7. Flavia
Flavia
H is four spider arms spread along the bank of the spring—unmoving, almost blending in with the rocks and detritus of the forest floor. But I had long ago learned what a predator lying in wait looked like.
“Little human…” The warning in his voice was clear. I scrambled over and knelt just behind him on the edge. It likely wasn’t what he intended, but it was a skill that had always served me well distracting Tiberius’ men. I placed my hands on the flesh of his massive shoulders.
“What are you—” he started, but then I pressed my thumbs into the crevasse where his muscles met, and he stilled.
He was tight, but I felt his muscles relax just like a man’s would under my ministrations.
I don’t know what I expected from a demon, but his anatomy wasn’t so different from the other men, just larger.
At least near his neck and human arms. I pressed my thumbs into the column of muscle and tendons that ran up the back of his neck, then spread my nails over the skin underneath his dark hair.
He let out a low, reverberating chuckle. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Does this not please you?”
“Clever little thing,” he murmured, his voice carrying amusement and something darker. “You think to disarm me with touch?”
“It worked on lesser predators.” I dug my thumbs deeper into the knots of tension, feeling the way his breathing shifted.
I traced my hands down closer to where his inhuman arms emerged.
The skin there was rougher than leather armor, shifting into something closer to black iron where his segmented arms emerged.
It should have disturbed me, his monstrous anatomy.
Instead, I gently scrapped my nails over the rough texture in fascination.
“Though perhaps you're more resilient than Roman dogs.”
“How flattering. Comparing me to your former tormentors.” His tone remained irreverent, but I caught the edge beneath it. “Tell me, did they purr like house-cats when you touched them this way?”
My hands stilled. “No. They took what they wanted. I merely survived.”
“Survived,” he repeated slowly. “Such an interesting word choice. Not submitted. Not surrendered.” One of his additional eyes swiveled to watch my face, looking for a reaction. I gave him none. His overly wide mouth dipped into a frown.
The rough, shell-like texture of one of his arms wrap around my waist and in the next moment I was drowning in heat.
Hot water surrounded me and I was back in that villa, my body pressed against those heated floors.
Floors far too warm for comfort, as knives and heat pokers tore apart my skin over and over again.
I burst up out of the water, heaving as I coughed water out of my lungs.
I coughed again and shook my head, water streaming from my hair as I scrambled backward toward the spring's edge, my torn stola clinging to my body like a second skin.
I clung to the rocks at the edge, but was shaking too badly to pull myself out.
“No, no, no,” I gasped, the words tumbling out between ragged breaths. The heat—it was everywhere, seeping through my clothes, into my pores, reminding me of those terrible nights when they would drag me down to the basement where the floors burned like the fires of Dis itself.
Ysu remained perfectly still in the water, his multiple eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't read. The steam rose around him, but he made no move to approach, no gesture of comfort or threat. He simply... observed.
“Curious,” he said finally, his voice carrying that irritatingly detached interest. “You showed no such reaction to my form, to my venom, to the prospect of death itself. Yet heated water reduces you to this?”
I managed to stand, and wrapped my arms around myself, shivering violently despite the warmth submerging me.
“I have endured much,” I managed, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “But heat... heat brings back things I would rather forget.”
His head tilted slightly, a gesture that would have been almost human if not for the way his additional eyes moved independently, studying me from multiple angles simultaneously.
“Ah. The Romans and their love of heated baths and floors. How they wish to drive away the cold that defines these lands.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
“Fascinating. Warmth—something most of your kind finds comforting—sends you into panic.”
“Perhaps I’m broken,” I said bitterly.
“Too demanding to be broken,” he said, with a hint of amusement, “perhaps you just see the honesty in the cold and darkness.”
No response came to me, so I simply bit my lip, looking anywhere but those eight, lingering eyes.
“Show me,” he said suddenly, his voice carrying new authority. “Disrobe. I would see the full extent of what they have done to you.”
I stiffened. “I will not?—”
“You will.” His tone brokered no argument, though he still made no move to approach me. “You are my bride now, bound to me by bargain and venom. I have claimed you, and I would know exactly what condition my prize is in.”
