82. Rorax
Rorax rolled her shoulders as she made her way out to the Contestar Courtyard. She had heard the yelling before she even made it up the steps from the library. She squinted as she shoved the keep’s double doors open, the sun burning her eyes.
Tightening the long strands of white ribbon holding her hair in two buns on top of her head, Rorax took exactly four steps before coming to a screeching halt as soon as what she saw registered in her brain.
Mo and Mairi stood toe to toe, screaming at each other.
“Shit,” Rorax mumbled under her breath, looking back and forth between the women.
Movement to her side made her look up as Briar came and stood next to her.
“What’s going on?” Rorax asked.
“They just found out that Mo knew Mairi’s brother, or some shit. Mo had somethin’ to do with Mairi’s brother being sold off to Ostr in the slave market.”
“Holy Mother of K??n.” Rorax’s attention turned from Briar to the two other Contestars who were still screaming at one another.
Briar looked up at Rorax with sad eyes and shook her head, folding her arms across her chest protectively. “But hey, I’ve been waitin’ for you, I . . . I wanted to talk to you ‘bout somethin’.” Briar shifted her weight from foot to foot and tucked a strand of short blonde hair behind her ear. Her lips were pressed together tightly, making the scar down her face pull taught.
“What is it?” Rorax tore her attention from the screaming women and watched Briar warily. Usually the Air-Born Contestar was composed and relaxed. This nervous energy was unusual, and it put Rorax on edge.
“I heard that you were tryin’ to find a way outta’ the Choosing. To free yourself from the magick. That’s why you an’ your Protectorates are always in the library, tryin to find somethin’ to help.”
“It’s true,” Rorax nodded, “I am.”
“If you find a way out, do ya think that I could use it, too? If I come down an’ help? I know that I wouldn’ be much use as a Guardian, don’ have the connections or the temperament, but I don’ wanna die to prove it. I have family back home, a sister.”
Rorax turned fully to Briar. “We could use all the help we can get. We would be happy to have you. We might not be successful, and we both might end up dead anyway, but it’s better than nothing.”
Briar nodded eagerly, her face and posture relaxing. “Me, too, that’s all I want, just a chance.”
“My shift is during the day, after my morning session and before Contestar Training. Come and find me then, the librarian will show you the way.”
Briar’s face cracked a small smile. “Thank you, Rorax.”
Rorax spotted Ayres staring at her from over Briar’s blonde head.He was leaning against a pillar as he raised his hand and summoned her with two lazy, tattooed fingers, motioning her to come. She gave him a flat look and was tempted to flip him off.
“Excuse me,” Rorax murmured to Briar, stepping around her fellow Contestar and stalking over to stand next to him, keeping a wary side eye on the women still screaming at each other.
Ayres lowered his head down to her ear. His nose bumped her earlobe, and she fought to keep from leaning into him. “You’re late,” he murmured.
She scoffed. “Not like anyone is getting anything done anyway.”
“Mairi has a reason to be upset.”
“I heard, what happened to—”
Rorax didn’t get to finish her sentence as Mairi screamed bloody murder, pulled a knife from her sleeve, and sliced it across Mo’s throat.There was a beat of silence as both women, and the whole courtyard, stared at the blood running from between Mo’s dark fingers.
Then the screaming started, and soldiers rushed the two Contestars.
“Fuck,” Ayres clipped, grabbing Rorax’s arm and all but throwing her behind him. She staggered, tripping over her own feet, and watched from over Ayres’s shoulder as Mo fell to her knees, her hands still gripping her throat.
Mairi’s shocked expression faded into something like pure fury. “Die, you evil bitch.”
In a surprisingly graceful move for Mairi, she twirled and gave a roundhouse kick to the side of Mo’s head. Mo’s neck made a sickening snap, and her body crumpled to the ground.
Ror’s eyes rolled back into her head as pure heat, anger, and bloodlust punched through her chest, and a red haze came over her eyes.
