Chapter Thirteen #2
He stares at me in silence, then swipes a hand over his nape. “I don’t want you to—” He cuts off abruptly and sighs. “You’re not a hostage.”
“So you’ll let me leave?”
“It’s not that simple,” he says. “You’re not safe going anywhere until you regain your memories.” He points at the cuffs on my wrists. “And until we can determine what those are and what their purpose is.”
“They won’t come off,” I remind him.
He nods. “I am aware. We tried everything to to remove them when you first arrived. The magic is . . . unlike anything I’ve seen, and I’ve seen more than you can possibly imagine.”
The king extends a hand down to me. Not wanting to be churlish, I take it, blushing when my knees buckle as I rise and I slump against his big frame. He catches me easily, and we both gasp when that strange current zings between us.
For a heartbeat, every nerve in my body feels charged and alive as if I’ve been struck by an elemental force, and then the flow deadens and cuts off as quickly as it had come. The red glow of the runes on the bracers indicates that something had clearly happened. What was that?
“The cuffs did something,” I whisper, pushing out of his embrace and staring at the runes that had lit up. “When we touched.”
His expression is unreadable. “I saw.”
The runes are arcane; there’s no doubt of it in my mind. While I can’t read them, I suspect the symbols etched on the bracers are powerful, inscribed by a very strong runecaster. “Do you know what any of these runes mean?” I ask the king.
He nods gravely. “Obstruction and confinement. Runes to weaken and to ensnare, runes of submission and compliance, runes of obligation, consequence, and punishment. Runes of control. Pain. Forced dormancy.” He snaps the words out like they’re poison in his mouth, and with each revelation, I flinch.
“Forced dormancy?” I whisper.
“To render you unconscious,” he says.
Someone has put these on me to bind me, to control me to excessive extremes. But why? I’m nobody . . . a bladesmith from the desert. Fear snaps through my veins and I suppress a shudder. Nothing good can come from manacles like these.
“Show me your hands,” he says, and I comply before I can think too hard about it.
His fingertip traces a faint five-pointed shape on each of my palms, causing me to nearly jolt out of my skin.
That same deadening prickle sweeps through me, but the potency of his touch is much more carnal, as though he’s stroking up the center of me.
My thighs clench, face heating and breath lodging in my throat.
This feels strangely intimate, his index finger softly kissing the lines along my palm.
Sensation sings through my body. I gasp and snatch my hands away, miniature shock waves of pleasure detonating inside. Stars above . . . did I just . . . ?
He frowns at me. “What’s the matter?”
Gods, kill me now.
“Nothing,” I mumble.
Silence stretches between us as my ears grow hot with discomfort. I shuffle uneasily when his stare doesn’t leave mine, his face unnaturally still like a stone gargoyle. He doesn’t give away a thing, but I can tell he’s thinking.
“Truce?” the king says in a gruff tone, and when I don’t immediately answer, my surprise evident, he continues.
“I know you have no reason to trust me. But I cannot in good conscience send you back to Oryndhr without understanding what those cuffs mean for you. If they have been placed with your consent, that is a different matter. But if they haven’t, then you could be in danger. ”
“How do I know that I’m not in danger here?”
A strange conflict rages on his face. For an instant, his black eyes glimmer gold before returning to their usual color.
“You have my word that you will be safe,” he growls, as though his tongue is crowded by a mouthful of teeth.
The sound of it doesn’t scare me, however.
Oddly, it resonates with protectiveness . . . and a hint of need, surprisingly.
Is it similar to what I’d felt earlier? He looks as though he wants to grab me, throw me over his shoulder, and do wicked things to me, but then he turns on his heel and strides out of my room, muttering under his breath.
By the gods, he’s so temperamental. Benign one moment, brutish the next.
I frown, uncertain of whether to follow him.
“Suraya, I don’t have all day.”
I roll my eyes, but my feet move almost of their own volition, chasing his footsteps down the corridor. “How do you know my name?”
“I know everyone in my kingdom.” He glances over his shoulder, and I inhale a sharp breath at the utter perfection of his profile. My pulse trips. Sands, if he weren’t so surly, I’d be in a world of trouble.
I follow him down another hallway to a set of marble stairs that lead to a carpeted floor that feels like walking on a cloud.
Another marble staircase takes us to the ground floor, more sparsely decorated but no less lavish.
The furniture is polished to a shine; the mirrors lining the corridor are spotless.
Golden sconces light our way, revealing massive, gilded paintings of bucolic scenes, stunning in both their size and their artistry.
There are soaring azdahas and other magical creatures I’ve never seen depicted in them.
I want to linger and study each of them, but the king keeps marching forward until we reach two massive doors leading outside.
At his punishing pace, we reach the training grounds quickly, with me practically running every few feet to keep up with him.
We stop near a sweeping row of weapons racks; I’m trying to catch my breath when he throws me a sword.
I fling my hand out, barely grabbing it before it impales me.
I scowl at him, but he ignores it, pointing to a big man standing nearby.
“This is Maxur, one of my generals. He will assess your skills.”
I swing the sword around to point at him and arch my eyebrow. “Afraid to test me yourself, Your Majesty?”
He steps out of the way as another blade—presumably Maxur’s—crashes down on mine, and I instantly parry as if I’ve known how to counter an attack all my life.
I blink in shock, but am forced to defend another set of brutal thrusts in quick succession.
Somehow, my body knows exactly what to do, steel meeting steel in an effortless dance.
I’ve known the basics of blade wielding for a long time, ever since I began making them in the forge. But I’ve never fought with such skill . . . or deadly precision.
