40. Chapter 36
Chapter 36
Raven
I stood an arm’s length from Caelan in his tent, but we felt a million spans apart. The mud he’d ground into my face had caked and dried. My skin felt tight, with tracks carved out by my tears. Caelan’s fury pulsed in the air, a vast living thing.
“So. Raven. That’s your true name? To match the mark across your back?” He tossed the clipped words at me like daggers. His fingers twitched like he wanted to carve the mark from my skin with a knife.
I wanted to cower beneath that fury. I shook from the strength it took to stay standing with my head held high. It would be so easy to sink to my knees and curl in on myself, burying my face until I could not see the way he looked at me.
Never in my life had I wanted to melt before a man the way I did now. My anonymity was an armor I’d always worn. No matter what anyone did to me, they never really saw me . They could try to kill me or thrash my skin until I bled or humiliate me with words or any manner of cruelties, but none of them really touched me. My secret protected me.
Now my secret had been torn from my grasp by those I trusted most and laid out for all to see. Caelan knew it, along with all of Emperor Calathan’s court. My hopes were dashed. My freedom was gone.
“It is.” I managed to stop my voice from wavering.
Only one other experience in my life compared to the exposure of this moment. I was in Lusa’s chambers, the last time I saw her in the north. She was lying naked over the fur covering on her bed, trailing a finger up and down her thigh, languishing in the aftershocks of pleasure. I stood before her, awaiting assessment. My heart had pounded then, as it did now. It was not uncommon for her to inspect my body and critique my skills as part of my training in the bedroom arts. But the sharp attention she gave me that day saw past the surface bodies we wore; that day, Lusa saw me as one person sees another. Or so I thought then.
“My little bird,” she said. “Are you ready to leave your cage?”
I remembered contemplating what it would feel like to be free. “I don’t think so,” I said honestly.
A little smile teased her full lips. “Good. Because your cage is not made of locks and bars and walls. Your cage is your name, Raven. You will take it with you even when you fly far from here. I’m thankful.”
“Why?” I asked. I was a little bit in love with her back then, and for the first cycle I passed in Los.
“Because I want you to always come when I sing for you. No matter where you are, I want my song to summon you home.”
I vowed she could count on me. That I would stay loyal to her, and to my father’s name, no matter the time and distance that separated us.
She'd chuckled. "Oh, I know you will." She called me back to bed. Her fingers trailed down my mark.
That mark was an embodiment of my cage—a physical symbol of the name I could never escape. But not until today had I thought of Lusa as the person who put me in that cage.
It was the emperor. It was my father's choice to pursue a just Vaharilar. It was Eymen, who sold me to the Coterie, thinking it would offer me my best chance to survive.
It was never Farad, who had opened the wooden box they'd used to transport me north and hugged me even though I was covered in my own filth. It was never Lusa, who'd loved me even though I shivered in pleasure beneath the blade of her dagger.
But that wasn't love, was it?
For the first time, I asked myself why the Coterie would brand an assassin-spy with a mark that would announce her true loyalties to anyone who saw her bare back. Was I ready to face the answer?
“Why did you come here?” Caelan asked.
“You captured me.”
He took an abrupt step forward and I flinched. The air in the tent was very hot. I thought he might hit me.
“Don’t fucking lie to me anymore. You and I both know I tried to set you free.”
My mind flitted like a bird trapped in a small cage. The power I previously had over him had evaporated. I was small. I was nothing. He would bat away my lies until I told him the truth.
“I had nowhere else to go.”
“Another lie. You could’ve stayed in Los.”
“I was only there to get close to Tanead. With him captured, I had no reason to stay.”
Was that why Farad had sent me into Los? Or was he only trying to get me out of the way until my return to Vaharilar was convenient?
Caelan prowled to a side table where the rich red wine he preferred waited. He poured a large glass and threw it back. He poured another. “So you were fucking him. I wondered.” He kept his back to me as he said this. I tried to get my muscles to relax.
“No. He had no interest.”
Caelan chuckled. “Then how did you hope to cement an alliance? You have nothing else to offer. Your family is dead. You have no lands, no wealth. Your name is poison. It’s a marvel you’ve lived as long as you have when most Vaharilaran lords and soldiers would kill you on sight just to curry favor with my father.”
“Precisely. My name is poison. My blood is poison. A poison that could kill your father, if the right hands wielded the weapon.” I was putting together the answers for myself as much as for Caelan as the words spilled out of me.
Caelan was quiet. He threw back another glass and turned. I still wore the dress I’d had on at dinner, but I felt naked beneath his searching gaze. “So that’s it. You thought Tanead might want you on his arm when the time came for him to invade Vaharilar, but then I captured him and you decided to come along looking for a more promising target. Someone rich enough and well-positioned enough to actually do something with his traitorous ambitions.”
So Caelan hadn’t guessed that the plan was never mine. He didn't realize that Lusa was a traitor. For a moment, I considered telling him. I could pay back betrayal with betrayal. Lusa and Farad would lose their heads, and the Revival would be set back decades.
