Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
The reading eats away at me, my mind trying to figure out what it could mean. This place was supposed to be our happiness, our freedom, and now something looms over us.
But what?
No matter how many times I seek answers from the cards, they remain silent and steadfast. Death is coming, but that’s all they’ll tell me. Hilda reminds me that they don’t always do our bidding, that they sometimes withhold information so we can make our own choices, but we need answers. Ineed answers. Not knowing is half the horror.
My anxiety prevents me from sleeping, so after hours of tossing and turning, I give up and leave my tent. The town we’re in has a lush forest around it, but in the field we’re set up in, there are large oak trees. They are probably hundreds of years old, and their branches are so large, they dip down to the ground and back up, leaving nice seats the children have enjoyed during the day. Tonight, I find myself there, my fingers trailing over bark that has seen generations of people come and go. What must they have seen? I find comfort in that now. Time continues on no matter what. Even when I’m gone, this tree will stand as long as nothing comes along to chop it down. That kind of strength is beautiful, and I pull from that now, hoisting myself up on the dipping branch and straddling it. I absorb the strength beneath my fingers, needing it. If I’m stronger, perhaps the cards will give me more information.
Whose death? That’s the biggest question. Which one of us will die? Or will we all perish?
I don’t know how long I sit here, my legs dangling from the tree, my eyes focused on the leaves above my head. I can see stars through the lush foliage. The wind rustles the branches, and if I squint my eyes just right, the stars look like they are twinkling violently. It’s such a pretty sight, I don’t realize I’m not alone until a tiger leaps up on the branch beside me.
I jolt in surprise, my arms windmilling as I start to topple over backward. Before I can slide too far, however, strong arms wrap around me from behind and steady me again.
“Sorry about that.” Spade laughs. “I told her not to startle you. She doesn’t always listen.”
I blow out a puff of air and pat Freedom when she bumps her head against my shoulder. If someone would have told me that I’d have the opportunity to pet a wild animal like a house cat a few years ago, I would have called them crazy. The bond Spade and Freedom have is enviable, but she seems to enjoy my company as well. I take every opportunity to give her attention, but only when she asks for it. I’ve seen Freedom lash out at someone when they threaded their fingers into her fur and she didn’t give them permission to touch her. I have no desire to heal from claw marks.
“You couldn’t sleep?” I ask, glancing over at him as he hooks a leg over the branch beside me and takes a seat. He’s dressed in loose linen pants tonight, as if his sleep were interrupted.
“One of the horses was pregnant,” he replies. “She decided to give birth tonight, so I was helping there.”
I straighten. I hadn’t even known one of the horses was pregnant. “The baby?”
“Healthy and fine, just like its mother,” he says with a smile. “Our family grows.”
His words remind me that it may shrink again soon, and my shoulders slump. He strokes my back, offering comfort.
“What’s wrong, habibti?” he murmurs. “I checked your tent when I was returning to bed and found it empty. What’s troubling you?”
I sigh, unsure how to explain. I don’t want to worry them, especially when I don’t have any real answers myself.
“I read something in the cards,” I murmur. Freedom chooses that moment to pull away from my touch and disappear up in the branches of the large oak tree, off to explore.
“Something bad?” Spade asks, tilting his head.
I nod. “Something bad, but I have no other information so I don’t know what it really means or who the cards are talking about. All I know is something is coming.”
Spade studies me, his beautiful, light brown eyes reflecting the stars and the few lights left on at the cirque. He’s always beautiful, especially in his performance outfit, but dressed down like this, he’s even more stunning. It feels like he could sweep me away into the desert at any moment. I’d let him. I’d let all of them sweep me away to wherever they wanted to go, even hell.
He reaches up and cups my chin before stroking my jaw. “You know,” he murmurs, “when I finally made it to the cirque, it took a long time for me to stop looking over my shoulder for danger.”
“This isn’t that,” I argue. “The cards?—”
“Are not set in stone,” he interrupts. “Hilda tells me that it’s only a possibility.”
“This is different,” I rasp. “Even Hilda was afraid.”
He tilts his head. “I see, and this fear of the unknown keeps you awake.” When I nod my head, he sighs. “I understand.”
He also dropped a little hint of his past, so I can’t help but lean into his touch. “What did you look over your shoulder for?”
The branches rattle above us as Freedom treks along them, her soft chuffs echoing in the air around us. He smiles up in her direction, pleased that she’s enjoying herself.
“My foster parents,” he admits. “My situation wasn’t quite like the orphanage of the kids we saved, but it was close.” Anger filters through me, but before I can open my mouth to rant, he presses his finger to my lips. “Shh, habibti. I’ve been safe for over a decade now. This is just my history.”
“Sorry,” I say sheepishly.
