Chapter 20 #2
Letting Leslo go, Kye pivoted around, turning his attention to the row of sirens who’d gathered by the water’s edge, watching the proceedings in stunned horror.
With the bolt of silk under his left arm, Kye played with the loose end of the fabric in what looked like an absentminded gesture, but I believed he was very aware of it. He couldn’t stop touching the silk, relearning the sensation of something other than glass in his fingers.
“I wonder if the same holds true for other kinds of fae, even those not protected by the divine power of a fallen goddess?” he asked gently, sweetly even, tipping his head to the side with a charming smile. “What do you think, Sagara? Hm?”
He hummed casually, cheerfully.
The captain drew in a breath, as if about to jump off a cliff, then took a step toward his king. I stared in disbelief, shocked by the man’s loyalty. The rest of his crew didn’t run away either. On the contrary, they shuffled a little closer too.
Then I realized with a start that I had moved toward Kye too. I didn’t remember making those steps, lured by the gentle tune vibrating in his throat as he kept humming softly.
Everyone in Lyrei was always terrified of Kye’s company, and now I understood exactly why. As much as they feared his touch, they feared even more that he would make them want it.
“Oh, my loyal subjects,” Kye drawled approvingly, watching his people moving toward him like fish following a lure. “On second thought, I’m afraid we can’t really spare anyone from the crew, can we? How about you instead, my dear?” He turned to one of the nuns.
The poor woman paled. As he approached her, however, humming a gentle melody under his breath, she leaned toward him.
“What’s your name, sweet thing?” he murmured seductively.
She blinked for a moment, as if having forgotten her name.
“I-Ilona?” she replied hesitantly, licking her lips.
He stood butt naked in front of her, but her eyes stayed firmly on his, no longer straying anywhere else.
“What a lovely name,” he murmured, raising his silk-covered hand to her face.
I held my breath in horror.
What if it didn’t work?
I had to stop it. I couldn’t let him kill an innocent woman right in front of my eyes. Yet I couldn’t move a muscle, staring at him mesmerized, just like everyone else around us. Even Odine seemed to be captivated, watching the proceedings with rapt attention.
What kind of magic was this? I’d spent almost a week with the siren king now, and I had no idea he could enthrall people like that.
But maybe I had been enthralled too all this time?
When it came to Kye, I’d experienced the pull of his attraction firsthand.
But it had never been quite like this, like I had no choice and no agency over my own body and actions.
Even the effects of glacier saffron had been less absolute.
The saffron made my body move on its own accord, but it didn’t affect my mind or my emotions.
I thought I knew Kye. But I obviously hadn’t witnessed his magic in its full power before. It was beautiful, terrifying, and potentially deadly.
“Look at you,” he crooned, bringing his hand closer to the nun’s face.
“I bet you’re one of the wildest females in Sarnala on a full moon.
Do you love those nights? When you sprint through the forest, covered with nothing but fur, wild and free?
With primal lust coursing through your beastly body?
Tell me, sweetie, when the males inevitably catch you, do you submit?
Or do you stalk them yourself, then force their knots into your hot, willing body? ”
I couldn’t comprehend the full meaning of what he was saying to her. Yet my body burst aflame with desire.
How many times had I nearly jumped into his arms with no care for my safety, only for him to stop me?
Well, he wasn’t stopping anything this time. He was inviting it, luring the poor woman and all of us into his touch.
“Wild and free-spirited you may be,” he continued, weaving a sweet snare with his voice, “but you will be a good, obedient girl for me now, won’t you, Ilona?”
She nodded, with a hard swallow in her throat.
“Good. You’re doing so good, my dear. Just like that, sweet thing,” he half-whispered, as if guiding a lover through an orgasm. “Just a little bit closer now.”
With that, he cupped the nun’s cheek with his silk-covered hand.
A body-shuddering moan escaped her parted lips, as if she had indeed just orgasmed for him. Her eyelids closed. Afraid to breathe, I waited for the telltale shimmer, for the color leaching from her body as she transformed from a living woman to a glass sculpture.
