Chapter Thirteen - Rhea
Another walk through the gardens with Kiya, another beautiful gown, and another friendly conversation. The days since Dante and his brothers had returned from battle had blurred into the days before. The only difference now was the much stronger pressure of Dante’s mind against my own.
The black shadows that I’d come to know as his consciousness were always invading my thoughts. It was particularly bad when his mind was drifting to thoughts of my body and what he was still planning to do with it.
I had to put a hand on the railing of the wall as a particularly racy image of myself wearing nothing but a lacy red bit of fabric over my breasts came into my head. Dante was thinking of how he would like to remove the fabric with nothing more than his teeth.
“Are you alright?” Kiya asked, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. I nodded with a smile that came off as more of a grimace.
“Just a headache,” I lied.
She frowned but kept her arm in mine as we turned to walk deeper into the garden. I tried to even my breathing as I pressed my mind against Dante’s. After a moment, he relented and let me in a bit deeper.
Do you plan on spying on all my thoughts from now on?
I focused, sending the words as best I could between us. It’s a bit hard not to spy when you’re thinking so… loudly.
I felt him smiling along the bond, then saw through his eyes the sight of his bedroom and the expanse of his legs in front of him, naked and splayed.
Blushing furiously, I drew myself further out of his mind, his laughter chasing me as I went. I sent him one last thought as I closed off the bond. Prick!
Kiya pulled on my arm. “Do you need a glass of water? You’ve gone positively pink.”
“No, I’m okay,” I said, wincing in embarrassment. “I think I just need to lie down.”
She looked me up and down. “I think that’s for the best.”
As I made to bow to her and head as quickly as I could to my rooms, she grabbed me by the wrist, halting me.
“What is it?” I asked, noting how her amber eyes had gone a bit frantic.
“I know you’ll want to disregard this warning,” she began, pulling me closer to speak in a harsh whisper. “But you must take your meal in your room tonight. And no matter what you hear or see, you must stay inside.”
“What—”
“Just… trust me,” she said. Then she squeezed my arm with a sad smile and left.
I stood a moment in the garden, wondering over her words before a rush of dark desire washed over me. I straightened, feeling the sensation slithering over my body, then hurried through the cobblestone paths out of the garden, into the manor, and up to my room.
Breathing heavily, I braced my hands against the chest on the wall. I tried pressing my way back into Dante's mind if for no other reason than to tell him to keep his private moments to himself, but the wall between us was like metal.
Sighing, I noticed the plate of roasted duck and wild berry stuffing on the chest.
Kiya had looked different when she’d told me to stay in my room tonight. Her face had held none of the playful sharpness it usually displayed. And what had she meant that no matter what I saw or heard I needed to stay inside?
I took the plate to the window bench and sat. What was out there tonight that wasn’t meant for my eyes?
I’d finished my plate by the time the first bonfire was lit. I placed it to my side and watched as all along the hillside beyond the city, fires began to crack and pop into existence.
In my reflection in the glass windowpane, I saw the many-colored lights sparking in my eyes. And I knew there would be no staying inside for me. Not when the colors of the fires called to me deep in my bones.
Kiya underestimated me, anyway. I knew how to move in a way that kept me unseen, and I knew how to defend myself should it come to it. Besides, the males had all but considered me nonexistent since Dante’s display of shadow power in the library.
I slipped into a black hooded cloak, then slipped out the door.
The city was alive tonight with drums and the smell of meat roasting. Fae folk passed me, wrapped up in their own revelry. I smiled as a father swept a little magenta-haired girl up onto his shoulders. She shrieked and laughed as he bounded up the street with her.
Everyone was moving towards the bonfires on the hillside, and so I was swept onward with the crowd. An older male held out a goblet filled with wine towards me as I walked. I took it and sniffed as I walked. It smelt of cloves and of something fiery.
I took a drink and felt my head begin to spin as the crowd pushed me on.
We came to the edge of the city and onto the road. Around us, wildflowers were closing in on themselves, protecting their delicate petals from the blustering night air.
A bonfire burned in front of us, so bright I had to turn my eyes away from it slightly. All around me, the crowd began to chant a hymn in a language I didn’t understand, but I could feel its power in my bones.
A hand closed around my arm and pulled me sharply from the crowd. I spun, ducking under the second hand that reached for me and throwing my weight into the body in front of me.
“Nyx be damned,” a familiar voice cursed as two strong arms pinned me against his chest. “Could you ever just come easily?”
Dante held me at arm’s length. He was dressed in his battle armor, and I couldn’t help but note the way it tightly hugged the muscles of his chest, arms, and legs.