I didn't want that. Angry as I was, I would not be the reason a second rebellion failed.
“Yes. Whoever has me on their arm will gain support from those inside Vaharilar still loyal to my father’s memory and mission.” That was the reason for the tattoo, I realized. It wasn't to remind me of my purpose—it was to declare my value. I was a branded item owned by the Coterie, marked and ready to be sold to whoever emerged as the leader of the Revival.
“Find anyone promising?” Caelan mocked.
“I’m afraid being chained up was rather limiting.”
“Good. Because you’re mine. No one else’s.”
He still wanted me?
“Yes,” I said, more quietly.
Caelan set down his glass and stepped towards me again. He moved slowly, rolling his foot across the ground. “But you know names, don’t you, Eave? Father be damned! Raven . The rebellion isn’t only rising in the Borderlands, is it? There are traitors in my father’s court.”
Lusa’s face flashed before my eyes, along with Priest Farad’s. There were more in their network, including many I didn't know. They’d kept the others from me in case I was ever captured and tortured.
I raised my chin and refused to answer. Caelan wouldn’t believe a lie right now and I wouldn’t give him the truth. Lusa and Farad might deserve my betrayal, but they also deserved a chance to explain themselves first.
Caelan took slow step after slow step. While my heart raced, he stalked forward in slow motion. When he reached me, the heat rose between our bodies. The thumping of my heart was making me dizzy. He looked down at me and I refused to allow myself to look away. He raised a hand, and though he did so with a steady fluid motion, I flinched in fear anyway.
He chuckled. Darkness flooded into his eyes—the darkness I’d come to associate with his sadistic hunger. His fingertips gently brushed a lock of hair off my neck. My breaths came shallow. It felt like a threat.
“Yes, yes of course there are. And now you’re at the center of it. Congratulations. You’re right where you wanted to be, aren’t you?”
It was true, and yet, at that moment, it felt anything but. Though technically, I’d been Caelan’s slave all this time, this moment was the very first time that I felt my own powerlessness.
What had I thought? That I could come here to the emperor's court, hang on his son’s arm, and outsmart them all? That I would weave seamlessly through the political world that pulsed beneath the pleasant surface conversation, conquering it before I ever even understood it?
Perhaps I had. It was a sheltered, na?ve girl’s dream. Farad must have known that, but he'd nurtured my false hopes and gone around me as soon as it was convenient.
Well, fuck that and fuck them. I wanted vengeance, as they did. But I would not be the sacrificial lamb whose throat they slit to get it.
Bravery flooded back into me. I felt solid on my feet again, though Caelan’s presence so close still unsettled me. I squared my shoulders, allowing his hand to brush one. His jaw clenched as his fingers touched me and a flash of wanting invaded his eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to be here. I chose to be here.”
Caelan growled. He tilted forward like he was leaning in to kiss me. Then he rocked away again. His head fell back and he studied the canvas that hid the sky.
I shouldn’t allow him to gather himself. I should press myself against his chest while his self-control wavered. It was to my benefit to make him want me. Yet even knowing this, I stood frozen, awaiting his next command. His next startling movement. His next choice.
When he was calm again, he looked down. The fire had left his eyes, leaving them cold. The sadism that attracted me had transformed into the kind of sadism that even I knew to run from—the killer kind.
“The time for choice has passed. I can’t let you go now, no matter how much I might want to.”
Did he want to?
“Your name was declared before all the nobles of Vaharilar. You are the symbol you’ve always wanted to be. A symbol I must keep on the end of my leash if I don’t want you killed. Which, damn me, I still don’t. But I won’t hand you my father’s empire either.”
Caelan took my chin in his hand. He was neither gentle nor violent, just firm, but I felt the soreness left behind by his earlier violence when he pressed my jaw. My cheeks reddened at the memory of my public beating and debasement. I feared it was just the beginning.
Caelan tilted my head back uncomfortably, forcing me to look at him. My neck felt dangerously exposed, my chest scandalously arched, my mouth slightly open.
“Trust me when I tell you, Raven, that you will regret the choices that brought you here. You may crave pain, but you’re a proud woman. I do not think you will relish a life of constant humiliation.”
My lip quivered, though I tried to stop it. I breathed to quell any tears that might wish to fall. He was right, of course. The exposure of standing before him tonight, stripped of the disguise I’d named “Eave” had ripped me open and left me feeling naked. And there were only the two of us here. How would I cope with it when the eyes of an entire court were on me?
I realized Caelan had no choice now but to put on a show of having completely and utterly dominated me. The Traitor’s daughter. It would happen often and it would happen publicly. What form would it take? I didn’t know Caelan’s tastes well enough yet to guess.
A thought invaded: Would he enjoy it?
I shuddered. I thought he would.
“Good,” he murmured. He’d felt my quiver. He’d seen the fear in my eyes. “You understand.”
Abruptly, his hands left my body. He turned and marched out of the tent, leaving me alone and strangely bereft. I hugged my arms around me, suddenly cold.