45. RHYDIAN
45
RHYDIAN
I ’d thought perhaps, after returning to the train things would be different. Instead, she was indifferent. Rieka acted as though she hadn’t risked her life to save mine. To risk her life for a man who she claimed to hate, to wish was dead, believing all that she does about me, and still choosing to rescue me regardless. It was utterly ridiculous.
I’d sat with her all night as her eyes were mended, hoping just once, for a word, anything so we might talk about what happened, about why she came to my rescue when she could just have easily stayed on the train. No one knew of our deal. She would have remained on the train, but she would have been rid of the Bloodhound. Instead, I’d been met with absolute indifference to what had happened.
And then after the talent show, she went and fell asleep in my arms, as if that wasn’t the absolute worst thing she could have done. For two hours I tried to get those damn bows out of my hair, her laughter at my struggle striking low in my stomach. And in the end, she put on a show for her bunkmates and helped me get them out.
If I weren’t certain how much she hated me for what I did to Kris, I would have sworn on her damn Celestials that it was done in earnest.
I’d spent the last two days trying to take my mind off her. With the success of the raid, the council had never been more on our side than they were now. And it was all thanks to Rieka.
One of the Runners had let it slip that we had voted in Rieka as a Runner—my coin was on Lily. The council had demanded to know why. My position made it impossible to withhold that information, at least the part they requested. They had spent all day before the talent show debating the merits of a Runner who was immune to Toxicant Traps, debating what benefits that would hold for our people in the long run, as well as her position by my side. And most importantly if she could aid in freeing all the passengers? Since the council was split they agreed to enforce both decisions.
The first. If Rieka was indeed immune to traps, and the mission to the factory could now go ahead, then she needed to be trained and protected.
And the second. In order to achieve this, since leadership of the Runners fell to me, the council saw fit to extend my timeframe. I now had another year before I had to take my grandfather’s position on the council. But it had a condition.
I was forbidden from leaving the train for anything other than that mission. No supply runs. Their reasoning—the more time I spent on the train with her, the more likely she was to produce an heir to take my place in twenty-five years.
So now I was utterly fucked.
The point of going on all those supply runs was distance. If I had distance, I wouldn’t think about her. If I had distance I wouldn’t dream about her or a future we might have. Distance gave me time to figure out a way to get out of the deal with the buyer. To save her. To save everyone.
Now I was going to be on the train with her every hour of every day. My thoughts on nothing but her. I’d spent the last three weeks taking cold showers before bed just to keep my dick down because being so close to her, touching her during one-on-one training was making it near impossible to not want her.
The first sign of sex being even a possibility with Rieka and all my senses were thrown from the train. I doubted she even knew what effect she had on me.
I couldn’t close my eyes at night without seeing her. Her scent perfumed my pillow, the touch of her fingers lingered on my chest. It was agonising how much I thought about her, how much I dreamed about my hands on her body. Squeezing her thighs and kissing the lips of her pussy. It was utter torture.
Because even with her hatred for me, the worst part was that I wanted her to want me back.
How fucked up was that?
I’d put her in an impossible position, made even more impossible by the fact I’d had the perfect opportunity to stop this had I just turned that godsdamned horse around back in the slave camp when she’d recognised me. If I’d just done that, maybe everything would have been different? Maybe Rieka would actually want me instead of the freedom being with me could grant her?
I’d gone through every possible scenario, every way out of the deal I’d struck. And there was only one path forward. But even if we succeeded, even if with her help we managed to free all the passengers, one of us would still be living on borrowed time.
The note I’d found on my pillow, the one that smelled of her crumpled in my hand as I forced the thoughts from my head.
I wish to add an amendment to the conditions. Lily asked me to teach the little ones to bake. I left early to prepare for the class. I will make it up in training tonight.
