49. RIEKA
49
RIEKA
H ate was such a weak word. I hated sugar-coated sweet nuts, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat them if someone offered them to me. Hate was Dislike’s cousin. You know his name, you know his occupation, and you even invite him to soirees because it’s the polite thing to do. Because Hate was a tolerable emotion.
I didn’t hate Rhydian Kanyk.
I loathed him. Viscerally. The ego of the man. He dared to be angry with me for taking the opportunity to free myself.
He made me leave Taren on the platform. No explanation, no chance to say goodbye. Just left him.
Taren had asked me if I trusted them, Filora and the other Runners in Lantern Town. And of course, I said yes. Because they had given me no reason not to trust them.
Rhydian had taken Taren’s acceptance of his situation as cause to then order me back onto the train. And I’d done it. Me.
I’m a fucking idiot.
I’m standing with my dress gripped tightly in my fists, water up to my ankles, The Bathhouse empty save for a very naked Rhydian and myself, and all I could think about was how could he be mad at me when he’d do the exact same thing given the chance.
We were selfish creatures after all.
“Rieka, will you get in the water please!” His tone was flat. Even with his blessing controlling his blood pressure, I could still smell it on him.
“Why did you make Taren stay?”
He waded towards me through the water. “Did you want him to be a prisoner again?”
A growl rose in my throat. Of course, I didn’t want my friend to be a prisoner. I snapped back. “What kind of question is that?”
“One that needed asking apparently.” He scoffed as he pulled the pin from his hair and tossed it to the pool ledge. “Get in the water Rieka, you’re covered in their blood.”
“You have no right to be mad at me!”
“I am not mad,” he pointedly replied when he waded closer.
“Yes you are,” I insisted. “You’re mad I tried to get them to take the collar off,” I replied through gritted teeth.
“I’m not mad about that.”
“Rhydian you reek of anger.”
His scent immediately spiked, his inner voice furious. “Because you used your taint to impersonate a dead god in front of three hundred Kensillans. Do you realise the danger you may have put yourself in!”
My entire body fought the desire to run. Rhydian knew. He’d seen my spectral, and he knew who it was, or he’d guessed—either way Rhydian knew.
My hands fisted in the fabric of my dress, and I marched down the pool steps, fury fuelling me. “I’d do it again if it meant I could save someone I cared about.”
Finally unable to hold his composure he shouted in frustration. “All that is steady, Rieka will you get in the godsdamned water before I drag you in.”
I stared him down. “Make me.”
His eyes darkened. “If you wish it!”
Rhydian moved swiftly, closing the distance between us in three short strides. Still a head taller than me even standing on the lower step, he scooped me up in one single move, flung me over his shoulder and descended back into the bath.
Then as if I weighed absolutely nothing, he threw me into the water.
The weight of my dress weighed me down, the world above me, ripples of blue and brown. In my frustration at being thrown in and unable to move, I pulled the dress off, letting it sink to the bottom of the pool.
I rose from the water ready to unleash my anger on that infuriating man, but my body stilled. Rhydian stood no more than a foot away from me, the former fury which had contorted his face had vanished. His gaze was as intense as his scent. Lust and desire permeated the air between us.
His eyes dropped to my chest, to the undergarment I wore. The one he’d traded his sister for. The fabric clung to me, a second skin of pearlescent silk that felt see-through under his gaze.
My body betrayed me and I slid a hand up his chest, my fingers trespassing onto his tattoo. My voice escaped me in a whisper. “I fucking hate you.”
Beneath the water, his hands clawed at my hips. “I know you do.”
Our lips collided in a fit of wanton destruction. There was barely a breath shared between us as he lifted me up by my ass so I could wrap my legs around him. A trail of desperate kisses made their way down my neck coming to a stop at my breasts.
Rhydian sucked at the flesh so slowly that my entire body trembled at the sensation.
I took his head in my hands, dragging his lips back to mine where he devoured them.
His scent was intoxicating. Raw earth, the scent of power, of strength. It was all-consuming. A landslide. I didn’t care if it buried me.
