10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
B eyond the doors was an entire world of its own. We entered a sitting room of sorts that split the space down the center. On the far wall was another massive stained-glass window. A lavish rug bisected the space, keeping the chill of the bare stone floors off the feet of anyone who had the pleasure of curling up in one of the brocade-covered sofas and settees. On either side of the room was another enormous door carved as lavishly as the one The Raven was quietly shutting behind me.
We were alone save for a massive shaggy dog lying in a pool of brilliant cobalt light piercing the window. The kin’tha made a sound I could only interpret as disappointment and, with a swish of its tail, found a spot next to the dog.
“So . . . definitely not a cat,” I whispered in the unnatural stillness of the room.
The Raven lofted a brow and looked between me and the animal. “You don’t know what your own pet is capable of?”
“Is that really the best conversation to have right now? It’s not my pet.”
Exasperation leaked into his face and spilled out of his expressive forest-green eyes.
“Fine. To your right is the King’s quarters. To your left is the corridor to the rest of his apartments. When you come in, you are to sit on the pillow and wait for him. No matter what you do, you are never to leave that pillow unless he commands it.”
I frowned. “Cute. A human-sized pet bed. What a gem you ha—”
My lips finished the sentence, but my voice cut off like a pair of scissors had reached down and snipped it in two. Panic gripped me at the foreign feeling of heat building in my throat as I tried to force sound from my mouth.
“I see the tongue lock has become far more effective at muzzling my new dog.”
The King’s voice poured into the empty space left by my sentence as he swept into the room.
He was dressed in far more relaxed attire. A simple pair of leather breeches clung to his body, tucked into boots that looked expensive. His chest was bare, glistening with a soft sheen of sweat clinging to the small patch of hair dusting his sternum. Pink scratch marks adorned that bare chest, his shoulders, and peaked over to disappear down his back.
He barely spared me a glance, a single twitch of his eye, before he clapped The Raven on the back. “You’ve done well, Raven. I didn’t expect a gift from you. Tell me how you found my new gem. I’m eager to hear how you pried her from Rictus’s hands.”
The King snapped his fingers and pointed to the giant pillow resting next to a wingback chair. I wanted to snarl and scream at him that if he wanted an ass on a pillow, he’d put himself there before I would, but without my voice, all I could do was make baleful glares at him.
The Raven’s scabbard slapped me on the ass as he passed me, then joined the King as they sat. I pressed my thumb into the hidden wound and followed directions, sitting, with my legs crossed at the ankle beneath me. It wasn’t the most ladylike position, knees splayed under my rich green gown, but it was the only true form of rebellion I was afforded at this moment. So what if I wasn’t the picture of ladylike, demure submission? I’d rather be running the King through with The Raven’s sword than sitting on a pillow next to him.
Indignation rippled through me as, absentmindedly, the King reached out to stroke my braided hair. I wanted to bark viciously at him .
“That foul creature he calls an assistant sent a wisp to me. Said that he had something I’d like to see and to bring as much magic and sentiment as I could carry.” The Raven shifted in his seat, adjusting his sword to rest on his calf as he watched his friend pet me. “It’s been years since he sent me even a hint of a sale going on.”
“The last time was when he thought he had your aunt, right?” The King asked mildly, but I felt the twisting of the barb as much as The Raven did.
To his credit, he didn’t rise to the bait and merely nodded and grunted.
Satisfied with the twist being received and settled on, he turned his attention to me, fingers weaving into the hair at my scalp as he twisted my head up to look at me. “And you thought of me when you purchased her?”
“She was the finest work I’d ever seen in the Night Market. Even Harrower hasn’t put out work this good since the war.”
The Raven’s eyes connected with mine, and I felt like he thought that might be a compliment.
“It was a shame that we had to kill off all the good slavers. I miss the days when the courts were spilling over with the proper grandeur of the daora of old. Rictus and Harrower are the only two left with the eye. Harrower’s work has always been of better quality than Rictus’s, of course, but he’d always been an artist. This, though, if the Grand Market Balls were still taking place, she’d surely be the pride of his ship.” His soft thumb dug into my scalp. “Perhaps we should bring them back. What do you think, my Raven? Do you think we could get Harrower and Rictus to put out more meat like this one if we brought back the ball?”
