8. Riley
RILEY
There’s a scrape of metal on gravel, and the light comes on. I squeeze my watering eyes shut. A bang echoes down the cave’s mouth. And then comes the familiar thud of boots, drawing nearer and nearer, until it stops about a foot away from me.
I peek out, squinting my eyes. I stagger backwards until the sharp rocks of the cave’s wall dig into my flesh from behind. I bite back a scream.
Aron has his skull mask on. Today, he comes as the Necromancer.
And I think that can only mean one thing.
“Is it time?” I gasp, my heart speeding up, tremors running through my body, fear fusing with a horrifying kind of relief. “Have you come to kill me?”
“What?” With the key in the lock, he pauses, his brow knitting in confusion. “No.”
It is only then that I notice the plate in his spare hand and the blanket thrown over his arm. I return his baffled expression.
“Your outfit,” I say simply, my voice choked and unsteady.
“We were out on a raid and got delayed. I came here straight after.” He unlocks the door and steps inside. “Would be a shame for you to die of pneumonia,” he adds in a harsher tone of voice, making it clear he’s not acting out of concern—as if I could think otherwise.
My arms hang limp by my sides. I’ve long ago stopped bothering to hide my breasts or privates from him.
My soul feels even more exposed to him than my body is.
He hasn’t just stripped me of my clothes.
But through denying me any basic comfort or dignity, he’s robbed me of all my protective layers, leaving me raw and aching in a way that makes my nakedness insignificant.
“Why don’t you kill me already?” I demand. “What the fuck are you even waiting for?”
He sets the plate down, careful not to spill tea from the steaming mug on top of it. Then he reaches me in two strides and yanks me away from the wall. I tense and whimper, expecting pain.
But he only throws the blanket over me.
“Aren’t you eager to die, Hotshot?” he drawls, studying me.
“Not really. Just eager to be out of this fucking cave.”
He only chuckles in response.
I crouch down next to the plate, my already bruised knees protesting the contact with the ground.
The food is always the same: a slice of bread and two triangles of cheese.
It tastes of nothing; it’s just stuff to fill the hollowness inside.
But I inhale it in complete silence, then drink the tea without allowing it to cool, letting it scald the back of my throat.
Aron sits down with his back against the bars. His shoulders are slumped, and there are shadows under his eyes.
I stir, ready to return the blanket to him, but he stops me. “Keep it for a while longer. I was away for a long time today. You need to warm up.”
“Okay.”
I debate asking him about his day, just to fill the time, to focus my attention on something besides the vice of the walls around me.
But I’m too drained to even formulate the question.
I haven’t slept properly since I got here.
And as I finally get warm, I grow drowsy.
Sitting up is too much of a struggle. I lie down, making myself as comfortable as possible.
Aron is watching me, and to escape his relentless gaze, I close my eyes ...
The first thing I see when I wake up is his face. Unconcealed—he’s taken his mask off, revealing deep grooves of fatigue. But his eyes are as intense as ever, sleepiness fusing with something fervent in his look.
I’m lying on my stomach, pebbles pressing hard into my breasts even through the fabric.
Unsettled, I realise that the blanket has slid off to my side, leaving my back, ass and legs bare.
His attention is fixated on the curve of my hip, and he’s biting his lower lip, simmering with something I don’t want to acknowledge.
I sit up quickly, covering myself. He drags his gaze to my face lazily.
“Tell me, Riley,” he addresses me, his voice low and husky. “Do you enjoy fucking?”
“W-what?”
“Do you like it when men put their cocks inside you?”
I stare at him, my mouth agape.
“Or are you into girls?” His eyes glint with curiosity.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Hmm,” he grumbles. “Did you only have sex when they forced you?”
“What is your fucking point?” I pull the blanket tighter around myself.
“Did you ever let someone fuck you because you wanted to?” His face is without compassion.
“I don’t want to be talking about this with you.” Or with anyone, for that matter.
He grumbles again, then pulls a black hunting knife from the sheath at his belt.
He traces it through the grit on the ground with a scraping noise, drawing a circle.
Then he looks directly at me, his eyes burning into mine.
“Riley, Riley, Riley ...” he drones. “All I ever do is make people talk who really, really don’t want to talk.
