Chapter 64 #3
Caliban shoved her roughly to the ground. Her feet slipped, ankle twisting. She caught herself on reflex with both hands, her weight slamming into her ruined wrist. She screamed.
The crowd rippled with laughter.
Her white hair hung in her face as she looked up, watching as Caliban stood before the large throne.
"I present to you, my Umbra—the conquered Princess of Luna, Luella Ilis Eritrais!"
The crowd roared with cheers and jeers.
"She is mine now. And by belonging to me, she belongs to you, as well.
My Umbra." His tone was sickeningly fond.
"We won’t lose this war. The rain that gripped the kingdom—hers!
" he cried. "The terror of the winds that swept through the lands of our enemy, forced upon Serpentis by her will. She is powerful, and she is now mine."
The tip of his boot brushed her ribs, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
"Stand."
She did not.
The boot pressed harder. "Do you wish to anger me on your first day here, Luella?"
She hated the way he said her name.
"Would you prefer to be forced? I do not care how I get your obedience.
The fun is in breaking you. I could just as easily make you mine in truth and coat your insides with my shadows to bend your will to mine.
Then, you would truly have no choice at all but to obey.
I could do this, but I will not. Do you know why? "
A slithering sensation crawled over her ankles. It was cold—the shadows.
They snaked up her legs and disappeared beneath the bunched-up hem of her shift.
She felt coldness high between her legs and tried to squeeze them shut, but couldn’t.
They forced her legs to stay parted as the shadows drifted past her hips and waist, tightening as she was suddenly ripped up into a stand.
The shadows forced her legs to move, each step disjointed.
When she was before him, her back to the crowd, the shadows stilled, lingering around her body in warning.
"When I ask you a question, answer. The consequence is not one you wish to endure."
"Why?" She could scarcely recognize the trembling cadence to her voice; one word, yet it was hardly coherent.
Her heart was one long beat in her chest.
"I do not turn you into an Umbra because I do so enjoy the process of breaking my victims. What pleasure are you if you do exactly as I wish?
What pleasure is any slave if I do not get to see their tears as they kneel before me, see the way their hands shake, or eyes dart away?
Some would cut off their own limbs to be rid of my touch.
Are you the same?" Caliban reached out and touched her shoulder; she flinched violently. He smiled. "So predictable."
His eyes turned out to the crowd. "Luella Eritrais is ours. Do you not think she should have something to denote her as such?"
The ripples of sound that swept throughout the crowd had nothing on the roaring of her blood in her ears. She was going to pass out. The room darkened, and she swayed, held up by the shadows.
He snapped his fingers. A male appeared by his side—familiar. Ambrose.
"You d-died. I saw y-you," Luella stuttered, the shadows holding her hostage.
His dark skin was more sallow than she’d remembered, with deep bruises beneath his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. The shade of his eyes was softer in the light—a deep brown, with no shifting shadows.
There was such anger on his face that she felt sick from it.
Ambrose held out a simple black box to Caliban, who took it and waved him away dismissively. She felt Ambrose’s stare as he walked back down the steps and disappeared into the crowd.
Caliban lifted the lid from the box, rattling it slightly as if to tease her. "Your first gift," he said, lifting whatever it was from within the box.
A necklace. No—she studied it closer and saw it was far from jewelry for adornment.
This was a collar.
Thick black stone that gleamed.
He ran his thumb over the side. As it swept underneath and came away, blood was on the pad of his finger. "Best be careful. This one bites."
He waved his hand, and the shadows forced her to her knees. She slammed into the stone with such force her teeth threatened to crack.
She heard the distant roar of the rain. It fell louder—louder. Until even the crowd behind her filled with sounds of worry. Caliban’s eyes cut to them as he yelled:
"Do not fear! She does not yet have the power to undo us. I will bend her resolve, break her, and forge her magic until it can be turned into the greatest of weapons. Our enemies will be felled by my power over her."
He was taking all the credit for her magic—unwilling to even acknowledge the fact that her power was, supposedly, greater than his.
In his mind, she was a tool, a vessel to be used.
Anger filled her like a storm. The walls were stone—neither wind nor rain could break through. But she felt other things to be used, that called to her.
The pool of bloodied water was like the flow of blood in her veins. The magic within her uncurled, reaching, reaching—and she felt the exact moment it latched on to the water.
The crowd gasped. She felt as the water grew.
His knuckles grew white where he held the collar in his hands. He reached forward, lifting her chin with two fingers. His strength was bruising. She couldn’t rip away, forced to bend to his liking.
The water was a force unto itself, as was her magic, but it was so strange, the way she felt it roar on her behalf, as if an incensed entity coming to her aid.
Waves fell on the crowd. Choking gasps sounded as a few Umbra were drowned by the rising water and falling waves.
She felt it pour down their throats and enter their lungs. She shook.
"Enough!" Caliban roared, his nails cutting into her flesh and leaving crescent indents. Blood welled, dripping from the stinging, shallow cuts on her jaw and chin.
"You wish for me to obey you?" she managed to say through the pounding terror inside her. "I thought you—desired my magic. Don’t you w-want me to be powerful?"
It was risky, goading him like this. He could snap her neck before she would know what had been done to her. She knew he would not kill her—but there were far worse fates than death.
And Luella found out just what one of those fates was as Caliban snapped forward like an awaiting serpent, both hands on her cheeks, lifting her, all while his shadows kept her against the ground like a marble statue.
Her neck ached from the strain as he tilted her head up unnaturally. Her spine twinged.
The collar was hooked around his thumb, the cool sleekness of it digging into her cheek as he held her face steady.
"You are chaos incarnate, and you don’t even recognize the power inside you. The way you could make this realm—and the Above, the Below—bend a knee before you. You want so little. It’s almost charming. If it wasn’t so sickeningly pathetic."
His shadows curled up her body, beneath her shift—she shivered from the frigid feel of them as they slithered over her breasts and up her neck.
He moved one hand away from her, lifting the collar.
He did something to make it unlatch. She saw the spikes on the inside. They were blunt, thick. It would hurt.
Her hair was swept away from her neck.
His jaw was set, green peeking through the shadows in his eyes. It looked too much like Vale. She had to look away.
"This is your penance until you can be collared in other ways—until your magic bends to my hand and not its own."
Caliban placed the collar on her neck. His fingers drifted over her spine. It clicked as it latched. The spikes dug in fiercer, poking at her incessantly. She felt one poke at her throat, making it hard to swallow down the saliva that had accumulated in her mouth.
All at once, the rain stopped. Her magic disappeared entirely. And Luella understood what the collar was for.
"The conquered Princess!" Caliban roared, waving a shadow-tipped hand toward where she knelt before him.
The crowd roared, and the space inside her that had once been so full was now empty and cold.