“And you’re the teacher from this morning,” I replied.

“Oh, I’m one of many teachers. We take turns. I’m Anika.” She looked me up and down and smiled as her inner voice said, “I can see why Eleen isn’t fond of you.”

It was such a matter-of-fact statement, like whatever she saw in me had confirmed whatever Eleen had said.

“Come on then.” The Echo moved away from the trolly, inviting me forward. My nose picked up the contents before my eyes did, and they instantly watered. Wet, stagnant, used towels filled the basket. I waited a moment for the scent to settle, and removed my gloves to ensure they did not absorb any speck of that scent before I took hold of the frame.

“It’s rough, right? All those taints mixed together. Body soup I call it.” Such a casual turn of phrase.

“It’s definitely not normal.” It was a repellent smell, all those scents, natural, taints…body fluids. It wasn’t an uncommon smell considering the amount of Blessed around, but my nose was uncommonly sensitive. Come to think of it, why was she still standing next to me?

“You’re an Echo though, aren’t your noses hypersensitive?”

She should be puking right about now. Every Echo I’d ever met couldn’t stand being in my vicinity.

At least two feet shorter than me, she looked up at me and twitched her nose. Within seconds her nostrils appeared blocked by some kind of membranous seal. “Never met an Echo like me before have you?” she replied, her tone delighted.

I simply smiled and turned my attention to the trolley where I took note of the number of towels in the basket and those that still littered the floor along the edges of the bath. “Do we have to collect all those?”

“You sure do. Morning shift, that’s you, has the wonderful job of retrieving all the night towels for laundry pick up. After that you wash out the showers, scrub down the floors, rehang all the brushes—” She continued with the verbal list of chores I was to perform until the twelfth-hour meal when I would be free for the rest of the day.

I couldn’t help but stare after Anika when she left. As she walked across the footbridge, the bone tips of her wings trailing through the water in a leisurely fashion, Anika passed beneath the skylight. When the morning light hit her wings, the white leather shimmered like diamonds.

I most assuredly had never met an Echo like her.

My investigation into Eleen was less than productive. She spent the better part of an hour travelling in and out of a room at the front of the carriage. Whenever she came out she would walk over to the edge of the pool and dip her hand in the bath then make a note in the parchment notebook in her hand. And every time she removed her hand from the water, it would rise in small tendrils as though desperate to remain with her.

Eleen was a Current. A water-wielder. Which made sense. She smelled very distinctly of the ocean.

I finally managed to sneak a look in the room and only found a series of large machines that I could not fathom their purpose.

In the end, the work was more stimulating than watching Eleen. Dozens of passengers came and went over the next two hours, pulling fresh towels from the cabinets built into the walls and then distributing them onto the floors when they were done. Left for me to collect and add to the body soup trolley. And after each group left, I’d mop the floors. There were some rules of courtesy though. Like rinsing off after fight training in the showers before soaking in the pool for an hour.

I’d just finished mopping after the last passengers left when a group of Runners did just that.

They arrived at the eleventh hour. Sweat clung to them, it glistened on their flushed skin like silver powder. The clothes they wore barely covered their toned bodies and no sooner had they entered the carriage, were those items distributed to the floor outside the shower room.

Amongst them was one particular person whose scent made my body do involuntary things.

A few minutes later the group emerged from the shower room, completely naked.

A tall curly-haired brunette man exited first, the same man who claimed Runners chose to stay on the train to help their families. From beside him, a petite purple-haired Sylph rose into the air, her dragonfly wings flittering as she flew over to the far wall to retrieve a set of jugs and brushes. They were accompanied by a young man and woman who looked so alike that they had to be twins. They shared the same golden-tanned skin, black hair, and bored expressions.

Mal, the green-eyed Bear-Blessed Brute who’d defeated Eleen exited next, hand-in-hand with the most exquisite Talon I’d ever seen. Skin the colour of kharee, and possessing the most breathtaking pair of rainbow feathered wings. The smallest of the group was a dainty blonde girl who looked about my age and who had the distinct charcoal scent of a Kindling. She was engrossed in a conversation with my "husband." I tried to focus my hearing, but she gestured, much to my dismay, in the one language I did not know. Whatever had been spoken between them though, pleased her, because she began jumping up and down, gripping Rhydian’s arm. Her enthusiasm led to her grabbing the purple-haired woman’s arm and dragging her into the pool, casually followed by the rest of the group.

I wasn’t so far removed from the world that I couldn’t admire the fine-tuning each one had done to their bodies. Thick muscles, lean muscles, each one giving the appearance they had been crafted by the gods for the purpose of combat.

It was difficult to hide the flush in my cheeks. I’d never seen this many people naked as I had seen this morning. And since my memory of that night in Keltjar was so badly fragmented, it was also the first time I was seeing him naked .

Deogns weren’t conservative in their fashion. Our summer robes revealed enough of a person to be able to admire one’s physique, but I’d only ever been permitted to see a man’s body when I visited Papa at the cadet training grounds. Of course I’d seen male bodies since, but my circumstances didn’t exactly allow me to be picky. Yet somehow the gods, the Eldertides, whoever it was that now influenced my life, had placed the most perfect specimen of a man in my path. The rest of him was as sublime as his ass.

What was I thinking kicking that man out of my bed at sunrise?

I may hate him, but damn if he wasn’t attractive. Large taut muscles, thick arms, ladder abdominals and those clean-cut angles just above the band of his trousers.

Wish I remembered sleeping with him now.

No sooner had I consciously pried myself from admiring Rhydian in all his glory—for research purposes obviously—had Eleen found herself in the group’s vicinity.

