Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Sasori
Drum. Drum. Drrrrum.
Drum. Drum. Drrrrum.
My fingers beat an incessant cadence against the armrest of the bone-white throne that I lounged across sacrilegiously. I scratched my head against the back in an attempt to alleviate the ever-pounding headache that constantly grew until I could hear nothing but the thumps of my heartbeat.
Voices rose and fell, a constant undulating that echoed off the curved walls and impossibly high ceiling, both the same hue as the throne that I perched in now.
Even the floors of the manor were the same unsettling color, as if we were deep in the belly of a beast. No pops of color served to accent the stark white, and the glaring brilliance of it in the high afternoon sunlight threatened a migraine that would leave me incapacitated for days.
The headaches had only gotten worse as days turned into weeks, which turned into damn near two months.
Two months since I’d severed the Bond with Lex d’Talionis.
Two months since I’d killed my father and plunged Samyr into chaos, gaining the throne through the blood spilled of damn near one hundred Vessels.
The same throne I’d all but relinquished when I invited the gods to Samyr as a place to regroup and strategize in the wake of the disaster that was the Battle of Vespera.
Drum. Drum. Drrrrum.
Concentrating on the movement of my fingers and the steady beat they produced was the only thing keeping me sane—in this moment, in this meeting, in this manor that felt more like a prison with every passing hour.
“Lady d’Hida?” A disapproving voice broke my thoughts and sent searing pain from my temples when I moved my head incrementally to regard the asshole who deigned to speak.
“What?” I snapped, my voice whipping through the now silent space as the advisor cringed at my rebuke. My father, for all of his flaws and missteps—and there were plenty—was not a harsh man. To other men, at the very least.
Women only served one purpose for him, as evidenced by the massive harem I’d discovered once I’d gained control of the manor.
He’d had a similar fate planned for me once I returned from Vespera.
I’d been “soiled goods” since I gave my body to my Bonded—as if I’d had a choice in that matter—and would have been “gifted” to his soldiers.
In all likelihood, I would have been hogtied naked and brutally raped until I died.
I’d seen it happen before to my older sister; she’d so desperately wanted command of her own life, wanted to share in something “beautiful” with a boy who cared about her before she was sold to the highest bidder like a horse at auction.
My sister’s maid had informed Father of his eldest’s indiscretion, and he promptly had her dragged by her long black hair from the manor the next morning, naked as the day she was born, and threw her to his soldiers just beyond the manor’s back courtyard.
Cocks in hand, his soldiers waited as if they had been prepared for that precise moment.
“Look,” my father had said, his fat fingers gripping my chin so hard he left bruises for a week. “Watch what happens to daughters who don’t follow their father’s words. She wanted to whore herself out to a man not selected for her, and so a whore she will be.”
He’d pulled my chin straight and forced my eyes open when I’d closed them, just so I could see my sister’s arms and legs tied open as she fought off her rapists, her constant piercing screams muffled as cock after cock was shoved deep in her throat while others relentlessly thrust into her.
Tears cascaded down my face and over my father’s fingers as I was forced to hold my sister’s gaze and watch the light slowly die in her eyes.
When her wet cheeks dried, she’d turned her face away, breaking our eye contact as if she didn’t want to subject me to the pain I’d see deep within their amber depths.
I stopped my struggle then, resigned to my fate, the same as she.
Bile burned my throat and threatened to escape, but I bit my tongue until I tasted blood, swallowing back every urge to vomit lest I be tossed to his soldiers next.
Eventually her screams quieted, and she grew lax, her body undulating bonelessly as soldier after soldier sought pleasure in her unwilling flesh well into the night. Blood trailed between her thighs to mix with their semen that dried there or dripped on the ground.
With her naked and abused, the life gone from her eyes, my father made her chosen lover fuck her once more before ending her life with his sword in her ribs.
“A small mercy I allowed her,” he’d gruffly told me. I didn’t want to know, nor did I ask, how else she was supposed to die.
Her ex-lover was found hanging from a tree outside his home, not a day later. The pink blossoms native to Samyr fell early that season, nearly all shaken from that particular tree to land in his hair and around his feet like our land wept for them both.