She snapped herself to attention to see Isgra grinning over at her, longing and anger plain on her face, too. Rorax smiled right back and pulled her hair knives from her buns. Glee and excitement bubbled up inside her, and suddenly she was desperate to see the deep red of Isgra’s blood dousing the stones, to feel its warmth across her palms.
Volla would never know.
Rorax took one step before a strong pair of hands gripped one wrist, and then the other, pinning them together.
“Hey!” she snapped, as Ayres ripped one of the ties from her hair, causing the hair of one of her buns to fall loose, and twisted it around her wrists. He ripped the knives out of her hands, tossing them to the ground. He picked her up and had her pinned against his chest before she could think of a way to slip out of his hold.
“For the love of Marras, Rorax,” Ayres growled as she started thrashing in his arms, trying to break free. She wanted to see Isgra’s blood splattered across the stones, and she wanted it now. She had been so patient for so long. She deserved it.
“I will tear you to shreds,” Rorax hissed. She didn’t know if she was talking to Isgra or Ayres. She thrashed again but gods above, wrestling Ayres was like wrestling a bull. He was breathing heavily but was otherwise undeterred as he dragged her away from the chaos. “Let me go.”
“Heads up!” a House of Ice soldier hollered at them as a huge ball of fire barreled towards them. It didn’t make it far.
A wall of black, crackling with red energy that looked like lightning, rushed up from the ground protecting them from Isgra’s fire. The wall didn’t so much as flicker under the pressure of Isgra’s fireball.
Rorax snarled. She desperately wished she had her knife, or any of the magick being dangerously flashed around from the other Contestars. Ayres’s arms pinned her limbs down fractionally tighter, and he dragged her in long strides towards the nearest tower.
Just as they reached it, Milla and Cannon burst through the doors, along with a handful of Death Court Guards. They came to an abrupt halt when they saw Ayres dragging Rorax away from the fighting. Rorax saw them and snarled even louder.
“Mediate this shit,” Ayres snarled jerking his chin over his shoulder. “Don’t let any of the Lowborns die, especially Enna and Briar.”
They nodded and disappeared into the fray.
The hallway was mostly deserted, and he dropped Rorax from over his shoulder, wrapping one arm around her hip and simply dragging her along beside him.
“Let me go.” Rorax thrashed against him, arching her back, kicking her legs, and then trying to headbutt him. He didn’t even flinch, and the rage from the influx burned hotter through her chest.
If she couldn’t kill Isgra, she would settle for Ayres. The arrogant fucking asshole. He was dragging her down the hallway, closer to her room when the influx hit its peak. Power surged through her veins.
Her back arched in a different way this time, as the magick fused its way into her cells, her upper body straining against his wrist and forearm.
“Fuck,” Ayres clipped, quickening his pace.
She started thrashing even harder in his arms until they got to her room. She scratched her nails down his forearm so he would drop his hand away, but she only succeeded in making him curse and sliding his arm down her torso.
Then a different kind of electricity rocked through her.
His palm had slid down her chest and had inadvertently cupped her breast.
She took three heaving breaths before arching her back to press herself further into his palm.
He squeezed.
“Ayres.” A moan ripped from her lips as all the heat, all the anger and aggression in her blood flipped and barreled down into her core.
“What’s your safe word, Little Crow?” Ayres’s voice was gravel and lust against her ear, and it made her even wetter.
She opened her mouth, but didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.
“Little Crow.” He growled. “You don’t tell me, and I don’t touch you. What is it?”
“Red,” Rorax whimpered, desperate for his hands to continue.
“Good girl,” he growled, as everything exploded.
She needed his skin on hers now, she turned to face him and all but ripped off his sweater, exposing his broad chest.He pulled her leather Contestar armor off over her head and stared down at her breast bindings.
“You weren’t wearing these that day you were poisoned.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Ayres’s fingers dipped into the top of her bindings and ripped it off. He stared like a depraved man at her heavy breasts, his pupils dilating. She squirmed, rubbing her thighs together as the raw, animalistic expression made Rorax drip down her thighs.He reached behind her neck and into her hair and jerked her face back to his so roughly, Rorax groaned into his mouth.
