Thirty Six
Rohan
“You dare embarrass me at The Interval!” Halen slams his fist down on the dining room table. “At my own Games!”
He’s worse than a child having a tantrum.
I snarl at him, standing at my full height at the other end as a servant places food before him, then fills up his goblet.
He doesn’t even thank her, just leers and shoves her away with a rough hand.
He’s the only one in here, his family probably washing in golden bathtubs somewhere, and I want nothing more than to smash his face into that plate.
I eye the guards around the room. Too many. Always too many.
The Nighturn still runs through me after the guards fired it at me and the dragon when there were no more wolves left alive in the Enclave. I don’t know how long I was out, but I woke up on the floor, a guard kicking me awake.
“You are a bastard, and a disgrace to my lineage,” he continues. “I thank the Gods daily the people do not know who you are,” he seethes, face red.
“I can make it known,” I threaten.
“You won’t dare or that elf will feel my wrath… again!”
I grind my teeth.
“You think you can put a dragon into the Enclave, a young one at that, and I won’t go to it?”
He was young, scared, hungry and afraid. I’m a fucking Dragonbond, of course I went to it.
“I will do as I please with my dragons,” he growls.
“We are the people of dragons,” I spit out. “We are Dragorie, they do not belong to you!”
“You are the filth of Dracozar!”
I laugh, the sound dark even to my ears. “It’s called Dracozar because it’s the land of Dragons. Your polished ass won’t change that.”
“It is mine!”
“An illusion of your own doing.”
“It isn’t an illusion, boy, that’s why I have a crown upon my head and dragons in my stead. My dragons.”
I growl, leaning forward to put my hands on the table.
“They are stolen dragons.”
“And,” he begins, clasping his hands in front of him smugly. “It doesn’t matter how or why I have them in my possession, what matters is that I do, and they will do as I command.”
I scoff. They never will.
“Oh, you don’t think so?” He frowns. “Then whatever shall I do with the elf? That’s her task after all. If I have no use for her…” He trails off, and my body freezes at the threat.
“You have other elves,” I grit out.
“And none have been able to speak to them like that little elf,” he muses.
My pulse picks up.
“There’ll be others.”
“Actually, you see, there won’t.” He takes a drink, spilling some down his fine tunic.
“This alliance with the Elven people has taught me a thing or two about their abilities. Some are more potent in their affinity than others. Ivara, for example, she told me she has no skill for archery, but she dabbles in poison. Niyah excels in archery and herbology. She’s also very skilled with animals, but a dragon?
Not the slightest compulsion to even be near one, and apparently if the desire isn’t there, neither is the skill.
” Another sip. “In fact, her people have only ever recorded three elves in existence to have the ability to speak with dragons, isn’t that peculiar? ”
“She cannot be the only one.” She just can’t be. He needs to find someone else and leave her the fuck alone.
“But she is, and you will do well to remember that I will do anything to get what I want.”
I seethe internally, my body heating while he smiles.
“The Games are going well, aren’t they? The best we’ve ever had.”
“You love watching us die,” I retort.
“Of course I do.” He never denies it. “It’s the best part.”
He throws the chicken leg down, causing juices to splash on the table.
A servant comes, a young woman, and she immediately leans over and cleans up the spillage with a cloth.
Halen watches her, a smirk on his face, and then he’s grabbing her ass, squeezing it roughly and the woman freezes, her face paling.
“Wait for me after,” he orders her.
“Y-yes my king,” she stutters, head down, leaving for the kitchen.
I grind my teeth.
“Oh, come on,” Halen says, noticing the anger on my face. “They all want it.” He smirks as he takes a drink. “Just like your mother.”
I’m on the table and lunging for him before a single coherent thought comes to me, ready to strangle the life out of him, but then an arrow is in my shoulder, another in my arm, leg, taking me down onto the food as a plume of green vapor explodes around me.
I fall off the table and drop to the floor, taking plates with me. Growling in frustration, I try to get to my feet, try to get to the bastard, but my body starts going limp.
His shoes come into view as numbness spreads through my body, the tingles painful as I feel everything slow down within me.
“Such rage, boy, but we can quell it.” He clicks his fingers, and then I’m dragged out of the room and down the familiar path to a side room I was in when he first took me.
Guards quickly strip me, undoing the ribbons around my forearms, chains replacing them as I growl and snarl at them like a wild animal.
A weak animal.
