Chapter 40 #2
My eyes snap open, taking in the waifish woman standing in front of me, her fucking hand still on my cheek.
I surge toward her, but chains rattle, my shoulders throb, and I sway uselessly in place.
I realize a few things in quick succession. Eislyn ambushed and captured me, and she’s holding me prisoner. And right now, I’m chained by my wrists to her fucking ceiling in what otherwise looks like an expensive flat.
Beyond it, I have a bird’s-eye view of San Francisco, and I can only imagine this place is at or near the top of one of the city’s many skyscrapers.
My own trussed up state in the middle of all this luxury makes the situation all the more ludicrous.
“Did you really hope to stop me?” Eislyn looks pityingly at me.
“You do have a mind for strategy,” she says, “but I assure you, I could’ve come for either you or your foolish wife at any time.
” I pull on the chains above me, determined to break my fucking hands to get out of here if that’s what’s needed.
When those don’t give, I attempt to move my feet.
Though the pads of them touch the marble floor, my ankles are shackled to the stone.
A sane man might be a little worried. All I feel is that same intoxicating rage that has burned in me since I first learned of Eislyn’s continued existence.
My magic builds, crawling up my veins. But the moment it reaches my palms, it fizzles away, and right when I think it will take over my mind, the boiling edge of it cools, though it shouldn’t.
I can feel the monster roll back into me, chained every bit as much as I am.
Eislyn’s eyes stay pinned to mine, a sick fascination in them. “Your power won’t work here.” Her eyes flick to my bindings. “Those handcuffs neutralize magic.”
I grimace at her.
She smooths my hair away from my face, and the touch is an offense.
“I’m afraid that you, my king, are truly at my mercy.”
I narrow my gaze at her, well aware of my own disadvantages at the moment.
“Is this your grand plan, then?” I ask. “Chain me up and gloat?”
She smirks a little. “Do you really think so little of my ambitions?”
My mind flashes to Selene’s final memories as Roxilana—the ransacked palace, my best friend’s betrayal, the invading Roman soldiers, the slain bodies of my mother and sister, and my pregnant, hunted wife.
It’s hard to breathe around my deep, abiding hate for this abomination. In my veins, my power stirs restlessly. I can feel it rise and burn out, rise and burn out.
“If your ambitions remain as they did in Sarmatia,” I say, “then yes, I think very little of them.”
If Eislyn is offended, she doesn’t show it.
She backs up from me. “Do you know what I intend?” The fairy looks placid enough, but she seems to be almost buzzing with excitement.
“I have a basic fucking idea.”
She raises her eyebrows and folds her arms, perching her chin on her knuckles. “Enlighten me.”
“Get me down, and I’ll sing like a bird,” I counter.
She studies me for a moment longer, like she’s considering it. Finally, she nods. “I will get you down, Memnon, and we will have a nice, long reunion.”
My gaze tracks her as she steps away to grab a dark amber vial resting on a side table. She uncorks it and crosses back over to me.
“All you need to do,” she says, lifting the vial, “is drink this.”
The liquid inside it is undoubtedly either a potion or a poison.
I give her a scathing look. “I don’t think so.”
“This part wasn’t actually up for negotiation, Memnon.” Eislyn reaches up and grips my jaw.
I recoil in an attempt to dislodge her hand.
Eislyn huffs out an annoyed noise. “I don’t want to hurt you—I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”
My protest is a roar in my veins. She has feasted on my suffering.
Her hand returns to my jaw, and she digs her fingers into the muscles of my cheeks there until she’s wedged my mouth open.
“Don’t act so sullen,” she admonishes. “Kings have killed for this elixir.”
She tips the liquid onto my tongue, and I watch her as the thick, floral flavor fills my mouth. If this is a poison, then it’s a disarmingly sweet one.
Eislyn has only just pulled away, and she must feel so very proud of herself, feeding her shit to her captive, when I spit it out, the liquid spraying all over her.
“I don’t want your cursed libations, fairy,” I say.
For an instant, I seem to take her by surprise. Her expression twitches and briefly shifts into something like shock. Then, it’s gone, and her mask is smoothly in place once more.
Eislyn steps in close, liquid dripping down her jaw, and she slaps my face.
My head whips to the side, though I hardly feel the sting of contact over the continuous pain in my shoulders. And as I lean my head against my strung-up bicep I begin to laugh.
