Chapter 14
The black lines of the enchantment form spiderwebs over his skin, lines and circles and curves faintly humming with the crushed crystal mixed into the ink. The marks trace over his ribs and abdomen, sliding beneath the waist of his trousers.
I try not to stare as Roiven slowly unfastens the ties of his pants and eases them down.
He’s beautiful, but evil is still evil no matter how good it looks. I tear my eyes away from his thickly-muscled thighs and surprisingly plump rear, up to the most innocuous bit of him I can find. His shoulders. His broad, well-formed, muscular shoulders. My chest feels warm.
I am well and truly an embarrassment to the Empire, for the thoughts running through my head at the sight of this witch.
Roiven balls up the trousers and holds them over his phallus, as if any modesty can still be spared when he’s standing utterly unclothed on a black rock island in the middle of the ocean.
The gray light filters through the clouds to illuminate all of him.
The sea-wind teases his long black hair and pulls it away from his face.
“Well?” he asks sharply.
He has the most attractive naked body I’ve ever seen. And the hints of bruises I saw when Harfor delivered him to me are all gone. He really does heal fast.
I blink, cough, and remember why I asked him to undress in the first place. Slowly I run my eyes over the cruel lines marking Roiven, trying to ignore the body beneath and focus only on the enchantment itself.
I walk slowly around him, studying the lines that cross the tapered plane of his back and how they cut down all the way to the heels of his feet.
When I used to pick an Enchanted to smuggle, I never had the luxury of studying their marks so closely.
It was always just small, stolen moments, one ear straining in case anybody was coming.
Roiven’s head turns to follow me, but his feet stay planted. His whole body is straining and tense, like he expects me to try and stab him at any moment, and it makes the cut of his muscles look all the sharper.
“You can relax. I’m not going to touch you,” I tell him.
“Oh?” His voice is as jagged as broken glass. “You try stripping naked in front of someone you detest and see how it feels.”
“Fair enough,” I mutter. “But it’s not like you have anything to be ashamed of.”
“That’s not the point,” Roiven growls. “Would you want to be this vulnerable, if I could command you to do anything I wanted?”
My eyes catch on a piece of the enchantment, and my eyebrows furrow.
“…That’s strange,” I exhale softly.
“What?” Roiven twists over his shoulder and stares at me. I bend forward, inspecting his lower back more closely.
I know my own name, in the enchantment symbols. It was drawn into Rampage, to make the Hellion mine. But I don’t see it on him. And here, the spot where all the enchantments tie to? He’s keyed to the order of the imperial knights. To any knight.
Roiven starts to turn around, his feet shifting in obvious discomfort.
“Hold still,” I order absent-mindedly, and the Witch King freezes.
I reach a hand forward to trace over the lines, but I don’t touch him.
My fingerpad hovers in the air just over the marks while I frown.
Roiven’s skin goosebumps like he can feel my touch all the same. His whole body clenches tighter.
Harfor said he’d obey me. Did she mean I’m still a knight, even with my titles revoked? How did she know he’d have to obey me? I know the witch hasn’t been faking it. I can’t imagine how much it hurt to have to listen to me kill his people, powerless to stop it, or even to try.
Harfor watched me command him at the docks. Watched me make him kneel.
I don’t know what this means, but my veins run cold and I feel lightheaded. What if the real test wasn’t whether I could keep him alive, but whether I had powers I wasn't supposed… a warning pain starts in my head.
“What is it?” he asks sharply, when I still haven’t answered.
“Nothing.” I take one step back, then another. My left hand snags as I run it through my tangled hair.
“Knight. Tell me. What did you see?” His face is paler than normal, and he still hasn’t moved from his exact pose when I told him to stop. He probably thinks I’ve discovered something that bodes poorly for him.
I don’t want to tell him that I’m not a knight, I shouldn’t be able to command this enchantment at all. That Harfor shouldn’t have expected me to. I can already guess what he’d say, and I’m not willing to hear it.
“It’s a lot of marks,” I say instead.
“Yes,” he answers. A shiver runs visibly over his body. He’s hating this. Every second of it. I close my eyes and rub my forehead so he can at least have a moment of privacy.
“It’ll hurt, you know. Having the ink pulled from your skin,” I say, still without looking.
“I don’t care. Do we have a deal? You get this thing off me, and Savasaeirn takes you back alive.” He says the words quickly.
I walk back around to face him properly. If I’m actually considering this, I need to know the look in his eyes; need to be able to read him. Right now the enchantment is the only thing standing between me and Sava’s vengeance.
“How am I supposed to trust you?” I peer into his eyes, glass-gold in the light of day. He stares back just as hard. His jaw is so tense I’m surprised his teeth haven’t cracked.
“A bold question, considering only one of us is betraying our kind.”
“I’m not a witch.” I whisper the words. They don’t sound quite as firm as I mean them to.