She hoped he fucked like he kissed. Hard, and hot.
Her nipples scraped against his chest, alarmingly cold over a golden medallion that hung in the middle of his pecks, and then hot against his warm skin, tickling over the slight hair on his chest.
Ayres continued to kiss her as he picked her up and carried her to her bed. He laid her down on her back and only broke off the kiss to take off Rorax’s boots and rip off her pants.
Rorax was completely naked under him, and she only wanted one thing, spreading her legs for him. “Ayres,” she pleaded. “Touch me.”
Ayres smirked and gripped her hair, yanking it back so that he could see her face. “Where do you want me to touch you, Rorax? I expect you to be very specific.”
She didn’t hesitate, spreading her legs a fraction wider. “My pussy. Please.”
He slid his fingers down to her wet slit but didn’t enter her or circle her clit. She rolled her hips up like she was chasing his hand, but he didn’t so much as graze her again.
Her influx writhed under her skin. Needing more, demanding more. “Please, Ayres.”
He slid his hands back up her slit and used the tip of his thumb to hit the target dead on. Bullseye. Her hips bucked, and he tsked in disapproval. “Rorax, I said I wanted to hear what you wanted.”
Ayres switched his thumb out for another finger and started to work her clit until her whole body hummed and tingled, her legs writhing around his hand. “Aryes, please. I need to come.”
“That’s my good girl,” he murmured low in her ear. He inserted a finger, two fingers into her and her hips bucked again. “What do you want inside you when you come first, Little Crow? My fingers, my fist, or my cock?”
She let out a distressed whimper as his finger continued to swirl her clit, his fingers pumping steadily inside her. “Cock. Your cock.”
“Beg for it then.” He snarled, pinching her clit so hard she gasped.
“Ayres!” she cried. “Please Ayres, I don’t—”
He flipped her over onto her stomach, gripped the hair at the back of her head and jerked her torso up, forcing her skull up to his shoulder. Her spine almost bent in half, but before she could cry out, he slammed his cock all the way inside of her pussy, buried to his hips in one single shove.
She screamed.
Ayres chuckled darkly and used the thumb he had used on her clit to wipe away the tears that had sprung to her eyes, mixing her fluids across her cheek as she panted heavily. “I like seeing you hurt on my cock, Little Crow.”
Ayres let go of her hair, but snaked his hand under one of her arms, wrapping his tattooed hand around the front of her throat to keep her head pinned against his shoulder. He started to slide slowly in and out of her, torturously slow, forcing her to feel every single thick inch of him.
He reached around with his other hand and must have felt how wet she was, how stretched her pussy was around his cock, because he groaned in her ear.
“So wet for me, Rorax. What a perfect, sloppy cunt.”
Ayres’s thumb rolled over her clit in a deliciously steady rhythm, and she felt more tears threaten to fall from her eyes. She felt it become swollen and engorged, and then the tip of his thumb slid just under the small swollen hood of her clit . . .
“Ayres. Ayres, I—” And she came. Erupted. All the anger, hate, lust, and heat the influx had brought into her body detonated.
“Fuck,” Ayres grunted as she squeezed around him. “Fuck, Ror. You feel so fuckin’ good.”
He didn’t stop.
He continued to pump into her, rubbing his thumb right where she needed it.
Rorax’s remaining influx preened in happiness, but her swollen nub ached in protest of the over stimulation. “Ayres, I can’t, I—”
He growled, his breath hot in her ear. “You either say the safe word, Ror, or you take it. You take my cock until I wring every single last orgasm your body and your influx can handle.”
“Ayres.” His words made her womb clench, and he grunted, pressing harder on her clit.
Ayres breathed heavily into her ear as he stroked his cock deep into her, and hearing him there, feeling the sweat of his chest on her back, his huge hand gripping her throat . . . she was going to come again.
