12. CHAPTER 12
Miya
The Territories
Archai, Caspador
The leather padding along the edge of the brass bar cooled Miya's forearms. She leaned against it, already dizzy.
“Another.” The captain tapped the counter. The bartender retrieved their empty shot glasses. They shared their own private room at the club while his men enjoyed their party downstairs. Lucky her.
Miya downed the shot of vodka without hesitating.
Compliance.
That was the bare minimum. She had to minimize herself. All thoughts and needs. It would make the revenge feel even better once she crushed him.
There were no lights overhead, only candles along the walls and tables. Flames licked the thin glass container that divided the room into two. With the dark leather couches in the center of the room, Miya might enjoy a place like this under different circumstances.
“Tell me about Aiden,” the captain said.
The burn in her throat and chest came from more than vodka. Was he still concerned with Rafferty's loyalty? “He’s my handler.”
“Just your handler?”
She shifted beneath his stare. “No.”
The captain nodded. “Smart girl like you wouldn’t waste an opportunity to get an edge on anyone. You have feelings for him?”
“Plenty of feelings. Enough feelings that sometimes I can’t handle leaving his giant head attached to his body.
” Miya hated Aiden more than anyone. Having to lower herself beneath such an idiot infuriated her.
It was humiliating being on his arm, but she benefited too much from it right now to get rid of him.
“Does he love you?” the captain asked.
“Aiden’s incapable of loving anyone but himself.”
“If he could, would you be the one?”
Miya rolled her eyes. “I’m his girl.” Aiden had only proposed a hundred times. Not that he ever meant it.
“Good, then you can sway him. I understand the king has cracked down on your boss’s territory. Perhaps, one day, there will be a more reasonable man ruling Caspador.”
The ground beneath her felt unsteady. He spoke of regicide. What else could he mean? The image of the king's family warmed her chest. The towering mossy pillars of his palace and the gleaming marble stairs that caught the sun’s light. How his smile beamed whenever he saw his children.
The captain took her hand, and she stumbled onto numb legs, following him to the couch.
To share such intentions with her sealed her fate. He'd never allow her to tell anyone. What if he did plan to assassinate the king and replace him? That incompetent idiot of a ruler didn’t deserve the throne. But…
But death?
The bartender placed a tray of shots on the table. The captain brought one to her lips, and she let him pour it into her mouth.
He smiled in approval. “Where’s Aiden from?”
That again?
He’d brought her here to interrogate her.
The realization shook her. Miya couldn’t hold up to a real interrogation by a Ciondian officer.
Especially not once he got her drunk. She couldn’t escape this.
Her clothes felt stuffy, her skin clammy.
It took all her concentration to focus on what he said because she kept drifting away to nothingness now that she understood what he meant to do.
The questions came slowly at first. He repeated the same ones, shooting them at a rapid pace, until he’d throw in a new one when she least expected it.
He forced another shot on her, lifting it to her mouth when she resisted. Her arms became heavy and distant until they felt like they were drifting away from her body. The captain battered her with his questioning.
“You slipped me… something…” Miya said. She moaned. Even when she closed her eyes, the lights seared her vision.
“Drink the last one.” The captain tapped the table. “How old were you when you met Aiden?”
“Seventeen… I need to go… get sick…”
“You’re fine.” He jostled her when she closed her eyes, her muscles twitching in response to his touch. “Explain your mission at Krowe’s.”
“My boss promised the estate to his client.”
“Who’s the client?”
“They don’t tell me.”
“I need a name.”
“Only Aiden and the boss know.” Her head lulled. “What did you give me? I don’t… feel right…” Miya heaved and doubled over, grabbing her mouth. The captain nudged her away from the couch.
“Hurry.” He shoved her hard enough for her to trip.
She stumbled to the restroom and caught a trash can just in time to get sick. Holding her stomach, she turned on the faucet and rinsed her mouth, spilling water onto the ground and counter. Her hands fumbled as if they weren’t really attached to her.
Miya met her reflection in the mirror. Beneath the mascara streaking her cheeks, it looked like her mother stared back at her. Not just because of how much Miya resembled her, but because of that look in her eye, that message screaming soundlessly.
Run.
Her mom never complained to her or let Miya see how she felt like a captive in the palace, but Miya saw it now when she looked back through time. She saw how badly her mom wanted to choose her own life. Needed Miya to do the same.
Pain pinched her chest. She looked away and, as she did, her long hair cascaded over her shoulders.
She saw her mother again. Dancing in the garden.
Reading on the bed. Staring out over the palace walls like her mind alone may carry her away.
Miya imagined the wind whipping the heavy skirts of her dress in the courtyard, as wild as her heart had been.
She held up her hand in the light, looking over the black mark on her ring finger. Her mother had worn an alexandrite stone passed down to generations of queens. In the sun, blue and green filled its core, but the incandescent light on her mother’s vanity brought forth a red glow from its depths.
“Steady for the public and fiery under heat. This is how a queen must be, you know.”
“What would you say, Mama?” Miya’s mark remained black as she rotated her hand. The color never changed, no matter the light. “Are we as different as we seem?”
It hadn’t been her mother’s choice to marry her father.