Eislyn is no more than a power-hungry fairy with a brittle fucking ego. What a doomed, foolish combo. She’ll make a mistake soon enough. Then I will have my vengeance.
I continue to laugh as the fairy moves around to my back. I can no longer see her, but I hear the sound of a chair being dragged over.
It creaks as Eislyn steps onto it. Then her hand finds my hair and none too gently she jerks my head back, until I’m staring up at the ceiling.
It’s only then, as I watch her lift that vial to my lips again that I realize how well and truly fucked I am. In this position, any liquid poured into my mouth will go straight down.
I jerk my body back, but the chains shiver and do little else. I’m far too tightly bound for any real leverage.
“I vow to you,” Eislyn says as I try unsuccessfully to wrestle away from her grip, “I can do this all night. I have bottles more of this that I can feed you if this doesn’t take.
But go ahead and make it hard on yourself.
” The glass lip of the bottle touches my mouth.
“In fact, I will be honest, my king,” she says, bringing her face in close to my ear. “I enjoy watching you squirm.”
She dumps the entirety of the vial into my mouth.
I choke on the drink, and fight though I may, some of it slides down my throat.
“That’s it,” Eislyn coaxes. Her hand moves to my neck and she strokes it as though helping the liquid down, and I vividly imagine peeling her skin from her still living flesh. All I can do, however, is fucking imagine, because I am as helpless as a babe.
I sense the exact moment the serum takes hold. I feel it like a spark alighting on tinder. Whatever magic lay within that potion, it sparks again and again inside me, potent and uncomfortable.
Eislyn’s hands slip from my throat and hair. She steps off her chair and comes around to my front as I roll my neck, her gaze assessing.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
Vaguely ill.
The potion is still sparking in a dozen different places in my body, and it’s making my trapped magic churn in the most uncomfortable way.
I can feel some of the liquid sliding down my chin and neck. I level her with a look. “Angry.”
She ignores the comment and instead scans me over.
“Now that you’ve poisoned me,” I say, “are you going to let me down?”
Eislyn scoffs. “I already told you, I didn’t poison you. I gave you an elixir, a powerful, coveted one.”
Funny, I feel none of the power she’s promising. In fact, it has been many, many years since anyone and anything has made me feel this powerless.
“Don’t pout, my king,” she says, assessing me. “It is so very unlike you.”
“You don’t know who I am,” I say back. Not an accusation. Merely the truth.
“Oh, but I do. I all but created you.”
“Funny, I have different memories of the people who birthed and raised me.”
She shakes her head. “Who do you think coordinated the marriages between your ancestors? Two hundred years I spent arranging powerful spouses for your lineage.
“So you bred my line like fucking horse stock.”
“I did.” She appears openly pleased. “But look at you,” she says. “The pinnacle of my efforts. What a specimen you are.”
“I take back what I said,” I admit.
The fairy’s eyes sharpen with curiosity.
“You better not take me down from here,” I say, even as my shoulders scream in protest. “Or I will use every vile, violent thing I have learned from war to kill you as painfully as possible.”
Her lips actually curve up at that. “I think I rather enjoy your threats. I cannot wait to use you, Memnon.”
With that she steps into my space again and rips open my shirt.
I hear her intake of breath, see how her eyes linger on my body in a covetous way. Her hand smooths over the skin of my chest, then down my abdomen, and now I’m vividly imagining how I will lop off her fingers joint by joint and shove them down her throat until she chokes on them.
“I will let you down—in a moment,” Eislyn says. “The wine was only a prelude.”
Her eyes drift to the wall behind me, and without another word, she walks over to it. I hear a door open and close, and the room falls painfully silent.
A shudder courses through my body, and my jaw clenches so hard it hurts.
My shoulders are screaming, and that potion Eislyn gave me is still sparking in my blood like a dozen small fires.
It makes my magic restless, and my power courses through my limbs faster and faster, as though looking for an exit.
I cannot let my mind linger too long on Eislyn. Whatever she intends, I will undoubtedly hate. But even as old and powerful as she is, she is bound to make a mistake. The moment she does, I will act.
My eyes move over the furniture in the room, which has all been angled to face where I am hanging. Eislyn, it seems, has made a spectacle of stringing people up.
Beyond the room, the city glitters in the darkness. Still nighttime.