Chapter 4 #2
I had no choice now, trapped and immobilized by him.
His hard embrace pressed my arms to my body.
His bone whip trapped my legs. It wasn’t a whip, though.
He didn’t use his hands to lash it. The white spinal column with the spiked tip moved independently like an extension of him.
It was a part of him. An appendage. A tail?
The realization made my blood run cold with horror.
I screamed. A wordless, terrified sound so deep and loud, it tore from my dry throat with scraping pain.
“Hush…” he croaked. “It’ll pass.”
What will pass?
My fear?
His nightmarish face?
His screams and roars?
Our pain?
I didn’t know, but everything inside me vibrated with the frantic need for all of it to be over. All of it.
It had started suddenly, but took what felt like an eternity to pass.
Slowly, so torturously slowly, his shaky, shallow breathing deepened.
The tension in his arm muscles over my breasts eased.
He dropped his head to my shoulder, pressing the side of his face—the softer, more human-like side—to my neck.
“Please…please, let me go,” I whimpered.
With a long, body-shuddering breath, he finally raised his head.
“Just don’t touch my feet.” It came out on a long exhale like a plea, as if he’d run a marathon or had just come out of a long battle and was begging me for a moment of peace.
Gingerly lifting me from his lap, he set me down next to his chair. The spine bone uncurled from around my ankles, releasing me. I swayed before finding my footing.
He leaned his head back, lowering the eyelid over his left dark-blue eye. The glow from the flaming-red monster eye had also dimmed.
My path to escape was open. Just a few moments earlier, I would’ve died for a chance to get out of this shack. Now I stayed, with my feet rooted in place.
“I…” I shifted my weight from foot to foot, unsure what to say. “You should’ve told me about your legs… I wouldn’t have kicked you.”
He remained silent and motionless. With his features relaxed, he seemed to be focusing on his breathing as his chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm.
Or maybe he couldn’t move much without pain?
That could be why he escaped the auction tent, dodging the fight.
If the pain from a simple kick could incapacitate him like this, no weapon would’ve helped him win that fight anyway.
He might be big and scary, but he was right, he was far from perfect. Oddly enough, learning about his weakness made me feel something other than just fear or anger toward him. Other than mere curiosity.
Compassion stirred inside me.
I avoided looking at the right side of his face, but the white glimmering bones were hard to ignore in the darkness. It looked like a skeletal beast had almost swallowed a handsome fae man, and I wondered what happened.
“What’s wrong with you?” I blurted.
“An easier question to answer would be what isn’t?” he said without moving.
I waited a little longer, but he didn’t answer either of those questions. After a few more deep, measured breaths, he lifted his head.
“We should go.”
“Where?” I asked, then remembered that I had to pee. “Actually, I need a bathroom. Badly.” I snorted a nervous laughter, my senses still frazzled and my nerves frayed. “It’s a miracle that I hadn’t peed myself during that scare you put me through.”
He nodded wearily. “You can do it outside.”
With a flick of his wrists, his cuffs lit up with green. The tiny gears and wheels inside them turned, and his chair whirred, lifting off the ground.
I tipped my chin at the chair while grabbing my sweater from the floor and shaking the sand out of it. “That’s neat. I’d never seen anything like that before.”
“It’s not from Alveari.” He adjusted his cloak around his shoulders, then pulled his hood up, drawing it low over his face again.
“Where is it from?”
“From the Lorsan Wetlands, the Gorgonian Kingdom up in the Above.” He removed one of his cuffs and hung it up on the door before opening it.
Once we exited, he touched his wrist with the other cuff to the closed door. With a flush of green, the gears moved again.
“Is that how you lock the door?” I asked, watching his ministrations with growing curiosity.
“Yes. The cuffs are pulled toward each other by magic, making it impossible for anyone but me to open the door.”
I wasn’t sure if it was worth locking at all. What was there to protect inside? A grass rug and a plain wooden chest? But maybe the beach dwellers would find those things valuable enough to steal them? And then where would I sleep?
Timur sounded calm now and looked to be in control. But I kept a careful distance from him, remembering his earlier episode and how suddenly it had happened.
“Are we going somewhere far that you locked the door?” I asked.
He gave me a tired look. “You wanted to relieve yourself? Do it now.”
“Here?” I looked around.
