Chapter 4
As they climbed the stairs to their bedchamber, Raiya realized that her dress had been torn in her struggle with the demon. There was a long rip from the hem to her knee, baring her dark tights beneath. She looked at her hands. The demon had licked all the blood clean, leaving broken nails and pink scrapes on the tips of her fingers.
Raiya’s mother had once told her that if a man put his hands on you once, he would undoubtedly do it again, no matter what you did to please him. Nirlan had just thrown her to a demon. Did the same logic apply? Would he punish her that way in the future, risking her life again?
“Do you remember when we used to talk about our dreams, before we were married?” she asked.
Nirlan sighed a little. “What?”
“I said I wanted to recruit a mage to power my enchantments, and you said it was a good idea. I thought I could be a real enchanter and invent things.”
“So much for that idea. I’ve hardly seen you do anything but lounge on the sofa for months.”
“And you told me you wanted to make things better in Frosthaven. You said that after the illness took your father, you were finally going to have the opportunity to make real changes in the town.” She gave him a sidelong look, which he didn’t bother to notice.
He’d never hired a mage for her, though she’d asked about it many times before he’d implied she was annoying him by bringing it up. Instead, he’d hired Eunaios to help himself with his own goals.
“You probably liked that, didn’t you?” Nirlan said.
She looked up at his back as he climbed the stairs ahead of her, her brow puckering. The candle in his hand cast flickering shadows on the walls of the narrow passage.
He glanced over his shoulder to smirk at her. There was no mirth in his smile. “You seem like the type to enjoy having a monster putting his tongue all over you. You were probably thinking about how big his cock might be.”
“You were the one who threw me to him like a bone to a dog.”
“I didn’t expect you to enjoy it so much. You hardly even fought him.”
“How do you expect me to fight a creature like that? What else could I have done?”
“You and I both know what you were doing.”
After over a year with him, she had thought she was too tired to feel real anger toward him. The anger she’d felt early on had long ago been replaced with emptiness. After a while, she’d given up hope of changing him or her circumstances, and it had been hard to feel anything.
But right now, she was furious. Perhaps some of the demon’s anger had rubbed off on her.
Once, one of the servant girls had quietly asked Raiya why she didn’t leave him.
“I don’t know,” Raiya had said, but in truth, there were many reasons. The primary one was that she was afraid of him, and afraid of what he might do if she tried to leave.
“What if you can’t control the demon?” she asked. “What if it kills you?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She was mostly unfazed by the accusation. “Why do you think I’d like it if you were killed?”
“Because I know exactly the sort of person you are.” As they reached the landing, he stopped, turning around to look down at her. “You think you’re so complicated. You think you have such deep thoughts and emotions that no one else could understand. But you’re a simple creature. You want to feel special, like every other woman. You want to be doted on. You want to be prized. And you’re angry because I won’t give you that. Because I refuse to coddle you. Isn’t that right?” He put his hand on her waist, nudging his leg suggestively between her thighs. “You’re angry now, but we’ll make love tonight and I’ll make you squeal with pleasure like I always do, and by tomorrow you’ll have grown bored of trying to be angry, like you always do.”
“I’m not in the mood for lovemaking.”
“We’ll see.” He pulled her through the door to their bedchamber and pushed her toward the bathing room.
She quickly closed the door behind her and tapped the small, rune-covered crystal mage torch on the wall, which lit the room with cold, blue light. She stripped out of her torn, dirty dress. There were bleeding scratches on her knees that she hadn’t noticed before then, and a growing bruise on her ankle where the demon had grabbed her. She peeled off all her clothes and hurriedly cleaned the wounds. Nirlan would be annoyed if she lingered there too long, which would make him an impatient lover.
When she came out, he was lounging on the bed. He looked her up and down, frowning a little. He almost looked a touch regretful. She often got the feeling that he felt sorry about things he said and did to her, but that never stopped him from doing them again, over and over.
“Come on, then,” he said, jerking his head toward the space beside him on the bed. She sat down next to him.
“What if I had died?” she asked.
He sighed again. “Don’t start.”
“What would you do if I left you?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. It was either brave or careless, she wasn’t sure which. Perhaps she was past caring what he did to her. “What if I decided, ‘enough is enough,’ and walked out?”
He looked surprised, then he laughed. “And then where would you go? I’m everything you have. I’m your entire life.”
“What would you do?” she pressed.
He sighed, slowly pushing her backward onto the mattress. “Raiya, you’ll never escape me. We’ll be together until the end, whether you like it or not.”
It was lessthan a week later when Eunaios announced that he was prepared to cast the final piece of the binding spell.
There was to be another gathering so that Nirlan’s friends and peers could witness the event. After all, what was the point of having power if no one knew you had it?
Nirlan supervised Raiya’s preparation for the event with a critical eye. She was wearing a deep blue Uulantaavan-style robe secured with a wide belt at her waist. Its sides were split to the hip to the hem, revealing her trousers beneath. Nirlan preferred Ardanian-style dresses, which was exactly why she hadn’t worn one.