When he gave a sharp slap to one of her breasts, his rings stinging against her nipple, something new and erotic woke up inside of her stomach. She sucked in a shocked breath as the sudden pain of it made the influx inside of her writhe, and with it rose pure, ecstatic pleasure.
“Again,” Rorax pleaded, just as he slid home again, and she moaned. “Ayres, please, again.”
He didn’t slow his pace as he laughed in her hair, the scruff of his chin rubbing the soft skin on the back of her neck, his fingers flexing around her throat. “My Little Crow likes pain, hm? Well, you know what I expect you to do when you want something.”
She bit her lip, her hands tightening around his arm. He stopped rubbing her clit to pinch it, and she almost came right there around his cock again. “Please, Ayres.”
“Please?”
“Please.” She was way past caring about begging.
He did as she asked, slapping one, and then the other with shockingly brutal strikes, and then she came again, screaming his name and coming so hard she saw stars exploding behind her eyes.
Vaguely she could feel his balls tightening and heard him grunting something probably filthy as he stopped thrusting into her.
Rorax couldn’t hear him, though. Couldn’t feel anything except for him filling her with his cum. It was so sexy she would have moaned, but she could barely even breathe.
Her mind had been obliterated.
She sagged against his arm still bared over her chest, keeping her pressed against him as he heaved in gasping breaths.
Rorax couldn’t even sit up anymore. Every nerve in her body sang with a deep euphoric calm. Never in her life had Rorax ever fucked rough like that before. Never in her life had she ever had an orgasm that made her feel so . . . high.
Ayres released her throat and let her sink forward onto her bed. She nuzzled into her blankets and groaned in pleasure.
“Ror, did you hear me?”
“Hmm?” she asked.
Ayres huffed out a laugh on her shoulder, and she peeled open an eye to stare sideways at him. He had followed her down to the mattress and was hovering over her. He pressed his lips to her naked shoulder, and something in her stomach went warm.
Then he wrapped his hands around hips and flipped her over, so she was staring up into his face.
“Don’t move, or the next thing I’ll be slapping is your ass, and I promise it won’t feel nearly as good as when I slapped those pretty pink nipples.”
Rorax scowled, but Ayres just gave her a smug tilt of his lips as he got up and off the bed. Rorax’s still open eyes followed his perfectly sculpted body as he disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a wet towel.
Ayres knelt between her legs, lifting them up and spreading them apart.
She could feel his cum dripping down and over her pussy and down her ass, and when her pussy twitched at the thought of it, Rorax had to admit that she liked it, there in some raw, fucked up way. It made her warm inside.
Ayres stared, his eyes molten silver, for so long she started wiggling her hips with discomfort. “Ayres?”
“Sorry,” Ayres grunted, finally dipping the towel down to clean her up.
He wiped her down, taking his time to slowly clean her.
“Do you still feel the Influx at all?”
“No.” But she sat up on her elbows to look at him still kneeling between her legs. She shivered when she saw the dark hungry look still lingering in his eyes. “Thank you, Ayres, for keeping me safe. For keeping me from hurting anyone.”
Ayres nodded, a shadow of a smile on his lips. “Of course.”
“What will happen to Mairi?”
“She is dead. Most likely.” He padded over to deposit the wet rag into her hamper and pulled his pants back on before climbing back into bed with her.
Rorax watched him carefully the whole time, shaking her head in disbelief. She had just had sex with Ayres. It was everything she had ever wanted it to be and more. She could still him between her thighs, and she hoped that feeling would never go away. She already wanted more.
If only Mairi wouldn’t have had to die for it to happen.
She ran both hands through her hair. “I can’t believe it. But I would have done the same thing if I ever found myself in her position.” She shook her head again, and looked up to see Ayres watching her, studying her hair draped out over her pillow.
Ayres met her gaze with a hard, determined edge. “I would have, too. I would’ve done things a lot worse for my siblings. Especially for my sister. I would have torn the world apart for her.”
A ghost of a smile danced on her lips. “You have a sister?”
“Yes.”
“Where does she live?”