My back hit something hard and a pained moan rushed from my lips, only to be caught in another of his kisses. I opened my eyes and found we were under the walk bridge, the metal shielding us overhead.
Keeping my legs wrapped around him, I raised a hand to cling to the metal above for support as my back pressed into the pylon. A moment later Rhydian released his hold on me and forced a startled gasp from my lips when he ripped open the silk between my legs, the stitches snapping in time with the seam that tethered my soul to my body, fraying with every breath I took. Then he slid his fingers inside my wet, throbbing pussy, and I didn't recognise the noise that escaped me.
Visceral. And hungry.
He smiled into the kiss as he claimed my lips. By the time his fingers had finished, I was nothing but raw energy. I was dough in his hands.
“Rhydian, I want you inside me,” I begged, drawing another kiss from his lips.
Slowly, he guided his beautiful cock inside me, the length so unbelievably perfect that had I not hated them, I would have thanked the gods for its creation.
Rhydian braced his hands on my hips, and he thrust. Hard and fast, he struck me to my core, whipping away any sense of calm I had clung to. My body hummed under his touch. The nerves roiling under my skin.
I wanted more.
“Don’t stop ,” my inner voice pleaded. So he obliged.
Rhydian’s thrusts quickened their pace, building the ache inside of me until I could barely remember my own name.
Boots colliding with metal sounded above me, and I dared to look up. But he kissed me again. First to distract me, and then to silence my cries of pleasure. Footsteps passed over the bridge and Rhydian timed every thrust in harmony.
He took me further into that state of ecstasy until I could no longer tell where I ended and he began. A name, whispered from soft lips, the sound tickling my cheek.
“Rieka. ”
The dam in me burst, the sensation rippling through my body, igniting every cell, every fibre of my being until I collapsed into Rhydian’s arms, my body no longer mine.
Gods this is bad.
Rhydian Kanyk had unravelled me. Every nerve, every cell, every breath of my being had been utterly and irrevocably undone by this man.
And he could never know.
I shouldn’t have made the cake.
Which was a ridiculous notion since I’d intended to make Rhydian fall in love with me. A goal which I was certain, especially after our tryst in The Bathhouse, I was well on my way to achieving. The cake had simply been a calculated part of my decision.
Only now I found myself wondering if Rhydian liked other pastries. Did he like apples in his cakes, did he like cream on his sweet buns, why, when he hated strawberries, had he eaten the strawberry pie in Keltjar?
I was not that person. I had never been that person. I used men to achieve my goals. I wasn’t proud of it, but it didn’t keep me up at night.
He did.
Thoughts of Rhydian kept me up long into the night that I would watch him sleep just to make sure he wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
The issue was, whilst I didn’t want my feelings to develop further, I needed his to. I needed to spend time with him to learn why he had made the deal to sell me. I needed to learn who the buyer was if I was ever going to escape whatever deal Rhydian had made. And that was only possible by spending time with him. So as much as I didn’t want to, I forced myself to welcome his company.
In the mornings, Rhydian had made a habit of waking up with me and escorting me to The Fight Hall. Like he was some Devout suitor accompanying me to the assembly rooms on my morning promenade. During rounds, he always seemed to be in Lily’s room when Sal did her daily check-up on the pregnancy. And at night, even though I’d met his second condition, we still sparred.
Then after we’d thrown one another across the mat, our bodies aching and sweating from the rigorous exercise. The result was always the same. The two of us in some barely private alcove or vacated washroom, my legs wrapped around his waist, his hands gripping onto me for dear life as he respectfully railed me into oblivion.
Afterward, we would walk back to his office where he would fill his tub and watch me bathe. I would soak and he would sketch. Sometimes passengers, sometimes me, sketches like the ones in his apartment in Lantern Town that we hadn’t talked about yet. And if he felt inclined, I would let him ask me questions. I didn’t always answer them, but he never pressed the issue. It wasn’t until I was drawn for another Hunt that I started to have genuine questions of my own.
