Chapter Nine - Rhea
“A whole pleasure house full of things to suit your desires, and this one chooses the library to pass the time,” one of the strangers said, pushing off the bookshelf and stepping towards me.
“Her master must be particularly boring,” his companion said with mock sympathy. “Should we help liven her evening?”
My eyes darted between the two approaching males, then to the small sliver of space between them. There was little hope I’d be able to slip by them and back out the way I’d come. Behind me was another row of books, its shelving so sturdy I was sure I didn’t have the strength to turn it over and find a way to escape beyond.
My options were frighteningly low, but there was always one option worth trying when it came to hot-blooded males. And so I drew my lips into a sultry smile and crossed my legs, letting the slit of my red gown fall away and reveal the tanned skin of my thigh. The two males' eyes immediately fell where I’d intended them to.
“I can find pleasure in even the simplest places, my friends. But alas, my night is coming to a close, and my master will be along to fetch me very shortly. It’s a shame you won’t have time to show me your own… simple pleasures.”
One of the males caught my eye, his own gleaming with lust and a hint of apprehension, but the other hadn’t looked away from the exposed skin of my thigh. He stepped closer, cocking his head and reaching out as if to touch me.
“Your mark,” he said, his eyes widening on the tattooed band around my upper thigh. “Dante’s never taken a slave before. What is it about you that makes you worthy of the attention of a beast like him?”
“She must have some interesting talents, don’t you think?”
They were toying with me now. They knew I’d bluffed on Dante’s eminent arrival. And there was nowhere to go but through them. I braced myself, letting every muscle in my body fill with the sweet rush of adrenaline that came before a fight. I might be no match for the fae, but they would bear the scars of our meeting nonetheless.
“Come and see just how interesting my talents are,” I purred, my voice carrying just as much sweet promise as deadly threat.
With a snarl, the larger of the two males moved towards me. He was fast, but his speed was nothing compared to Dante’s, and I was able to throw my body out of the way just as his hands closed to grab me. I pressed myself against the bookshelf as I moved and pushed off, driving all the force of my body’s momentum into the male’s face through my elbow.
A sickening crack sounded off the walls of the library as the male shouted a curse and hit his knees. The second of the pair was already moving, but the pain of his friend distracted him just long enough for me to make a mad dash past him.
I still wasn’t quick enough to avoid the hard locked hand that closed around my bicep then yanked me backwards with such force I felt my shoulder separating from its socket.
Fighting back the urge to scream as pain rippled up my arm and down the length of my side, I threw my weight in the opposite direction. But the male held firm, pulling me closer against his body and throwing an arm tightly around my upper half.
He turned me forcefully back towards the dark corner of the library. I struggled against him, but it was useless. The more I fought, the tighter his arm closed around my throat. He held me firm as his companion stood, dark red blood dripping over a vicious smile on his face.
Before another move could be made, the shadows between the books came to life.
Writhing and rippling, darkness filled the corridor. The scent of electricity hit my nose, and even as I realized who had come for me, I felt the man behind me stiffen.
I was pulled back around in the direction of the door. There, wreathed in shadows, Dante lounged with his hands in the pockets of his pants. If it weren’t for the lashing of the darkness around him, he’d have seemed entirely bored with the scene he’d just entered.
His violet eyes met mine, sparkling with electricity.
“Do go on,” he said, his voice indifferent. “I believe you were just about to find out what I find so… interesting about this one.”
The male behind me dropped his hold on my neck. I staggered a step, then stopped. Where was I to go? Forward and face Dante’s wrath for my indiscretion or turn back to the two males I’d been trying to escape?
“My lord,” the bleeding male said, his voice nasally as he attempted to speak past the broken bones. “We meant no—”
Dante hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved, but the very presence of him seemed to catch the words in the male’s throat. Such violence emanated from him, it sent me staggering back a step, bumping into the male. He stiffened as my body pressed lightly against him.
“Go on,” Dante repeated. “She won’t give you any more trouble. Have her.”
I stared at Dante, aghast. I had known I was nothing more than a pretty political device to him, but for him to so brashly offer my body to these males…
“As you command it, my lord,” one said, some of that hunger again creeping into his voice. His hand touched my cheek while his other wrapped around my waist, pulling me backwards, tighter against him.
My shock turned to icy hate as I kept my eyes locked on Dante’s.
With one final rush of adrenaline, I thrust my foot backwards, hoping to catch him off guard and land a devastating blow to the space between his legs. But he caught my leg easily, clearly having learned from my previous violence.
“Easy,” he said in my ear, his tongue briefly tasting the lobe. I shivered as the hand he’d caught my leg with held it firmly, moving his fingers slowly higher up my thigh. “No need to fight any more. Your master’s allowed it.”
I shut my eyes tightly, tears pricking at the corners. I would not let them see me cry, would not let them see any kind of effect their actions could have on me.
I am not my body. I repeated it again and again in my head as his tongue moved across my neck, his hands roving higher and higher on my thigh.
