Chapter 15 #2
Now I recognized Ray’s voice, the fae who’d bid on me and almost bought me at the auction.
He hardly looked like himself, though. His long hair hadn’t been brushed in a while.
It tangled in a long, messy rope that dangled down his back.
The detailed designs on the shaved parts of his skull had smeared, leaving only faint smudges of gold paint behind.
He was completely naked, no skirt, no chest armor, not even a single clip in his hair.
His legs fell open as he turned to us, revealing a smooth area between his legs. No cock, no mating cluster, either.
This wasn’t about sex for Ray, at least not literally. He’d been just syphoning the pleasure of the humans in his possession.
“I’ll buy your Joy Vessels,” I blurted out. “Both of them. I’ll pay their weight in gold.”
I wasn’t even sure if we had enough gold for that yet, but I would make more. I’d take out another loan from Ray if I had to, on whatever terms he named. I just couldn’t leave Mia and her companion in Ray’s possession like that.
“You’re a h-human, aren’t you?” Ray muttered, tripping over syllables.
“What does it matter? I said I’ll buy your Joy Vessels. Right now.”
He scrambled to all fours, trying and failing to push up to his feet.
“They’re not for sale.” He sat down on the rug again, giving up on trying to get up.
“Name your price,” I insisted.
He scoffed, staring at me closely. “Ahhh, I know you. You’re the one who got away.
Your weight in gold seemed like such a high price that day, didn’t it?
But then, I ended up paying even more for these two.
” He waved at the humans behind him in an uncoordinated gesture, then reached between Mia’s legs again.
Ray pressed the ball of his hand to her clit, eliciting a post orgasmic shudder from her otherwise motionless body. A shiver crossed Ray’s shoulders, too, as he tipped back his head and rolled his eyes, basking in the echo of her pleasure.
“Worth every coin I spent on her,” he moaned. “You know, they were right when they said women were better than men. Men don’t last as long and can’t come as often. At least mine can’t.” He shoved a hand against the man’s leg, then fondled Mia’s naked breast. “She’s much better.”
“Name. Your. Price,” I gritted through my teeth, balling my hands into fists.
Ray’s bloodshot eyes met mine, and I drew in a shaky breath.
“They’re not for sale,” he snapped. “I would buy you, however…”
He rose to his feet unsteadily and sauntered toward us in stumbling steps, with his stare glued to me.
“Elaine, come here,” Timur’s voice rang with alarm.
The bones in his tail rattled menacingly. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back to him.
“Stay close,” he whispered into my hair.
Ray’s tendrils stretched to the limit between Mia and him, forcing him to stop about a step or two from us. Licking his lips, he stared at me in a way that made my skin crawl and my stomach roil.
“Stay away from her, Ray,” Timur warned in a low, threatening voice.
Swaying on unsteady feet, his gaze unfocused, Ray didn’t appear to hear Timur’s words or to read the warning behind them.
“When was the last time you made her come?” he asked Timur, not taking his eyes off me. “It’s better if it’s been a while. Their pleasure wears out from fucking too often. W-weak, wretched creatures. My two aren’t enough…”
He grabbed a metal teapot from the ground and shook it, then tipped it over with not a drop coming out.
“Shit. We’re out ag-gain,” he mumbled, slurring his words, then tossed the teapot against the doors with force. “I said the tea needs to be here! Always!”
His shrieks reverberated under the high ceiling, making me jump. Timur’s hold on me tightened. He lifted his tail, aiming the sharp end at Ray’s chest, right at his heart.
“My Joy Vessel is mine. Only mine,” he said firmly, articulating each word.
“I’ll buy her from you. How…how much did you pay for her? Her weight in gold? I’ll double that. No…triple it.”
My heart thudded frantically, not from fear but in anger. Once again, I felt like a chattel, to be owned, sold, and used.
“She’s not for sale,” Timur replied evenly. “I came here to talk about a different business.”
Ray’s features shifted into a grimace of distaste. He tossed a calculating glance at the human couple passed out from exhaustion, yearning to get back to them already.
