11. Navuh
NAVUH
T he first door of the clinic sealed behind Navuh with the familiar hydraulic sigh, and then, after a pause, the outer one opened. As his wheelchair rolled through, he found he wasn't sorry to leave this cage. In fact, he hoped never to return there again, but that was too much to hope for.
His rehabilitation would require more doctor visits than he cared for.
It would be a mercy if they checked him in a different patient room, though. He had spent enough time in that claustrophobic space, cataloging every scuff mark on the floor and every hairline crack in the paint where the wall met the door frame. It was a miracle that he hadn't gone insane in there.
The upside of the move was that he would have a new canvas to examine, but the downside was that it would be just another cage.
At least he would be sharing it with Areana, but even that had a downside.
She would function as his nurse, which he was not looking forward to.
They had a five-thousand-year relationship, and it had its own dynamic that had served them well over the centuries.
Now they were being thrust into a sort of interaction neither of them was comfortable with.
Hildegard had given Areana a crash course in nursing, or rather the particular sort of nursing that he required, and Navuh had listened and filed things away.
Instead of getting a physical therapist like he'd been promised, Areana was to watch a series of videos that were supposed to teach her everything she needed to know to become his therapist.
She'd looked overwhelmed with everything that Hildegard expected her to learn, but she'd nodded and smiled and pretended that it was all fine, that she could handle it all.
"That's everything," Hildegard told Areana, one hand on the strap of her bag.
"Medication schedule is on the tablet, color-coded, and I've flagged the ones that can't be taken together.
Bowel and bladder routine is the laminated sheet.
Don't lose it. Call me if anything changes or you are not sure what to do.
Don't wait to see if it resolves on its own.
And don't let him talk you out of the schedule just because he's feeling charming that day. "
Navuh had snorted. "I'm never charming when I'm subjected to indignities."
Hildegard hadn't even looked at him. "Good luck," she'd told Areana and hurried out.
Now his chair was being pushed by Daniel, his personal Guardian as he had grown to think of him, and Areana walked beside his chair.
In one hand she held a laminated sheet that told her how to deal with his bodily functions.
In the other she carried a tablet like it was a live grenade and she'd been told to defuse it following instructions in a manual written in a language she barely understood.
"Well," she said, pressing the tablet to her chest. "I suppose it's time to see our new home."
"Our new home," Navuh repeated. "What a charitable way to refer to a dungeon cell."
"It's a very well-appointed apartment that has hosted many important guests. Even Annani's daughter stayed there for a while."
"What had she done to deserve that?"
A ghost of a smile lifted Areana's lips. "She fell in love with a former Brotherhood member."
"Ah, right. I remember that story. No wonder they put her in a cell."
"It's not a cell," Areana insisted. "It's a nice apartment."
"It's a cell with better furniture and lighting, but it's still a cell."
Areana shook her head, but she must have realized that it was pointless to keep arguing and remained silent.
Navuh thought of Daniel, pushing his chair, in his unremarkable civilian clothes, with the sidearm in a holster that he would never have cause to draw against a paralyzed man in a wheelchair.
It was such a waste of resources to assign a Guardian to him, but perhaps Daniel could make himself useful in other ways.
What if he could pay the Guardian to handle the bathroom visits and save Areana the trouble and him the humiliation? The problem was that Navuh didn't have any money to pay Daniel with.
"Do you have any money?" he asked Areana.
She looked surprised by the question. "I have a credit card."
"What about cash in hand? Didn't either of our well-to-do sons give you money?"
She shook her head. "But if you want to buy something, I can get it for you."
"I need cash so I can tip Daniel for all the good work he's doing."
"I don't need your money," Daniel said from behind him.
"I'm not talking about a few miserly dollars. I want to pay you to take me to the bathroom when I need to go and save my mate the trouble. You look like a strong fellow, and I don't weigh much now that I've lost so much muscle."
"I will do it for free for Lady Areana if she asks for my help. You don't need to pay me. I'm being paid very generously as it is."
"It's very gallant of you to offer your services for free, but I would prefer to pay for them."
"You don't have any money," Daniel reminded him.
"I have a credit card," Areana said. "I can order food and buy things. Kalugal gave it to me and placed no restrictions on my spending. I would be more than happy to order food for the three of us together regardless of whether you help my mate to the bathroom or not."
"That's very kind of you, but I can't accept your generous offer," Daniel said. "I will assist whenever you need me, though."
Navuh said nothing, but inside he was seething.
Their son was providing for his mother because he could not. Because he was a captive, a prisoner, an invalid in a wheelchair who needed to be taken to the bathroom. He couldn't even buy Areana a cup of coffee.
But it wasn't his fault that he was in this situation, now was it?
He hadn't put himself here. He'd been on top of the world, perfecting his war machine and building an army of unstoppable soldiers, until Areana had decided, in her infinite and misguided compassion, to smuggle Tula off the island rather than let the female surrender her child the way every harem lady had done before her, including Areana herself.
If she had left well enough alone, none of it would have happened.
He would still be on his island. He would still have his legs, his army, his throne.
She had done this to him, and she knew that. Given the guilty expression on her face, she also knew exactly what was going through his mind.
"Shall we?" Daniel said, interrupting the moment, then engaged the wheelchair's brake.
As usual, the elevator ride was impossible to read. Up or down, he couldn't tell, and he suspected the clan had engineered it that way on purpose to keep him disoriented.
