ESSA
The lotion burned as I rubbed it between my legs, but I set my teeth on edge, pushing up inside myself with two fingers.
For an instant, the sensation sent a stirring of pleasure through me, and I thought of Charlie, of the night we’d spent on Dorhane together in that cave.
I imagined him on top of me, my fingertips playing over the muscles of his shoulders as he moved inside me.
But Charlie was dead.
The girl I had been that night was dead, too.
And I couldn’t let myself think of Charlie again. Otherwise, it would be impossible to do what I had to do now.
A towel sat upon the vanity. I wiped my hand off on it, then I stood tall, meeting my own eyes in the mirror.
Dizziness was taking hold of me. And at the core of myself, where the poison was slathered, a fire was starting to kindle.
I had to take my place on the bydrune bed now or pass out before I got there.
I opened the door and found Ollie waiting. The look on his face was miserable, the expression of a slapped child.
“You look lovely,” he said, the words coming out a choked whisper. I took his arm and allowed him to lead me into the bydrune chamber.
A colonnade ran around the edge of the room and a glass dome rose above, shockingly undamaged from the bombardment.
Flowers were twined up the columns and silk swags hung above.
A fountain trickled in one corner. In other circumstances, the space would have been beautiful, serene.
But I knew what was coming. In the center of the room there stood a table of white stone, draped with silk and pillows.
Ollie glanced over his shoulder. “Isn’t your Aunt supposed to be the one…?”
“She’s not coming,” I said, and I unceremoniously slipped the robe off my shoulders and handed it to Ollie. As pale as his face had been before, it grew red now as his eyes skated over my bare skin.
“You look…” he muttered, but words failed him.
I was beyond caring about modesty now. Beyond caring about anything. I lay down on the stone table, feeling its chill radiate into me.
A pair of silken, lavender scarves had been looped through a pair of holes in the stone.
“I think you’re supposed to tie me down,” I said, putting both my arms up next to my head in a pose of surrender.
Ollie first tied down the arm that was whole, cinching the cord around my wrist. Then he tied down my maimed arm—at the elbow, since there was no wrist. It wasn’t until I felt the drops on my skin that I saw he was weeping.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just—this is—”
“Ollie,” I said firmly. “Go out and tell them I’m ready.”
His eyes fixed on me, blinking fast.
“You would truly do this, Essa?” he asked. “Is this your wish?”
“To prove I’m worthy to be Queen of Maethalia,” I said. “I would do all this and more. Now tell them I’m ready.”
Ollie didn’t know about the venom coursing through my veins, or the poison burning like embers between my legs. Still, something in my eyes must have scared him. He recoiled from me, almost as if afraid.
“What of your love?” he asked, a tinge of bitterness in his words. “What of Charlie?”
“He’s dead,” I said. Tears suddenly welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back, furious with myself for allowing them to come. “Now for the last time, tell them I’m ready.”
Now, I understood what had scared Ollie a moment before. The ice in my voice almost scared me, too. I’d been afraid of my mother. My sister Paemalla had been a terror. But, I realized, they were nothing compared to what I was now. Or what I might become after this day.
The ancient matriarch of our line was Aulucia the White. How, I wondered, would history remember me?
Ollie passed a trembling hand over his brow, sniffing back his tears.
Then, in a sudden motion, he lunged in and brought his lips to mine, kissing me.
I froze, shocked. Then, just as quickly as he’d swooped in, he pulled away.
It was over before I knew what was happening.
He fixed his tearful eyes on me for one more moment, his expression full of longing and anguish and something else—anger, maybe.
Then he wheeled and was gone, his Torouman boots silent as he trod across the stone floor and out the door.
I had no idea what his kiss meant or what I felt—tenderness? Disgust?
Then I heard it, the low reverberation of a gong being struck.
The bydrune had begun.