It happened a week after the fight pit, Rhydian had insisted on running with me but had been refused by the council, so Mal and Anika had volunteered to accompany me. And the fact it was me and only me that they helped hadn’t gone unnoticed.
When I’d voiced the question to Rhydian, after returning unscathed, he’d informed me that the Runners considered me one of them. But when I’d asked him why the council had refused his leave of the train, he’d said it was because of me.
I pressed further, “Because I’m your wife or another reason?”
His hand had paused then, the charcoal coating his fingers like a Kindling after a burn. He looked up at me from his position on his sofa. “Another reason.”
“Does this reason have anything to do with why you intend to sell me to the buyer?”
“No.”
I didn’t press the issue further. But a week later, the two of us once again in his office, him sketching, me bathing, another question that had been brewing on my mind since Lantern Town sprang from my lips.
“How did you find me that night in the pit?”
It was black ink that coated his hands tonight. They halted their motion once again at my question. “You wish to know if I tracked you?”
I swallowed and leaned against the edge of the tub, my arms resting under my chin. “Did you?”
He had placed down his paper and quill and walked over to his desk. I scented my blood the moment he opened the drawer. When he returned, he walked over to the tub and presented me with the arrowhead from my first Hunt. He didn’t stop me when I took it from his hand. The blood appeared to have crystalised where it coated the blades. Crimson crystal on black steel.
“And have you used it for anything else besides tracking me?” He understood my insinuation. I wanted to know if he had done to my blood what the captain from the garrison had done to his, the memory walking a piece of his blessing that he’d divulged to me since the incident.
Without hesitation, he said, “No.”
I had stared at the arrowhead and contemplated dropping it in the bath, ridding him of the opportunity to learn my past. But instead, I handed it back to him.
Rhydian had taken the action exactly as I’d intended. He thought I trusted him with my life.
I couldn’t have been more obvious where my feelings for him were. Even if I had no intention of admitting them, I expected him to.
But after two weeks of us spending every waking moment together, myself acting like a lovesick woman, I was still without a confession.
And it only exacerbated my own issues.
Rhydian Kanyk had invaded my thoughts, and he would not leave.
During a baking lesson when I was supposed to be focused on measuring the right amount of sugar in a recipe, I found myself reminded of the way his body had felt against mine, how distinct the contours of his stomach were under my fingertips, the shape of his muscles so perfectly defined. That incident had resulted in a sprinkle of sugar becoming syrup.
It was an actual miracle that I was still sane after a month of skirting around the issue of my… feelings. I’d grown so focused on my pursuit of Rhydian that I’d failed to notice the changes in my bunkmates.
Sometime during the month since Lantern Town, the boy from the talent show had started courting Tira. According to Farox, Fray as he was called danced with her all evening and brought her flowers from the nursery the following morning to ask her to court, flowers she promptly ate in delight.
I hadn’t noticed that S’vara wasn’t sleeping in her bunk anymore since I spent most nights on the floor of Rhydian’s office. That net she’d been making, S’vara had strung it across the gap between the two sets of bunks and had been sleeping in there every night. She even started making some for the other passengers. Her trade item she called it.
As it turned out, I was the last person to know that the project Emil had been working on for weeks—with the copper wiring and the steel fan he’d purchased in Lantern Town—had all been components of a pair of wings he’d been constructing. It wasn’t hard to guess who he was building those for.
In all honesty, I shouldn’t have cared. My goal was freedom. My freedom. What happened in the lives of my bunkmates shouldn’t be my concern, Rhydian should be. Yet I found myself craving the time I’d spent with them—eating with Emil and Hentirion in The Mess Hall discussing history, sparring with Saska and learning his knife techniques, walking the trade market with Tira and S’vara. I’d even missed playing drinking games with Farox in The Cantina .
“War makes brothers out of strangers, ” my father used to say. I’d never believed him until now.