One heartbeat.
Another.
Nothing happened. Ilona’s chest rose and fell with her shallow panting. She was still breathing, still living.
Thank fucking God. I finally allowed myself to draw some air into my lungs too.
She was alive.
Rubbing her cheek on Kye’s hand, Ilona slowly opened her eyes and gave him a sultry look.
“There is nothing sweeter than a werewolf’s knot on a full moon night,” she said huskily. “In my beast form, I’d rip you to pieces, Your Majesty.”
He gave her an amused smirk. “I bet you would.”
“And what a waste that would be.” She pouted regretfully, then added as a proposition, “Any other night, however, I’d gladly spend with a siren like you.”
From her words and the seductive smile she gave him, it was safe to say the Moon Goddess didn’t demand either purity or celibacy from her worshippers.
Ilona didn’t look scared and wasn’t acting like a victim.
Maybe she didn’t know about the curse and didn’t realize the danger she had just so narrowly escaped.
But Kye knew, and he’d been fully prepared to murder Ilona to test the magic of his silk.
He patted her cheek through the fabric and praised, “You did well.”
I’d seen him kill monsters, but only to defend us from them. I believed he valued life and killed only out of necessity. Had it been necessary to expose Ilona to deadly danger? Did it make his actions any less reckless or cruel just because she survived?
Kye’s actions, as his emotions, often stretched beyond limits and crossed the lines that I’d been raised to respect.
He hated fiercely, fell in and out of love quickly, punished ruthlessly, and claimed swiftly.
There was a certain thrill from just being at his side.
But there was also great danger in growing close to him, even for those he claimed to favor, the danger that didn’t just come from the curse.
Sidling next to me, Leslo cleared his throat. He seemed uncomfortable in the situation and eager to be done with it.
“Alright then.” He grabbed my arm again. “Since the silk works, our deal is complete.”
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Kye turned toward him. The gaze of his iridescent, multi-faceted eyes cut to the brack’s hand on my arm.
“Ah, about that...” he murmured.
Leslo’s hand promptly released me, and I had a feeling he wasn’t even fully aware of the action himself.
“What are you planning to do with the human?” Kye asked, looking bored.
Leslo shrugged. “Do you want to test your silk on her too?”
A muscle in Kye’s jaw ticked.
“No,” he retorted coolly. “But I’m willing to take her off your hands. For a good price too.”
He spoke in a detached, indifferent voice, not sparing me a glance as if I wasn’t even there. I knew he cared about me. I understood he deliberately downplayed his feelings for me in front of the brack. That did not negate the fact that two men were about to negotiate a price for my person.
“How much?” Leslo drawled, in an obvious attempt not to look too eager either.
“Well, let’s see...” Kye tapped his chin, squinting into the trees to his left, as if searching for an answer in the forest.
“She’s the only human in the whole of Nerifir right now,” Leslo inserted into Kye’s pretend contemplation. “You’d be the only king with a pet like her.”
“We don’t know that for sure.” Kye waved a hand in a vague, elegant gesture. “There might be more. But I’m willing to buy this one. It’ll save you the hassle of dragging her all over Nerifir in search of a suitable buyer.”
Leslo snorted skeptically. “I don’t think finding a buyer would take long in her case. Humans are rare and treasured higher than gold. Another king or a high lord would snatch her the moment he learns she’s for sale.”
Kye moved a shoulder with a slight wince at the mention of another man buying me, but his voice flowed smoothly, “Maybe, but that would still take time. Instead, you can go back to your goddess right now. Tell her the good news that you completed the task she gave you. Collect your reward. She would handsomely reward a good, obedient slave like yourself, wouldn’t she? ”
Temptation thickly infused his voice.
Leslo lowered his head defensively but croaked, “I’ll only take gold or precious stones for the human. And no more quests or favors.”
