Chapter 19
Ihear a faint click of metal and look up. Talarin is approaching with the leash in his hand, and I feel a little surge of anticipation. I get to go outside.
There’s less of that fluid grace to his movements now. They’ve become even more efficient. There’s a tension to him, something almost reptilian, like a crocodile that makes absolutely no move that isn’t necessary until it’s ready to erupt into violence.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?”
I nod quickly, and when he opens the cage, I go before the permission can be taken away.
When I come back, he hasn’t moved. He’s standing in exactly the same place, the leash still in his hand. It’s unsettling how still he can be. I walk to his side and present my neck to him.
He clips the leash to my collar, his fingers never grazing my skin like Mero’s or Arrek’s would, and turns to lead me outside. The way his robe falls leaves part of his back exposed, showing those hard lines of muscle, the lean discipline of his body.
The sun is creeping toward midday. I glance down at my watch, then look away before I can read it. I don’t want to know when the precious thirty minutes will be up. Not this time.
As we pass the stairs, he stops. I remember Mero bringing me up here, and it feels like so long ago. At the time, it was one of the most humiliating, most intense experiences of my life. Now it’s just one of many.
“Do you want to go up?”
I nod.
To my shock, he steps toward me and lifts me with ease, cradling me against his chest. His white robes are soft against my skin. He carries me up the stairs and sets me down as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
I look out over the landscape, putting sights to the sounds I was listening to from my cage. The river, the forest, the rolling hills beyond. There are no birds in their V formation overhead, but a raven caws somewhere among the trees, and I turn toward the sound.
For a little while, I just stand there looking. I want to take it all in, experiencing the outer world as best as I can.
Talarin stands a little distance away. I give him a sideways glance, wondering what he’s thinking, and find him watching me.
“You went downstairs.”
I look up at him, remembering the pale light streaming over the supplies, like it was a bomb shelter. Centuries’ worth of food, the bed with its restraints, the shower seemingly molded for my body.
One of those things I try not to think about. Now he’s bringing it up here in the sunlight.
I try to read his expression. He doesn’t give me much, but there’s this hesitation to him, and a hint of guilt.
“We would never keep you there against your will,” he says, his voice quieter.
That’s not what I’m worried about.
I look away. I know they wouldn’t put me in that box, that they wouldn’t keep me restrained down there. But I’ve started to crave things I never thought possible, shameful things that make my body respond in ways I still struggle with, even as I try to accept it.
I’m scared I’m going to want them to take me down there and never let me go.
I want to open up to him, but it’s because there’s no one else to confide in. But then again, I haven’t confided in anyone for a long, long time. I don’t know how to tell him what frightens me without vocalizing the things I don’t want to admit to myself, as if saying them will make them more real.
He waits, giving me time to answer, and I look out over the trees.
There’s nothing I can say.
“It was my idea.”
“What was your idea?”
“To change the basement for you.”
Now he’s trapped my attention again.
“You built it, right?”
He shakes his head.
“We did not.”
“Then who did?”
“The men who owned this estate long before us. They built it for their Fated Mate.”
I try to picture someone else living here, because these three feel as if every bit of it was made for them.
“Mero’s forefather constructed this estate thousands of years ago. We are not like Ruttelle. Other triads try to recreate the same three for eternity. This is the only time the three of us have formed a triad before. And now we have found you.”
I shiver.
“The woman they made it for… I thought…”
I concentrate, trying to remember what I know of their species. I don’t know where I heard this.
“I thought you went into the cryo-bays in Colossus and made a new version of yourself until you found your Fated Mate. But if Mero’s, um, like a clone?
” I check if I’ve offended him with the terminology, but he has no reaction.
“If he made it for a woman, then how can Mero be a new version of him… of himself, I mean. Like wouldn’t they have had kids the normal way and be done? ”
“She died before they could bring her here. The room has been empty since.”
There’s a sadness to his eyes. I don’t press him on it; it wasn’t his forefather or iteration of him, but that must be one of the worst tragedies that can happen to one of the alien species.
Did they ever know her? Did they ever see her?
I think of the way these three men look at me. If they’d been with her, I can’t imagine they would ever have let anything bad happen to her. What could possibly have happened? What could have got past men like them?
Or had that room been built before anyone even knew her? Just an imagined woman they hoped would come into their lives one day, someone who might not even exist.
I have a hundred questions. I want to ask him how it happened, whether he knew her, whether Mero did.
But there’s that grief on Talarin’s face, and I think of something else to say.
“And all those clothes? They were my size.”
I try not to think about the ones that were definitely not my size, the ones with extra fabric made for a future I will not let myself consider.
“All bought from the capital.”
I bite my lip. I have to know.
“And that… that box? Was that theirs?”
His gaze grows more intense, and I know he’s imagining me in it, unable to feel anything but his touch.
“No. I bought that from the capital personally.”
The sun has no more warmth.
“I think I’d like to go now.”
Something dark flashes across his face.
“Very well.”
His voice is deep. I can tell he’s about to move toward me, and I pull away from him, the leash tightening ever so slightly. Before he can pick me up, I turn toward the stairs, trying not to take them two at a time.
He follows me down and back inside, and I stand in front of the cage as he reaches for my collar and unclips the leash. I stare straight ahead, knowing his fingers won’t graze my skin, not turning around to look at the titan behind me.
I crawl in and wait until I hear the lock click and him start to walk away before I turn.
And then I’m in my cage, but I’m thinking of a darker cage, and I hug my knees to my chest, and I have this surge of fear that after these hundred days I won’t be able to leave, and it won’t be because they stop me.