Chapter 10 #2
But they’d catch me. They’re outside my door even now, where they’ll remain until he calls for them. I’d be killed or sent to Victora Prison. Probably the latter. It’s less merciful.
The Emperor’s son is following fast in his father’s footsteps, day by day becoming cruel and unaffected. Crowned in gold and glory, all for having been born rich, the son of a monster. He’d pursue me just for the sake of revenge.
And then I’d never get home.
The thought of my mother’s shoulder, my head resting there once more, pushes me on. I stoop, taking this man who sickens me into my arms, carrying him through to my bed.
His head indents my pillow, his body sinking down into my bed cover.
His shoes are already off. He’s wearing nothing but a loose robe. Something simple to slip out of. Expectant. After all, when have I ever said no?
Not since that first day.
I unclasp it, open it, reveal the body that repulses me, flaccid in swaths of pasty moonlight. Working the bedspread from beneath him, I cover as much of him as I can, then disrobe.
I crawl into the bed next to him, naked, and try to sleep.
It takes a long time, and even then comes only in drifts, broken with fear that he will wake. That the drug won’t hold.
The gasps of sleep are full with nightmares.
Powders floating in wine, blood soaking into sand, shower water so hot my skin boils with it, my flesh peeling off in enormous chunks, the Deathball, its spikes slicing into me, the Emperor waking, the Emperor sleeping, the Emperor…
Neither awake nor asleep is an escape from this night. Every heavy breath he takes, every cough, seems to signal the end of the prelude. Time for the show.
Somewhere around dawn, I roll onto my side, my back to him. My skin crawls awaiting the touch of his callous fingers. Fingers dipped in the blood of so many others.
Sinking, drowning, in a sea of gray.
Deeper, darker, gray.
Then peace.
Gray and stormy sky. A dark ocean. Floating.
Robin’s eyes, distrustful. But so beautiful.
Atrea.
Rocky cliffs so close, if only I could reach them. Scale them. Let them cut me to shreds, let my flesh be swallowed by that ocean, vomited back out onto the shore. Let every piece of me rot in the sun of that fair isle. Ground into dust. Swept into the dirt of my homeland.
I’d die for one full breath of that fresh air.
One good and deep breath.
A serpent wraps around my hand, dragging me back down. Twisting, it curls itself around my waist, slithers over my chest, up and up toward my throat, squeezing tight around my neck. Then its tail, worming over my chin, forcing itself in at my lips…
My eyes fling open, and I gasp in humid air, thick with magnolia. Too hot. Too early.
His fingers pause at my lips.
The Emperor.
I kiss them.
Everything crashes down on me.
His hand, wet with my kiss, trails back down my chin, stroking over my chest. “Where were you last night?”
“I was here.” I force a smile, like it was a mad thing for him to have said. His faded blue eyes catch mine sharply. “All night, here by your side,” I insist.
“I don’t remember coming in here.” Pushing himself up, he scans the room like it’s one of his many enemies—like he might have it gruesomely killed on a whim.
The sheet covers his lower half, and I’m thankful for it. That I don’t have to see all of him first thing.
I press up on my arm, rolling over toward him. “You don’t recall? I had training. I came in late, then drank wine with you. Perhaps we had a few too many.” I laugh, but he doesn’t even crack a smile.
He knows.
My heart pounds in my chest, ready for whatever might come next.
I lean a little closer, flexing the muscles he automatically grazes his eyes over. “You were wonderful last night.” Lying my head against his shoulder, kissing his arm, I whisper, “I’m so sore.”
There’s the slightest hint of a smile right at the edge of his lips, but his voice remains cold. “I wish I could recall.”
“You’ll just have to take my word for it. Unless…” I tilt my head, forcing myself to look up into his inhuman eyes. “You’d like a repeat performance?”
He regards me for a time, like a butcher inspecting a stuck pig. “You know I meet with the Senate Thursday mornings.”