“Maybe if you didn’t mysteriously appear and grab at me, I wouldn’t have to fight you all the time,” I pouted, crossing my arms and drinking again from the goblet.
Dante frowned at the goblet, then the heightened sound of chanting drew his attention towards the bonfire. “Didn’t Kiya tell you not to come out tonight? You shouldn’t be here.”
I looked towards the bonfire as he made to pull me away. My heart dropped as my eyes adjusted enough to see the bonfire for what it truly was.
I ducked out of Dante’s grip as he hissed my name, then ran towards the pyre. I skidded to a stop between two red-robed males holding their hands high and chanting in that terrible, indecipherable language.
My eyes filled with tears as I took in the sight. A young girl, naked but for the rope that bound her, was tied to a post in the middle of the pyre. Her black hair hung over her face. She was human.
Below her, the pyre burned faster, reaching for her hungrily. As the flames licked the bottoms of her feet, she raised her head to the stars and screamed. The fae around me only chanted louder in response.
Rage, pure and primal, burned in my chest as Dante pushed his way to my side.
“What is this?” I asked, never taking my eyes off the girl as tears began to stream down her cheeks, sizzling to vapor in the heat.
Dante stood silent. A muscle in his jaw ticked as the firelight danced with the shadows on his face.
“Why are they doing this?” I screamed, pounding a fist against the armor of his chest. “What has she done? What is her crime?”
“Nothing,” was all he said.
The rising fire heated my face as I looked at the girl, the soles of her feet beginning to burn. “It’s a sacrifice,” I whispered, recalling terrible stories about the offerings made to the fae by some of the more backward villages near the veil.
I sneered one last withering glare at Dante. Then, with a movement like lightning, I took the dagger from the belt on his chest, dashed for the pyre, and pushed past the priests in their bloodred robes.
With a guttural shout, I threw the dagger. My aim was true, slicing through the rope that held the woman’s arms to the pole in the center of the pyre. She fell heavily to the wooden platform and screamed as the fire licked at her arms and face.
“Run!” I shouted to her. “Save yourself!”
But she only looked up at me, her eyes full of pain and resignation.
“How dare you, insolent slave girl!” one of the priests shouted, holding up his hands as if to curse me. But they dropped as quickly as they’d risen when Dante again stepped to my side.
“My prince,” another said, and together, the robed men bowed.
The title they addressed him with made me start. I’d heard him only referred to as “my lord” by fae outside of the manor.
“Rhea,” Dante said with such tenderness that I nearly let him take me when he wrapped an arm around my waist. But then the girl behind me again screamed.
“Free her,” I demanded of him, turning away from the red-robed males. “Take her home.”
I whirled, fuming as I heard one of the priests laugh. “This girl comes from a village of savages and kinslayers,” he said. “She has been given to us freely. Take her back, and what they do to her will be a fate much worse than death.”
I looked back at the girl who now screamed and writhed on the platform as the flames continued to reach higher and higher around her.
“She burns so her people will live,” another shaman said, more gently than the first.
But I could only watch the girl in her pain, knowing now why she burned, knowing the sacrifice she had made for the good of her people. I knew the feeling all too well, the feeling that your own life was worth nothing.
“Free her,” I said again, this time to the priest. “And I will take her place. Sacrifice me, and let her people know she has paid her debt for their souls.”
From beside me and from inside my mind, I felt Dante balk at the offer. But I held my ground and stared only into the beady red eyes of the priest who had first spoken. His mouth drew back in a loathsome grin, and the fire behind me died away some, giving the girl some reprieve.
“What say you, my prince? The woman is yours to offer.”
I did not turn to Dante, did not meet his violet gaze, though I could feel it burning into me. In my mind, I spoke to him.
My life has never been mine. This has always been what I am. A sacrifice.
Dante’s sadness at my words was overcome by a wave of anger as he replied. Your life is mine now, and I would not have you spend it on some nameless girl from some backwards village. Would you not let this girl give the ultimate sacrifice for those she loves?
I turned to meet his gaze, my anger fueling my every movement and every thought. I would not wish the choice on anyone.
A rush of compassion and guilt rushed down the dark bond that connected us. I gasped at the intensity of it, and in my momentary lapse, Dante threw me over his shoulder.
No! I screamed in my mind and aloud, my cries mingling with the girl’s as the shaman raised his hands, the fire dancing to new heights in response.
Desperately, I reached down and took another of the daggers secured to the belt at Dante’s hips. He didn’t move to stop me as he carried me further from the pyre. But my aim was true. The dagger whistled as it flew through the air, just missing the shaman’s head as it found its mark.