His eyes narrow and the anger in his face slackens into something like exasperation.
“Denying it changes nothing.”
“Stop lying,” I say, from impulse, but as he pinches his lips together I already know the truth.
The enchantment doesn’t let him lie.
Well, maybe he just thinks he’s telling the truth. I can choose not to believe it. The tension in my head eases.
The enchantment works because I’m still a knight. Not because I have powers the other knights don’t; a natural affinity for magic. The council stripped my titles, but the God-Emperor was the one who granted them, so the enchantment still sees me for who I truly am: a knight.
There. I can believe that.
“You can put your clothes back,” I tell him, and I turn away so I’m not tempted to keep staring at him.
“Can I move?” he growls.
“Fuck. Yes, of course.”
Roiven shrugs back into the thin green tunic and trousers. Sava comes back in and lands, and I turn to watch. The blast of air from her wings is so strong it makes my eyes tear up and my ears ache. I sit down quickly on one of the rocks.
I know it’s my only way of getting back home, but am I really going to free this prisoner and let him and a dragon as big as Sava go free?
If only there was a way I could get word to Harfor or one of the Hellions.
If they could set a trap, or be waiting at the Bluff.
And then maybe Harfor would believe I’m human.
But if they see me flying in on a dragon… they won’t understand. And they won’t give me a chance to explain.
“Do we have a deal?” Roiven says. I look up to see Sava tuck her black wings in tight and rest her head down. One of the dragon’s massive inky eyes is fixed on me.
“I don't trust you.”
“Then you name the terms.”
I hesitate, nervous I'll say the wrong thing and find myself in a trap.
“I want to go back to the Bluff. At night. If we land on the northern rockfield, nobody will see us.” The island should be empty, but just in case.
“Your people left,” Roiven says stiffly. “You want to go back there? Wouldn’t somewhere else be better?”
“Somewhere populated? I'm sure they’ll welcome me with open arms if I show up on dragonback,” I say, lips pursing.
I’ll have to take a fishing boat, or wait for someone to arrive to fix the enchantment. But the very fact the Bluff should be empty is a point in its favor.
“There have to be other unguarded isles…”
“I want to go to the Bluff.”
Roiven glances at Sava. Then his head jerks in a nod.
“Fine.”
“I’ll remove the obedience after we get there. But only if you can still truthfully swear you’re planning to leave without hurting anyone else or dragging me away again.” It’s the best security I can come up with.
Roiven frowns at me and folds his arms over his chest.
“I want it all gone. The whole thing.”
“And I want a fleet of Hellions and a nice hot meal. Once I take the obedience off, no knight will be able to command you.”
“That’s no deal at all.”
“Listen.” I shake my head. “It’ll probably take everything I have just to break that one little piece, and I’ll be too drained to keep going. Do you know how long it would take for me to remove all the enchantments? Of course, if you want to spend all month here with me…”
It would probably take more like a week. But they don’t need to know that. I hold my breath. I don’t want to free him from anything I don’t have to.
“One day. Not a month,” Roiven growls.
“Then like I said. Take me to the Bluff and I’ll take the part that makes you obey me.”
Roiven shifts his weight, then unfolds his arms to run his hands through his hair. Agitation screams through every line of his body.
“If Savasaeirn kills you, I am no longer bound to your commands anyways. You offer nothing.”
“It makes you obey any knight. Killing me won't break the enchantment.”
His jaw clenches. Roiven spins on his heel and strides away from me toward the dragon. I don’t follow. I watch them converse for a moment, Roiven speaking in hushed tones that I can’t overhear.
I don’t waste my time staring at him. I walk across the rocks and get another drink of water.
I straighten, turn, and flinch back, hand going to my sword hilt. Roiven is standing right there, not three feet behind me. I didn’t hear him approach. There’s color high on his angular cheeks, and he won’t meet my eyes.
Is it a sign he’s trying to lie, or is it just because he’s embarrassed that a few minutes ago he was completely nude in front of me?
“Fine,” the witch says. The wind lashes his black hair across his face.
“Fine?” I raise my left eyebrow.
“We have a deal. We ride to the Bluff at sunset.”
“Well. Good,” I sputter. I ignore the voice saying witches don’t keep their bargains, because I have no choice but to trust him. Anyways, right now, he can’t lie.
If this works, I have a way back, and a way out of this mess with Roiven. I don’t know how I’m going to explain how I returned, or explain how my prisoner escaped me, or even how to sail by myself from the Bluff to the nearest outpost of civilization.
I'll just have to figure it out. But I don’t want to die in the Wild Seas.
Roiven takes another step toward me, until he’s looming over me, glaring down with those gold-fire eyes. My breath catches and warmth floods through my body. His lips are inches from my own.
“A word of warning, knight: try to trick us, and Savasaeirn will not hesitate to remove you from this world.”