No. To the Scavenger King, sex isn’t intimacy.
That’s not what he craves.
The guards finish tethering me to the table, shifting back into the shadows as Arkyn flicks the lid on his copper weald, releasing a bulb of fire he gathers into his clawed hand with a few hissing, scalding words. Anotherclickbefore he pockets the instrument, cradling a hungry flame that churns in his hand like a ball of molten stone, igniting his face otherwise hidden beneath his hood.
Igniting his savage smile that pulls at all the tightest bits of his smelted cheek.
He rolls his head, breathes long and deep, more fire forging in his eyes. A scalding promise of what’s to come.
I harden my heart before I finally tip my head to the side and meet Kaan’s volcanic stare. Try not to implode beneath it.
“Close your eyes,” I say, heart clenching. Then louder, more insistent, desperate to cut through his roaring thrash. “Kaan,please.”
He stills, making a sound much like a dying dragon before he presses his eyes closed, tears slipping down his cheeks that split my heart in two.
I look to the shadows above; to where I know Arkyn’s beast is roosting, readying to enjoy the show. Darkness I used to hide amidst.
Not this time.
This time, I close my eyes and gowithin.
I carve a giant hole in the ice crust atop my lake that’s big enough to swallow the mound of bundled fear I refuse to acknowledge, but not before the first smear of flame sweeps down my arm, blistering my flesh in a way that’s supposed to prepare me for the blazing pits I’m to return to.
Battle amidst.
I stiffen, distantly aware of Kaan’s strangled roar as I clench, jerk, and twitch in the wake of the melting trail—the reek of burnt flesh becoming thicker.
More cloying.
All the while, I continue to stuff, stuff,stuffmy fear away—
Gone.
I follow it at a distance. Swim quietly down into my deepest, darkest depths—past a swishing silver entity I don’t dare turn toward—and retrieve a frosty memory to hide within. Memory of a small snow hut I dug for me and Fallon not long after we got free of this place.
Except Fallon’s not there.
It’s just me, alone, bearing wounds from my battled escape. It’s just me, bundled on my side as I try to hug myself to sleep, humming my calming tune over and over again. And although I imagine talking to someone I promised to save—tofree—I’m simply speaking to myself, making a promise that I willlive.
Because that’s what Fallon would’ve wanted. What she would’ve asked of me at this moment, here in this snow hut I built big enough for the both of us … were she actually here. Had I not been forced to leave her dead and alone beneath a mural of finger-painted moons, draped in the cloak of the guard I slaughtered for an iron key I used to escape.
That’s what she would’ve wanted, had she not died alone in that cell while I beat myself bloody in a battle pit for Arkyn’s selfish gains.
But I can no longer hide from my past; stuff the pain away and pretend things ended differently. That I left an empty cell behind and that Fallon got to see one of the moons she loved a final time before she died.
She didn’t.
I untangle the memory from the stone I bound it around, tethered so tight it would’ve stayed forever drowned had I not swam down to face it. I set it loose, letting it replace the softer one I built for myself. Feel the hurt plunge deep.
The loss.
Then I swim to the spot where I last spotted the stone that looked like a lump of coal, knowing what it is. What it contains, should I just give it substance to feast from. Something I believe my Other was protectingme from, waiting until I grew ready to face the Creator who’s spent so much time hurting me via Arkyn’s bidding. Something I could’ve gone an entirelifetimewithout.
Except Kaan’s burnt and beaten, chained to a chair, being preyed on by his bloodlusting brother.
Except our daughter’s lying half dead in the same cell that took myFallon.
They are mine, I am theirs, and theywillsee the sky again. Or Creators hear me, the world will rupture beneath my fingertips.
