Chapter 5 #2
But my bindings were solid blue stone, not rope I could cut on the sharp edges of stone dragon scales.
I’d tried breaking them on the walls, to no avail.
The only thing that could combat power was more power, and without my rings I had nothing.
A chill went down my body. If Cleodora found me now, I was completely vulnerable.
“Better get the glowing stone then,” I panted, stretching my arms above my head and ignoring my burning muscles and the sharp pain that cracked through my stomach.
This wasn’t working. I needed to get higher.
“Hey, Gaia,” I said conversationally as I pulled one knee under my body and then the next until I knelt on her shoulder, my hands braced on the stone sweep of her hair. “If you’re watching this, can you do me a favour and work some divine intervention if it looks like I’m going to break my neck?”
My legs quivered as I stretched higher, nothing at all holding me to the statue as I stretched my arms, my fingers finally brushing the blue gem embedded in the ceiling.
I really should have considered how I was going to pry the damn thing out, but I was too close to stop now.
My nails threatened to crack as I dug them into the hairline seam around the stone, failing spectacularly at pulling it free.
“This is the problem with being amazing at everything,” I groaned, heaving on the stone, hooking my thumbnail under the edge. “Even my failures are epic.”
I wrenched with my bound hands, convinced I just needed a little more force, and when that didn’t work, I tried pushing on the glowing gem, trying to pop it out the other side. I stretched as high as I dared, throwing extra weight into the stone.
I really ought to have seen the fall coming.
I was kneeling on a statue’s shoulder, balanced on two arguably knobbly knees, for gods’ sakes.
One moment I pressed on the stone, the next my hands slipped, my arms cut a fast downward path, and I tumbled off the Mother’s shoulder too fast to catch myself.
So this was how I died. Trying to rip a blue stone from the ceiling of a cave. Not exactly ballad-worthy. Maybe Ryvan would elaborate my death into something epic and deserving of a legend. Like battling a rampaging lion to save a whole village from its vicious jaws.
I’d like to say I fell gracefully. In reality, I flailed and squealed, my bound arms wobbling like jelly, my legs akimbo as I tried to curl into a ball.
Everything happened too fast, and not even instinct allowed me to cushion my fall.
I plummeted like a comet, destined to break on collision with the carved stone floor and—
Stopped, like an elastic band tugged me back, halting me two feet from the ground.
I exhaled shakily, my head spinning. A net of glimmering blue magic had caught me, and for a moment I knew the exact combination of shaky relief and sparkling fear acrobats must feel when they came close enough to kiss death but were saved by their nets.
“Zaba!” roared a welcome voice, footsteps carrying Kier closer as the net gently lowered me to the floor.
I got shakily to my feet in time to be engulfed by sandalwood and pine as strong arms bound me in muscle and protective rage. He was shaking, either with panic or anger. But if he hated me, why was he hugging me?
I half expected to lift my head and find the Haar, but it was Kier with his brow knotted in worry, his sapphire eyes almost black with panic, his mouth flattened into a hard line.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded, his stare clashing with mine.
“That I was imprisoned and needed to escape?” I threw back, pulling myself out of his embrace even if it hurt. I needed my own arms around my middle, needed to hold myself together as pain lanced my soul.
“Imprisoned,” he echoed, his voice as hard as steel. And then he sighed, his shoulders dropping as he pinched his nose. “Zaba, you’re not locked up because you’re a prisoner.”
“Right,” I said with a nod, the lance of pain growing spikes, more like a club as it attacked my heart.
“I’m locked up for some other reason. Which is it—a traitor awaiting execution?
A patient waiting for a doctor to certify her insane?
Or maybe this is a lovely little retreat, and we’re all about to gather in a circle and sing campfire songs around the statue of the Mother.
Did you remember to bring marshmallows?”
“Zaba,” Kier murmured in a gentle tone that made all my spiky, vulnerable parts even spikier.
“Well? If I’m not a prisoner, why am I locked in a cave with no fucking exit?”
I retreated when he came closer, reaching for me. His gaze held mine, steady, beseeching. Full of the same love I saw this morning.
“You’re not a prisoner, or a traitor, or a patient,” he said in a calm voice that made me itch for a sword. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the way my stomach knotted in response to it or the way my face heated, skin pulling tight over my bones. “Come here.”
“No.”
“I want to hug my mate, whose soul I can feel literally tearing itself apart, so get the fuck over here, Zaba.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, backing up. I had to swallow the lump in my throat to get it out. “No.”
He wasn’t acting like a man who hated me, but it made no sense. The first time, he exiled me. This time he locked me up—that part was logical. But saving me from getting splattered on the floor and then holding me? It didn’t add up. I didn’t understand.