A sickening scream rent the air, so close to my ear that I threw my hands up against it to protect my hearing. I opened my eyes to find my assailant on the ground, throwing his body wildly against the bookshelves and then the stones of the floor.
I whimpered and stepped back against the shelf as I saw shadows curling from the tattooed band on my thigh, covering the male in burning darkness. They snaked around his legs, his arms, and his face as he flailed. Everywhere the shadows touched, acrid smoke rose from his flesh.
But every move he made to rid himself of the burning darkness was useless, his hands passing through them like smoke.
The second male let out a sound of disgust and fear and ran towards the door. But Dante struck, grabbing him by the back of his neck as he ran and turning him back towards the ugly scene.
“No, no,” Dante spoke, almost soothingly. He stroked the male’s cheek as he leaned over his shoulder, watching the male on the floor burn. “You mustn't leave yet. I need you to watch and see exactly what becomes of those who lay their hands on my property.”
Bile rose in my throat as the screams from the floor reached a frenzied pitch. He grabbed at the hem of my dress. I tore it from his grasp and stepped backwards towards the door. There was no way past the male who stared pale faced and wide eyed at the wretched form of his friend and Dante behind him, watching in blank indifference.
I turned my head away from the man as the shadows continued to devour him.
We remained there, the three of us and the assailant-turned-victim on the stone floor. After what seemed like hours, all that was left of him was a withered shell of a man, blackened skin stretched over his skull and his mouth open in an eternal scream.
Finally, Dante dropped his grip from the neck of the other male. He fell to the ground and vomited. His hands shook as tears fell from his eyes.
Dante moved him aside with his boot, like a bit of trash on the side of the street. Then he held his hand out to me.
I looked at it, at the hand that had moved not even an inch to command the power that devoured another male. When he took a step towards me, I flinched away from him.
His gaze dropped along with his hand. Then he turned away from me.
“Come.”
As he walked away back towards the door that would lead me out and away from this horrible scene, there was nothing I could do but follow him.
I followed him out of the library, through the now empty hall of the pleasure house and outside into the gardens that surrounded the property. He didn’t turn to walk back the way we’d come, the way that would lead us to his manor and my slave quarters. Instead, he walked deeper into the gardens.
I hesitated. I could run. Perhaps he’d exhausted himself during that display of deadly power. Perhaps it would be my only chance to try it.
But my feet seemed to move of their own accord, keeping pace a few feet behind him as he strode under towering pine trees, eventually leading us to a small wooden bridge over a stream.
He leaned against the railing, looking out into the starlit night that reflected off the surface of a small pond. I stood at the opening of the bridge, unable to find the courage to step up to his side.
“You ran,” he said simply. An accusation, but there was no bite to his words. If anything, I thought I heard a tired note of sadness in his voice.
I closed my eyes tightly and clasped my hands together in front of me, digging my nails into the soft skin on the backs of my hands to try and clear my thoughts. All I could see in my mind's eye was the image of the lifeless husk in the library. All I could feel was his wet tongue moving across the skin of my neck as his hands gripped my thigh.
Focus, I needed to focus. I knew there would be terror and torment here. It didn’t change the fact that I had a job to do. I had people to save.
I placed the images and sensations one by one into the lock box in the back of my mind. There were many such memories hidden away there, and this would just be another to press down before closing the lid. One more deep breath, and I opened my eyes.
Then, I stepped to Dante’s side. He looked at me sideways before going back to watching the rippling starlight on the pond.
“I wanted to do some reading,” I said as lightly as I could. “The party had turned a bit boring.”
He turned to look at me fully. I smiled at him to try and stifle the fear that rose in my chest as his full attention settled over me. I tried not to think about the power behind the hands he now rested lightly against the rails of the bridge, the calm with which he had dispatched that male from this world to the next.
“This place isn't safe for a human woman on her own.”
“And where am I safe, my lord?” I asked, moving to look out over the pond as he had. It was a lovely, calming view. I wondered briefly how often he’d found himself here, settling his mind after murder or some such unspeakable act. “Here, with you?”
“Do you think anywhere else in this godforsaken city is safer for you than by my side?” He scoffed, leaning back to rest his elbows on the bridge. “You’d be dead in an instant.”
“I’ve hunted and killed fae beasts for the better part of a year. I’m not afraid.”
His eyes met mine, intense and searching. “Maybe you should be.”
For the first time, I saw something more than malice behind his eyes. Something trembling and delicate. Something afraid. Shadows danced around his face as they always did, obscuring the details.
“Afraid of you? Or of these?” Carefully, I drew a hand through the darkness that followed him, dancing around him. The touch of that darkness wasn’t blistering like I’d seen when it seethed over the flesh of the male in the library. It was cool and light, like water in a pool. The shadows curled around my fingertips and snaked up my arms.
“You would be dead in an instant if I willed it,” Dante said softly, his voice as cool and soothing a caress as his shadows.