I took a cold shower and attempted to detangle my mess of a head with balm and soap, and then spent the next hour sparring with Mal and Jordry. They finally collapsed at half-six to catch their breaths. I was stretching out my own anxiety-ridden muscles when I noticed my grandfather enter The Fight Hall.
“I thought you would be watching your wife’s class this morning?” he asked when I jogged over.
“She didn’t tell me when it started.” A fact I only now just realised.
Grandfather leaned on his cane. “Care to accompany me then?”
I glanced over at Mal and Jordry collapsed on the mat, chests heaving. Perhaps training wasn’t the best outlet for my frustrations if I was taking it out on my friends.
I quickly retrieved my shirt and joined my grandfather.
“You seem frustrated,” he noted as we headed in the direction of The Kitchen .
“Is it that obvious?”
My grandfather tipped his head. “Only to those who know you.”
I remained silent. Unsure of anything I could say that wouldn’t betray our bet.
“Have you spoken about it to your mother?”
My pace slowed. Grandfather rarely talked of my mother. The topic was too hard and to derisive for either of us. He’d never agreed to her decision, and she had never forgiven him for his. But when he brought her up it was usually because he was worried about me.
He changed the subject when he realised I wasn’t going to answer. “Rieka paid me a visit this morning.”
I abruptly stopped. When I asked him why, his answer was about as surprising as things could get in this place.
I repeated his answer. “She asked if I would like a cake for my birthday?” Even I thought I sounded incredulous.
How does she even know when my birthday is?
It wasn’t a secret. It just wasn’t a topic I liked to think about—the collar around my grandfather’s neck being the glaring reason why.
“What did you tell her?” I asked him, noticing the crowd forming in the passage between the carriages.
“When have you ever said no to cake?”
He had a point.
“She asked if you liked citrus fruit. Apparently, she knows a wonderful sweet lime recipe and asked if she could have a few from my tree, I hope it is ok that I said yes?”
I honestly didn’t know how I felt. No one had ever offered to bake me anything before.
We continued in silence until we reached the passage between The Greenhouse and The Kitchen.
The crowd was unusual. Lily and the others on kitchen roster had made a habit of keeping The Kitchen doors closed. But the answer quickly became apparent. It was not just the littles in The Kitchen today, both passages were crowded with passengers watching Rieka.
It benefited me that they all believed us married. I was able to relegate myself to a position just out of her sight, but where I could see everything.
Flour dusted the counter like snow, white marks smeared across her face like paint. Standing on the wooden packing boxes we used to load supplies stood over a dozen littles, their faces equally smeared with white.
On the counter stood a sack of flour, a bowl of salt, jugs of water and a bowl of what looked like the foam from a mug of ale.
Rieka was teaching them to make bread I realised.
For two hours I watched her instruct the class on exactly how to make such a household staple as she called it. A commodity which a rare few, my sister included knew how to make. And with the number of passengers on the train, I doubted she was teaching them because she thought the train needed more bread - which it did. But perhaps—
We’d never actually spoken about why the Runners volunteer as they do. So it wouldn’t be feasible to think Rieka was teaching them a skill for afterwards, for when growing grain was a real possibility?
She rubbed the back of her hand across her cheek, spreading the flour further, the white powder smearing the corner of her mouth. She absentmindedly licked it.
One of the littles called her Lady Kanyk, and my heart jumped. Rieka didn’t seem phased by the address.
When had they started calling her that?
She glided across the space, moving to a little to help him pour his water into his bowl where she then instructed him on how to correctly stir the mixture. The smile never left her. It was the same one I’d first seen her wear in the town square of Keltjar. All those months ago. Joyous, exuberant and at peace.
By the end of the two hours, one hundred small buns were baking in the oven, and I was ready to kick my sister out of The Kitchen .
Rieka had agreed to the condition after all. I knew committing to it meant I would lose this bet. But right now, looking at her in her dishevelled but happy state, I’d never found her more irresistible.
With my hands safely detained in my pockets for the moment, I meandered through the departing crowd and only cleared my throat when the last of the passengers had left.
