Chapter 5
Gemma
“I t will be a three-day flight to Krynn,” Rivin grunted, releasing my arm abruptly enough to make me stumble into the quarters. It didn’t help that the trail of my wedding dress twisted around my legs. The Kylorr male frowned down at me. For a moment, he stepped toward me, as if to help, but then looked away. “How many meals do you take a day?”
Rivin was my new husband’s ambassador. Not the one who’d brokered this marriage with Mr. Cross, but he’d been the only one present as Azur’s witness. The one who’d stood quietly in the corner of the courtroom, his hand casually draped on the hilt of his sword, as I’d signed my name in blood. The one whose arms Azur of House Kaalium had shoved me into the moment we’d left.
My husband hadn’t even let me say goodbye to my father, to Fran, and that stabbing tendril of cruelty nearly made me cry.
But if he thought he could break me, he was wrong.
“Am I to be a prisoner on board?” I asked Rivin, straightening when I got my legs underneath me. He was dressed in the same fashion as Azur: armored. Though, unlike his lord, he wore a flexible plating down his chest and had circular, decorative rings cuffed to the bones of his wings. “Locked away in this room until we arrive to your home planet?”
Truthfully, it would be a relief. Perhaps my husband wouldn’t seek me out on our wedding night. Perhaps he would just leave me alone . Which was the next best thing I could hope for, being the bride of a Kylorr.
Rivin had bright blue eyes, resembling the color of the Nulaxian male’s. A deep scar ran down his left cheek, curving around his mouth like smile lines. Only this male was scowling something fierce.
Strangely enough, I didn’t see fangs. Could…could the Kylorr retract them?
“How many meals do you take?” Rivin asked again.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him, None .
But I would need my strength and a clear head once we arrived to Krynn.
“Three.”
He turned.
“What about my belongings?” I asked hurriedly. My three trunks from home. My entire life packed into them. I needed to change out of this dress. I needed to burn it next.
“They will be given to you once they are searched,” Rivin informed me, his heavy footsteps treading back up the short set of stairs. Those stairs led to a door I knew would be locked from the outside, which led out to the hallway of the Kylorr’s ship.
I watched that door close behind him.
Then I was alone.
Dragging in a deep breath, I slumped down onto a chaise lounge, plush and draped in black velvet. The whole room was appointed with expensive furnishings—including the largest bed I’d ever seen on a space cruiser, a glistening bar cart of multicolored liquors in various crystal decanters, and a complete Halo system installed into one of the wall panels. There was a second door that I assumed led to the washroom. And behind the bar cart, there were floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out into open space, dark and starry, where the ship was docked in a private bay.
Not even as soon as I got my bearings in the room, a gentle hum sounded and we pushed off from the docking port, the launch sequence seamless.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I clenched my fists in my dress, feeling my thumb throb. When I opened my eyes, I saw the dried stain of my blood, dark red against white cloth.
I thought of his voice, soft like smoke but as unyielding as stone. It was my fear that this was his room, his private quarters. When my gaze flitted to the bed, I stood and walked to the Halo panel. I tapped on the setting to darken the windows and to project the mountains of the Collis instead.
Home .
Not anymore.
I felt a breeze across my face as the Halo panel adjusted the temperature in the quarters to that of our province. I heard bird songs, bright and melodious. I smelled the pine trees after a rain. Instead of the darkness of space, I spied the peak of Mount Hara. I was transported home for a brief moment of time.
But instead of peace, all I felt was crippling worry. Worry that my father wouldn’t keep his word. Worry for my sisters. Worry that I would never see them again. Or Fran.
Instead of the bed, I curled up on the chaise. Lying on my side, I felt velvet tickle my cheek and I thought of the red glare of my husband, thought of the sound of his wings and the whisper of the blade across his palm, the slice blooming black.
With Mount Hara in my sights, we set course for Krynn.
* * *
For three days, I waited.
My trunks were returned to me on the night of the first day, and I could finally change out of my bloodied wedding dress. I pressed my face into the textures of my clothes, breathing in the soap Fran used to wash our laundry and feeling my throat go tight with grief.