“Don’t be,” he murmurs. “I enjoy your protective nature. Still, I’d like you to know where I come from.” He leans back against the branch and tugs me after him so we’re lying together on top of it. “I was born in the middle east, but I found my way into the foster system here when I was seven. My parents died from some disease that I can’t remember and there were nice, rich couples looking for charity projects. I became one of them.”
I nestle closer to him for comfort, my fingers stroking his bare chest. Something tells me this isn’t a nice story, and I’m prepared for it.
“The couple who fostered me was indeed rich. I was so excited, thinking that these well-off people wanted me, that they could grow to love me, but from the moment I arrived at their mansion on the East Coast, I realized that wasn’t the case at all. They didn’t want children,” he murmurs, his eyes riveted to the stars. “They wanted workers.”
“How terrible,” I rasp, imagining a tiny Spade desperate to be loved, only to find cruelty instead.
“It was, but at least we were somewhat fed. We certainly didn’t eat the same things as they did.”
“How many of you were there?” I ask, catching his use of “we.”
“Five,” he answers. “Two girls and three boys. They put me to work in the gardens mostly, but sometimes, during parties, I was forced to walk around with a tray of drinks and cater to their rich friends. Not a single one of them questioned a bunch of kids working around them. I have memories of being five and offering little slices of cheese to grown, drunk men, but at least I wasn’t on the streets. At least I wasn’t dying of the same diseases running rampant through my country. They reminded me of that often.”
“So what happened?” I ask. “How did you find your way here?”
He takes a deep, rattling breath. “They fed me, but not much, not enough to run far. It was a strategy. If we didn’t eat too much, we wouldn’t have the strength to run away. Apparently, they learned their lesson before I arrived there. They had a history of using that tactic, and the state continued to allow them to foster, but my escape . . . That’s simple. Freedom.”
“Freedom?” I ask, frowning up at the tiger in the top of the tree.
“Yes. She was also their captive, arriving a few years after I did. They kept her in a cage in the back garden. She was a source of entertainment, just as I was. She was underfed, but not so much that she wasn’t still terrifying. I saw a part of me in her, a caged animal at the mercy of others. She must have seen the same in me. When I started talking to her while I worked around her cage, she’d sit and listen. At some point, I grew foolish enough to pet her. Imagine my surprise when she let me.” His soft laughter tells me this was a bit of happiness from his past, that Freedom became that.
“There was a party, another extravagant thing to celebrate something. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but the house was full, and we were dressed in our work outfits and given trays. Some drunken asshole knocked into mine as I was walking past and spilled all my drinks. The silence in that ballroom was deafening as everyone turned to look at me. I’d been hit before, but never quite like I was by the man who ran into me. At the silence, he turned and backhanded me.”
He shifts against the branch, readjusting me so we’re more comfortable. “I remember tasting blood in my mouth as I sprawled across the floor. I remember looking up at him with blood dripping down my lips. I also remember my foster parents watching, drunk and unconcerned, as one of their guests moved to hit me again. When his boot hit my ribs, I screamed and scrambled away. He was drunk and really clumsy. I assume the only reason I avoided being beaten into a pulp was because of that.”
“They all sound like assholes,” I comment.
“They were, but it’s okay. There are always bad people in the world. What they did to me wasn’t nearly as bad as what they did to the girls they fostered. I was too young for their games at the time. They preferred their boys to be older.”
I gasp and move to sit up, but he holds me against him, his embrace strong and reassuring.
“Don’t worry for me, habibti. I escaped, and I got the others out too.”
“How?” I ask.
I can feel his smile rather than see it. “When that man tried to come after me again, I ran out of the house and found myself in the back garden. Freedom was sitting up in her cage, her intelligent eyes watching me. She chuffed at the blood on my lips and the way I held my ribs. I walked up to her cage and touched my fingers to her forehead, and she let me, pressing against my palm, asking for help, just as I was asking her.” He laughs. “I was a skinny, weak, little boy, but Freedom? She’s a queen just like you. She always has been, and she didn’t deserve her cage, just as I didn’t deserve mine. It was a silly instinct to pull the pin on her lock and open it. She could have killed me, but she didn’t. Instead, she climbed down slowly and looked at me as if to say, ‘Well, come on, skinny boy. Let’s escape together.’ She refused to move until I climbed onto her back and pressed my face into her fur.”
“So you got out?” I murmur, and on the back of a tiger no less.
“We cut our way out,” Spade corrects. “We left through the ballroom, taking down anyone in our way. Some of them laughed when they died, so drunk they didn’t realize what was happening. A few of them screamed and tried to run, but my foster parents weren’t in the crowd of those who died. They sensed trouble and immediately locked themselves in their safe room, so although we escaped, for a long time, I thought they’d come after me.”