“Rhydian,” my sister said from over the counter. “I didn’t know you came to watch?”
“I hadn’t planned on it. But I thought I’d surprise my wife,” I answered without taking my eyes off Rieka. From behind the counter, she fixed me with a heated gaze.
It was now very clear to me, this was a state in which she turned me on. Apron wrapped around her waist and flour smeared on her cheek.
So fucking beautiful . I feared if I looked away she would vanish because a god was so enamoured by her beauty they had stolen her for themself.
Rieka knew what I wanted without me saying a word. “Come to make me regret, have you?”
The corner of my mouth quirked up. “You reap what you sow.”
“Lily, why don’t you go and rest? Rhydian can help me clean up,” Rieka suggested without breaking eye contact.
“Really, oh that would be—oh you two!” A small huff escaped her when she realised what we were asking. I knew she couldn’t object. Especially since I’d caught her and Jae in here a few times.
“Just not on the counter,” she said as she headed for the door. “And please, clean the countertop. I do not need your asses reflecting back at me when I’m stewing dinner.”
The door had barely sealed shut when I marched around the bench, wrapped my hands around her thighs and lifted her atop the counter. The smallest of gasps escaped her, which only made me want this more. I slid my hands around to the front of her trousers only to find the fastening more than I bargained for.
She stared up at me with an expression of satisfaction. Rieka pursed her lips. “Do you require my aid, husband?”
After a minute, her pants just refusing to budge, my frustration forced me to give in. I took a step back and gestured to her. “If you would be so kind.”
Slowly, Rieka raised herself on the counter until she was standing atop it, her gaze down upon me, staring at me from beneath those icy white lashes. Testing my patience, she removed the apron first. Slowly. When it dropped to the countertop, she let her fingers crawl to her waistband cord and left them lingering on her left hip.
Words bubbled up in my throat threatening to come out if she did not rid herself of those pants in the next few seconds. She smirked.
With one quick movement, the pants fell loose to her hips and stopped, the fabric caught teasingly between her kissing thighs. I grasped her from behind, the flesh of her ass cheeks supple in my hands and I lowered her back down onto the counter.
A shocked cry escaped as her naked ass kissed the cold steel. I quickly removed my jacket and slid it beneath her, shielding her from the cold.
I ran my hands down the outside of her thighs as she leaned back, hands bracing herself against the countertop. Slowly I caressed the tops of her thighs until the skin beneath my fingers raised, her body reacting to my touch. I used that moment to part her legs and knelt before her.
I wouldn’t tease her like she teased me. I wanted her too much to wait. I lifted her legs and adjusted one in the crook of my elbow to hold her in place, where I had the perfect view of the ebony masterpiece before me. I leaned in and kissed the inside of her thigh, a soft satisfied moan slipping past her lips as I trailed them along the soft skin. Her breath hitched upon my discovery of her most sensitive area.
I do the same along her other leg, starting at her ankle. Kissing the spot on the inside of her knee, lingering on the thickest part of her thigh and sucking just enough that another moan slipped out. But when I reached the sensitive skin between her leg and her pussy I kissed the top of her mound instead.
I slipped my fingers inside and as I parted her, I ran my tongue through her.
The stuttering moan my kiss received only made me want more. I buried my face inside of her, delighting in the delectable moans that she tried to muffle as my tongue made torturous circles. Perhaps I was a tease. The more she moaned as my tongue fucked her, the more I wanted to hear that sound.
My tongue penetrated her, and she tightened around me. I withdrew it, just enough that my name slipped from her lips. Rieka whimpered, her hand reaching down to grip my hair.
Again, I kissed her, burying my face in her pussy, penetrating her at a leisurely pace that her grip possessively tightened on my hair, and she swore in her native tongue. Something that sounded an awful lot like a prayer.
I fucked her until she begged me to let her come.