“Surmalinn,” Ayres answered, looking away from her, a sudden edge to his voice.
Rorax swallowed. “Did she… was she there during the Siege?”
“Yes. She survived.”
The high euphoric feeling in her heart deflated, and she looked from his face to the ceiling.There was a long silence as Rorax studied the intricate patterns carved into the wood of her ceiling.“If I don’t find a way to free myself from the Choosing, Ayres, you should take me back to Surmalinn.”
She blinked, and a fat tear trickled down the side of her cheek and into the hair by her ear. “Your people deserve their revenge.”
Ayres slowly rolled so he was flat on his stomach, his silence charged, and she could feel that he needed a moment to separate what they had just done with who she was. They laid in silence for a heavy moment, and when he spoke again his voice was harder, colder.
“Some of my people would slaughter you on sight if you stepped into Surmalinn again.” Ayres let out a long sigh. “Some of my people lost everyone they loved, and everything they owned when you and the Wolf came.”
Rorax steeled herself, before turning to look back at him. The warmth was gone from his features, and it made her chest ache with regret.
“But there are others . . . others who view you as Surmalinn’s Guardian Angel.” He scoffed a bit and rubbed his hands over his face, then sat up in her bed.
“Really?” Her heart felt a little lighter as her eyes traced over the tattoos and the muscles on his back. The four, thin, vertical lines that traveled all the way down his spine, along with the skulls, the roses, Death’s most infamous monsters, and thorns.
Despite herself, her tongue peaked out and touched the top of her lip. She would lick those tattoos one day.
He turned towards her, but only far enough that she could see the profile of his face. “You have your own statue in the library. In both of Surmalinn’s libraries.”
Rorax’s lips parted in a silent stun.
“They don’t look like you . . . not really. The cowl you used to wear made it so no one really knew who you were or what you looked like until you came here.” He shrugged his shoulder and looked down at his hands. “One of my brothers thinks you”re a gods damned hero. He told my sister to name her daughter after you.Another thinks you should be dragged through the streets and killed. You are a polarizing topic in my House, in my own family even.”
Rorax pushed herself back up onto her elbows. “And what do you think?”
The muscles on his broad back flexed. “I don’t know.”
Rorax nodded. That answer was fine. It was honest and expected, but then Ayres let out a cold, angry, bitter laugh that cut her to her core. “Well, I obviously don’t hate you enough not to fuck you. Even if you are a monster.”
She stiffened, right before her heart crumpled in her chest.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” Ayres said to her over his shoulder, and her heart cracked a little bit more at the loathing, disgust, and hatred in his voice.
Rorax could see it; Ayres hated himself. One of the best men she’d ever known, deeply hated himself for what had just happened between them, for what had been happening between them. Even though he had every right to think that way, to hate her like that, his words made her feel like she was disgusting. Rotten, and empty.
Anger bloomed amidst the devastation in her chest. When did she allow herself to feel so much? When had she allowed herself to turn into—this? This sappy mess? Three months ago, she wouldn’t have given two shits about what the lieutenant of the House of Death thought about her, what anyone thought about her.
Now she felt like she was spiraling out of control, like he had just punched the air out of her lungs.
Did Cannon feel this way about her? Did Piers and Kaiya?
She would be naive to think they didn’t feel the exact same way Ayres did. She was simply a tool to them.
Rorax hadn’t done enough, wasn’t enough.
Though maybe no matter what she did, no matter who she saved, or who she became, she would never be able to outgrow or atone for what she had done. She would always be the Wolf’s Pup.
Ayres shuffled, leaning forward to pick up his boots off the floor and bent over to start lacing them up. She watched him, feeling utterly defeated.
Tears started to drip down her face, but she refused to let Ayres see her this way, refused to let him see that his words had cut her so deeply.
So instead, she brushed past him, grabbed the first dress from her closet and pulled it on, not bothering with a bra or panties, or even shoes. Rorax just needed to get away from him, now.
“Ror, where are—” Ayres started to ask, but Rorax closed the door between them, and did not look back.