“No business.” He waved a hand. “L-later.”
He turned to pick up another teapot. Timur whipped his tail, wound it around Ray’s chest, then yanked him toward us.
“Not later. Now,” he demanded.
Jolted to his senses, Ray met Timur’s eyes for the first time since we got there.
He blinked, focusing on his blue eye, then on the red one.
Confusion mixed with alarm on his face, making him look almost lucid for the first time during our visit.
He raised his hands in front of his face, cowering behind them.
“What the fuck are you? What kind of a b-beast?” he mumbled.
Did he really just call Timur a beast? When he was the one using people as sex toys?
“A beast? Sure. And I’ll tear your head off your shoulders if I don’t get what I want,” Timur replied, visibly calm.
I knew him well enough, however, to catch the strained note in his voice. Timur was furious. In fact, he was holding back with all the restraint he possessed. And Ray should be terrified of that restraint snapping potentially.
Timur placed the long, white fingers of his right hand over Ray’s head. His claws pressed into the skin of Ray’s skull, leaving indentations but not drawing blood yet.
“My business is brief,” Timur said. “Tell your men you’re giving me a cave, and I’ll leave you alone. Deny me again, and I’ll crush your fucking head.”
His bone fingers flexed. The claws pierced Ray’s skin. Thin rivulets of dark blood trickled down his face. The shock of pain yanked his mind out of the stupor.
He squirmed, grabbed Timur’s fingers in an attempt to pry them off his head. When that didn’t work, he gripped Timur’s tail, but the spikes on the vertebra hurt his fingers, forcing him to jerk his hands away with a scowl.
Finally, he opened his mouth to scream for help, but Timur gave him a firm shake.
“I swear you’ll lose your head the moment anyone enters here. I’ll fly away, unharmed.” He opened his wings wider to support his point. “And you’ll lose the gold.”
“W-what g-gold?” Ray blubbered, barely coherent.
The pain that had given him some mental clarity initially seemed to be jumbling his thoughts now.
“The gold I’d be paying you if you had any business sense left to rent me one of the many caves that are currently sitting unoccupied.”
Ray squinted, trying to blink the blood out of his eyes.
“You want a cave?”
“Yes, I do. And I won’t leave here until you tell your goons to give me one.”
“A-a cave? Which one?”
Timur heaved an exasperated sigh.
“How about one like this? Spacious, high from the beach, with its own water source, and a patio. Right, Elaine?” He kissed my temple, drawing me closer in a hug with his left arm. “Would you like to watch the sunrise on our own patio, my sweet?”
It sounded fantastic, but I couldn’t focus on choosing the features of a cave when a man’s skull was being crushed right in front of my eyes.
I wanted to bury my face in Timur’s shoulder, refusing to see this.
Then I remembered how Ray tried to force-feed me the hyacinth flower.
He would’ve succeeded, too, even if I fought him.
The only reason he stopped was because Timur placed his outrageous bid at that very moment, distracting everyone.
Timur protected me before we’d even exchanged a single word with each other. If he wished to kill the asshole who once tried to strip me of my free will, I wasn’t going to stop him.
I turned to Timur with a smile.
“Yes, darling,” I said firmly. “I’d love to have a patio, a lot of space, and a comfy bed big enough for both me and you.”
“Did you hear that, Ray?” Timur turned Ray’s head to look at me, then back to him again. “Now call Zayr in and tell him what she wants. Because one way or another, I’ll give my woman whatever she asks for, and I don’t need you alive for that.”
Ray opened his mouth to yell for his men, but Timur brought his face closer to him, trapping his eyes with his gaze.
“I’ll deal with Zayr only, do you hear me? Call in anyone else, and you are both dead. Do you understand?”
Ray tried to nod, but with his head trapped in Timur’s claws, it didn’t really work.
“I do. Let me g-go. I…I d-do…” he mumbled.
Timur unclasped his fingers, and the Ashgate’s Master of the Wall dropped to the ground in a heap of naked flesh and tangled hair.