She collapsed back onto the counter, her chest rising and falling heavily as the results of her satisfaction fell onto the lining of my jacket, forever marking her territory. The kind of scent that left a mark, a claim.
I collapsed back onto The Kitchen floor. Another perfect view.
Rieka laughed, the muscles in her thighs clenching wondrously. “A few more of those and you might just be right,” she said, her voice echoing off the steel-plated walls.
I would gladly accept that challenge.
So the next day, I made her come in the washroom of a sleeper she didn’t sleep in.
The day after that, in the closet to my office.
That afternoon and the one after that, she came several times in the darkness of The Pipe Room , the sound of the filtration system loud enough to shield the sounds she made.
I made her come every day for the next week.
Tonight, because Rieka had another baking class we’d had to schedule another late-night training session, a particularly gruelling one. She made it impossible with her snarky comments, and her incessant flirting to not want to fuck her right there on the mat. When I’d finally had enough I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder and took her to the one place we hadn’t marked yet.
To The Aviary, where I made her come among lilacs and honeysuckles.
As we lay beneath its domed skylight, under the twinkling souls of the God Sphere, amongst the night blooms, Rieka’s fingers slowly made their way up my shirt. Inching closer and closer to my Sul.
However intimate we were, those tattoos were only ever permitted to be touched by the one I give my heart to, my Dana.
And whilst a part of me knew just how close I was to letting that be her, I knew if she attempted to touch them I would have to stop her.
I waited for her to make contact with the inked skin. But she never did. Rieka’s hand stopped, her fingers instead drawing patterns on my stomach where my shirt had risen.
“How do you do it?”
I glanced down at her, her chin resting atop my stomach where she had draped herself. “Do what?” I asked, trying not to focus on the movements of her fingers as she replicated the patterns of the runes into the fabric of my shirt.
“How do you hide your blessing from everyone on the train? From Eleen and Jordry? How do they not know you’re a Hemopath?’
Those grey eyes were wide, full of keen interest that I almost didn’t want to answer just to keep her looking at me in that way.
“I mask my taint. Make myself appear and smell human.”
She drew the rune for ‘home’ when she spoke again. “But why do they follow you, why do any of the Runners follow you if they believe you’re human? Your problems are not the same.”
I sighed heavily, leaning back on the crook of my arm. The stars above seemed to leer at me, daring me to look her in the eyes and lie. Again.
I chose the truth. “Because I can blend into Naven society and because I’m as stuck as they are. My family have been the caretakers of the train since its inception. By council law when we turn twenty-five we have to remain on the train.”
Rieka scoffed, an incredulous look on her face. “And who made up that law?”
“The ones who made this prison.”
Her expression told me she was trying to find meaning behind my words. “Has anyone ever broken that law?”
Again I told her the truth. “One ancestor. 400 passengers died as a consequence before he returned to the train.”
I watched her expression as she contemplated my words. Shock and disgust. I expected her to make a comment, spew curses or go off on a rant about what bastards our wardens were. Instead, Rieka lay back down, shifting my other arm into a pillow for her head and pressed her body into mine as she turned to gaze at the God Sphere above us.
“So how do you do it then, mask yourself from other Blessed?”
With her head so close to me, her hair catching in my beard it was impossible not to smell her. Cinnamon, freshly baked bread and honey.
“My family’s always called it Conversion. We can take another’s blood and our body metabolises it and for several hours we exhibit the traits of the one whose blood we ingested.”
Rieka shifts against me.
“Does that disgust you?” I asked, looking down at her.
“It’s not what I expected to hear. But your taint is one of the more unusual, so I shouldn’t be surprised there’s more to it than being a lapdog.” She smirked at her own comment.
Relief flooded me and I couldn’t help but smile . “At least I don’t enjoy sleeping in piles of sweat-addled bodies.”
Rieka rolled around to look at me . “I reject that stereotype,” she said aloud . “The sweaty bodies are usually due to group sex.”
