Chapter 27 #3
My mind was buzzing with all of the commands and lessons which Cassius had been drilling into me, and though I was confident in my ability to pull off any con, I had to admit that there was a whole lot more to being noble than I had ever really thought about.
Customs, traditions, formalities and posturing were parts of their everyday lives and seemed so important to them that I had to question at what point they ever let loose and just enjoyed themselves.
They had so much more than almost everyone else within the kingdom, and yet it seemed to me that all they did with it was covet it and relish in how very clever they thought themselves to have it.
I placed my arms on the edge of the tub, my eyes trailing over the ink there and my throat thickening a little.
I had forced myself to look at the tattoos like this a lot in the years since they had been put upon my body.
I made myself accept them and even grew to understand that it was yet another thing which people found attractive about me.
I supposed I was lucky in that regard – the designs were intricate and beautiful, somehow powerful too.
At least if I was going to be forced to bear scars, they had been ones considered desirable.
I no longer shuddered when I looked at them, nor was my head filled with the screams I could remember all too easily if I allowed myself to. Mostly, I just felt numb when I gave them my attention.
There was no point in me wasting energy lamenting things I couldn’t change or wasting time on regrets.
It was done. Over. Blood spilled and vengeance achieved.
It was simply one thing in a list of shitty things which made up the entirety of the man I was.
I was all sharp edges and broken pieces wrapped up in the sweetest kind of poison, which was perfectly designed to lure the unsuspecting close and encourage them to buy into the lie which I presented to them.
I may have played the role of charm and banter, a thousand smiles always set waiting upon my lips from seductive to playful, knowing to friendly, but none of them held so much as a taste of the truth.
Beneath the exterior, I was nothing but rot and ash, selfish desires which gave way to unthinkable acts without so much as a shred of regret left in their wake.
That was what it took to survive the life I had been gifted.
I would never apologise for it or even feel badly for it.
Dog-eat-dog didn’t come close to the reality of the slums. It was every monster for themselves where I came from, and no matter how well I hid my teeth, nothing would ever take away from the sharpness of the bite I could offer nor change how suddenly I might be tempted to do so.
My eyes moved to the palace once more and my fingers drummed against the edge of the copper tub as I looked at it, wondering if it might be the answer I’d always been seeking. The end of the life I’d been born into and the beginning of something so much sweeter.
Problem was, nothing ever tended to work out so simply as that. Especially for me.
My fingers moved to the amulet at my throat and I rubbed it between my fingers absentmindedly, wondering if Kyra truly held the power she claimed and would be able to offer me all she’d promised. It seemed more like the makings of a dream than a reality.
“Are you always this sad or do baths upset you?”
I jolted in alarm at the sound of the voice, twisting in the water so sharply that I sloshed a whole lot of it across the tiled floor.
“Shit, Kyra,” I gasped, finding her sitting in a tall armchair there, her feet bare and legs kicking idly where she’d slung them over the arm of her seat, once again allowing her dress to bunch up and reveal her thighs to me. “How long have you been there?”
“I followed you here with Cassius,” she replied with a shrug.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “I looked for you and you were gone.”
“Oh…well I went and helped Ma-mar in the kitchen for a while. She’s ever so nice.”
“She’s Cassius’s mother, not yours,” I pointed out and she stared at me for several seconds like she didn’t understand that then nodded.
“She told me to seek the light in all things,” she said.
“That’s an old saying from the Temple of Saresh.”
“The god of the sun and all things living,” she breathed, her eyes widening in realisation. “I remember now…only, that is all I can recall.”
Her face fell and I sat up, water running down my bare chest as I turned to look at her properly.
“Your memories will return to you,” I said, aiming to reassure her but she only shook her head.
“I think they’re all too far gone for that,” she murmured, her eyes brightening with tears for a moment, but she didn’t let them fall.
“Then you can make new ones with me,” I said firmly.