“Zayr!” he yelled.
The doors to the cave opened and a guard’s head poked in.
“More tea, Ray?” the guard asked helpfully.
“Fuck off. Just get Zayr in here. Now,” Ray barked, turning away from the door to hide his bloodied face behind his hair.
“Yes, Master.” The guard picked up the teapot that Ray had tossed at the doors earlier, then disappeared behind one of the doors.
“And yesss…bring more t-tea t-too,” Ray ordered, slurring his words. “Always m-more tea, you idiot.”
The door opened wider, and two fae brought in Timur’s chair. It was odd to see it empty. But even without its master using its foreign magic, the chair looked out of this world with its buttery brown leather and its thick, bronze wheels with gears and rivets.
“What the fuck is…that?” Ray stared at it, his gaze unfocused.
The tall, bald fae, Zayr, followed the chair into the cave.
“It belongs to the general,” he said, tipping his chin at us. “Or do you want me to send it to his new cave?” He cast a sly glance at Timur, as if he already knew he got what he came here for.
“I didn’t say I’m giving him a c-cave… Did I?” Ray ran a hand over his mussed hair, tracing it all the way down to the end of the messy braid. “I don’t do business. I can’t… Shit, why is it so hard to fucking th-think?”
He sounded lost, scratching his forehead and looking around as if he’d forgotten where he was.
A wisp of pity filtered through my utter loathing for this man.
He’d turned into a pale shadow of his former arrogant, brutal self.
He absolutely deserved everything bad happening to him and more, but it was unsettling to watch a strong, magical being like this powerful shadow fae stumble around like a toddler and slur his words like a drunk.
A drunk? It certainly looked like it. Ray’s behavior seemed impaired in a similar way as if he were intoxicated. Drunk or drugged. Was that the effect of too much human pleasure?
Zayr waited until the two guards who’d delivered the chair left the cave, then closed the doors behind them.
“Many caves are sitting empty, Ray,” he said. “The rent is down. You could use his gold.”
“Gold…” Ray repeated mechanically. “Gold is good. Mazra wants gold for the tea, doesn’t she?
That bitch is ripping me off. I know she is…
The beach has all the dirt, and the sun, and whatever other shit that f-flower needs to grow.
Well, the Wall…the Wall has caves. And this ugly monster here has g-gold…
” He turned to Timur with a shudder. “Wherever the fuck you’d crawled out of.
Ashgate is such a shit hole filled with the ugliest beasts. ”
Unsteady on his legs, Ray stumbled back, tripped over the edge of his bed, then fell on it backwards, spreading out his arms. His hand fell onto Mia’s head.
“Aah, there you are, my sweet thing.” He ran his hand down to her shoulder, then rolled to his side to see her. “Come on, my precious, give me some more of that beautiful pleasure of yours.”
He flipped her onto her back, palming her breast, but she only snored loudly, drawing her knees to her chest.
“Sleeping…” he lamented. “They get tired so quickly. And they’re useless when they’re tired.”
He dropped his head into the bedding, face down, his limbs spread over the crumpled sheets like a starfish.
A guard brought in a fresh pot of the cursed tea and set it down on the floor. Ray didn’t stir, ignoring both the guard and the teapot.
“Come.” Zayr gestured for Timur and me to follow him out of the cave.
I got off Timur’s lap but couldn’t force my feet to make a step away from the two humans piled on the floor like broken mannequins. They looked so utterly spent and lifeless. I wished I could take them with me, and I only hoped they’d forget everything that had happened to them here.
“We can’t leave them here,” I said.
“Then stay here with them.” Zayr scowled. “Make Ray a present. He’d thoroughly enjoy that.”
It sounded more like a challenge than a threat. Still I shrank away from that offer, retreating closer to Timur again. Wrapping a possessive arm around my middle, Timur silently flew over to his chair, bringing me with him.
Zayr led us out into the corridor, then closed the wooden doors behind us.
Only once we were out of Ray’s bedroom did I realize that I hadn’t taken a single full breath while inside its walls.