On the second day of our journey, I spent it mostly curled up on the chaise lounge. Rivin locked the door whenever he came to drop off my meals—three a day. All were travel rations, dried chunky bars of high-calorie meals. His lips seemed to press tighter and tighter with every single one he delivered to me, and I wondered about that.
The second night, I decided to help myself to the bar cart, wrinkling my nose at the whiskey and going instead for the blue liquor of Bavian slew . It reminded me of the blue salt caverns, and I downed the first glass like a shot, the taste pleasantly sweet but tart.
It didn’t take much to get me drunk—I never drank, after all, leaving that particular habit to my father—weaving around my new prison, my head light, giggling like a loon.
The third day, I woke with a pounding headache and so incredibly nauseous that I slept as much as I could. The bed was still made. My meals were untouched. I never cried. Not a single tear, though inside, I felt shriveled and defeated.
When I woke next, I saw him .
With a gasp, I shot straight up from the chaise lounge, highly aware that my dress had bunched up during my fitful sleep and I had a sour taste of slew on my tongue.
Azur’s red gaze dipped to my bared legs, and I hurriedly tugged the material down, rising on shaking knees to stand before him. He had his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the wall next to where I’d been sleeping.
How long has he been watching me? I thought, panic rising in my throat.
He was wearing a deep green tunic—the color of our dark pine forests in the Collis—that molded to his chest, highlighting ridges and valleys of sculpted muscle. His pants were black, his dagger present at the belt on his waist. He wasn’t wearing his gauntlets, revealing veined hands with long, strong fingers and surprisingly neat and shorn black claws.
He was studying me quietly, those eyes narrowed on me, his chin tilted down. Like a predator with prey, that gaze tracked my every movement. My every breath. My every fidget. And so I forced myself to be still.
Azur flashed his fangs at me when I held my breath—thinking it likely he could hear my thunderous heart—and I couldn’t contain my flinch.
“Gemma of House Hara,” he rumbled, the words drawn out. Mocking though soft. “Daughter of the Collis. I must admit, I expected more from such a noble house.”
I wasn’t surprised at the level of indignation that rose in my breast, even as nausea roiled in my belly.
The sharp words left my lips. I even smiled at him as I noted, “Yet you paid for me. You paid whatever I asked. Whatever I wanted. You were desperate to have me.”
Those red eyes burned . His glare nearly withered me where I stood.
Perhaps my pride would be my undoing. Perhaps it would be a blessing. Perhaps that berserker beast in him could be triggered. Perhaps my death would be quick, a flash of a blade, instead of the slow drain from his feedings. Because thinking of him taking my blood, knowing it would nourish him, strengthen him…it was sickening.
Azur pushed off the wall quicker than I could blink. Then he was leisurely circling me, once, twice, three times, like a beast about to pounce but not before making its prey fearful.
Chills ran down my arms when he stopped at my back, goose bumps rippling across my flesh. My heart felt like it was in the pit of my stomach. His scent drifted to me, a clean, woodsy musk like the silverdrops that bloomed only under a full moon in the Collis or of damp soil after a heavy rain.
His touch came, cool and unavoidable, oddly gentle. He swept my black hair over my right shoulder, baring my neck, his dull claws scraping over the column of it like a warning.
Azur gathered my hair in his large fist…
Then a ragged cry tore from my throat when he jerked my head back by my hair. Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to make me claw at his forearms in panic and alarm. He pulled far enough that my back was arched, my neck completely exposed, my head craned back so I was forced to meet his eyes above me. To look up at him. To submit.
A vulnerable, uncomfortable position. One meant to make a point…that he owned me. That he had the strength to make me do whatever he wanted.
I dug my nails into his forearm, but he didn’t even flinch. I only dug harder, determined.
“Remember how you feel right now,” Azur murmured, his eyes trailing down the front of my body, catching on my heaving chest. “Remember the way your blood is rushing. How you’re desperate and squirming to get away from me. Remember this ache , little wife.”
