Chapter 11
It is not until the blades still that I realize I’ve been rapt at attention at the window for hours, watching the duel, the back and forth, like a dance, each of them in each other’s minds, each of them knowing exactly where the other will be an instant before it happens.
Then it’s like snapping out of a trance as they start to walk around the building, and I see that my coffee is cold and that the book I brought up and never cracked open is the same damned one I’ve reread a dozen times already. I’m not thinking straight.
I don’t want to be seen. Not right now. Not when I know what’s coming for me.
I pulled on sweatpants and a sweater before coming up here, whatever was closest to me.
I’m going to have to change again anyways.
One sock has bunched up under my foot, and I tug it straight before climbing down from the chair.
The bells ring with every movement, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
I wait for the sound of showers on sweaty bodies, hoping that Arrek isn’t in the great hall, and slip down, poking my head around the corner.
Empty.
I jolt out, looking every way for him, but he isn’t between me and the front wall, and I wave my wristlet, the doors opening to me out of seamless stone.
And I run the same line down, the one I used to take before they came, until I had to stop for six months, never daring to start this far up the hill.
The run that is the same place but different, the great lawn tamed and manicured beneath my feet, and I can feel their eyes on me even though I dare not turn to see if they are on the walls somewhere.
Then, when I’m in the forest, hidden by the familiar trees, I stop to let myself breathe. Only then do I glance at my watch.
4hr 12m.
I’m going to be put over a huge alien’s lap and spanked this afternoon.
I blink, the thought just repeating in my mind, and it’s hard to process it.
Just ten days ago, if I had been here, I would have been thinking about snares, traps, harvesting, preserving, preparing for the cold bite of winter, while managing the three of them, false trails and switchbacks, leaving traces that led them on hour-long hunts in the wrong direction.
Now I’m thinking of that hand, coming down, again and again.
I shiver, and the rush of heat between my legs is enjoyable, this yearning, needy ache, and the fact that I am not allowed to reach down and take care of myself only makes it sweeter.
Then a darker thought rushes through my mind, and my eyes go wide, because even considering it is dangerous, so dangerous.
What if I don’t come back?
I swallow, and I can’t move. I’m petrified by the thought, because my mind is already mapping it all out. He wouldn’t hunt me down with the Reaver. I know that. He gave me that dark promise.
“Unless you want it to be so, so much worse.”
I could make it past the walls in forty minutes flat.
Not to the village. Towards the only place they would never think I would go, towards the laws of the Empire and the society built on brutality and arrogance.
It would not be easy. Night and day, hiding my scent, my tracks, never knowing if each moment would be the one they would descend on me, grab me…
And punish me.
It would be so much worse. I don’t know what twisted things they have imagined in their nearly seven hundred years, but there are dark pleasures and dark brutalities I never dreamed of.
Would he chain me? Pinch and twist my nipples until I scream, or put a gag in my mouth and not let me speak for the rest of the hundred days? Slap me, choke me until the world goes black, then bring me back and force me to cum while three sets of hands punished, twisting, groping, pulling and…
I’m panting, so fucking wet, and I squeeze my legs together tight, aching for their touch.
Or would he just put me over his lap and spank me until there was nothing left of me, until my ass was bright, burning red, until I’d fought and given up and fought again, until my mind melted under his torturous touch?
I find myself turning already.
4hr 08m.
More than four hours, and the freedom out here is dangerous, so dangerous, because at any moment that whim could become real, and I could run.
And because I want to be perfect for him to ruin.
I don’t fight it. Don’t fight that part of me that wants to get so dolled up, so fucking…
I can remember the way those two twins looked at me, the envy and frustration in their eyes, because they saw me with a triad of brutal warlords while they served a man who brokers favors and the kind of power made in backroom deals.
These men have power by their swords and the swords of those who follow them so naturally.
At the doors, I lift my wrist.
The stone opens.
I pause before stepping through, looking back just once. The forest is still there, and it calls to me, that ultimate gamble, to be free of these men forever…
Or chained to them in a way that won’t let go.