Chapter Fourteen
I groaned, flipping onto my belly and burying my face in the pillows.
How many hours had I spent rolling around in bed, a familiar headache pounding in my temples, nausea churning in my stomach?
I should have expected the hangover, but I hadn’t.
It came regardless; the price I’d pay for a momentary reprieve.
At least my nightmares hadn’t returned. Some combination of wine and company had kept them at bay.
Without Vapula haunting my dreams, new anxieties crept in. The Prince had changed over the past few days. There was something about him—vulnerable and astoundingly honest—that he’d allowed me to glimpse.
Something that threatened to undo me if I let him get any closer.
I shuffled out of bed and lit the lantern on my desk.
My heart skipped a beat. A bronze key glittered on my desk, the one that unlocked my room.
I patted my pockets, finding them empty.
Sitri must have taken it, or just maybe, I’d been drunk enough to give it to him.
I glanced at the door. Shut. Not locked.
Had I chosen to let him in here, or did he bring me to bed himself?
I couldn’t quite make sense of the tension in my chest—not anger or fear, but something altogether different.
Last night’s events seemed distant in my mind. I squeezed my eyes closed as I dug through my memories.
We’d been there in the great hall, and Sitri had asked me to let him bind me.
He’d calmed me when I panicked. Talked to me about trivial things.
I might have even laughed, and then the memories became hazy, so drenched in wine and firelight that they could not be replayed.
I took another look around my room. Sitri had left without a trace.
No scent of him lingered in the air or on my sheets, and the only sign he’d been here at all was the key left on the desk.
It seemed so unlike him, or at least, unlike the idea I had of him.
Maybe he really had suspected me, suspected that I was here to work against him.
Now he understood the truth; I feared Vapula as much as he did.
He hadn’t used that fear against me, though he knew I coveted freedom and had stripped it from me. Never hesitated to imprison me.
What kind of game was Sitri playing?
I shook my head, hoping to drive the circling thoughts out. I needed food, and drinking oils, and then more sleep.
Without bothering to shut the door, I wandered from my room and towards the kitchen. I was so busy rubbing my forehead that I nearly crashed into a tall, dark figure as I rounded the first corner.
Sitri, with his silver eyes and wild, black hair.
In one hand, he carried a bottle of drinking oils. The other held a plate loaded with flatbread and some kind of jellied preserve. As he caught sight of me, his brow lifted, and he bared his teeth in a grin.
“I wondered just how long you’d sleep in today. Perhaps I should have told you; survival isn’t immunity, darling, and alcohol is poison indeed.”
“Yeah, a warning would have been nice,” I muttered.
He made for my room, his arm brushing against mine as he passed, and I turned to follow. Sitri sauntered through the open doorway and set the meal on my desk. I raised an eyebrow. He shrugged.
“You have missed two meals, darling. Did you expect me to let you starve?”
“You’re one to talk.” I followed him inside and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “You haven’t eaten in a week. Last I checked, you weren’t starving, and hunger couldn’t annihilate.”
“It can’t, but hunger pains will come all the same. Besides, it’s too soon to know your limitations. Humans rarely stay around this long.”
The unspoken truth in his words hung heavy in the air. Humans were a resource in his world, used to create labor and soldiers. Demons didn’t keep us; they bound us, turned us into more of their kind, and put us to work. What Sitri did for me was exceptional. He was deep in uncharted territory.
He swept by me, lingering for a moment in the doorway, glancing at me over his shoulder. I scanned him for any sign of hostility or his dangerous, playful attitude. What caught my eye instead was the heaving of his chest. Was it just my imagination, or was the Prince winded?
I blinked, and his breathing had calmed. The hangover was making me see things. I shoved aside my lingering concern, refusing to let the Prince twist my emotions.
“Sitri? Do you remember what happened last night?”
Something in his face softened as his eyes flicked over me. “You overindulged,” he said, “and when I was certain you’d become a hazard to yourself, I brought you back here to rest.”
“And you didn’t… do anything to me? While I was drunk?”
At that, Sitri laughed. “You really think I’m such a monster? Why would a monster bother to ply you with wine? I don’t need alcohol to get my way. If I wanted, I would take. You always suspect the worst, darling.”
I let out a sigh, tinged with relief and that strange tension I’d felt before. He was right—he didn’t need wine. He had enough raw power to do as he willed. I wasn’t sure whether the thought was more comforting or terrifying.