So for my own sanity, I decided I would not make Rhydian my focus. Marian 1 st was still months away. My freedom could very well be obtained another way. Perhaps even my bunkmates might hold the key. I may have feelings for the man, but that didn’t mean I had to make my world revolve around him. The next decision I made was entirely for me. I started attending Hentirion’s classes with Tira.
I’d never actually been permitted to attend day school in Deos on account of my family’s status as Military Caste. I’d learned to read and write from the Education Packages the Celestial Offices sent to the Burrough families, and since my mother had been the daughter of two members of the Scholar caste, she’d taught me history. It was because of her that I was able to pick up languages so fast. To actually be able to participate in real school classes had become the highlight of my day. And I wasn’t the only adult in attendance.
Kosha and a few of the council members had started attending, often adding their own piece of historical knowledge to the class at the invitation of their invested teacher.
Saska on occasion attended, to become more fluent in Prean he’d informed me nonchalantly one afternoon. As if one handsome Deogn artist who shared his bed every evening hadn’t been the obvious reason.
But in attending the classes I began to notice a change fall over the train.
Death was a common occurrence here. What wasn’t common was child deaths. The entire train considered children their greatest possession. Regardless of the marks the children all wore on their hands, every child was looked out for, cared for and fed by every single passenger on board. So when one died, it wasn’t just their parents who mourned, it was the entire train. During my last Hunt another child had fallen ill and the day after, their spirit was claimed.
Two more children died since, all with the same symptoms as the twins I’d seen Sal tend to all those weeks ago.
After their deaths, Sal had turned to her medicines and tonics, spending every free moment she had tending to her plants in The Greenhouse and the only person who could call her out of it was still banished from the train.
Sal became so focused on finding a cure that she sent me on all the rounds that didn’t require her attendance. Those visits were the only reason I knew the children had started going missing.
Hentirion had been the first to bring it to my attention. He was an abnormally cheery man by nature, but had grown increasingly frustrated by the parents suddenly taking all their children out of his classes. When he’d finally decided to visit each family one by one to learn why, believing himself the reason for their absences, he found all those children were sick too.
I was intent on checking up on the children during my rounds with Sal after that point. I’d been with her when the other children had been sick, so I already knew what symptoms to look out for. Fatigue, absentmindedness, lack of appetite followed by an inability to wake from sleep, and then eventually death. And all within a timeframe of a week.
But when I visited the families the day after, some of those children were gone. Not dead, gone. Missing. It happened every few days. Hentirion would tell me one of his students hadn’t come to class, I’d check up on the family during rounds with Sal, and then a day or so later, they would be gone, and no one was talking about it.
I kept track. Fifty children had disappeared since my first rounds with Sal. How could fifty children just disappear and no one asked any questions?
The final straw occurred exactly a month after Lantern Town when I learned Ghena hadn’t come to class. I’d rushed to visit her guardian, a woman in her sixties whom she called Biba, and found the seven-year-old had fallen sick. I’d been on my way to Rhydian’s office hoping he would be the one to help me figure this out when I learned of the trial going on in the Council Chambers.
I had to push my way through the council hall just to reach the gallery stairwell. Every balcony of the gallery was full, as though every passenger on the train had arrived to watch.
Finally managing to find a gap on the second-floor balcony, I studied the scene. Tira stood on the edge of the council circle clinging to Farox, tears streaming down her face. Every council member sat in session. Standing in the space at the centre of the table, with his head hung low stood Frey, the young boy who had been courting Tira. Standing beside him with a busted lip was Saska. Anguished twisted knots formed in my stomach as I listened to the councillor’s discussion.
Frey had attacked Saska during a sparing session.
He’d used his taint.
To obtain Saska’s collar.
That was impossible. I’d seen the boy. He wasn’t entirely harmless as a Kindling, and he was one of the Collarless. He’d been training with us every morning to prepare to take his oath to be a Runner when he turned sixteen next month.
My stomach twisted tighter.
Frey was turning sixteen next month. He had attempted to claim Saska’s collar before he was of age. And he’d done it by using his taint on the sparring mat.
