Chapter 12 Sadaré
SADARé
PANICKING, I spin a circle within the foliage-painted walls, wondering what to do.
My breath hitches out of me in something between a gasp and a sob—but I can’t allow myself to cry now.
I press my hand over my tender mouth, as if trying to push down the impression of Isha’s lips to find Daesra’s underneath.
I forgot Daesra. Gods, how could I have?
Of course I know how. The food I’ve eaten, the water I’ve drunk, even in such small amounts. I work my tongue, swirling that bitter flavor over it once more.
The seeds.
The memory of Daesra floods through me with nearly excruciating force.
His arms around me, his mouth on mine, his heart beating in tandem with my own from the countless times he’s held me, waking or sleeping.
The gleam of his red eyes, his sharp grin, and his pearlescent sword as he flips it casually in his hand.
The deep hum of his voice rising as he murmurs, I still love you, now that I know the worst of you.
The potency of his memory makes it harder not to cry, even as his words make me shudder in foreboding. Because I wonder if he ever did meet the worst of me… or if the worst is yet to come.
If he will still love me, once it has.
At least the seeds are helping me. I cast my gaze at the withered plants all around the tower. They must have been grown with Isha’s blood, or at least a certain demigod’s. Because the seeds, even as dried up as they are, helped me remember Daesra with only their flavor leeching into my mouth.
Gratefulness—never mind the thought of Daesra—replaces any feelings of jealousy I might have had for her.
And yet it was unfortunate timing for memory to strike me like lightning. Of course I want to remember him, but I also want to return to him. At this rate I won’t be able to, because I utterly fucked the situation into the ground with Isha.
I can’t leave it like that between us, despite everything—not when I was finally breaking through his defenses. Not if I ever want to be free of this place.
I dash out of the tower, the slap of my sandals echoing against the walls. As quickly as I run, it takes me until the end of the arcade to catch up to him. He must have heard me coming, but he doesn’t stop to wait.
“Isha!” I cry, when I’m nearly to him.
Finally, he stops, but he doesn’t turn, his back a dark, forbidding wall raised against me. So I duck in front of him, raising my hands in a calming gesture, breathing hard.
“Please don’t go. I don’t know what happened. I grew faint, and I panicked…”
“Well, you haven’t eaten,” he says flatly, no emotion in his eyes—certainly none of the warmth I’d seen in them just a moment ago.
Of course he would bring that up first. He tries to step around me.
I draw myself up before him. “I haven’t,” I admit, my tone strong and resolute. “So punish me for it. I’m asking you to.”
His stony expression turns considering. He no doubt wants to punish me for more than that, but this is the easiest excuse. Especially since he can’t admit exactly how I just wronged him—perhaps not even to himself. Despite being winded, I barely breathe as I wait for his response.
His brow arches. “You’re asking?”
I know what he wants. My throat thickens in resistance, but I still say it. “I’m begging you.”
He folds his arms. “I don’t see any begging.”
I drop to my knees, the bone floor hard and cold through the silk of my gown. My voice takes on a desperate edge that I don’t need to fake. “Please, please punish me. I want it. I want you, however you’ll let me have you. I beg you.”
That regains his attention. He eyes me keenly over his folded arms. “However I want?”
I swallow a spike of nervousness. I can’t lose this foothold I’ve gained. “Yes.”
He tips his head with a smile—one that could be either good or bad for me. “Well, we are almost to the dining hall.”
Fear replaces any nervousness in a surge as Isha hauls me to my feet, his grip on my arm unyielding. Indeed, we’re only a few more steps from the double doors at the end of the arcade. He shoves them open, sweeping me inside.
But where I was expecting a feast of the same proportion as the last couple, the table is clear of anything. No servants stand in attendance along the bone-built walls. It’s as empty as when I slipped through here on my way to the tower.
I look at him questioningly.
He nods me. “Get on the table. The only feast right now is you.”
The words send a deep shudder through me—one that becomes less pleasant as my eyes catch on the bent figures supporting the marble slab as I move closer. I still don’t know exactly what—or who—they are, and I don’t really want to know.
When I reach the thick stone edge, I throw my leg over it without hesitation, even though the silver chains bite into my hip and the silk of my gown catches on my knee.
In less than a blink, my coverings are all gone.
I’m unimpeded and entirely naked, save for my cuffs and collar. Isha’s doing, of course.