The Raven grunted again. “Doubtful. The newer Darrigs have no imagination. They just follow the trends of whatever court they plan on selling the daora to. All—what do the humans call it?—base models? No creativity at all. You’d waste all that magic and all that power to grant them leave to compete against each other. The others would be no true competition, especially if Rictus is going to be putting out work like this. ”
“Perhaps a royal commission, then? I’ve been meaning to get around to building my own stable, you know.”
“I do. But you’ve made good enough sport of the daora at the palace.”
Being talked about like I was nothing more than a new designer lamp made my fingers flex and crave to wrap around their throats and keep squeezing until they both shuddered their last breath.
The King leaned down and took a deep breath from my hair, scenting me like the dog he was treating me as. “What do you think, Cricket? Should we get Rictus to craft us an entire herd of you? Or will you be sport enough for me?”
I glared at him, not even bothering to try to mouth the words boiling in my blood.
“Good girl. Didn’t even try to speak. I think the bitch can be taught.” He laughed long and deep at his own joke, but behind him, the thunderstorm of The Raven’s patience was growing dark and brooding. His grip tightened as he laughed, and he was dragging me between his knees, off the pillow, and in front of him before the laughter petered off. “How long was she with Rictus?”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t have been long. The tongue lock was still settling into place when I bought her. Not long enough for it to seep into the bone but long enough for him to set it.”
“So, less than a few days. His kind never did learn how to set them right, always a little fritzy at the beginning there.” His attention pulled away from The Raven and focused on me wholly.
The Raven was intense, someone who could make even the most hardened person watery in the knees.
The King was as intense but in a completely different way. His gaze did not draw the air from my lungs, toy with it, then slide it back into the deprived flesh to shoot electricity through me. His gaze was a fist around my throat, squeezing until the pressure built behind my eyes and the primal side of my brain took over and fought with futile thrashes. The King was the lion toying with the lamb out of boredom, uncaring to how each swipe of his massive paws drew more blood to splatter across snow-white fleece .
His thumb caressed my jaw, his eyes traveling the manufactured planes of my face as if both annoyed by their perfection but also trying to find the seam of expert tailoring. “Do you wish to please your King?”
His breath gusted over me, and that fist moved from my throat to my stomach. I wanted anything but that. I wanted to ram a blade through his heart and make love to the jet of blood.
My eyes darted pleadingly toward The Raven and saw a blank wall erected in the window of his forest gaze as his jaw ticked, and he eased into the wingback chair in quiet repose.
“Answer the King, Cricket.”
The razor of his voice cut through the tension and sliced it into a more deadly thing.
Rage, hot and visceral, pumped through my blood. I imagined a volcano seated in my core erupting through me and burning away all sense of self-preservation. The silent prayer for help I had sent out to The Raven had been thrown back in my face, the reminder of my position within this place branding itself into the fabric of my psyche. The fantasy that he had watched me with interest and desire at the campfire, that he had toyed with me at court in some misplaced flirtation, and that, in the baths was a moment where he cared, went up like cheap tissue paper in a house fire. It had been just that, a fantasy, a lie I told myself trying to get through this. He had never cared. I was just another daoire he had bought who would serve at their feet.
I could take control of this situation, though. I could dictate the way this went. Men were and would always be stupid when the idea of getting their dicks wet came into the equation. The Ard Rí and The Raven might be Fae, but they were both men, and I could and would use that against them.
Sonny Rule #5: Lying is only bad if the person you’re lying to is a good person. A lie for self-preservation? Putting on an act for self-preservation? In the catechism of the lost, was there anything more holy ?
I let the wrath that sizzled in the marrow of my bones slide from my face, and that little voice that anyone who had worked more than three seconds in retail had mastered took over. I let it stretch over me, just like pulling on a Halloween costume.