The night was young. The stars had just started coming up, with the pale glow of dying sunset still coloring the edge of the horizon.
Back in Teneris, the Joy Vessel Keepers would be opening the roof over the sarai already.
The guards and servants would be up in the palace.
The stores would be opening up, getting ready for a busy night.
Here, the beach still seemed quiet. There were only a few huts on this side of the stone path. All of them looked deserted.
“It’s the calmest time of either night or day in Ashgate,” Timur said. “Most sleep in after staying up long into the morning hours.”
“Why are mornings such a busy time here? Isn’t that when shadow fae usually go to sleep?”
“Yes, the law-abiding ones do. But that’s when the crime thrives in Ashgate.” He stretched his neck jerkily, peering at me with that blue eye of his from under his hood. “Do you no longer need a bathroom?”
“No I…I still do. Only it’s not like I’m going to find one here, am I?” I snapped, pulling my sweater tighter around my shoulders.
He didn’t deign me with an answer. I sighed and headed around our hut in search of a suitable spot to relieve myself.
“Do it here. Stay close.” He stopped me just a few steps away from the rocks and the short tree between them.
Even if I stepped behind the rocks, he’d hear me pee. But the alternative was to walk farther away into the dark night and whatever shadows may be lurking on the beach.
“Fine.” I shrugged, then stepped behind the closest rock and lifted my skirt.
Maybe Erik’s indifference had rubbed off on me, but I felt better with Timur close by. For all I knew, Timur wasn’t much safer than any other criminal in Ashgate, but he had an interest in protecting me, even if just as his property. Though he’d never actually said what he needed me for.
I finished my business, pulled up my panties and adjusted my skirt, making a mental note to get my clothes washed at the first opportunity. Even if I had to wash them in the ocean without soap, it was better than nothing.
“Time to go,” Timur informed me when I returned from behind the rocks.
“To go where?” I asked. “Where are you taking me?”
He steered his chair toward the path carved in the face of the cliff. “Just follow me.”
I planted my feet into the black sand of the beach, however, without making a single step.
“Where are you taking me?” I repeated, not moving from my spot.
He veered around. His wide shoulders raised then dropped with a deep breath of exasperation.
“You have work to do,” he said evenly.
Apprehension seized my chest.
“What kind of work?”
“It’s time to make back the gold I spent for you.” His harsh words sounded even worse when said in a clipped, emotionless voice like that.
I fisted my hands at my sides, anger rising inside me anew. It was hard to contain it, but I tried.
“I didn’t ask you to spend anything for me. I never wanted to be bought or owned by anyone.”
“Yet this is your purpose in this world. Your only purpose. If I didn’t buy you, someone else would have. Either way, you’d be pleasured tonight, and your pleasure would be sold.”
I drew in a shaky breath, taking a slow step back from him. Just as slowly, his chair moved forward, after me.
“You don’t have a choice, Joy Vessel,” he said, his words sounding like a threat.
What could I do now?
I could run. But his magical chair was fast. Chances were, he’d catch me quickly.
I could scream for help. But who would help me here?
“If I didn’t buy you, someone else would have,” he’d said.
There’d likely be plenty of fae rushing to me if I screamed. Only they wouldn’t come here to help me. They’d be here to fight Timur for me. And what would I gain at the end? Another master, probably just as bad or even worse.
Maybe I could fight him myself? I knew his weakness now. If I kicked him again…
The memory of his tortured screams echoed through my mind with a cold shiver running down my spine again. The very idea of causing someone—anyone—that much pain repulsed me. Yet if that was my only choice…
“There is always a choice,” I said grimly.
He turned his face skywards, as if calling on his gods to grant him enough patience to deal with me.
“Our other option,” he said slowly, “would be to go back to the shack over there and sit inside it until we both starve. Is that what you prefer?”
He waited for my answer, as if genuinely interested in my opinion. Obtaining my consent might help him sleep better at night, but I wasn’t going to give him my blessing to abuse me.
He huffed, annoyed. Clearly his request to the gods didn’t result in any more patience.
“Look, you’re not a fae,” he said. “Without food and water, you won’t last long. I need to feed you, and this is the only place I know where I can get food suitable for humans. It also helps that instead of me paying for it, you will get paid for eating it.”
“Wait, what? Are you taking me for breakfast?” That came as a shock.