I glance back at him with surprise, and he smirks at me. At least he’s smiling again, even if his smiles are dangerous. But now I have to crawl up onto a table with my backside in the air. Oh well. I’ve done this before.
With Daesra.
I shove the thought from my mind, taking a deep breath.
He’s as close and yet as far as the quicksilver ring dangling from my iron collar—both of them impossibly far if I lose my memory or if I can’t get this thing off my neck.
In the meantime, I have to pretend that the collar belongs where it is. That I belong where I am.
On this table, apparently.
I sink my shoulders and hips into my pose as I crawl forward, giving Isha the best show I can. “Want me to dance?”
“Yes—but not now,” he says as I move to do so. “Lie on your back.”
I roll onto my back as gracefully as possible, pretending not to notice the cold, hard surface beneath me, even though I want to yelp and grimace. “Like this?”
“Arms out at your sides, your knees up.”
I do as he says, my breath growing more rapid. Just as I wish the light in the room wasn’t so bright, the candlelight in the huge toothy jaws hanging over the table flutters and dims. I hope the thing doesn’t come crashing down. It certainly appears as though I’m about to be swallowed by it.
Isha approaches slowly, and when I look at him, he has a wicked dagger in one hand, slightly curved with a sharp edge only on one side, and a length of silk in the other.
The last thing I see before he drapes the cloth over my eyes is the gleaming dagger where he sets it on the table.
Fear races down my limbs like freezing fire, and my breath comes in a gasp.
“Wait—!” I start to shift—and then my hands and ankles lock into place, with that invisible force acting upon my cuffs.
He must be able to attach them to any surface.
He simply hasn’t demonstrated the power liberally.
I can’t help it—the sensation of being bound, combined with my wild imagination conjuring up all the ways in which the cuffs could be used, makes me grow warm and wet inside. Until I remember the dagger.
He secures the blindfold tightly behind my head, leaving me with only sound and sensation. Smell and taste, too, of course, but the only scent suffusing the air is Isha’s—that salty, stone-cold darkness that is his unique perfume—and the only flavor the slight bitterness on my tongue.
Bitter indeed, or perhaps bittersweet, because I instantly recall how different Daesra’s scent is—his clean, earthy musk, so warm and alive.
I want to bury my nose against his neck and inhale until that’s all I can smell.
But he’s not here. He’s not even in this realm.
It’s still questionable whether the seeds are helping or hindering me in this moment, reminding me whom I should be with right now.
At least if Isha carves me to pieces, I’ll be able to think of Daesra in the end.
Isha’s voice makes me tense. “Since you seem to disdain my feasts, I imagined you could be the meal. Tell me that you want this.”
“Y-yes?” I squeak out, not sounding sure of myself at all. Not with that dagger lying next to me. My chest rises and falls in increasing rhythm, my exposed breasts tingling with heightened sensitivity.
Surely he won’t… He couldn’t…
But then I remember how quickly he healed my bite wounds—gods, I remember now; that woman was Melé, Daesra’s mother—but the dull edge of the blade tracing along one of my ribs chases every thought from my mind, leaving only an icy line of fear in its wake.
Fear is a lot like pain in that sense, wiping away everything else. I still can’t help jerking in reflex, and I hiss when the point stings me.
His breath warms my ear. “Trust me. Lie still. Or else you’ll only be hurting yourself.”
Of course. That’s what he wants: me, in the palm of his hand.
As long as I’m obedient, he won’t crush me.
Or slice me to ribbons. My sudden withdrawal from our kiss—and our even deeper breath exchange—must have really cut him.
So much so that he’s teasing me with a sharp knife in repayment, refusing to allow any retreat without reprisal.
I feel a hot trickle of blood dripping down my rib cage where the tip nicked me, involuntarily or not, after I moved. When the cold edge of the blade presses into me again—the dull side, thank the gods—I hold my breath and try my utmost to remain absolutely still.
It’s torture as he continues to drag it all over my body.
Not only am I jumping with fear on the inside, I never know where he’ll place the blade next.
And it tickles, especially along my ribs and my inner thighs and arms. I suppose I shouldn’t have suggested tickle torture as a punishment earlier, even if it was in jest and only with a peacock feather.
This is something entirely different. I earn myself another nick when I can’t help gasping.