Chapter 6
“Do you really want to be here?” Jessamine whispered to the maid on her left. “Working for him? You have to know what he is. He’s a monster, an abomination, and I’m sure he’s hurt you before.”
The blonde maid didn’t even react. In fact, the more Jessamine looked at her, the more she was certain Leon had chosen this woman because she looked like Fortuna. Nearly down to the exact detail, just bled of color.
This maid had the same nose, the same features, the same wide gaze.
But her eyes were a pale blue that was almost eerie to look at, and her hair was so blonde it was nearly white.
Jessamine’s stomach churned, looking into the features of a woman who was so similar to her cousin and yet couldn’t be more different.
The maid finally made eye contact with her, and Jessamine thought, This is it. This is where I will finally get someone to help me escape this place.
But that was not what the maid said.
“I am happy here. The king is kind, and he takes care of those who work with him. He will never let us go hungry or ever feel the effects of all that goes on in this world.” She then leaned a little closer and hissed, “And I will never help a witch.”
Right. Well. She’d get nothing out of this one, then.
Jessamine slumped in the chair they’d placed her in.
Every single morning, a group of maids came into her room, shuffled her into a chair, and then strapped her to it.
She was meant to look out the window at the kingdom beyond and perhaps find some love in her heart for the people she saw there.
Leon said it was the only way he could think to get her to cast pity on those who wished to have a goddess as a queen.
But she knew what it really was. He wanted to wear her down. Force her to sit here, days passing on end, rotting away as people moved around her, most refusing to even speak. They brushed her hair, washed her face and body, dressed her. She was nothing but a puppet.
Today, though, she was done taking what they gave her. The maids would leave eventually. She was given a few moments to walk around on her own. For her health, Leon had said.
She was tired of being compliant, and perhaps it was time to be anything but.
The maid finished making her bed and then returned to where Jessamine was strapped into her chair. “I am going to release you now. You are to behave until Leon comes to speak with you.”
Ah, yes, the order of operations in this place.
The maids finished cleaning, because Leon couldn’t walk into a room where someone had mussed the bed.
Wrinkled sheets were the sign of a man who didn’t have enough money to never see such a thing.
So he made sure that the maids had done their job before he ever stepped foot in her room.
Then he would ramble about making her queen, how it would be best for both of them if she accepted it, and how she was going to love her new life with him.
Jessamine had pretended to listen. At some point, she wondered if it would make him slip up and release her from the chair. Not today. It had been nearly a week since she’d woken up here, and Jessamine was done pretending she was okay with any of this.
The moment that nasty maid untied her and walked out the door, Jessamine reached out her hands. She drew on that well of magic that was so familiar, the well that connected her to Elric even though she hadn’t been able to sense him for a week now.
His magic was still with her. That would never disappear.
“Burn,” she whispered. “Burn and set the entire room on fire.”
She directed that spark to the bed and watched as it was soon engulfed in flames.
She stood a little too close to it, feeling the heat blasting her face as the wooden frame started to crackle and creak.
It felt good to do something in rebellion, even if she was just destroying the smallest bit of this room. She couldn’t do much else.
Her power had waned in the time that she’d been here. She wasn’t sure if that was the effect of the God King or if it was something far worse.
Like the coven had finally decided they were done waiting for magic, and they had decided to take what was owed to them. She feared without her standing in the way, the other women would sacrifice their god like they had in the old days.
The door slammed open, and a guard rushed in. His eyes went wide as he saw her standing there, a dark figure silhouetted by orange flames, before he ran back into the hallway screaming, “Fire!”
That left an opening for her. The guard was overcome by alarm that the fire would spread, and it certainly could in a castle like this. Fire had a way of finding fuel, no matter how far it was. And fire like hers? Oh, it could spread even farther.
She reached out her hand and cupped a small spark in her fingers.
It made her palm look as though it were burning, but she didn’t feel the pain of it, even though she could see her skin blistering.
Curling her fingers a little, she let the flames build in her hands as she headed out into the hallway.
“Burn,” she whispered again, tearing off a portion of the flames and flicking it toward the nearest door. It would spread into the room beyond. Leon, like his father, preferred wooden furniture. That was a mistake she would make him regret.
She walked down the hall after the screaming guard, setting fire to everything she could get her hands on.
Over and over again, she sent flames into the rooms beyond.
There was no sound of screams that followed her, but she was certain she looked like some mad, avenging demon who had arisen to take all of their souls.
The guard only turned once and saw her following him. His wide eyes grew even larger. She saw true terror in his gaze as his voice choked in his throat and he ran even faster.
From her. He ran from her now, not just the flames that were sure to overtake the castle if no one addressed them.
She followed him into what looked like the barracks.
There were plenty of guards here in various states of undress, all of them staring at her as she walked into their midst. Cots lined the wall, each one neatly made.
Wooden trunks were at the end of each bed, and a wooden nightstand between each cot. So much of it that could burn.
“You should have let me go when I begged,” she snarled, and then she set fire to all the cots that lined the room.
Their shouts echoed in her ears, and still, somehow, it wasn’t enough. She wanted them pleading for mercy. She wanted them on their hands and knees, coughing in the smoke and moments from death, where they would cry out to a god or goddess to save them. And there would be no one to hear them.
No one but her.
She encouraged the flames to burn brighter, hotter, all of it fueling her rage until suddenly she swore she heard the sound of laughter.
Then clapping.
Then all the flames burned out as one.
The sudden lack of heat seemed to suck all the rage out of her body with it. Jessamine stumbled, bracing an arm on the wall as she tried to get her bearings again.
What had just happened? Her hands shook as she looked at her burnt fingers.
Her legs could barely hold her up, and she needed the wall just to remain standing.