Of course I know. And I know the sun’s high in the sky and he has little time to spare. So I lay my head down on his lap and play the flirt. “Do they really need you so badly every Thursday? Surely you could miss one.”
He can’t, and he won’t.
The knowledge helps me tolerate the way he runs his flat hand over my pecs, around and around.
I’m going to need a bath.
“What a shame you weren’t so very keen for my company last night.” His words hold a bitter edge, like poisonous pokeberries.
“I am sorry I was late,” I rush out. “It won’t happen again. I had to train them in the forest, and the change to my routine threw me as to which day it was. You know I’d have been here earlier had I realized. I’m always here, am I not?”
“Not the way you once were.”
He may as well have reached into my chest and stopped my heart with his cold, dead fingers. It’s a warning, and I hear it loud and clear.
Rolling onto my stomach, I grasp his hand, pressing his fingers to my lips. “My most sincere apologies, Emperor.”
He holds his hand quite still, assessing me, and I keep my head bowed.
It’s always the way with him.
If I escape one trap, I stumble so easily into the next. You pay one way or another in any deals done with this man. Living is a constant negotiation.
“It would be my honor to wait on you tonight, Emperor.” The words are out before I can stop them.
Survival.
The animal half, trained like a dog to eat scraps from the gutter.
“I shall have to check my calendar.” He says it coolly, a dagger sliding deftly into my kidney.
“Yes, Emperor.”
His hand slips free. He reaches for his robe, begins to dress. “I suppose it’s only to be expected you might forget some things. You are under a lot of pressure this season.”
“Yes, Emperor.”
“And you’re soon to be a free man.”
“Yes. Thank you, Emperor.”
“And what of the talent this season? Anyone worthy of my interest?”
How casually he drops the words. Anyone on the outside would think he was concerned with the game. But that’s not what he means by ‘talent.’
And it sickens me that my replacement—the next in line to be favorite should the Emperor lose interest in me—might be the one man I’m most desperate to protect.
I lower my head further, trying to hide the color that touches my cheeks. “No one of such talent this year, I’m afraid. Though I promise you an entertaining season. Perhaps the best yet.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, Emperor.”
“Very well.” He moves for the door, then pauses. “Though, if you are finding your captain’s duties too arduous to remember appointments… perhaps I should look into your teammates for a replacement, do you think?”
My insides turn brittle, so much ice, ready to crack.
“No. Please. Emperor, no.” Whatever dignity I might have believed I could hold onto drops with the sheets.
Before the next beat of my heart, I’m kneeling before him, naked once again.
“It was one mistake, and I wish dearly I hadn’t made it.
Every moment I spend without you, I am poorer for it.
Please grant me the chance to make it up to you. Any way you see fit.”
It might be wiser to keep my head bowed, but I don’t believe he can resist me.
I put everything I have into one longing and seductive look that I throw up at him, letting my chin fall gently against his hip.
When his body presses forward, when my lips purse to kiss his thigh, when he strokes his nauseating fingers through my hair, I know I’ll live another day.
“I’ll send for you.”
I remain on the floor, head low, even as the door clicks closed behind him.
He’s gone.
One night free of his hands, and at such a cost.
One night, and why did I do it? Why did I stay in Evander’s surgery until the final player came? Just to have a drink with him? Why did I go into the showers with him? Why did I save him a seat, tell him my secrets, break bread and drink wine with him?
Evander was right. Robin’s dangerous. Dangerous, because he feels like home. Like safety. Dangerous, because he makes me feel like the man I used to be, back when I was free. When I had a will of my own. Dangerous, because I can’t get enough of him.
But everything, everything, depends on the Emperor’s favor. Robin being kept safe from him, Maria having a home with me, the freedom I’ve spent half a decade earning through murder, simpering, fucking a monster I detest…
Every physical part of me wants to curl up and die.
But the revulsion inside me is too strong to ever succumb to the urge.
I will never die on Victoran soil.
I will win Deathball.
I will be free.