When his grip tightened in my hair, I imagined that it was a vibrator buzzing away at my clit and let my face contort in pleasure. The fingers loosened, and I looked up at him from between his knees with the one look every man knew, the look of a cock-hungry woman on a mission to get fed.
Tentatively, I let my hands dance up his knees as if asking permission to touch him. A stupid grin of victory spread across the King’s fallen angel features, and he let his back fall against the expensive brocade of the chair as he pat his thigh, beckoning me upward.
The Raven shifted behind me. I felt the tip of his boot rest against my shin as I knelt between his friend’s knees. Whether he was asking to participate or looking to be connected to the moment in some way, it didn’t matter. I shifted his toe away from me with a flick of my leg carefully executed to make it look like I was getting more comfortable.
I was not letting the King into my body. It didn’t matter that the tight channel that he would be fucking was one Rictus had crafted for his pleasure. It didn’t matter that I had already been violated by someone else before he even had the opportunity to break that piece off me and grind it into dust. I was in control here. I was going to dictate how this went. And if I was in control of this moment, I could fool myself into not feeling this one thing I had spent my entire life up until Rictus, dodging like I was back in a middle school gym at PE.
My fingers spidered up his leather-covered thighs, walking a distinct path toward the intricate multithreaded length of braid lacing up the front of the breeches. I let my eyes stay locked on his, letting them whisper all the hot things I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to even if I could. I let them do all the talking and all the weaving of the lies I was going to wrap around his throat and pull tight.
Fingers wrapped around the laces and pulled slowly, letting each millimeter drag out. I wanted him aching for me by the time I took hold of him. I wanted him to bust like a schoolboy his first time with a woman. And from the slow panting that was gripping the bare chest, I was accomplishing my goal. He had forgotten all about The Raven brooding across from him, and all he could see was my eyes. The knowledge that the eyes he gazed into were not actually mine, but the crafted eyes forced upon me by Rictus made this easier.
I don’t know if I was expecting his cock to be some sort of monstrous thing, mutated and wholly other, but I was certainly not expecting to reach into his leather breeches and pull out a perfectly normal, perfectly human male cock. There were no ridges, no spines, no strange protuberances or fancy tentacles or anything. It was just a rock-hard, modestly sized, perfectly average human cock. If I wasn’t fully committed to the bit, I would have laughed. Something told me laughter in this situation would probably not be the best idea. It sounded like it was probably the best way to catch a terminal case of the deads.
Bending forward, I let my mouth hover over the head of his cock, teasing him with the heat of my breath. He watched me, stone still, as if hypnotized. When I let the warmth of my mouth slide down over the sensitive tip of his cock, he hissed like I burned him and rose, hips first, from the chair. Salty skin and the taste of pussy flooded my tongue.
I wasn’t unfamiliar with the taste of pussy. I’d only been with two men in my entire life, but most of my partners were women. I was an equal opportunity pervert. I didn’t care what rested between their thighs I cared more about what sat between their ears and in their heart. That was the only thing that caught my attention. Beauty was beauty, and it was always nice to look at a pretty thing come undone for you. But nothing beat the look of someone who had you truly captivated absolutely shatter for you.
I was less offended by the taste but more offended by the fact that I hadn’t put it together. The pink of his lion scratches hadn’t even faded yet from the last daoire he’d bedded, and he was here, in his sitting room, sampling another. This man was a pig in leather pants.
The hot brand of my tongue swirled around the tip of his cock, varying flexing and rolling against the ultra-sensitive glans. The taste of pussy flooded my mouth, and I could at least focus on that, let its rich flavor draw me down into a make-believe world where I wasn’t about to throat fuck myself on this swine’s dick. I could pretend I was back in Detroit, at Sloane’s place, lying in their bed, tracing their chest scars while I cleaned off the toy they had just used on me. It had always been my favorite ritual of theirs. Staring into their rich hazel eyes as I deep throated their favorite piece of silicone.