“Oh really,” I laughed into my words. “Since when was sexual revelry permitted within the Ecclesiarchy?”
“Since 358,” she said with a cocked brow. “We have an annual festival. The Celestial always encouraged procreation, especially during Lesan.”
“Wait, really?” My question earned a confused expression from Rieka . “That’s a real festival? Deogn Devos celebrate sex and fuck all over the city with anyone?”
“It’s not that debauched,” she chuckled, a strand of her hair falling across her brow at the movement . “Couples struggling to conceive participate in Lesan in the hopes of having a child. I’m a child of Lesan.”
The black had grown so much in the last week that the colour had finally reached her ears. Delicate strokes of black ink on a white canvas. I knew it was stupid. I knew how she would interpret it, but I’d done it anyway. I brushed the strand behind her ear and told her I didn’t know.
“Why would you? I don’t publicise it. But I’m not ashamed of it.”
She moved into a sitting position then, the absence of her body against mine unpleasant. “My mother wanted another child, and so she and my father participated together. I was born nine months later. I couldn’t have asked for a better father.”
I leaned back on my elbows, giving myself the perfect view of her. That buckskin vest flaring over her bare legs, her trousers discarded somewhere in the grass.
Rieka pulled her plait over her shoulder and immediately pulled the red leather tie from the end. I expected her to tidy the plait, but instead, she began wrapping the leather string around her wrist.
I watched as Rieka then tied a knot into the centre of the string before adding two more on either end and threaded them through one another, the leather forming a circlet. “Do you miss them?” I asked her.
Rieka paused with the string between her teeth, her inner voice replying. “That’s a rhetorical question, right?” She pulled, snapping the excess off the leather circle she had created.
“Not at all. Not everyone has loving parents. Lex and Lera’s abandoned them in Lantern Town because they didn’t want the burden of bringing up two Skin Weavers.”
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Lantern Town used to be a Runner’s haven, the twins would probably be dead.
Taking my hand from my stomach, Rieka proceeded to wrap the leftover length of leather string around my wrist.
“Were their parents not passengers of the train?” she asked when she began work on a second circlet.
“They were. Collarless, not Runners. They ran shortly after the twins were born. We can’t choose who we’re born to, but we can still choose our family.”
A minute later, the second circlet complete Rieka spoke in a tone oddly quiet, even for her. “Do you know what Mogya means ?”
The phrase she spoke was rough, but not unfamiliar. “It's the Brute term for mate.”
Rieka slipped the smaller circlet over her wrist and slid one of the knots, the action tightening the loop. “Mogya Fyaak, One who shares a soul is the literal Gods’ Tongue translation. One of the only phrases carried over from before the fall. No other phrase, in any language, had ever been able to embody its meaning since.”
I didn't have a reason to doubt her words. After The Fall, the gods had purged Idica of all hand written tomes that had even a single word of Gods' Togue held within it's pages. What was left was partial transcriptions, of partial translations, of carvings in walls from a thousand years ago. It’s one of the reasons why T'eiryashta are so feared. Their ability to speak the language of the gods makes them a living, breathing link to the days before The Fall.
“Is this you making a public declaration, Rieka?” The comment earned me a cocky grin and a foot to the ribs.
“In Deos, Brutes honour that relationship by wearing marriage bands. We usually braid coloured string but these will do.” Rieka held out her palm, I assumed to ask for my hand. When I gave it to her, she slipped the circlet over my wrist and tightened it, securing it in place.
I examined the "band" as she called it. The knot she had tied in the centre looped in on itself. It was identical to the one on her own wrist. I wanted to ask why. Marriage customs were sacred rituals, why commit one when our relationship was just an act?
I open my mouth, tempted to say the words when Rieka cut me off. “Now no one will question our relationship when we go to Lantern Town for your party.”
“For the party. Of course.” My words came out heavy. Sluggish. As if even my own tongue couldn’t believe I had ever considered another meaning behind her actions.