In the palace or on the streets, the two of them were destined for the same life.
No escaping it. Her mother died living out men’s dreams without finding her own.
Just a body. Hardly more than a signature on a treaty.
In a marriage like that, her ring might as well have been a mark.
Why should Miya pity the king? He’d not simply jeopardized himself in his antics with Krowe’s estate, but his entire kingdom.
He must have known the Phaedra would retaliate to such an insult.
As hard as Miya worked to forget him, she wondered from time to time: would he play with their lives if he knew his daughter walked his filthy streets?
He’d care if the captain put a gun to his head.
He’d care if he watched his kingdom get ripped out from beneath him.
Miya couldn’t be the one to do it. She was getting too close to everything.
But maybe, just maybe, it would be better for all Caspador if the captain did put the king out of his misery.
Once again, Miya looked at herself in the mirror. Long ago, a different image met her, but so much had changed that she wouldn’t recognize that young palace girl. Gripping the cold countertop, she banished thoughts of that child long gone and scrutinized the woman who had risen from her ashes.
“He’s not your father anymore,” she whispered. “Your name is Miya, and you don’t owe him a thing.”
If she chose to run, then she'd run. Miya did not have to save the man who never saved her. But if she wanted to fight the captain, that was her choice too. These men couldn't force anything from her anymore. She had everything she needed to flee across the ocean if necessary.
She straightened her dress and reentered the room with her head held high, sitting beside the captain.
Her mother would want her to make her own life, not enslave herself to her father’s agenda, or to the futile quest to save Caspador, and not to these men who gladly used her up until nothing remained.
Wasn't that a half-truth, though? No matter what happened, her mother always returned to her people to care for them, even when it one day cost her everything.
No, her mother wouldn't want Miya to return to the abuses of the palace.
She'd want her to protect her siblings, though.
Their children. She'd want Miya to fight for the innocent people caught up in this war.
Her senses cleared, her muscles back under her control.
She wasn't running from this captain before hurting him.
And tonight, she needed to stay ahead of him.
If he learned the king's eldest daughter didn't really die, that she bizarrely lived as a spy and marked woman, he'd whisk her back to Ciondo.
“Why did you stay at Rafferty?” he asked.
Good question. Did she understand the answer?
“I ran a few times at first. Aiden always brought me back. I never ended up anywhere better. I know how to get by at Rafferty…” Her shoulders slumped.
She drew her knees to her belly, blue flames blurring in her unfocused eyes.
“I realized I didn't need to lower myself to them… I could take power for myself… I can still take more… with you…” All true. Miya would take more. She’d play the captain, and when she finished, she'd finally escape from them all.
The boss. Aiden. Her father. This war. At the end of this, she'd decide she'd done enough and leave Caspador behind.
“What else? What are you really doing at Rafferty?”
“I hate them.” Miya smiled. “I'm going to ruin them one day… I save the girls from them… Hide them away… There's a woman who will take my place when I'm ready to leave… But I'm not done yet… They haven't bled enough.”
Miya might not have become who she once planned to be, but she didn't waste her life. Even if she couldn't save Caspador, she'd saved so many girls from her fate. That made it all worth it.
“Who does your boss work for?”
She curled her toes. He’d asked her so many times. “No one.”
Non-stop questions.
The blue flames in the center of the room danced closer and closer.
Her father married her mother for a treaty between himself and Caspador’s religious tribes.
Those villages didn't used to be so bad, not until Bale took over.
The lust for power took root anywhere, the most resilient of weeds.
He basically sold her mother off. And why her of all people? Her beauty. Her body. Nothing more.
“How did you end up at Rafferty?”
A curse passed from mother to daughter. Eyes closed, she had a feeling of falling, weight hanging from her ankles, dragging her into emptiness.
“Answer.”
The words drifted in her mind. The truth and lies dancing together. Truth. Stick with the truth. “The boss noticed I was reading a flier… Said he needed a smart girl…”
“You said you’d been with two other places before that.”
“No. Only one. The first one. The people who took me.” Miya had buried that time of her life. Her body revolted against the memory with another bout of sickness. It didn't exist. She buried it with those men.
“Who took you?” he asked.
“People who said they could help. They tricked me. Marked me.”
“What happened to them?”
No more. It had been so long since Miya allowed herself to remember. Could she distract him? Resting against his chest, she circled her arms around his neck, groaning. “Captain, I'm tired…”
He tugged her head back by her hair just hard enough to sting. “What happened to the people who marked you?”
“They got killed… Greedy people make a lot of enemies…”
“You survived.”
The emptiness stripped the feeling from her voice. “I always survive.”
Let that be a warning to him.
Though her first attempt didn't work, Miya held onto her faculties just enough to keep fighting for his attention. To end this interrogation before it unraveled everything she'd hidden for almost fifteen years.
Little by little, she chipped away at his discipline. It felt never-ending. At some point, she’d started having those dream thoughts. She searched for the answers in the fog of her mind. Maybe kissed him to avoid speaking. Maybe passed out beside him.
Her thoughts twisted until they no longer made sense. Until she no longer recognized them as thoughts. Until she jolted awake to bright lights shining through the windows, trying to remember anything that had happened the night before.