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He cocked his head to the side, a habit I was starting to think was endearing. Then he kissed my forehead gently in a way that made me melt inside.
And with that, Ziran lept from the balcony of my tower. I watched his body dissolve into shadows, transforming into a flock of blackbirds that soared high into the night sky.
My heart was heavy yet whole as he disappeared over the dark horizon.
I knew I shouldn’t. Ziran warned me to wash my hands and rest. But all through the evening until midnight, I couldn’t help but touch myself, leaving a trace of his essence inside of me, just as Ziran surrendered half of his soul.
I clung to it, cumming again and again, reliving the sight of my alpha coming undone as I stroked and fingered myself to the memory of being home in his arms until the sound of that wicked bastard’s voice rose high in the sky.
“Reimund. Reimund…” I drowned the rest of his agonizing demands out.
I disguised my severed hair until he was close, pretending to recut the rope once he was near the window. Gotham’s nightly ritual of climbing my hair felt crueler that night. He should have the command of light and darkness no different from Ziran, who refused to use me like a tool, even to his detriment.
I hacked at my hair, sweeping up fallen strands without a care in the world. Gotham glared at me, his vision filled with venom, as I haphazardly gathered my bounty for him. He wanted even more than I cut off until my hair was a dirty blonde bob.
He didn’t come with food that night, so I was meant to starve, but he did not do anything else to harm me under the quarter moon, to my relief.
“You better be lucky I wasted my energy fighting off a predator. The damn winged beast gave me a good fight, so I don’t feel like wasting more energy on you.”
It took everything in me not to snort with laughter, knowing without having to confirm that Ziran had beaten him badly in the form of a bird. It made me so happy to be defended I started humming with pleasure, which only pissed Gotham off more.
Maybe my boldness could be attributed to stupidity, but I took it as my bravery finally returning to me. Gotham looked weak and insignificant after all the wonders I had felt, heard, smelled, and seen in the limited hours I’d been free of that stifling tower.
I counted the hours, minutes, and seconds until Ziran’s next arrival, more confident than ever, freedom was on the near horizon.
CHAPTER SIX
ZIRAN
Stalking Gotham wasn’t how I planned to spend this visit to Rei, but I had no choice as I melted into the shadows, using my magic to track the wizard. My command of shadow magic was superior to most, but I sensed something evil, something ancient, hiding within the stooped old man. As usual, I trailed him down to the bay as a bird but felt eyes on me that shouldn’t be there.
Gotham shuffled down the same path Rei, and I had taken about two months before. Even after sneaking a message back to the king, and getting word they were on their way, making use of court magicians to speed up their journey, my plans still needed to be completed, and I refused to leave.
I had no choice; I was out of options and out of time, unwilling to leave my omega who complained of feeling sick and dizzy in the morning. The poison had to be building too fast. I’d ask forgiveness once the army came, killed Gotham, and snuck away with Rei.
Our little adventure hadn’t been purely for his pleasure. I wanted to test Gotham’s magic, to see how firmly it chained my mate to his tower.
More importantly, if he could sense it. Gotham had, becoming even more diligent about appearing at odd times, never at midnight on the dot. Throwing him off schedule was part of the plan. A cornered anima acted differently than one thinking rationally.
It made me sick to think of Rei ill in the tower, unable to leave, but the more I observed him and Gotham in my shadow form, the more disturbed I became. And not for the apparent reason that he kept my omega in invite chains. No, what set me off were Rei’s words one morning after briefly recovering from his sickness.
He claimed he’d been stuck inside the tower for twenty-five years. Before that, he was bound to Gotham for at least seventy-five years, for a total of roughly one hundred years.
However, there was one tiny wrinkle with that equation. Gotham stole those secrets from my great-great-grandfather when he ascended the throne seven hundred and twenty-five years ago.
I could accept that Rei was taken and cultivated as a vessel after that because of the rumors about the Prism of Madness and the Beast trapped within, who were younger than him. However, the first mention of a rainbow-colored monster was about six hundred years ago.
No matter how I sliced it, either Gotham had kidnapped vessels before, or something was severely wrong with Rei’s recollection of the passage of time. I did not consider him a liar, and Gotham had more of a reason to hide the truth than him. Which meant something even more sinister was taking place here. I just had to understand what.
Landing on a tree branch, I watched Gotham stop by a grove overflowing with Solar Flare buds. Rei’s scent. And, as much as I hated to admit it, the wizards, as well. Chirping softly, I watched as he pruned the flowers.
Even as I understood Rei more each day, Gotham remained an enigma to me.
As an Elohime, surely Gotham knew imprisoning a rare Kindred shifter such as my mate was punishable by countless death sentences to make up for their crimes. Even a quarterblood warranted such protection. And after finding his hideout, I found that he just piled his hair up, doing nothing more than sleeping inside like a burrow.
Nothing about it made any sense. I clenched my beak as Gotham did the same thing again, lying in the enormous piles of my lover’s hair, sinking inside like a spider’s web. But this time, for the first time since I started stalking, something strange happened.
To my infinite horror, he reached for a pair of scissors and tore at his skin with his gnarled hands, cutting himself as well. No blood spurted from his wounds, but the gashes were deep. Unhealable. He should be dead from them.