That day forward, I feared and was repulsed by my father—really, all men—and bowed to whatever whims he carried. When he’d sold me to Vespera as a Vessel, I knew the fate that ultimately awaited me when I returned home, a fate I’d avoided when I stuck a knife through his belly.
I’d only wished I’d made him suffer longer, if only for the memory of my sister.
While I couldn’t make him feel her pain, I could inflict it on those he appeared to care about most—his councilors.
“Lady d’Hida,” the same councilor pushed, snapping me from my reverie. I whirled on the man, spots dancing in front of my eyes as my twin braids whipped against my back. Lips pulled into a snarl, I glared at the sniveling man. Near my dead father’s age, a relic of a time past.
With no warning, I pulled the sword I’d worn at my side since I’d found it in Vespera and, in one fell swoop, lopped the man’s head from his shoulders—or at least attempted to.
My blade stuck in his neck about halfway through the strike, not severing the appendage completely, and only serving to mortally wound him.
It took a great deal of strength to cleave a man’s head from his body, strength that was waning the longer I remained unBonded.
Damn Rune Master and her “unknown” affects for severing a Bond.
Screams tittered around the room as the councilor’s body slumped to the ground, silk-covered knees hitting the stone first before the rest of his body followed.
The force of his fall pulled the sword from my hand, where the tip clanged loudly as fountains of red gushed from the wound.
Some spurted high into the air, his heart not aware that it was disconnected from his brain.
A wayward arc sprayed from his neck and splattered against my face, warm tanginess dripping from my forehead, down my face, and across my lips.
I pushed the coppery liquid off my mouth with the back of my hand, smearing the residue against the silk of my tunic-dress.
With a last gurgle, the man’s body stopped twitching as he finally, finally, succumbed to the injury. Blood still poured freely around the site where my blade was embedded in his neck, though it no longer shot upward.
Stupid bastard and this godsforsaken headache, I lamented as I splashed through the growing puddle of blood so dark it was nearly black. The warm liquid was quickly cooling, steam rising from it as I put one bloodied slipper against his shoulder for leverage and pulled.
With a wet sucking noise, the sword came free from the councilor’s neck.
Chest heaving with exertion and pain from that damn headache, I let the bloodied blade fall loosely to my side. A slow clap reverberated through the now silent space.
I whirled on my heel to see the gods standing in the open doorway. The hall beyond them was just as white as the receiving room and flooded with the same light, though it was blessedly empty, the petitioners wisely evacuating the surrounding area lest they fall on my sword next.
“That was . . . quite a show, Vessel,” Kaos growled, his enormous hands still slowly clapping as he and his sister made their way farther into my receiving room.
The gods were taller than humanly conceivable—nearly seven feet each—but where Kaos was considerably bulky with a skin so obsidian its contrast was almost painful in the pure white space, Solace was impossibly thin and just as pale as the walls in the Samyrian manor.
“Glad I could provide you entertainment,” I groused as I wiped the blood on the dead councilor’s robe.
“Positively barbaric. I hate those weapons,” Solace hissed, her long fingers gesturing aggressively to the blade in my hand.
I shrugged before sliding the sword back into the scabbard at my hip. It was the last thing I had of King d’Refan, and I was not about to discard it simply because of Solace’s preferences.
Kaos stopped to admire my handiwork while his sister practically floated to the throne, pausing only briefly before resting delicately in its confines.
I never wanted to rule Samyr, but I bristled seeing her sitting there.
King d’Refan—the man I owed my allegiance, my heart, my soul—despised the goddess with the force of a thousand suns. His dislike of Kaos was not far behind, but his hatred of Solace was legendary—at least to me.
He’d shared so much with me—his visions, his plans, his dreams for a free Elyria—all while I offered him relief no one else, not even his wife, thought to grant. His predictions were . . . severe, but I endured every one of them and would happily do so again, if only he were alive.
I nearly snarled at the thought of King d’Refan’s death and the Mage who was responsible. My hate for General Rohak d’Alvey eclipsed even my immense disdain for my previous Bonded group.
“You’re looking quite murderous right now. Who could you possibly be thinking about?” Kaos goaded, dry humor lacing the god’s tone. His sister simply huffed in annoyance, an action that seemed to make the male’s smile grow wider.