“But you won’t,” I said, surprised to find I believed the words, as rash and irrational as they were. He set those beautiful violet eyes fully on my face, and my heart thundered in my chest in response. It was a dangerous game I played here, teetering on the edge of a honed knife. My hand dropped back to my side, tendrils of darkness fading from it like they were grasping at it, trying to hold on.
“Won’t?” His left eyebrow raised, the other obscured in shadow.
I turned so our bodies fully faced each other and leaned into him just slightly. “You won’t kill me.” Try as I might, I couldn’t force the usual easy smile onto my lips. I saw his eyes flick to them as they quivered. “Will you?”
He stepped closer, his fingers and his shadows raising to touch the side of my face. I let my head tilt into his touch as the darkness stirred within the golden strands of my hair.
“I’m still debating it,” he growled. But there was no debate in the angle of his body over mine, nor in the harsh waves of his breath. Even if it were only for the heat of my body, he wanted me alive. It was evident.
I felt my eyelids growing heavy as he closed the distance between us, his forehead resting against mine as he placed both arms on either side of me, grasping the railing of the bridge behind me and pinning me between them. My entire body was being pulled towards him like metal to a magnet, and it was all I could do to stand between his arms, breathing in the sweet, electric scent of him.
“What’s to debate?” I asked, my voice hoarse as he hovered just inches from my lips. Gods, I wanted to close the distance between them. Gods, I was a fool for wanting it. “I’m a human girl, your slave. My life is yours to do with as you please.”
A smile drew up the corner of his lips, making what I could see of his face just that much more irresistible.
“And I will.”
His arms drew in closer to either side of me, pressing lighting against the exposed backs of my own, drawing goosebumps wherever our skin touched.
I let my head fall back, exposing my neck. I felt him lean his face close to the exposed length of my neck, a primal growl sounding deep in his chest. From my own lips, a small, desperate sound broke, and at the sound of it, his hands were suddenly on my body.
One cupped the side of my face as the other gently drew away my hair from the side of my neck. Then, his lips were on me. I arched into his hips as they pressed me against the bridge with a gasp as his canines dragged across the sensitive flesh. He pressed his face into the crook of my shoulder, breathing deeply.
Then he pulled away, his hand still cupping my face as the shadows swirled between us. They still obscured half of his face in darkness, but where his eyes shone through, they searched mine, desperately.
“But not like this.”
Dante stepped away from me, and the few feet of distance felt like a void ripped in the world. I reached out and took his hand, pulling him back into proximity of my desire.
I blinked as his eyes again met mine, and I saw something in them I’d never expected to see. “You’re afraid…” I said as he stared into the depths of me, the pain and indecision written on every feature of him I could see. He looked away but kept himself close to me.
Slowly, feeling with each inch I moved I might be badly punished for the motion, I brought my fingers up to the shadows that hid his face. They were thicker than the others that circled and danced around us, more like a pool of liquid metal than cool water.
He flinched away, bringing his face beyond the grasp of my hand and sending me recoiling a few inches. Yet still he did not leave the space that we shared, and after a heartbeat, I again pressed my fingers into the sweet thickness of the shadows.
They never faded, swallowing my fingers and then my whole hand in darkness. Above them, his violet eyes watched me, heavy with an emotion I could not name.
Then, my fingers found skin. I sucked in a breath as they roved across the hot surface of his face. This side of his face was covered in rough, raised flesh from the corner of his chin up to the lower eyelid of his right eye. My fingers traced the shape of it softly as his eyes watched my face.
Something surged through me as my hand fully rested on the side of his face, over the ruined flesh that he’d hidden from the world. It was a feeling of overwhelming desire entwined with a dark hope that made my very soul ache.
“What happened to you?” I whispered. The fae heal quickly. What could have possibly caused such a terrible wound that it would mark him like this?
A slow, terrible realization swept over me, and my eyes widened.
Our own prince, marked and cursed with a power that will be the undoing of us all.
He grabbed my wrist lightly, pulling my hand away from where it still rested. I watched the depth of sadness growing ever deeper in his eyes.
I turned the hold until my hand was grasping his, then brought it to the plunging neck of my dress. His eyes followed his touch as I pressed his fingers against the silver skin of my own scar.
“It’s okay,” I murmured with as much of a smile as I could bring to my face. “If anyone understands, it’s me.”
Dante’s eyes darkened. Whatever had softened within him hardened again at my words. A wall went up between us that I hadn’t realized until this moment had been broken down.
“A human could never understand,” he said with the same tone of indifference in his words as when he’d spoken to my assailants in the library. He dropped my hand and turned away from me, away from the bridge and the fading moonlight that rippled upon it.
“Let’s go.”
He strode away from me with his hands buried in his pockets. His shadows lingered a moment, twining around my legs before being reluctantly pulled after their master.
My hands shook as I followed after him.
The scar I had felt on his face was unmistakable. It had been shaped like a dagger plunging across the hardened skin of his cheek and jaw.
One hand a dagger, one a dove.
I shuddered. There was no denying it. I had found what I had come here to discover, to use to destroy this terrible place and save my people.
Dante was the weapon.