Kyra blinked at me, the tears clearing and her throat working as she twisted in her seat, folding her legs beneath her and leaning forward, the shift in her posture drawing my eyes to the curve of her breasts and my cock began to get all the wrong kinds of ideas within moments.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and I nodded uncomfortably, not liking the idea of anyone feeling indebted to me.
I wasn’t a good man. Never would be. Anything I did served my own purpose first and foremost, and anyone who believed otherwise would only be rewarded with the sharp sting of shock when they realised the truth of that.
“Tell me how your magic works,” I said, shifting the subject before she got any foolish ideas about me being something I wasn’t, and I would end up forced to rectify her opinion.
“It is endless,” she said with a shrug. “But not mine. All of the power in me belongs to my master.”
“But where did you get that power?” I pushed.
Kyra’s lips opened then closed, her teeth sinking into the bottom one as she thought, and I couldn’t help but consider the fact that I was naked and the two of us were alone, despite being fairly certain that she wasn’t anything even close to Fae anymore.
She had shown me no signs of desire nor given me any real reason to believe that she was interested in the pleasures of the flesh herself.
I supposed being able to shift her body from one thing to another with magic meant that she didn’t really have a body at all. So there was absolutely no point to the issue I was currently having beneath the milky white water, and I was going to have to concentrate on willing it away.
“I don’t know,” she admitted at last. “I think someone made me into this, but I… Everything I ever was is a blur now. An empty void. Or maybe I never was anything in the first place? Maybe I’m just nothing.”
“You’re not nothing,” I growled, uncertain why those words had made my muscles lock or why I was filled with the desire to make her forget ever giving voice to them.
“Nothing is what those above us want to believe we are. Nothing is what this twisted society claims we should be. But I have never accepted that to be my truth, Kyra, and neither should you. Anyone who thinks to make you into nothing should watch out for the day that they are forced to hear you roar.”
“I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks of you as nothing,” she said, her cheeks colouring as she took in my words, and I couldn’t help the cocky shrug I gave her.
“Not anymore they won’t,” I agreed.
Silence fell between us as my gaze ran over her and she studied me just as diligently, making my skin prickle at the feeling of her eyes on me.
The air filled with a crackling, potent kind of energy which I swear sparked off of everything surrounding us, making my throat thicken and skin tingle.
We just stared at one another, the link connecting us seeming to swell until I thought I saw the collar around her throat once more, the white gem blazing at its centre and the magical chain connecting us.
I blinked and the vision disappeared again, leaving me unsettled.
“Show me what your magic can do,” I said suddenly, needing to banish that image from my mind.
I dropped my hands back into the water, rubbing my wrists as if I wanted to scrub the feeling of the chain from my flesh before stopping, realising what that would mean.
That link between us was the reason for her offering me this magic.
Without it, I would be back on the streets, no princess for a bride and certainly no empire ripe for the taking.
And despite the unappealing look of the magical chains which bound us to one another, I couldn’t feel them and Kyra didn’t seem to either, so I had to assume they were more symbolic than real.
Kyra smiled at the request and got to her feet, holding a hand out and igniting a flame upon it, the colour shifting to blue, purple, orange, green, pink, the flickering light seeming to swell and fill the entire room.
I stared at the power she wielded so casually, my mind unable to fully comprehend it. Even the Fallen hadn’t claimed power over the elements, but it seemed that Kyra’s powers held no such restrictions.
She clapped her hands together suddenly and all of the light in the room disappeared, making me suck in a breath as I found myself entirely lost in a void of darkness.
Only the solid press of the copper tub and warmth of the water surrounding me reassured me that I was still where I had been, but my heart began to thrash in my chest as I failed to see a single thing, no matter how hard I strained my eyes.
My lips parted on her name, but before I could utter a word, a deep growl sounded from the far corner of the room, blood red eyes appearing out of nowhere and adrenaline pouring into my flesh.
I lurched back, water sloshing from the tub again as my hand reached towards the stool where I had left my clothes, hunting for the dagger I had left there with them as a curse escaped me.