“Put more makeup on,” he said.
Raiya didn’t bother to reply, but returned to her dressing table. She looked in her mirror, staring hard into her own dark eyes. Her fingers clenched on the handle of her brush as she dipped it into a pot of pigmented cream. In careful, controlled strokes, she dabbed delicately over the bruise beneath her eye. She was surprised the brush didn’t crack in her hand.
She was furious.She had been for days now. Her patience had snapped, and she felt so much hate and bitterness toward her husband that she could hardly stand to look at him, and kept turning away from him instead. She feared that she would do something drastic if she looked too long. Something she’d regret.
When had things gotten so bad? When had her life spun so far out of control?
It had been slow. Like boiling a frog. She hadn’t thought she was the sort of person who would end up married to a man she hated, but here she was, standing like a decoration at his side, wondering how long it would be before he killed her, or she killed him.
To match the thick application of cream and powder on her face, she added blush to her cheeks and shadowed her eyes and brows. When she finished, she turned around to face Nirlan, waiting for his stamp of approval.
He frowned. “I prefer you without makeup,” he said.
“So do I.”
He took her arm to lead her to the great hall anyway. “I’m not in the mood for your nonsense today. This is an important night. Don’t embarrass me.”
The great hall was already filled with Nirlan’s friends by the time they arrived. It was just like Nirlan to be fashionably late to his own event. Eunaios was also waiting there, separate from the others. The man who’d accosted her during the last party had not returned, but she didn’t like any of the other visitors much more. She recognized many of them from previous encounters. They were all like Nirlan, more or less, just with different faces—similarly darkly inclined, interested in strange magics and occult practices, and usually unconcerned with things like legal technicalities and traditional definitions of morality.
Nirlan led the group toward the dungeons, flanked by guards. “Prepare yourselves. I promise you, you’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“We’ve seen your dungeon before, my lord,” said one of the men sarcastically, looking around the gloomy tunnels with distaste.
“Your wit is as sharp as ever,” said Nirlan flatly.
“He’s only joking, of course,” said a sun elf woman. “It’s not as if you’ve ever led us astray before, Lord Han-gal. We’re all waiting with bated breath to see what you’ve got this time.”
Raiya saw Nirlan’s lip curling. “I doubt you’ll be so flippant after you see it.”
Eunaios opened the rune-covered door to the deeper dungeon, and what could only be described as a wave of physical unease washed over them. Everyone in the group paused, startled.
Nirlan was the only one not fazed. “Come along,” he said smugly. He started down the tunnel, his hands clasped behind him, and Raiya reluctantly followed, despite the heavy atmosphere that seemed to be trying to push them back. The group remained uncomfortably silent.
The feeling of ambient power and rage thickened the air, pulsing in Raiya’s ears and making her sweat. She almost expected to find the demon waiting to kill them as soon as they stepped across the threshold.
When they entered its chamber, there was a collective intake of breath and a few muttered curses. None of Nirlan’s guests were laughing now—a fact which surely pleased him to no end. The room smelled of smoke and heat, though there was no fire burning. It smelled of hatred. It prickled along her skin like clawed fingers.
In the center of the room, encircled with rows of glowing runes on the floor and walls, was the demon. There was no magical barrier around him this time, but his arm was stretched out in front of him, held by a chain going from his wrist to the floor, forcing him to kneel. Another chain ran from a collar on his neck to the ceiling, baring his throat at a painful looking angle.
Reading the runes around him, Raiya saw spells of holding that would keep him in place even if he broke free of the chains. Additional binding runes had been painted in black ink all over his body, across his chest and down his legs, even up his throat and onto the edges of his face. They glowed in dazzling iridescent colors, equal parts frightening and beautiful. They were too small for Raiya to read from a distance, but it must have taken Eunaios weeks of research and planning to find them all, not to mention hours of careful painting.
Something black was dripping down the demon’s neck. Not paint—blood. His blood was jet black. Raiya realized that the collar he was wearing had spikes on the inside prodding at his skin. If he moved too much, the spikes would burrow into him.
It was a show of dominance. Nirlan wanted the others to see that he had fully conquered this creature. He wanted it to look dramatic. Raiya was disgusted.
“Ash and blood,” someone murmured.
“Is this some kind of joke?” someone else asked.
“It’s not real,” said another. “Some kind of illusory magic.”
That made Nirlan angry. “You doubt me?” He took the lightning baton from where it hung on the wall and approached the demon, who watched him unblinkingly. Raiya had to admit that she was impressed by Nirlan’s apparent fearlessness. When he stood next to the demon, he looked small and slight by comparison.
Nirlan raised the baton and dragged it up the demon’s exposed chest until it tapped beneath his chin. The tip of the weapon sparked, but didn’t shoot. The demon’s expression did not change as he glared at Nirlan, but the energetic tension in the air grew.