I’ve made mustards spill secrets that likely got their entire families killed.
It’s a special talent of mine. You really think I won’t find a way to make you tell me whatever I want to know? ”
“You’re sick.”
“So?” He shrugs. “Don’t make me get up, Hotshot. If you make me get up, I’ll make you regret it. On top of making you answer any fucking question that I might have.”
His voice is cheery and cruel. Indulgent. Everything inside me twists with anger. “Last chance, Riley.”
I usually know how to handle assholes. Do not rise. Never let them see that they affected you. It’s simple, really, once you come to understand what drives them.
But the Necromancer is a different breed, capable of unsettling me like no one has in ages.
Probably because I’ve followed his creations for so long.
Because I’ve heard him spoken about with such fear wherever I went.
He’s a twisted icon, and because of that, it feels like he matters to me even when he doesn’t.
Meeting him is a little too much like meeting a celebrity.
Tutting with impatience, he leans forward and traces the tip of the knife along my exposed shin. I don’t know why I don’t try to stop him when he slides the blanket up my thighs, chasing it with the blade. His knife leaves a faint pressure line on my skin as it inches up slowly towards my crotch.
“Fine! Fine!” I relent, and he draws back with a smug smirk. “What does it matter anyway? Yes, I did have sex voluntarily, too.”
“Often?”
“Twice.”
“Twice?” he repeats after me. “Is that all?”
“I found it very overrated.” Blunt honesty is one way to throw men like Aron off, but even I surprise myself by taking it quite so far.
Aron recovers fast. Too fast. “Overrated?” he repeats. “Didn’t they make you come?”
I play with my hair, coiling a strand of it around my finger and then uncoiling it. Aron doesn’t pressure me into answering. Somehow, that makes it worse.
“I ... I don’t know,” I admit finally.
Curiosity flickers across his face—a different kind than before. Not safe, but not malicious either.
“You don’t know if they made you come?” he repeats, his tone softer than before.
I close my eyes, hot blood blooming underneath the surface of my skin.
“I can’t talk about this with you. Please. I can’t.”
“What if you compare it to when you made yourself come?” His voice is relentless, invading the comforting darkness behind my closed eyelids. “How was it compared to that?”
I open my eyes to find him studying me.
“I don’t know.” I drawl unhappily. “I had other things to worry about.” I pick up a pebble and then toss it back to the ground. “Please, don’t make me talk about this anymore.”
A guttural sound escapes him. The kind that comes from deep within his throat—the kind I’ve noticed he makes when something interests him.
“If they had made you come, you would have known,” he says after a moment that feels endless. “And if you have ever made yourself come, you would have known they hadn’t. That leaves only one conclusion. You’ve never had an orgasm in your life, have you?”
“I don’t know.” I avert his merciless gaze. “Please. Drop. It.”
He makes another one of those sounds, even deeper this time. A growl. “What I’m hearing is you’ve yet to have sex and enjoy it. Am I right?”
I don’t respond, but something in my face answers for me, because he scoffs and shakes his head.
“Why is that even sadder than killing a fucking virgin?” he remarks, but with the air of someone who’s just musing out loud, not expecting a response.
“I don’t know,” I reply, regardless. “But this, this should feel worse than anything else, including killing me. Keeping me caged here, knowing what it does to me. Denying me any basic human dignity. This should feel worse.” I look him straight in the face, and he reacts instantly, his gaze locking into mine.
“Why are you doing this? Do you want me to beg? Because I will! I’m not that proud anymore.
If it makes you happy, I will get on my knees and beg for mercy. ”
His look hardens, and I know that whatever moment of compassion there was, whatever chance I had, it’s gone. Now the man who may have possibly heard me out has left, and back is the unhearing fanatic.
“The only mercy you’ll get here comes at the edge of a blade.” His voice is sharp as the crack of a whip. “And it doesn’t come when you ask for it.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because too much mercy for criminals and traitors got us exactly where we are today. Humane punishments for inhuman crimes.” He rises to his feet, spreading his arms theatrically.
“We, as a society, have failed to obey one of the most basic natural laws. The law demanding that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. For decades, we punished murderers with a few years in a comfortable cell. Thieves with barely a slap on the wrist. And traitors...”
He steps closer to me and crouches down, his face level with mine.