The word ‘prize’ stung, but I forced myself to meet his gaze. “You wish to catalog my damage like some merchant examining livestock?”
“Livestock?” His laugh was dark, genuinely amused. “Little human, livestock is raised for slaughter. You, I intend to keep.”
The possessiveness in his voice did not affect me as Tiberius’ had, even as I bristled at his presumption. Tiberius had thought me a possession, his amusing toy. Something in Ysu’s unnatural stare told me a different story. “And if I refuse?”
“Then you refuse.” He shrugged, the gesture oddly casual for a creature of his size. “I am patient, and I have time. Perhaps an eternity of it. But you are the one whose heart burns with a desire for revenge. How much time do you have?”
No time at all. I wanted them all dead, and I wanted it now. I could not stand the thought of them enjoying another day, unburdened by the pain they caused. I was gone, but another would take my place. They may have already found my replacement.
His expression gave away nothing, just the same appraising stare.
“If you uphold our bargain, make no mistake—I will see all of you eventually. The question is how quickly you wish to succumb to me,” he said, and his neutral face broke into a maddening grin.
“How gracious of you to give me the illusion of control.” I crossed my arms over my chest, as if that would hide me from him.
“Illusion?” His smile widened past that point where he looked human, his fangs flashing in the moonlight. Faster than I could see, one of his spider arms lashed out. I felt it pass over my arm and prepared for pain.
There was none.
Instead, one sleeve of my poor, tortured stola fell away, sliced cleanly without any damage to my arm.
I observed it floating in the pool for a moment, before returning to his gaze. The message was clear.
“My dear bride, if I wanted you naked, you would be naked. If I wanted you spread beneath me, you would be trembling and begging for more. The fact that you’re still clothed and defiant should tell you something about the nature of control here.”
Heat flushed through me at his words—not the painful heat of memory, but something else entirely. “You’re quite confident for a creature who’s been alone in these woods for three centuries.”
“Three centuries of hunting, little human. Three centuries of learning exactly how the human body works.” His smile grew even more wicked, if that was possible. “Testing exactly what will make you scream.”
The shiver that ran down my spine wasn’t from fear, and he knew it.
“I wish to understand what manner of creature I have bound myself to,” he replied with that same maddening calm. “Your scars tell stories. They speak of endurance, of survival, of a will that would not break despite every effort to shatter it. These are not shameful marks.”
His words caught me off guard. In all my years of torment, no one had ever suggested that my survival was anything other than cowardice, that my scars were anything other than proof of my weakness.
Tiberius had marked my entire body, but he had always kept my face unmarred.
He still wanted to show me off when the centurions came through for visits.
His golden barbarian wife that they could all covet.
Then he would reveal my true nature to them and they would sneer with disgust as they fucked me.
Ysu would do the same.
Perhaps my thoughts showed through on my face, because I swore I saw his gaze soften, though it might have been a trick of the light emerging from the pool.
“Little human, I am a creature born of curse and shadow, transformed by ancient magic into something that hunts in the darkness. Do you truly think the marks left by mortal cruelty would disturb me?”
“No,” I said slowly, realization dawning. “You’d probably find them... useful. Like a map to every weakness.”
“So distrustful, my bride.” His approval was evident, though it carried a dangerous edge.
“I suspect your weaknesses are not where your scars lie. Those marks represent places where you refused to break. Your true vulnerabilities…” His gaze traveled over me assessingly. “Those likely have been…untouched.”
I stood slowly, water still dripping from my soaked clothing. The tingling in my extremities had spread to a deep humming throughout my entire body, and I found that his presence—his attention—calmed the thrum in my blood. Like his venom sensed its master’s presence.
“You want to see my scars so badly?” I said, fingers moving to the clasp of my torn stola. “What will you give me in return?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Bold. Still negotiating with a demon while half-drowned and trembling.”
“Survival.” It was all I said, but he understood.
“And what would you ask of me?”
I considered for a moment, then smiled with more confidence than I felt. Never let them see you falter. “A truth. Something you’ve never told another soul.”