Inch by inch, I made my way down the King’s cock, my eyes sliding closed to remember that time when I was covered in my lover’s sweat, limp limbed, bathing in sunlight. I imagined the stubbed fingers weaving into the weight of my braid and guiding my head down farther were theirs. In turn, I let a small sound of pleasure rumble in my throat as I pushed the head past my tonsils to dance at the back of my vibrating throat.
I barely felt the toe of The Raven’s boot as it found a spot against my shin again, casting warm heat pooling in my blood to pump up from my leg to infiltrate the rest of my body.
My hands slid back to the King’s ass and gripped it as the image of Sloane unwound in my mind. The sunlight grew more golden, flooding their room with soft orange-and-rose tints as the image twisted, and in my mind, the cock I was sucking was no longer the King’s nor Sloane’s favorite strap. It was the thick cock of The Raven, filling my mouth easily and so warm to the touch. His skin felt warmed by hours bathing in the sunlight, and I could feel the golden rays of it radiating from his skin and filling my taste buds.
My head bobbed and twisted, my tongue undulating, cheeks sucking as I worshipped the sun-drenched cock of The Raven. I hadn’t even seen his cock, yet here I was, giving it a tongue lashing like I was on my knees for a god and loving every last second of it. I wanted more. I needed more. I needed to hear him moan my name. I needed to feel him strain into my mouth and then finally paint my tongue with his divine, salty gift.
I was ripped from the daydream of The Raven, his black breeches spread open wide, his glorious cock buried in my throat as he stretched his long body out in a sun-drenched bed, by the King snatching my hair and pulling me viciously off of him.
“You give throat like a dying salmon,” he spat and threw me from between his thighs.
Shook from the sudden change of attitude, my head spun with small flashes of the image I had conjured to survive that.
The Raven had recoiled into his chair, a brooding thunderstorm threatening to break the sky open and rain damnation on me.
“If her usefulness is over, Majesty, I’ll take her back to the warrens.”
The soft rumble of his voice was ice skating on sharp blades across my psyche as we both tracked the King as he moved around the room.
“Who said her usefulness was through? Hmm?”
Dangerous venom was dripping from him as he walked around with his cock spilling out of his open breeches. He looked like an obscene fallen angel, his trumpet proudly announcing his intent.
Metal ground against wood and leather strapping as the King pulled a well-used crossbow out of a cabinet near the sleeping dog and kin’tha. Fear lanced through me as I whipped my attention to The Raven, needing someone to tell me what to do.
The Raven’s brow twitched slightly, and he mouthed, Run , and darted his eye to the door he had indicated led deeper into the Ard Rí’s personal apartments.
Scrambling to my feet felt like I was moving in quicksand, limbs gobbled up by yards and yards of fabric. The slippers that had been placed on them were too slippery on the stone, and I slid, barely catching myself against the settee in my flight toward the doors. I was kicking the last one off by the time the King was turning to level the bolt at me.
This is it, you dumb bitch , a little voice whispered in my ear.
I was about to be the next Michigander to die by crossbow shot. What did it say about my home state that I wasn’t even the first this year? It said we were fucking crazy. That’s what it said.
The solid thunking twang of the bolt zipping free of the crossbow happened only a breath before the pain bloomed from the apex of my shoulder. Blood instantly began winding its way like a brook down the front of my dress as the King reloaded.
I wasn’t sticking around to figure out why he was such a shit shot for a king living in a medieval world, where it was perfectly normal to own daora and have a fucking crossbow.
I ripped the heavy, carved oak door open, sending agony licking through my arm, but I didn’t pause to wince. I was running before the doors had even spread wide enough to admit me, having to shove myself through the gap. The corridor that welcomed me stretched on for what seemed like dark miles of grey-blue stone.
I heard the muffled sound of The Raven mumbling to the King about a hunt being ill advised in the palace and the King responding something about The Raven getting old. And then it was the slow tap of the heels of the King’s boots rapping against the stonework.