There was a sting over my scalp as his grip tightened. A whimper escaped me, and I did the only thing I could of. He wanted me to submit to him? Never. Instead, I pressed my nails as deep into his forearm as I could and I clawed hard .
A hiss escaped him. Anger flashed and he pulled me closer. He bent over me. Roughly in my ear, he growled, “Because this is how you will feel every day for the rest of your life, Gemma of House Hara. I give you my word as a son of the Kaalium.”
His head lowered.
“ No, ” came the ragged plea when I felt the sharp press of his fangs against my neck. But I was powerless to stop it. I was completely exposed to him, made vulnerable and unprotected by his sheer strength.
His fangs pricked at my skin. His hot exhale of air against my jugular made my scalp tingle. He bit—but not hard enough to break my skin. It was a warning . There was only a sharp pressure, and then…
Azur released me.
I gasped for breath as I fell to my knees on the floor, my hands flying up to the bite. The skin was smooth. He hadn’t made me bleed. Not yet.
But I had made him bleed , I realized when he stepped in front of me. A small stream of black blood was running from my deep nail marks across his gray forearm. A part of me was horrified at what I’d done.
The other part, however…
I tilted my chin up as he scowled down at me. I glared right back, despite my heaving chest and my wounded pride.
“I will break you,” he promised me softly, those eyes rapt on me. “It is only a matter of time.”
The worst part was that I believed him.
This Kylorr was a sick monster. He’d bought me, he’d brokered this marriage, all because this was a game to him. He wanted to torment me. He wanted to make me fear him. He wanted me to submit. How many others had he done this to? How many other wives had he had?
A thought occurred to me. Were there other wives, even now? Did he go around collecting various females from different species, accumulating them with his wealth, all to bring back to Krynn and keep them locked away for his sick pleasure and amusement?
I believed he would break me eventually. I heard the truth of it in his voice.
However…
“Not before I draw more of your blood, husband ,” I promised him right back, meeting his eyes. My voice was unwavering. It was strong and certain.
Azur grinned. A wide smile that would otherwise have been considered darkly handsome, if not for the fact he was a twisted beast inside. Instead that grin filled me with dread and despair and loss and grief.
“I welcome you to try that again,” he warned. “You won’t like what I do in retaliation.”
His black tongue flicked against one of his ivory fangs.
Then his eyes went to my night dress and my unbrushed hair, made even more unkempt by his handling.
Scowling, he said, “Wash yourself and dress. Make yourself presentable.”
“Why?” I gritted out.
“We’re descending to Krynn,” he told me, already turning his back, making his way to the door. His wings appeared even darker than they had in the courtroom, though this time I spied tiny veins, like a spider’s web, running through the thinner membranes. “I wouldn’t want my wife to embarrass me in my own keep.”
The derision and distaste in his own voice was baffling. Still on my knees, I scrambled up to stand, pushing back my hair. Despite the fact that I’d worked myself to the bone for the last five years, I was still a daughter of the Collis from a respectable house. Even though no one knew of our debts, of our shame, my father was still a great and honored war hero. New Earth citizens recognized him from all over the colonies.
“I am still a Lord’s daughter!” I hissed at his back. “You cannot treat me this way and expect no repercussions. As a citizen of New Earth, I am protected by the United Alliance.”
His laugh filled the room like a rumble of thunder. He didn’t even turn to face me. He gave me his flared wings, and behind them, I heard, “You gave up your citizenship when you signed your name in blood, wife . You belong to the Uranian Federation now. As such, you belong to Krynn. To me .”
His smirk was dark and mocking when he gazed at me over his shoulder. Acid burned the back of my throat.
“As for your father,” he spat, “he was only too happy to let you go.”
I reared back, the unexpected words hurting more than I’d ever thought they might. It wasn’t anything I didn’t know already. My father hadn’t fought to keep me. He had betrayed me long before this Kylorr had ever made his terrible offer to Mr. Cross.
“Clean yourself up,” he ordered me again. The voice of a High Lord. Cold and detached but forceful. He knew I would not refuse him. Could not refuse him. “We’ll land on Krynn within the hour.”