“Come here, wife,” he said in a lower, rumbling voice that made my eyes sting viciously.
“If you come within a foot of me, I’ll castrate you,” I threatened, the first tears lining my eyes.
“And deprive yourself of those little gasps you make when I fuck you hard the way you like?”
“What are you doing?” I demanded, throwing my bound hands up. He hadn’t made any move to unfasten the magic around my wrists I noticed.
“Flirting with my wife?” he offered, advancing a step. “Turning you on so you’ll let me touch you again? I don’t like this distance between us, Zaba.”
He really needed to stop using the W word, because it made me weak. The pain in my chest grew more spikes, gouging deeper.
“You’re supposed to hate me,” I said in a tight voice. “I led you and your friends into a trap. Your brother’s dead because of me. I betrayed you. Again.”
And I barely fucking recovered from the first time. We’d had weeks together, at peace, secure in our marriage. Weeks. And then it was all ripped away.
Kier’s body tightened in barely-perceptible degrees, but I was so familiar with the way he moved. My heart quickened, fluttering in my chest. When he lunged, arms outstretched to grab me, I was already spinning on my bare feet, already leaping into a sprint.
Kier’s low laugh followed me, wicked and… carnal. What the fuck was happening? “I like this new kind of foreplay, Zaba.”
He let me run, gave me a head-start, and that in itself made me shudder. I wasn’t scared he’d hurt me, but my fear of rejection was its own living creature, sitting in my soul like a porcupine. It wasn’t a spike-covered bat cutting up my insides after all. It was my own fear.
Although, that head start was a little worrying. Was he so convinced he could catch me that—
A solid weight knocked into me from behind. Blue arms snapped around my middle as we crashed to the ground, Kier rolling to absorb the impact. He rolled us again until I was under him, my ass pressed to the surprising hardness in his trousers.
Right, so the confidence about catching me definitely wasn’t misplaced. I almost groaned. Why did I think I could outrun a goblin?
“Now that I’ve caught my prize, what should I do with it?” he mused, his voice low, gravelly.
Welp. Just like that I went from terrified of rejection to insatiably horny.
“You could unbind my hands,” I offered, fighting the urge to roll my hips back into him.
His laugh assured me he had no plans to release me. Cold shot through me when he caught my earlobe between exceptionally sharp teeth. My breath went faint. “But I like you bound, mate.”
This time I couldn’t fight my groan. That word was my undoing. And my salvation. He didn’t hate me, and wasn't rejecting me. He was claiming me.
“You’re locked up here,” he said, his hands stroking up my sides to grasp my arms, pushing my hands above my head where he pinned them with a single broad hand, “because this is the Chamber of Truths, where magic struggles to form. The stone and the markings block power, so whoever compelled you can’t reach you here. ”
“Oh.”
Oh. That made sense. I had thought those carvings on the floor were a little out of the ordinary. Guess they were more than a unique interior décor choice. That must be why I hadn’t heard Cleodora once since waking up.
“And your hands are bound for the same reason I had to take your rings away. You kept trying to kill yourself every time you gained consciousness.”
In the unlikely event that someone discovers my compulsion, you'll kill yourself before you speak my name.
I shuddered. “She—” Pain strangled my voice in my throat, and I gurgled, choking on my own saliva.
“Don’t speak,” Kier urged, kissing the back of my head.
“Don’t try to tell me anything. The compulsion is still there, the chamber just blocks their access to you.
Her access to you,” he added in a growl warped with rage.
“When I find who did this, I will rip her apart, Zaba. That is a promise and a vow. She will learn pain beyond any known level of suffering. She will beg for death for what she’s done to you. ”
I swallowed the knot swelling in my sore throat. I tasted blood, but I was well used to that after weeks of her compulsion. I knew my throat would heal in a few hours.
“You are no traitor, Zabaletta Kollastus. You’re not down here for punishment; this is how we saved you.”
I ducked my head, tears rolling down my cheeks onto the floor, a whorl cut into the stone right under me, concentric circles spreading out from it.
“We’re working on a way to undo the compulsion, but until then, you’ll have to stay in the chamber. It’s no way for a husband to treat his beloved wife, but I suppose I’ll have to find ways to make it up to you. And we are all alone down here…”
I choked back my emotion, my fear, my fury at being my own body betraying me, and wiggled my ass against Kier’s cock. “Make me see the gods, husband.”
He kissed the spot on my ear he’d grazed with his teeth, sending a hard shudder through me. “It will be my absolute pleasure.”