Their negotiations made my skin crawl. I felt dirty without being touched, cheap without even being sold yet, empty of heart and void of soul like an inanimate object.
Unable to listen for even a moment longer, I stepped away from them and toward the vast ocean that promised limitless freedom, but there was no escaping my fate.
I’d begged Kye to set me free, yet he refused, making it clear he’d never let me go.
I had no future in this world but the one he approved of.
No identity but the one that connected me to him. And no free will unless he allowed it.
I would never be his equal, even if he made me his queen. And the worst part about all of this was that I genuinely cared for him. Despite everything, I feared I could fall for him, fall for a man who measured his relationships in hours, when I took years to build mine.
Kye could never be my partner. He was my jailer.
A beautiful, gentle, and even caring one maybe, but still only a jailer.
And in a few minutes, he’d become my owner, as soon as the two of them determined the price they both could agree on.
Whatever relationship Kye and I could ever build from now on would forever have a price tag.
I’d know exactly how many gold coins I was worth to him.
Or maybe he’d pay with his cum diamonds?
That thought added insult to injury, bringing both a bitter smile to my lips and a hurtful prickle of tears to my eyes.
There was nothing I could do to stop this. If Kye didn’t buy me from Leslo, the brack would sell me to someone else, a stranger in some faraway place. I had no control over my destiny. I lost it the moment I climbed into Leslo’s van in the airport’s parking lot.
I took another step away from them. I didn’t want to hear their voices. I couldn’t even look at them, turning to stare out into the ocean instead.
The sun hovered low over the horizon now, spreading a warm sepia glow over the water.
Not far from the shore, the glow gained a pink hue.
It was pretty, with the shimmer I’d learned to associate with magic in Nerifir.
I stared at it for a moment, the shimmer dancing in my vision through the film of tears welling in my eyes.
What did those ballerina-pink sparkles in the water mean and how did they get there?
Then realization hit me.
“A patch of pink shimmer over a body of water,” Kye had said when I’d asked him to describe what a portal back to my world looked like.
Was that it? A portal to my world? Did the door to escape finally open for me when I was at my lowest point yet?
My heart skipped a beat, then thudded high in my throat.
Was that really it? A portal?
Kye had said there was one on the shores of Sarnala, hadn’t he? Why not right here? He’d also mentioned that some of them were open only for a limited time. What if this one was closing soon?
Even if I was mistaken, and it was not a portal but just a play of light in my blurry vision? What did I have to lose?
“It’s a deal then,” Leslo’s voice boomed behind me. “All our bargains are now complete, Your Majesty. And all promises fulfilled.”
It was now or never. I had no time to lose and no chance to think it over.
I ran.
I sprinted for the vague pink glow in the ocean as if my life depended on it. I leaped over the foamy waves rolling ashore, then waded through the water until it was deep enough to swim.
“Maren!” Kye’s voice roared behind me, sounding shocked and indignant.
I couldn’t allow myself to think about him. I couldn’t let his voice stop me.
Pushing off the sandy bottom, I brought my arms up and dove under. With my eyes open, I aimed for the glowing disk of pink shimmer up ahead.
The closer I swam, the brighter and clearer it became, beckoning me with the tunnel of white-pink light in the middle.
It was the portal; I was sure of it now.
I was so close, so close to being free. I stretched my arms, my hands sinking into the magical light.
The shimmer ran up my skin, drawing me out of the briny water of the ocean and into the fantastic stream of the mysterious River of Mists, toward the only freedom I could have.
Away from Nerifir and the extraordinary, beguiling man who’d trapped me here more effectively than a cage or a chain.
Warm, sparkling air engulfed my face and shoulders, guiding me through. My vision spun, my mind growing dizzy.
Did it work?
Was I free?
As the magic of the River of Mists almost enclosed me, a firm grip suddenly seized my ankle. One thing was certain, wherever I was going, I wasn’t alone.
The light dulled around me. The shimmer faded. Overwhelmed by the power of the River of Mists, my mind went dark.
End of Book 1