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“Everyone out,” Amon snapped.
“What yuh mean, everyone out?” Conrad asked, but Rycon grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him towards the door.
“Let’s go, Obeah Man,” he muttered. Conrad looked confused but followed Rycon’s lead. He and Dossidian began to leave, Meredith got up to follow suit, but Amon barked at her.
“Meredith, you stay,” his voice was so strained I almost didn’t recognize it. When the males had left, he turned to Meredith. “Ash Nevra struck her with an arousal curse. I was a fool; I didn’t see it coming until it was too late. It’s going to keep getting worse until she finds… release.” He bit out the last word like it hurt him to say it. I struggled against Kasha’s vice-like grip, bucking my hips in her arms. If I could just make it stop.
“It will wear off in a few hours. Is there anything you can give her that will knock her out?”
Meredith looked horrified but nodded. She rushed to the table that she had filled with draughts and potions she had prepared in case of injury and returned with one that I recognized the smell of. It was a calming draught. I groaned and bucked my hips again as Kasha crushed me tighter against her chest.
“I don’t want that,” I nearly sobbed, “I want you to touch me.” I strained with all I had against Kasha towards Amon. His face was so pale he looked like he was going to be sick.
“Keep her in here until it’s over. No one comes in except you two,” he ordered before vanishing in a cloud of shadow. I felt as if I might weep in his absence. Another rolling wave of heat rushed through me, and I gasped, straining against Kasha again. I just wanted it to stop.
“Here, Raven, drink this,” Meredith held the draught to my lips, and I turned my head away. Finally, Kasha spoke.
“If you want it to stop, Raven, you need to drink the potion.” She said softly, and I let out a strangled sob. The second my mouth opened; Meredith poured the draught down my throat. I choked and gagged on it, but every drop that slid down my throat began to quell the unbearable ache that had grown relentlessly within.
“There you go,” Kasha murmured, “A few more sips.” As calm relief began to flow through me, I eagerly gulped down the last few mouthfuls of the potion. Finally, the last dregs of arousal seeped away from me, and I felt my eyes close. I had a brief moment of clarity, before everything went black.
Ash Nevra had said Amon was my mate.
63
I woke up curled in the pit in the common room, covered in a thick blanket. Kasha and Meredith were sitting across from me, sipping something that smelled like tea. I was still wearing the chiffon gown, which was now horribly wrinkled.
“Hey, hey,” Kasha said as she realized I was awake.
“How are you feeling?” Meredith asked gently as I pushed myself up. How was I feeling? The question opened the door to a floodgate of somewhat hazy but horrifically embarrassing memories. I did a quick mental scan of my body and let out a sigh of relief once I was sure no part of me felt aroused.
“Oh my god,” I groaned and curled into myself, burying my face in one of the squashy throw pillows that littered the pit.
“It’s OK, Raven,” Kasha said, her voice gentle, “Nothing that happened yesterday was your fault.” I burrowed my face deeper into the pillow as I remembered how hard she had needed to grip my wrist to keep me from literally touching myself in front of everyone.
“I’m fucking mortified,” I murmured into the pillow.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Kasha told me, and I peeked at her. “We got you out quickly and were able to get you to sleep before you were able to do anything serious,” I remembered grinding myself against Amon in that disgusting bed chamber and shuddered. The memory of me literally begging him to touch me while he looked at me like I was some sort of rabid animal in heat would haunt me for the rest of my newly long, immortal life.
“I’m so embarrassed,” I told her, and she looked at me sympathetically.
“Don’t be. This is what she does to people. She’s sick and twisted. She wants them to ask to be…” She didn’t need to say the word. I knew what she was getting at. The way she was looking at me, I wondered how many times Ash Nevra had done that to her. I wondered if anyone had ever been there to save her from the follow-through. I knew the answer to that question without needing to ask it.
I understood even more now what life for Kasha must have been like before Amon freed her. Suddenly I felt like a horrible person for asking her to go back there with us to search for the Omnikey. The Omnikey!
“Did you find it?” I asked abruptly, pulling away from the pillow I had been hiding behind. I had been so busy feeling humiliated I had completely forgotten why we had been there in the first place. If we had the key, at least one good thing would have come out of that horrible visit. Kasha’s face fell, and I knew immediately she hadn’t found it.
“It’s my fault,” I said, deflating, “I didn’t give you enough time. I let her… do whatever it is she did to me.”
“It’s not your fault, don’t say that,” Kasha said. Meredith nodded.
“We were just discussing it before you woke up. Kasha had scoured the entire throne room with The Lens and had taken to checking hallways by the time Amon summoned her. The key just wasn’t there. We were wrong.” Meredith explained. Fuck. If I felt like shit before, I felt even shittier now.
“Did Amon fill you in, at least? On our meeting? We have three days to figure out where the key is before we go to war.” I didn’t even bother to mention the fact that Ash Nevra said she would be entertaining our proposal of me taking over her throne. I didn’t know what kind of game she was playing, but I knew that she would never willingly step down. I would need to kill her for it.
I was honestly shocked we had been able to simply walk out of there at all, after threatening her throne. As humiliating as it had been to be cursed by her, it didn’t feel like she was even really trying. Something about the whole thing felt too easy. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were missing something. Meredith's lips pursed into a thin line. She and Kasha exchanged a glance.
“No one’s seen Amon since… well, since he left the common room yesterday.” Kasha informed me, and that’s when I remembered another extremely unnerving detail from the day before.