Have I?
Without warning, more memories erupt. Dueling in a courtyard, a fierce grin on my opponent.
Clem. Hours spent together, practicing with many different weapons.
The man called Aran appears again, this time interspersed with more of those silvery, iridescent ribbons shooting from my fingers . . . like magic.
Disoriented, I falter on my feet. The distraction costs me as a searing pain runs across my hand, the tip of a very real blade catching me unawares, and I let out a choked scream. Blood wells and pools as my weapon drops to the ground from my slackened grip.
A terrifying growl rips through the air.
“It was my fault, Sire,” Maxur yells out. “She stopped when I expected her to move.”
Suddenly, my body goes hot all over and the runes on my cuffs burst into crimson light.
Warmth floods my veins, and the throbbing pain from the cut is .
. . gone. That’s odd. Or maybe I’m in shock.
From past experience of falling down a jādū mine shaft as a child, I know it can do that . . . make pain temporarily disappear.
“Show me,” the king demands, crowding my space.
I scowl at his tone and cradle my fist to my chest. “So you can make it worse? No.”
“It’s already healed,” he says. “Look.”
“No, it’s not, you fool,” I snap, hearing Maxur smother a sound of amusement. “I need a healer.”
“Suraya, look, please.”
It’s the low please that does me in. Gingerly, I wipe the tacky blood off on my leathers and I stare at my hand. And stare some more.
There isn’t a single laceration on my skin. There’s no slice, no gash, no evidence that I was injured at all. My palm is unusually warm with a faint shimmer that fades quickly . . . but the flesh is unbroken and perfectly healthy.
“Impossible,” I whisper.
My stomach roils the more I gawk at my blood-streaked and yet completely unscarred hand.
I know what I saw, the pain I felt. I send a panicked stare to the hulking men at my sides.
“Why are you both staring at me? I just hallucinated this wound healing itself. I’m serious!
I am sick, and I need a starsdamned healer. ”
The bastard of a king rolls his eyes before walking away, saying over his shoulder, “You’re not sick and you don’t need a healer. You’ve already healed yourself, because you have akasha in your blood. Now pick up your sword. Training’s not over.”
Mulishly, I open my mouth to retort, but then snap it shut. Is this why I healed so swiftly after the crash?
“I wonder if Ani will know anything about this,” I say aloud, bending to retrieve my fallen weapon.
“Anahima?” Maxur asks.
Curious, I glance up at him as we circle each other slowly. “You know her?”
He makes a noncommittal sound with a sidelong glance to where the king is standing, arms folded over his broad chest. I follow his gaze and ignore the unwelcome leap of my pulse at his commanding form.
“She’s the king’s sister,” Maxur says.
Sword forgotten, I blink in disbelief and think back to the kind woman I’d met, the one the king himself had chased off with his temper as if she were nothing but an inconvenience to him.
He’s so consumed with his own importance that he doesn’t even care about his own sibling.
I scowl, remembering why he’d rubbed me the wrong way from the start. Stars, the arrogance.
There’s little resemblance between them. Ani is a sweet, bookish, skinny, blue-eyed brunette. The silver-haired dictatorial fiend standing a few lengths away is the size of a house with an ego to match and has soulless eyes that reflect the abyss from which he was undoubtedly born.
Maxur barks a shocked laugh. “Tell me how you really feel.”
Sands, had I said that out loud? I flush and then shrug. “They don’t look alike at all.”
He shrugs in turn. “The king had dark hair until he ascended to his magic and the crown.” He screws up his nose in thought, mischief flashing in his hazel eyes. “And maybe he’s the size of a house because he likes lifting heavy things.”
“Sounds like someone might be infatuated,” I grunt sourly, though I’ll take the small fact that I agree about the king’s formidable figure to my tomb.
The man’s muscles have muscles. I’d felt them when I’d so brazenly poked him, seen them flex when he’d loomed over me like an unforgiving god, and practically crashed into them when I’d lost my balance.
Thank the stars I’m too sweaty to blush.
But Maxur grins, seeing right through me. “You can admit it. Everyone says he’s easy on the eyes.”
Committed to my lie, I heft my sword and grimace. “Not to me. I don’t go for the domineering, calculating, ruthless warlord who likes to order everyone around.”
“I hate to break it to you, but he is the king. All that goes with the territory.” Maxur grins, then crouches into an attack stance, coming at me in a rush that I sidestep easily. “So pray tell, my lady, what type do you prefer?”
“That’s a hard one.” I duck, slashing out, and pretend to think about my options while spinning, my steps bringing me around him to attack from the back. “Maybe a somewhat handsome, average-skilled, unwashed general with the pungent smell of overgrown onions.”
His eyes sparkle with mock outrage at my teasing; he ducks, narrowly avoiding my blade. “Bite your tongue, lady! I am better than average, and I smell like roses. Glad you think I’m handsome, though.”
“Somewhat handsome,” I say with a laugh, blocking an upper swipe of his blade as I veer right to avoid his natural downswing. “Definitely courtable.”
We both freeze at the low, ferocious snarl that interrupts our light banter. The sparkle vanishes from Maxur’s eyes, and his entire body hunches as if he’s shouldering some kind of invisible blow. I glance over my shoulder to where the king is fairly glowering at us.
Even from where I’m standing, I can see the gold shine flash in his stare.
I frown. “What’s wrong with him?”
Maxur shrugs, standing straight again, though all his earlier playfulness has disappeared. “We’re all fighting an animal inside. Now, attack me again.”