Chapter Nine
As commanded, I go to Luthian’s study, my core still wet and slick from my release. Since he found my choice of dress “studious,” I’m still wearing it when I knock on the door.
“Enter,” he calls from within, and I step inside.
At first sight, I realize that what Luthian “studies” is not a subject with which I am familiar.
The room is an octagon beneath a glass dome like a spiderweb. Daylight streams down on a dais in the center that’s surrounded by polished wood railings, but somehow the illumination doesn’t reach the dark outer perimeter. Candles light sixteen corners and the walls painted with murals.
Luthian himself stands in one of these shadowy places, browsing a shelf.
It doesn’t hold books.
“I am here, Guardian,” I say, shifting nervously on my feet.
He doesn’t turn to me, but says, “Still dressed for the archives? Well, that won’t do.”
I gasp at my instant nakedness. My nipples pucker in the chill; there is no hearth to warm me.
“Step onto the dais,” he orders. “I’m selecting the tools we’ll need.”
The shelf in front of him holds an assortment of impressive, very realistic phalluses. I hold my breath as I watch him decide. He takes down one, then another, hefting them both in his hands. They’re huge, much bigger than Firo or Luthian, and they don’t appear to be shaped for either human or faery. Though they’re both intimidating, I’m glad he left the largest ones behind. I’m certain the cocks on the bottom shelf must be modeled after ogres and trolls.
“I was very impressed this morning,” he says, waving a hand. A table like the one from the library appears just inches from me. “You took great pleasure in torturing Firo.”
“I did.” I bite my lip. “But Guardian... did I give him pleasure?”
Luthian chuckles. “Oh, you did. Most assuredly.”
“In the moment, I enjoyed it, but after, I felt mean,” I confess.
“That feeling will pass. Soon enough, you’ll become utterly indifferent to the screams of the tormented.” He means to reassure me, I think, but it’s far from it.
Do I truly wish to inflict that kind of suffering? Do I want to become so callous to it?
“Guardian, forgive me, but if I am indifferent, how will I know if I’m truly hurting someone?”
“That’s an excellent question.”
My heart swells with pride, beating itself against my ribs.
He taps his lips with his forefinger. “These aren’t skills you should employ outside of the Court. You might, of course. If you and your lover wished it. But the lovers you’ll take at court will expect and revel in such behavior. Outside of the court, these activities should only be undertaken with trust and strict understanding of how to know when your partner has had enough. A word, for example, that only the two or three or eight, whatever you will, know, which always means to stop.”
Eight? I boggle at the notion, but the idea of a magic word sparks my interest. “And we don’t have those at the Court of Pleasure and Torment?”
“There is no mercy at the Court of Pleasure and Torment. Therefore, it needs no language.” He goes to a cabinet and opens it. Inside stands a glittering array of bottles and phials. Some glow with their own light, gleaming emerald, fire-lit ruby, and blinding white. He takes down an ampoule of something purple. “But I don’t believe it’s a language you could master, anyway.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” I rub my hands down my bare arms. The sunlight through the web of windows overhead is cool by the time it touches my skin. I wonder if this is a test of my patience, to see how long I’ll endure the physical discomfort of freezing.
“You enjoyed watching me lash Firo’s feet,” Luthian says, depositing the potions on the table.
“I’ve never seen such a thing before,” I confess. “I’ve never even seen a criminal whipped in the village square.”
Luthian’s nose wrinkles in distaste. “I forget that you’re not just a human, but you’ve been raised among them. Imagine, reducing the elegance of pain down to such petty barbarism.”
“I must admit to a morbid curiosity, Guardian.” I’m as ashamed to reveal it to him now as I was the time I asked my mother for permission to watch punishments doled out in the square. She was gentle and kind in dissuading me, but I received the message all too effectively: it was wrong of me to desire another’s pain. “Mother couldn’t stand to think of it, though.”
“Perhaps you’re more faery than your mother was.”
It’s a joke, I know. But it pleases me that he’s said it. Should it please me? After all, I’ve spent so much of my life wishing I could be fae, wondering if I’ll ever fit in with the humans we lived among yet rarely encountered. But my mother also worried that she wasn’t fae enough. She was shunned by her court, after all.
“I’m a human,” I say, helpless to control the note of self-pity in my tone.
Luthian just waves a hand. “You’re potential. Nothing more at this stage, and nothing less. But potential is mighty. You’ve been here for two days, and you’ve already learned important truths about yourself and your desires.”
“I’m doing well, then?”
“I’m delighted with your progress,” he confirms. “But don’t congratulate yourself. There is still much for you to learn and experience, and we’ve not much time.”
“There isn’t?” I’m puzzled at that; he hasn’t mentioned time before.
“For my plan to work, you need to have ensnared Cassan by the night of his birthday party,” Luthian explains. “You needn’t know every detail. Just trust that it will work.”
“Yes, Guardian.” I’ll be more careful with my questions in the future.
“You enjoyed it when I inflicted pain upon Firo,” Luthian says, bringing us back to the original subject of our conversation. “But you’ll need to enjoy having pain inflicted upon you, as well.”
“Enjoy it, or bear it, Guardian?” I ask for clarity.
He seems delighted at the distinction. “This is what makes you such a good student. Enjoy, not just bear. This comes naturally to some. There are those truly blessed with an understanding of pain. Or a lack of fear. Others need to work at appreciating pain. The layers of meaning to it. You, for example. I believe you are a rare jewel, Cenere. One who can receive pain with the appreciation of all of your senses, but who can also create that pain and revel in it. If I teach you well enough—I assure you, I can—and you apply yourself to your studies, I dare say that your humanity will never be a burden or failing in the eyes of the court. And it will be more than adequate proof that you deserve the throne.”