I returned my attention to the conversation.
“It is the law,” a familiar voice said. I leaned over the balcony further and caught sight of his blonde head sitting beside his grandfather.
“Then it is settled. For the crime of using your taint in a sparring match and for the attempted claiming of a collar whilst underage, Frey Alcir is hereby banished for life from the Kensillan Territory Rail. He will be given the remainder of his rations and be released from the train at the next station. Never to be welcome aboard again. If one encounters him on a Hunt, he is to be shunned.”
Volnor, the Council Adjudicator stamped down his staff and brought the meeting to a close, after which Tomas, serving as Council Justice took Frey’s arm in his grasp and escorted him from The Council Chambers.
This was crazy. Frey was a child. They couldn’t send him off the train. He’d die out there alone. How could Rhydian advocate for this? Rhydian, the so-called resistance fighter who raided military compounds, and who freed Thralls and stole supplies—how could he condone the death of a teenage boy?
I rushed down to the first level trying to reach Rhydian. I had half a mind to call him a traitor when I saw him, a child abuser even knowing neither of those two things were true. I even opened my mouth to do just that when I noticed he was speaking Seja and trying to hide it.
“All of them. Thirty minutes. Abattoir ,” his gestures said.
The words had been spoken to Jordry and Lera who immediately left the carriage.
Rhydian was jumping the train? Why?
I caught up to Saska on my way from the next carriage and confronted him about the incident. Even in comparison, Saska without the use of his blessing was still one of the most dangerous fighters on the train. Frey had to have lost his mind to attack him. When I said as much, finding his version of events hard to believe considering his skills, he told me to speak to my husband.
Something wasn’t adding up, and I needed to find out what.
I was relieved when I found the bunks empty. I didn’t know what I would say to them if they saw me packing my things. I’d accumulated quite a bit since my arrival, and as I didn’t know where I would be following Rhydian, but was not willing to be caught out like last time, I pulled on anything I could find that hadn’t been sent to the laundry. I tucked Etrina securely into my boot and then headed for the back of the train.
The Pipe Room was as far as I made it before encountering any Runners. I used the cover of the pipes to shield me from their view, but not them from me. Each one passed over the walk bridge, first Mal and Si’mon, then Jordry and Amida, until within the span of three minutes I had seen all 129 Runners on the train cross through the carriage. And accompanying each one was a child. In some cases, more than one, the youngest two newborns bundled in blankets in Eleen and Oric’s arms.
They were the ones taking the children!
My nails dug into the flesh of my palms. It took every conscious thought to not break the skin and reveal myself.
Terrible, horrible thoughts ran through my head at that moment. Thoughts that drifted to rumours I’d heard on the run about ships that kidnapped Blessed children off the coast and sold them to the highest bidder. Rumours that had me avoiding travelling those routes for fear of what I’d do if I ever encountered one of those kidnappers.
I knew Rhydian was capable of selling someone. He’d sold Kris. He was planning on selling me, had sold me already in fact. Even with everything I was feeling for him, the idea that he was capable of selling a child—
My stomach churned violently at the prospect.
Another minute passed and I felt the motion of the train begin to slow down.
It was now or never.
I jumped for the metal of the bridge and swung myself up until I was standing. I crossed over the laundry bridgeway, the passengers below taking no notice of me and ran through The Cells and into The Livestock Car where only half of the enclosures were occupied. I climbed to the second-floor bridgeway and hid just inside the doorway of the next carriage. From here I could see down into The Abattoir where the Runners were huddled around every last child on the train.
Amongst them, in his red jacket was Rhydian, an expression of intense concentration on his face. And wrapped in a heavy coat in his arms was Ghena.
The train came to a crawl but never stopped.
The Runners wasted no time. Within seconds they had pulled the carriage door open and with a child strapped or clinging to their bodies, they jumped from the train with military precision.
Rhydian was the last to depart. The moment he did, I raced after him, bounding off The Abattoir floor and out the door into the cold chill of the morning air.