After I’m secured, I dangle there, heavy eyes watching the door as the king walks in, dismissing them.
He stands before me, eyes full of disapproval as he curls his lip.
“Your mother would be so disappointed.”
My body jerks, his verbal aim hitting true, and he laughs, moving off toward the side.
I breathe heavily, sweat coating my body already from the Nighturn and the thought of what’s to come.
I grit my teeth when Halen turns, eyes sharpening.
“You could have been a weapon of destruction.”
I am.
“You could have lived a lavish life under my heel, but she had to hide you from me, didn’t she?”
She did it to protect me, not that I knew at the time.
When I discovered what he had done to my mother, the first Games after that, I tried to kill him and gave myself away as his son.
He had no idea my mother was pregnant, nor he the father as he likes to remind me, like right now.
“She screamed, you know? Your mother. Tearing through her virgin cunt was like no other,” he says wistfully as my vision darkens at the edges. “So tight, so… bloody.” He grins, and I want to cover my ears, want to scream at him to stop like a child.
But I’m frozen, eyes blank, lungs burning for air.
I have no control as he mentally tortures me, and that kind of torture gets to me more than he ever could physically.
“She clawed at the ground. Hair wild. She cried, and her dragon cried for her too before it was rendered unconscious.”
I shake, a vision of my mother screaming for help, her legs bloodied, tears streaming down her face. I squeeze my eyes shut, throat tightening.
He moves to my arm and lifts a pair of tongs as my eyes open. They glow red, having been heated from the fire, then he clamps them down on my forearm over the chains, catching little bits of skin.
I growl, body shaking, chains rattling as the sizzle reaches my ears, my heart pounding,
“She was so good, I had to do it three more times there and then before I left her there, did you know that?”
I jerk in the chains.
“Gods, she was so feisty… a flirt.” He moves the tongs further down, and the smell of burnt flesh hits me, the skin turning bloody and black as my neck strains from the pain.
“She pulled my hair, scratched me up and it made my cock even harder, but it was probably the moment she begged me to stop that made me come inside of her so deeply, it was probably the moment you were conceived.”
My eyes squeeze shut, thinking about my mother that way. In so much pain and agony.
Nausea rises, saliva coating the inside of my mouth.
“I went back a few times, you know.”
My body jolts, my eyes flying to him.
“It was a few years after that first night that we made a deal, your mother and I. She wouldn’t tell anyone what happened and she would meet me so I could use her body as much as I pleased in secret, as long as I left the clan alone.”
She couldn’t have…
“How could I resist? She was beautiful, a prize, but having the secrecy to plunge inside of her solidified my decision. For lying with a Dragorie was disrespectful to our line, but her cunt was just that good.”
No.
“So every year, I would meet her at the same spot as she came back from The Glade, and like the whore she was, she would strip, get on her hands and knees and offer herself to me.”
I choke on my own saliva, and he laughs, pressing harder against the chains around my forearm.
“We did that a few times, but with no fight, it gets boring.” He sighs, and then he moves to the chains on my other arm, heating them too.
I can hear my skin sizzling, hear the chains sinking into my flesh and melding together, forever marking me.
But I would rather this, than hear what he’s saying.
He’s lying… she couldn’t have… she… she didn’t tell me.
But his eyes show nothing but a memory, satisfaction for what he had done.
“Oh, look how angry you are, Rohan,” he tuts. “Poor, weak little body. I should have found your mother when she was pregnant and beat you out of her.”
I growl.
“But then to have you here now, like this?” He takes a step back to a lever on the wall. “I’m having far too much fun.”
Then he pulls it and the chains recede, pulling away from my burns the sickly squelch of my skin blurring my vision as it’s ripped from me and I drop to the floor.
Agony roars through me, the skin on my forearm bubbling, still melting as Halen crouches down next to me.
My eyes flick to him, my mouth dribbling as he grins.
“I can’t wait to do the same to your little elf. Will she also squeal?” I make a noise, trying to fight the darkening at the edges of my vision. “Well, I’ll make sure you’re here to witness it.”
He steps back and calls for the guards.
“Get us new chains and let’s go again.”
Halen continues his torture, burning my skin, pouring a healing liquid upon it then starting again. It never ends.
The pain.
The taunts.
My mother’s cries echo in my head.
But I focus on her.
The one ember to keep my fire alive.
To make sure it doesn’t go out.
My one thing.
My Alara, as darkness takes me.