Why couldn’t she breathe? Jessamine had just been the avenging creature she’d wanted to be since Leon had stuck her in this castle, and now she felt like she could barely keep her head up.
“Ah, Jessamine.” The words were said in Leon’s tones, but she knew this wasn’t Leon speaking. “You prove day in and day out that you were the right choice. I am so sorry that this fool tossed you aside.”
He walked in front of her, the God King staring out through his golden eyes. She didn’t see even a hint of Leon left.
Elric had always seemed like himself, but now she had to wonder if she had never met the man who had once inhabited his body. Perhaps she had only met the god who took it over.
It was an unsettling thought.
“I have no interest in talking with you,” she muttered. “If you wish to make a deal with me, then I will only deal with Leon.”
“That’s not going to happen. You want to make a deal with the mortal because he is simple, easily distracted, and, frankly, beneath you.
” He reached for a lock of her hair, dragging it closer to her face so all she could smell was burnt hair.
“You need to be more careful with yourself. I want a beautiful goddess by my side, after all.”
“I’m not going to be here much longer, God King. I will escape.”
She watched as he pulled her hair to his own face. He inhaled the scent of burning, as though it was the best thing he’d ever smelled. Those golden eyes even rolled back in his head as he groaned. “Call me Ajax. I would like to hear my name from the lips of a beautiful woman once again.”
She leaned close enough to watch his pupils dilate before saying, “Never.”
She didn’t expect him to rear back and slap her.
The crack of his palm against her cheek echoed throughout the room.
It made her head spin knowing that he would dare touch her like that, as though it didn’t matter that it hurt, or that she was a princess, or that he was trying to woo her into being his queen.
She breathed through the pain and glared at him. He didn’t find her threatening, clearly, even though she had been doing a remarkable job of burning down his newly acquired castle.
Ajax’s chest rose and fell in anger, and his shoulders squared in a way she had never seen Leon’s before. “You are a hard one to crack, I see. That’s fine. You will fall in line like the rest of them.”
“I’m not falling in line for anyone,” she snarled.
“And why do you care, anyway? You’re just going to put a goddess in me and never see me again.
Isn’t that how it works? You’re expecting someone else to take over my body, and then you won’t have to worry about me anymore. Dealing with me is just temporary.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at her as though he were trying to peer through her skull to understand what her thoughts were. It was an unnerving stare, and she wondered if he could read minds.
But the longer he stared, the more she realized why he was looking at her like that.
Jessamine let her accusation fly like an arrow. “You need me willing.”
The words hung between them. They were dark and dangerous in their meaning, because if she had to be willing, well, he would never get her there. She could hold out until the very end of time, if that’s what it took.
Ajax’s face split into a smile. “Willing comes in many ways, princess. There are people who desperately wish for what I am going to give them. Some have always believed they deserved to be a god, and that I should offer them all the magic they can take. And then there are those who are just wanting the pain to end. All it takes is a few moments of weakness after ages of suffering, and I do believe those are the strongest of them.”
“Why’s that?” she asked, her voice shaking just slightly.
“Because they endure so much before they finally break.”
The gold in his eyes flashed as though sunlight had hit them, and then all she could feel was pain. Her body crumpling in on itself, her muscles contracting all at once.
Her head split in an ache that surpassed anything she had experienced before. It was as though he’d put a spike through both of her temples, then used them as reins to drag her to her knees. Her mouth parted on a silent scream, because the pain was so much she couldn’t make any noise come out.
Her guts twisted with a horrible ache. Like the pains during her monthly menses, but somehow so much worse.
It felt like there was a knife in her ovaries, slowly slicing them out of her body as they wrenched back and forth.
Stomach muscles clenching, she tried to ignore the suddenly fiery pain. But there was no containing it.
From the top of her head to deep in her guts, something was wrong. Very wrong. He was grinding her beneath the heel of his magic, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
Finally all the pain disappeared, and she fell onto her hands and knees, gasping for air. Jessamine tried to get her bearings. She could start a fire again, all she had to do was reach out her fingers…
He stomped on her hand. Hard.
Her fingers snapped. She could feel them breaking. Not just the image of it in her head or the pain he had put there. They were all broken in her right hand where she had reached out for a rug that wasn’t as singed as the others.
And then he lifted his foot and kicked her in the face.
Jessamine didn’t know how she’d moved, but suddenly she was leaning against the stone wall as he crouched in front of her. Warm blood trickled out of her nose, and she could taste metal on her tongue.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, fake pity on his features.
“You are so beautiful, Jessamine. Don’t worry.
I will piece you back together after I am done.
But you will work with me. You will take a goddess into your body willingly, and you will help me bring about a new age with more powerful gods. ”
“I would rather die,” she spat.
“Oh, come now. You’ve already done that once or twice and it didn’t stick, now did it? All you have to do is cooperate, and I won’t have to hurt you anymore.”
Some small part of her whispered to play along.
She didn’t want to hurt like this. Jessamine had been through enough torment in her regular life.
She’d been killed multiple times now, and injured more times than she could count.
Rolling over just this once, at least until she could escape, wasn’t a bad idea.
But a much louder voice just kept screaming “Fuck you!” in her head. And that voice felt so much more right than the other one.
So she gathered as much blood and spit in her mouth as she could while pretending to be thinking. Then she spat that large wad at his face the moment he seemed to relax.
Blood and spittle dripped down his face, another satisfying moment of rebellion as she hissed, “Do your worst, God King. I have no interest in ever working with you willingly. You are a sad excuse for a god, forcing others to worship you. I vow I will never do so.”
He arched a brow and shrugged. “Fine. I like it better this way.”
And then the pain hit her even harder.