I was throwing open doors to a library, a study, a dining room, a room bathed in sunlight. Opulence I had never even considered possible in a single house, let alone in what was considered a single person’s quarters, flew past me as I searched for a place to hide.
The King was counting off numbers at the doors like some depraved game of hide and seek but hadn’t yet breached the hallway.
The next door I threw open looked like a woman’s bedroom. I didn’t even think. I threw open the three doors beyond it, slammed the last one closed, and high-tailed it back to the woman’s bedroom. I left the door ajar and prayed my gambit worked out as I slid under the bed, letting the bed skirt fall back. I checked to make sure that not a single fold of the massive gown stuck out and then started taking slow, deep breaths as I listened.
The King announced the number fifty and began moving down the hallway. He wasn’t stopping at the open doors but was methodically stalking past them as he made his way through the long corridor.
My plan was simple, hope he went into that last room, which looked like a storeroom of boxes stacked up nearly to the ceiling and a bevy of furniture under white draped sheets. Once he was in the room, I would make a run for the other end of the corridor and, hopefully, out of this madman’s quarters. If I was lucky, I might even make it all the way down to the warrens, where I could hide properly.
Not that I thought any of the daora would hide me from the Ard Rí, as the stakes for them would be too high, and I had not been around long enough to buy even a thimble full of loyalty let alone risking a death-sentence-level loyalty.
I slowed my breathing as I waited for the exact moment I could make my move. And when it came, I ran on tiptoes as fast as I could. It was working. My plan was actually working!
My hand was mere feet from the handle of the entrance door when my calf exploded in vicious, burning torment as a bolt embedded itself deep into the flesh. I screamed, the sound catching in my throat and dying behind my tongue. Nothing came out as I collapsed to the floor, dragging myself ever forward toward my goal. Just a little bit farther, and I could maybe get free.
White-hot pain exploded behind my eyes as the King’s boot came down on the wound in my calf, and he leaned his entire weight on my narrow leg.
“Tsk-tsk, little daoire. That was barely five minutes of sport to make up for that sad excuse of a blow job.”
If sound could penetrate my mouth, I would be shredding my vocal cords on them. Instead, all I could show for the soul-eviscerating agony that was clawing through my leg and up my back was gasping huffs of air trying to breathe past it.
“Majesty . . .” The Raven warned with all the power of a cotton ball on the wind.
The King ignored him. “There is punishment in this court for failing to accomplish the one purpose you have in this life, daoire. Do you know what it is?” He didn’t wait for my answer, and the malice and madness in his voice told me I might, in fact, not survive this encounter. “You give until you do please your King.”
He pulled me away from the door by my braid, vertebra in my neck popping with the strain of his force. I twisted to look at him, and I wish I hadn’t. He was so beautiful, wearing the face of a holy angel with a brilliant smile flashing pearly white teeth. He wasn’t mad, wasn’t angry, wasn’t even losing control of himself. He was laughing like a frat boy at a kegger.
That angelic smile was the last thing I saw as his fist slammed into my face. My world narrowed to the ear-piercing screams that had nowhere to live but in my head as the King beat me. Sometime after both of my eyes had swollen shut and my nose had ceased drawing in air, I heard the crack of something wooden and thick being broken. Men argued, and for those seconds, I could live in the aching anguish that my existence had become. It was only a mere handful of seconds of reprieve, though. And then I found out what that sound was as it came raining down on me.
The meaty muffled crack of my arm breaking as I tried to protect my head from the bat or pole he was lavishing me with haunted me. And when that sound rattled through my jaw and sank into my teeth as my skull split open, I was granted the blissful black arms of a false death.
I fell into the velvet wings of that empty void of consciousness, floating above the soft fleshy thuds, until they, too, ceased, and the space was occupied only by the distant voices of two men raised in a heated argument. What were they arguing about? One was upset that the other had spoiled the party, and another was the crack of lightning across an open plain with anger and was cursing the other.
I let the two fools argue over whatever it was they wished to argue about and curled up among the stars in the silk of my personal night sky.