“You named her Freedom,” I remark, “didn’t you?”
He nods. “I did. I tried to set her free after we were safe, but she refused to go. She’s been with me ever since. She knew the boy named Roman, and now she knows the man name Spade. I’m both.”
I lift up and look down at him, reaching up to cup his jaw. “You freed each other. She needed you just as you needed her.”
His eyes sparkle. “Yes, and neither one of us will ever be placed in a cage again, just as you won’t be.” He strokes my jaw. “My queen. My Ember.”
I lean down and kiss him, seeing him for who he is. Spade is always the gentlest of my men, the most sensitive. I assumed it came from being so close to animals and seeing their unconditional love, but it’s more than that. It takes great strength to suffer such injustices, to be mistreated and refuse to ever treat anyone the same. It takes strength to remain as gentle as he has, especially with all the badness he sees every time the cirque calls him. It makes me want to protect him despite knowing he doesn’t need it. He’s a force all on his own. Just because he’s sweet doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of doing terrible things to save those he cares about.
Spade’s lips are plump and full, a feature that should be feminine on his face, especially with his long lashes, but it only adds to his masculinity. As I nestle against him, he smells like vanilla and incense, like he was in Hilda’s tent recently. I know the two enjoy meditating together. Perhaps he was there at some point today.
When he kisses me, it feels like home, just as it does when I kiss the others. He’s gentle and slow, delivering an all-consuming kiss that starts on my lips and ends in my soul. When his hands slide down my back, I moan into his mouth, suddenly desperate for more, needing to taste the freedom he exudes. I’m still not sure if this is all a dream, these men whom I so easily gave my heart to, but I know what I feel is as real as the tree beneath us. What we feel for each other is as old as this wooden giant, as if we were always meant to find each other.
“I need you,” I murmur against his lips. “Please.”
“You don’t have to beg me, habibti,” he purrs. “You always have me.”
I thank the stars that I’m wearing a nightdress instead of pants this evening. I reach between us and stroke his hard length through his linen pants, moaning at the hardness there. He’s so ready for me and as desperate for me as I am for him. I tug the waistband of his pants down, freeing his length, but there’s no room or easy way to remove his pants completely, so I leave them where they are, with only his cock exposed.
I pull my nightdress up around my hips and rise to straddle him. Wrapping my fingers around him, I stroke and draw a moan from his lips. His large hands span my waist and hold my nightdress up for me so I can rub the tip of his cock through the wetness between my thighs. I’m leaking for him, desperate to take him, so I quickly direct him to my opening and begin to ease down his length. We both groan as I rock my hips and work down until I’m fully seated. My legs dangle in the air, both of us nestled on this massive branch of this ancient tree, a tiger rummaging through the leaves above us somewhere. Neither of us seems to care about the strangeness of it. Here, there’s no oddness. We are just us.
I can’t use my legs for leverage, so I end up rolling my hips back and forth, shooting pleasure through my pussy when my clit rubs against his pelvis.
“Yes,” he purrs, his hands clenching my hips and helping me move. “Ride me, habibti.”
I rock against him, creating a slow buildup of pleasure. There’s no rush, no hurried, desperate roughness. It’s gentle, passionate, easy, and beautiful, just as Spade is. My tiger tamer. My kind killer. Because he’s so gentle with me, I’m the same with him.
Our climaxes build together, as if we choreographed it that way. We rock against each other, the gentle wave making both of us sweat within a few minutes. We moan together, our fingers caressing each other’s bodies, and his lips kiss along my neck before he gently tugs my nightdress over my shoulder so he can nibble me there. It’s so soft, tears spring into the corners of my eyes.
I’ve never felt so thoroughly cherished as I do with Spade.
“Come for me, habibti,” he purrs against the shell of my ear. “Take me with you.”
“Yes,” I cry, knowing I could never leave Spade behind no matter the situation. I’d take him with me. I’d take them all with me. Even into death . . .
We shatter together, our cries as soft and gentle as our lovemaking. He whispers words in his native language I don’t understand, but they still feel like sweet nothings in my ear. When his hands wrap around me and hold me, I do the same to him, holding on so tightly, I’d be afraid of hurting him if he wasn’t so large and muscular.
“I love you,” I croak, my tears still falling every so often. Home. This is home.
“And I love you, habibti,” he replies.
“Until death?” I ask, my heart throbbing painfully.
“Even after that,” he murmurs before kissing my forehead.
Sleep suddenly finds me in Spade’s arms, exhaustion finally winning out against fear. I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until the world suddenly moves and shifts, and I crack my eyes open and realize Spade is carrying me back to my tent.
Freedom walks beside him, her head brushing against my dangling arm every now and then, offering comfort and kinship.
Another queen who escaped her cage.
We’re all just beasts looking for love, I suppose.