It was the demon’s anger. They could all feel it. It was difficult for Raiya to resist the instinct to turn and run. Two of the others actually took a few steps back.
The sun elf woman was the first to speak. “What do you plan to do with it?”
“Whatever I wish,” Nirlan said, putting the baton away.
“Do you mean to say it’s bound to you?” someone asked.
Nirlan smiled. “In a few moments, it will be.” At his beckoning, Eunaios took a brush and an ink pot from a table against the wall, then began painting runes on Nirlan’s palms.
As the others whispered nervously to each other, Raiya’s gaze was drawn to the demon. To her surprise, his glowing eyes were already on her.
She stepped closer. There was no barrier between them this time, and it was petrifying being so close to him again. She stopped a few steps short, arm’s reach away from a monster from a fairy tale.
The muscles in his shoulders and chest shifted with each breath, straining from the cruel pull of the chains. As she came closer, she could see his thighs flexing with the effort of holding himself up.
He was magnificent. He was pure destructive power. It was in every line, every curve of him. He had been perfectly designed by the gods to seduce and kill.
She did not often see men—or man-shaped creatures—so exposed, physically or metaphorically. There was a secondhand shame in witnessing another person so degraded. Seeing someone helpless, in pain, kneeling and bleeding, filled her with deep unease in the same way that it filled Nirlan with joy. Nirlan would own him soon, and it would only get worse. The demon would be unable to harm him and unable to disobey his orders. He would be a slave.
To tame a creature like this was to spit in the face of creation. Nirlan already owned her, and it was a fate she wouldn’t wish on anyone else. As if Nirlan needed more power. As if he needed another person to abuse and demean.
She imagined releasing him from those chains, setting him loose before he was trapped with Nirlan forever. It was a crazy thought. The priests of all Four goodly gods agreed that demons were an abomination. There was no more corrupt or obscene being known to mortalkind.
And yet, he hadn’t hurt her when he’d had the chance. He’d spared her.
It was too late to save herself, but maybe it wasn’t too late to save him.
Raiya glanced up at Nirlan. He was preoccupied with the spell Eunaios had begun casting as he painted. None of them were watching her. She was inconsequential. She was just the woman on Nirlan’s arm. Someone whose name and works would be forgotten by everyone within a month of her death, who would be interchangeable with his next wife, and perhaps the one after that.
She looked down at the runes covering the ground, and a dormant part of her mind awoke—the part that had devoted itself to studying this magic long ago. There were runes for control and submission, commanding and obligation, pain and consequence. Spells for binding were ancient, poorly understood, and rarely cast. They were taboo for good reason.
She inched closer to the demon. Heat and rage radiated from him. His eyes narrowed at her, and she felt his anger intensify. She lifted her shoe to look at the shimmering rune beneath her feet. Hold, it read. She scraped the toe of her slipper on the rune, and a tiny piece of the dried black paint flaked away.
Suddenly, the air felt very hot and close, and it was hard to breathe. Glancing at the others to make sure they still weren’t watching, she fervently rubbed the toe of her shoe against the rune. Paint flaked away.
“I don’t know if you can understand me,” she whispered. “And I know you will likely kill me if I release you. But I would rather die now, on my own terms, than by his hand. All I ask is that if you must take my life, take his, as well.”
The demon watched her impassively, giving no indication that he could comprehend her words. Raiya’s hopes sank, but she didn’t stop scratching at the rune.
Eunaios’s voice rose behind her as he chanted the words to his spell. The room brightened as the runes glowed. A few more moments, and the spell would be completed.
Raiya ground her shoe against the hold rune one last time. Its glow flickered out. She’d erased an entire line in the symbol, rendering it meaningless.
She looked up, meeting eyes with the demon, and dread raced through her.
Finally, Nirlan looked over at her. His eyes flicked down to her feet, then back up to her face. “What are you doing?”
Raiya pressed her back to the wall, as far from the demon as she could get. Everyone in the room was looking at her now.
Apprehension flashed across Nirlan’s face. “What have you done?”
The demon pulled at the chain binding his wrist to the floor, carefully, as if testing to see what would happen. The chain pulled up from the metal ring in the stone until the stone shattered.
Nirlan turned and grabbed Eunaios, who appeared frozen. “Finish the binding!”
The demon tore the manacle from his wrist, wrenching the metal into pieces as if it were clay, then reached up to grab his collar. His fingers and throat bled freely as he grasped the spikes and pulled. The metal began to bend.
All of Nirlan’s guests shouted and ran for the door, many stumbling over long robes or impractical shoes. Someone near the front of the pack fell, causing a domino effect behind him. Eunaios turned to run with them, and Nirlan grabbed him by the collar, holding him back.
“Finish the damned spell!”
The demon stood straight, his horns nearly touching the high ceiling. He threw the bloodied collar aside and took two long strides forward. That was all it took for him to reach Eunaios.