She was as attentive to Rhydian as one would expect a lover to be, an ex-lover not so much. The entire group had this odd way about them. Casual bravado mixed with nonchalant weariness. Not a single one of them went any further from the edge of the water than a few feet. It was as though they expected to have to jump out and fight someone with their bare hands. Even Eleen’s body language changed around them. Mimicked theirs.

Perhaps attacks were not a rare occurrence.

Rhydian’s companions were the first to notice my drawn attention. The curly-haired man must have said something to him, the two holding a conversation before his attention had diverted to myself at the rear end of the bath. He began to saunter his way through the water, and right before he reached the ledge, the bastard submerged himself beneath the surface before climbing out.

The fucking nerve of the man.

The water cascaded down his body in glistening trails, the muscles in his arms constricting as he combed his wet hair back with his hands. Utterly on purpose, as though he expected a reaction out of me. As if he wanted one.

Amateur .

Naked as the day he was born, presenting me with the perfect view of what the gods had endowed him with—one of their best works if I was being honest—Rhydian strolled over to the trolley. “Last I checked, rotation had you on laundry duty?”

Entirely aware of the eyes that were on us, I relaxed into his presence in total opposition to the desire of the predator within me. “Checking up on me already?”

“Lack of trust in your wife isn’t a good look,” I said to him silently. “Whatever would your friends think?”

I forced another expression onto my face, one that I had no doubt would be interpreted as my being happy to see the Bloodhound. I casually trailed my hand to his forearm, “You missed me, didn’t you?” The enamoured tone with which I spoke was sickening. It didn’t faze him, unfortunately.

“Oh we’re playing that game now, are we?” His inner voice was amused. “Well if you’ll permit me, wife, a display of affection is in order.”

His hand wrapped around my waist and he pulled me, causing my body to collide with his.

My response was not my own, instinct born of blood kicked in and made my body rigid.

The scent of fear, sweet to the apex predator inside me filled my senses. But it was not my own. Rhydian’s ocean-blue eyes had grown round with caution, a question imperceptibly appearing within them.

No. I will not let this man think I fear him.

So I kissed him because it meant nothing to me.

His body settled into mine like butter, moulded into it like dough as his hands pressed into the curve of my back, my own reaching into his damp hair to hold him in place. If Rhydian was intent on having an audience, I was going to make it worthwhile.

His hands never moved from my back, but I let mine roam. The hand that wasn’t caught up in his hair, perused the muscles of his back where I let it linger just above where I had seen those dimples below his spine. For a split second, his scent changed, a spike of earnest desire and I smiled into the kiss.

As much as I would have liked to insult the man for his technique, I couldn’t. His mouth was delicious. Which was as infuriating as it was pleasing. But at least this aspect of my plan would be pleasurable.

“Enjoying yourself?” his voice cut in.

“Not as much as you it seems.” I could feel his erection pressing into my stomach. I moved my hips in an effort to rub against it.

“Natural reflex.” He altered the pattern of the kiss by sticking his tongue in my mouth. Compliance was mandatory at this stage of commitment. As one former lover had called it, I proceeded with the dance of tongues.

“Punishing Eleen for annihilating you in the ring won’t do you any favours if she’s part of your plan to endear yourself to me.”

“Whatever made you think I wanted to punish Eleen for the fight?”

“What exactly is it that you’re doing here then, if not annoying her with your presence?” He deepened the kiss enough that I was forced to catch my breath, so in retaliation, I slid my hand down to the flesh of his bare ass and squeezed.

“Scoping out the competition, of course.”

“Didn’t I make that clear last night? I’ve never given my heart to anyone,” his inner voice purred.

That made things easier for me then.

Taking my time, I withdrew my lips from his. I was shamelessly slow, keeping his lower lip between my teeth just long enough to catch that scent once again change to earnest desire, and then I released it.

“Then I’m done here.”

I heard the liquid ripple before he did, pulling away just in time to see Rhydian get saturated by the small wave that left the pool of its own volition.

I tried to hide my smile as Rhydian frustratingly combed his blond hair from his face once again. He turned to Eleen, seeking an explanation. The woman barely shrugged her shoulders. “Slip of the hand. Honestly.”

“Come on Rhydian. Let your wife work,” that curly-haired brunette male shouted from across the carriage, the purple-haired Slyph draped over him like he was her personal chaise.

That Talon with the rainbow wings smirked. “You wouldn’t want the others to think she’s getting special treatment, would you?”

“She is getting special treatment,” the purple-haired Slyph said bluntly, and not at all under her breath. Judging by the smile of approval she sent my way, she appeared to have enjoyed the entire display.

With a curt smile to Eleen, Rhydian returned his attention to me and after a split-second moment of hesitation he took my hand. From beneath long lashes, he gazed up at me as he brought my hand to his lips. Softly and slowly, he kissed the rises of my knuckles. The time it took from one knuckle to the next felt intentionally long.

“Don’t forget about our one-on-one training later,” he said when he finally pulled away. The fact my hand was still held in his was likely another conscious move on his part. As was the choice to speak it aloud. So it would be heard.

“You were serious about that?”

“Deathly serious. Think of it as condition number two. Revocable upon you being able to defend yourself against Eleen in a hand-to-hand fight.”

“Now who is punishing who, Rhydian?”

“How could I forget,” I said aloud, forcing a smile onto my face. “When did you say it was again?”

He gave my hand another kiss, a chaste one. “Tonight, on the twenty-second hour.” The smile he departed with was positively self-aware.

Bastard!

Of course he planned for our one-on-one classes to be at night. What better way to avoid sleeping with me than by making sure I’d be too tired to even attempt anything. I’d mistaken my competition.

I should have been looking at the slave trader in the red leather jacket instead.