“And before you ask,” he continued, “there is work to be done today. We shall depart for Lantyca shortly. You have an hour to prepare yourself.”
“Really? Today?” I asked.
“Indeed. It is our last trip for some time, too. Without an active battlefield, the flow of salvage has staunched. I have more pressing matters to attend to. My allies will execute on your intel. For now, I want you close until your services are again in demand.”
“Allies?”
“Did you think I produced these weapons domestically, darling? I lack the materials, the facilities, the knowledge. Lantyca was not built to raise an army.”
I tried to hold my face steady. Sitri’s smile faded from his face. Those rare hours in the workshops of Lantyca offered me a change of scenery, a chance to stretch my muscles and do what I was best at. They gave me companionship. A taste of the freedom I so desperately needed.
As soon as they’d been granted, they vanished.
“Thank you for the food.” I stood from the bed, moving to pull my chair from where it sat tucked beneath the desk. When I looked back up, Sitri had disappeared from the doorway, leaving only my meal behind.
“Think you’ve got it, darling?”
I sighed and set my collection of metal scraps down on the workbench.
According to Sitri, it used to be a flamethrower.
What had started as orders to clean and recreate simple weaponry had devolved into a full-scale reverse-engineering project.
For each of the devices whose mechanisms I discerned, three more took its place. This was truly a Sisyphean task.
“I’ll need a few more hours for this,” I admitted. “Unless you have an intact nozzle, that is. That’s where I’m stuck.”
“Noted. I shall check next door. Perhaps there are some that aren’t quite so damaged.”
Sitri ducked out of the workshop and back onto the city streets. I shook my head. What was one more trinket for the ever-growing pile he fed me?
At least he’d placed a little trust in me.
With every day that passed, he watched from a greater distance, granted more allowances.
When he’d first taken me out to work, he hadn’t let me out of his sight for a moment.
Now he had the confidence to leave me unsupervised in a building full of potential weapons.
The Prince was lucky. If he’d been right about me, about my ties to Vapula, the war would already be over.
Sitri reappeared in the doorway sometime later, a new basket of beaten metal in hand. He dropped it onto the table with a clang. I jumped, scrambling to recollect the screws and washers that went flying.
“This is the best I can do. Hope it helps, darling.”
“Honestly, you’re impossible to work with,” I said with a scowl. I shot him a glare and straightened out my workspace.
He had the nerve to laugh. “You think it’s impossible, yet you have done work far better than any of my own men. I’d say quite the contrary; if anything, it is you who cannot be pleased.”
I blinked. It was a compliment, albeit a backhanded one, that caught me completely off guard. There was something else to it, though; an admission of a weakness that he’d let slide so freely.
“There’s not a single engineer in this kingdom who can complete a task like this?”
“Mine is a kingdom of desires. You’ll find swordsmiths and rogues, vigilantes and oligarchs, but those with a talent for machines are quite rare in Lantyca. You are among fewer than a dozen peers here.”
“That explains a lot.” I turned back to my work, hoping Sitri missed the smile on my face.
Praise had always been lacking in my life. It was nice to be recognized. Celebrated.
After so long in my family’s shadow, I’d forgotten how it felt. The thought made my chest ache, even as I swelled with pride.
“Other kingdoms aren’t like this, then?” I asked, if only to distract myself. “Quite so… rustic, I mean.”
“Not in the slightest. Most of them have some specialty, whether it be science or soothsaying. There are seventy-two in all, each with its own noble ruler. Never dynasties. Always usurpers.”
“Seventy-two? And you know them all? Their rulers, their specialties?”
Sitri scowled, turning his head away from me and back towards my work. “To say I know them is generous, but I know of them, yes.
“Nine Kings to rule the Hells, twenty-three Dukes to bind the Earth, seven Princes to command their courts. Fifteen Marquises to keep the peace, five Earls to sow disorder, twelve Presidents to grant counsel, and one Knight to incite the war.
“That’s the story I was told, at least. If ever we cooperated in such a way, it was long before my rule.”
Sitri picked bits of metal from the basket he’d brought and discarded any that seemed damaged. I stared at him, dumbfounded, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Dukes ruling Princes? Presidents and Knights with kingdoms?
“Who thought up that nonsensical hierarchy?”