“But only if I do exactly as you command, Guardian,” I add, because I’m still so eager to please him. I want to be his grandest creation, fulfill the potential he’s seen in me.
A smile tilts his lips. “Your skills at manipulation, however, need polishing.”
I lower my head in profound shame. “My apologies, Guardian. It was meant in earnest.”
“I know.” He walks slowly to stand before me, takes my chin in his hand to tip my gaze up. “That’s what requires polishing. There is no room for honesty at court if we are to achieve our goals.”
I wonder if that includes honesty between the two of us, but he is a faery. “Nothing without a price,” rings in my head, one of few rational thoughts that still intrude in my quiet moments. Is there some spell over me, some magic that Luthian has worked to keep me infatuated with his lessons? These thoughts of safety annoy me. They pass quickly, and I assume they will come less frequently throughout our practice.
“You’ve just learned to inflict torment. You’ve made a brief acquaintanceship with it, yourself. Now, it’s time to learn true erotic suffering.” Luthian uncorks the ampule and sprinkles seven drops in a circle around me. Then he steps back and waits in silence.
A dire rumble shakes the room. The candles gutter and flare, their wicks drowning in their waxy seas. The bottoms of my feet absorb the dreadful vibration and I stagger. I look down to see the stone floor of the dais creak and split. A wriggling black vine bursts up in front of me, slimy and coated with short, hooked thorns. It swivels about as if seeking something out. Another rises beside me, more behind me, and soon I am caged in by countless dripping, prickly stems.
Finding its mark, the first slaps against my wrist and wraps around and around, forming a gauntlet on my forearm. I shriek and try to pull away, but the thorns pierce my skin, holding me fast. The more I struggle, the more I tear at my flesh, and there is no hope of escaping, anyway; my knees buckle as another vine catches my foot. It fixes itself with its cruel thorns up the back of my thigh as a twin does the same work. They grasp my buttocks and join at my spine, winding all the way to my shoulders in a harness of pain. My other arm is captured, and soon I’m bound, impaled on hundreds of the cruel thorns.
I sag against the vines at my back, though the very action makes me cry out as the spikes drive deeper. I know they’re only as long as a fingernail, but to my mind, they’re enormous, ripping me apart. So, I do not fight against them as they raise my feet off the ground, tip me back, spread me wide. I’m supported by a throne of pain, in a chamber gone so utterly silent that only my muffled weeping is louder than the sound of my blood dripping on the broken floor.
Luthian steps forward, standing between my legs. “You know that you cannot possibly escape, don’t you?”
I want to nod, but any movement causes the vines to tighten.
“You know that I won’t let them kill you,” he says.
“Yes, Guardian,” I whimper.
“Yet still you fear?”
I do. I fear that whatever comes next will be too much to endure. But I don’t fear him . Foolish though it may be, I trust him when he promises that no real harm will come to me. So, I find my voice again to say, “I fear the pain, Guardian. I do not fear you.”
His starry eyes light with cold flame. “That is the wrong answer, Cenere.”
My stomach drops.
“You will find many at court who enjoy fear. Who employ it as another form of pleasure. You can, after all, sense that they are sisters, can you not?” He crooks a finger, beckoning, and something slithers where I cannot see. It’s another vine, sliding into place between my spread legs. My eyes widen as Luthian pets it. “I could, if I wished, command this vine to enter you as a lover. To rake its thorns through your untried flesh, to burrow deeply, to coil itself around and around, until its thickest part stretches your opening past its limit. I could do that to you right now.”
I watch in horror as the tip of the vine moves closer to my unguarded center. It touches me, at the bottom of my opening, and I clench, not just from fear, but another, more wretched instinct. I am exposed. Vulnerable. Terrified. And wet. Throbbing. His words have touched off a hunger in me that whispers perhaps it would not be so bad, if only my cunt could be filled. If only the emptiness that has plagued me since the moment Sarta withdrew her tongue from my aching channel could be banished.
Luthian grins cruelly down at me. “Do you feel it? Your body crying out for something you don’t want? Something that will cause you untold agony?”
“Yes, Guardian.” But I don’t know if my answer will condemn me to that unimaginable pain. A tear rolls down my cheek and I tremble.
He leans over me, places a gentle kiss at the corner of my mouth. “Good girl.”
The vine falls.
“Various implements can be used to cause pain. Not all of them magical.” Luthian turns away, leaving me suspended in my cradle of thorns.
“You’re acquainted with the cane.” He moves from my limited vision, and I hear him shifting objects in the darkness. “But there are tools for bruising. Lashing. Inflicting pain in pinpoints and cuts or deep, bloodless injuries. A universe of exquisite agonies, with nary a potion or wand in sight. It’s important that you know you aren’t limited due to your lack of magic.”
“Yes, Guardian.” Cold sweat trickles down my spine. Or perhaps it’s blood from the thorns.
“This will be your final lesson of the day.” He strides onto the dais again, but I still cannot see him. He stands behind me and the vines shift, tilting me to stare at the floor, my knees wide, ass upturned. Where he stands, he can see all of me, every intimate part of me, on full display. And though I know he’s seen every inch of me before, it feels more dangerous now. More vulnerable.
He says nothing, but I feel his presence, unmoving, behind me. I hear my own ragged breath, cast my gaze about for something other than the floor, to no avail. I wait. And I wait.
A resounding crack splits the air, startling me enough to cry out before I even feel the pain.