That was an illogical thought because this place had been built long before he'd been captured, but blaming Annani and her damn clan for everything was his default.
When the elevator doors opened and Daniel released the brake and pushed him into the corridor, Navuh was surprised that it looked nothing like the word dungeon implied.
Someone had made an effort to make it look pleasant.
The floor was the same polished concrete as the clinic level, and the walls were painted the same cream color, but they were covered with large prints of famous paintings, the kind of art hotels put in hallways to impress their guests.
Fake plants stood in ceramic pots at intervals, and if not for his immortal senses, he might have been fooled into believing that they were real.
They were obviously of good quality, but they lacked the fresh smell and vibrancy of live greenery.
Still, admirable as the effort was to make it look like anything but a dungeon, the doors gave it away.
Each one had a small window set low, near the floor rather than at eye level, and looking through the glass of the nearest as they passed it, he estimated the door to be at least a foot thick, strong enough to contain immortals, the low window clearly meant for passing trays of food through rather than for looking out.
A small glass panel was set into both sides of each door, and he wondered if the mechanism was the same as the double clinic doors.
Only one side could open at a time to prevent the prisoner from trying to grab whoever was delivering or collecting the food tray.
Daniel stopped at a door that had no window at its base, lifted his phone, and directed it at the keypad. Something chirped, and then the door released with a pneumatic hiss and started to swing outward.
Inside was a small living room, the kind one would expect to find in an upscale hotel suite.
A couch upholstered in a soft gray fabric, two armchairs, a large-screen television with a console below it, containing three boxes of various shapes and sizes.
Pictures hung on the walls, all of the same stunning woman, all done in charcoals.
They weren't reproductions, and Navuh suspected who was the muse for the art.
He remembered Areana telling him about the former Brotherhood commander who was now the mate of Annani's youngest daughter.
The one who was an artist.
They had stayed in this dungeon suite, and those portraits were probably of Annani's daughter, done by the former soldier's hand.
Grudgingly, Navuh had to admit that they were very good. He also had to admit that the daughter was beautiful enough to turn the head of even the most devout follower of Mortdh.
Nevertheless, her mate was a traitor. A defector. A worthless piece of trash.
"This is so nice," Areana said, and he heard the effort in her voice to make the sound cheerful rather than simply surprised. "It's so pretty and cozy."
"It's a cell with a couch," Navuh said. "I'm surprised that those portraits were left behind."
Areana turned to look at the one hanging over the couch. "Oh, they are so beautiful. That is Amanda, Annani's youngest. Isn't she stunning?"
"She is. But she's mated to a traitor."
A talented traitor, he added silently. He wasn't going to give the scum any compliments out loud.
Areana walked over to the bar and opened the doors of the upper cabinet.
"It's fully stocked." She turned to him with a smile. "I can make you cocktails. Provided that Bridget approves."
He ignored her suggestion and pointed at the interior door on the other side of the television screen. "That's the bedroom, I assume?"
"It is," Daniel said. He walked over, opened the door, and then returned to push the wheelchair through.
The bed was large, big enough for two, and it was the first good thing to look forward to in a long time.
Navuh would sleep beside his mate again. This might be a dungeon masquerading as a hotel suite, but it gave him back that much.
"There's no kitchen," Areana said, still in the living room.
"Not that we need one. What would we do with a kitchen?
I can't cook." There was a note of relief in her voice, as though the absence of a kitchen had solved a problem rather than created one.
"I'll have food delivered instead. The guards in the lobby can collect it for me, and I'll get it from them.
" She came to stand in the bedroom doorway, looking in at the bed with a soft smile.
"It's not as fancy as what I had in the harem, but it's nice. "
Navuh agreed. "It is considerably smaller, considerably plainer, and considerably better guarded."
"But we can be together again," she said. "I've missed sleeping next to you."
"I missed that too." He reached out his hand, and she clasped it and gave it a gentle squeeze.
"We will make it work," she said.
Yeah, they would, because they had no choice, and there was no escaping this dungeon even if he didn't have locator cuffs on both wrists that prevented him from trying anything.
The innocent-looking things that could be mistaken for wide silver bracelets contained a mechanism that would inject him with a paralyzing neurotoxin if he did something he shouldn't, and he had been warned that it would be excruciatingly painful.
Still, he scanned the suite out of habit.
There was just one exit, which was the door they'd come through.
There were no windows because it was underground, but a large television screen displayed a stretch of landscape, mountains under a soft morning light, filmed from a drone.
It was the sort of thing hotels put on screens to simulate a view they couldn't provide.
It was probably hiding a camera.
There were visible ones too, which was almost generous of them, including one mounted in the corner of the living room where the walls met the ceiling, angled to cover most of the room, and another in the bedroom.
"That one," he said, nodding toward the bedroom camera. "Are we to provide nightly entertainment to the men in security?"
"It's off," Daniel said. "Bedroom cameras stay off unless there's an emergency."
"Like what?" he asked.
"The fire detectors go off, a medical emergency that is picked up by the camera in the living room or phoned in. There are phones here and in the other room. If you need help, you just pick up the receiver and press zero. It will connect you to security, and they will send whoever is needed."
"Of course," Navuh said even though he didn't believe him.
Later, when they were alone, he would show Areana what to do about the camera in the bedroom. A pair of underwear or a sock would be enough to cover it.