The girl's screams were silenced in an instant.
From the crowd around the pyre came a dry of indignation. The girl’s suffering had been cut short. The anger in me lashed out like a snake at the sound, and suddenly, I wanted to do whatever it took to end them, to wipe this entire kingdom off the map. If I had the ability right now, I would wield the power within Dante to burn this entire city to the ground, even if it took me with it.
We were far from the city when Dante finally stopped and put me down. I pushed off his chest when he stepped towards me and turned towards the forest that lined the base of the mountain.
I could hear Dante stalking after me, but I didn’t care.
“You cannot trade your life for every poor damsel!” he spat from behind me. I felt the anger in him spilling into my mind and forced up a wall between us.
“Even one innocent life is too many,” I hissed as I continued to walk.
“Tell that to the beasts you slay!”
“They are beasts , not people!”
“Are you so sure of that?” He caught hold of my shoulder and spun me around forcefully. He stood, outlined by the moonlight and the glistening city. His chest heaved with the control he exerted over his body, over the power within him. Then from the shadows that circled him, two huge, feathered wings rose. They were black as night and stretched at least six feet in each direction, the taloned tips of them stretching upwards as if to pierce the stars.
A gasp escaped my lips as I staggered back from him.
“You humans never live long enough to be sure of anything,” he said, letting those massive wings tuck into his back. “And yet you act like you know better than any other creature here.”
The rage that had been burning in my soul quieted by the shock of the sight of him. How could something so vast and so terrifying be so beautiful? Haltingly, watching his violet eyes for any sign of violence, I stepped into his space. I ran my fingers through the soft black feathers that lined each wing.
“You’re their prince,” I said hoarsely. “Why don’t you end such barbaric rituals?”
“Blood lust must be satiated, lest the snake begin eating its own tail.”
I had no answer to that, none that would have satisfied the wound of injustice that had been left on my soul. I moved closer to him, feeling tired and small, and let my head rest against his chest as I continued to stroke one of his wings.
“And what of you? What of the weapon you will wield to destroy this place?”
I looked up at him in surprise, finding him already looking down at me. So he knew my intentions here. He knew who I was and what I was destined to do. The thought was strangely comforting. At least I didn’t need to hide myself, not from him.
I let my head fall back against his chest. “Would it be so terrible?”
He stroked my hair in time with the motion of my fingers against his wings. The darkness emanating from him and into my mind was softer now, calmer. I would not wish the choice on anyone. He spoke into my mind, using my words against me.
Suddenly, I felt exhaustion in every inch of me. The weight of my fate and the confusion of this world weighed down upon me.
“This place is no less horrible than the human world,” I said, looking out towards the mountains and the expanse of black forest below them. The grassy plain we stood in stretched before the trees, and brightly burning multi-colored bonfires dotted along the hillside. A tear fell from my eye and splashed to the back of Dante’s hand. “And no less beautiful.”
Dante’s hand covered my cheek, stopping the flow of tears. He pressed my face lightly into his chest, and for a long moment, we stood in the field, watching the fires burn and listening to nothing more than the rise and fall of each other’s breathing.
“Why don’t you have any other slaves?” I asked, breaking the comfort of the silence between us. “Some of the men in the pleasure house had three or four beautiful human girls dancing for them. So why do you only have one?”
“I never saw one worth having,” he said, but there was something else beyond the barrier of his mind that colored the words, something more he’d locked away and wouldn’t speak of. Not tonight, at least.
“Never?”
“Not in 300 years, at least.” The hand softly stroking the side of my face stopped, drawing my face upwards to look at him. I blinked. Three hundred years… I knew the fae were long lived, but I’d never expected he’d lived so many years. The thought was unsettling. He’d been alive in the time before the war had started.
“Maybe living too long makes you blind,” I murmured.
His eyes searched mine as the shadows on his face began to ripple and reach out, like they could pull me in, like they could bring us together even without the two of us making the conscious choice. “I’m not blind, not at all.”
I reached for the shadows on his face. They covered me, sending tendrils up my arm as if to devour me. My fingers traced the harsh outline of the mark on his face, the dagger my hand was fated to command. “Let me see you,” I whispered, my heart hammering against his chest. “All of you.”
Dante’s eyes never left mine as his hand covered mine beneath the shadows on his face. Tenderly, he pulled it away and brought it to his lips. His kiss was full of so much promise, so much emotion. I almost pulled away.
“It’s best if you stay blind, at least to some things.”