Counting the small, shallow breaths the corset afforded her, she slid her gaze to where Otaso still held her hand. No longer crushed, her fingers now rested placid across his large palm. She wondered if anyone else could see the fine tremble there, would note the stink of fear under the heavy perfume. Not just her own, either. She could scent their anxiety as clear as hers, but whether it was for this performance or Otaso himself remained to be seen.
Aida squeaked as a hand appeared at her left, the feminine turn of a wrist depositing a porcelain plate before her. Unthinking, her black gaze swung up to take in this new wonder. The young woman flushed a brilliant red, tears bursting into dark eyes as she avoided meeting Aida’s. Scurrying away, the female rushed to perform the same act for everyone at the table.
Noticing Otaso’s dark gaze following the woman’s progress, a surge of guilt and concern swam through Aida’s stomach. A flash of memory of the man he’d killed over a simple touch. Tightening her fingers over his hand, she offered a shy smile, hoping to distract him from any misstep, whether real or imagined.
It worked well enough. Again and again, as some new person coming in and out of the room with food and drink startled her. Arms full, the women laid out tray after tray. None of the foods Aida liked, many she despised, but Otaso kept glancing at her. Forcing her to eat one morsel after the next though she hid the fact she wasn’t eating much at all behind another false smile. The indistinct murmur of the other males that she didn’t dare even peek at a background to Otaso’s ringing commands, his voice cutting through it all to pierce into the person he spoke to. He wielded his words and tone with as much skill as his sword, sawing into one man and stabbing into the next, derided them in turns. Only Varazi received a grudging compliment, some business Aida couldn’t pretend to understand.
It was the theme of the evening. There was little sense she could make of the conversation, names and places she had never heard of. Otaso limited her books, seeing only that she could read and write. Dusty history books, tomes on his conquests and victories were the basis of her learning. Aida knew nothing of these lands and people with such strange sounding names.
It didn’t help that Otaso gave her wine. Something he allowed her only on the most special of days, he refilled her glass as soon as she sipped the rich red liquid. Aida had no idea how much she’d drunk. She’d lost count hours ago and now admired the sparkling twinkle of the cut crystal.
Lashes fluttering, Aida tried to blink away the fatigue making her feel languid. The room seemed too bright and, she realized, far too quiet. Without a single thought, she turned her head to see all but the General and Vizier gone from the table. The rest of the men gone, slipping from the room without her notice. Still cocooned in the sticky, fluffy clouds of weariness, she met the general’s deep-set brown eyes, noted their widening as if from afar. At least, she assumed it was him, by the thick leather armor he wore even now, the rich red cape pinned at his shoulders with heavy brooches of blackened metal stamped with Otaso’s crest. Older than she would have thought, deep wrinkles lined his face and feathered around the fast building alarm in his gaze. On a slow breath that turned to a gasp, she realized what she’d done.
Turning away as fast as the sludgy limpness of her muscles would allow, Aida dropped her focus to the table once again. Finding Otaso’s hand reaching for hers where it trembled atop the dark wood to take delicate fingers in his. Squeezing her hand, the small bones ground together, groaning as he jerked her arm closer.
“It must be tonight, Imperial Majesty,” the dusty robed male said into the tense silence resonating with the red limned buzz of Otaso’s power. “They grow closer by the day.”
“I am aware, Molaro.”
“The time is near, Imperial Majesty. We cannot delay this,” Molaro continued, rising with measured care from his seat to approach a large chest set upon a narrow side table that held the bountiful trays of food not so long ago.
“I know,” Otaso snapped, dragging Aida from her chair by his hold on her hand.
Crashing into his side, Aida stifled a shriek as she fell to her knees beside him. Gripped under her arms, Otaso yanked her into his lap, leaving the room to swirl and dance. What little food she’d consumed threatened to revolt as the stark colors of the room smudged and feathered, drifting through the room on eddies of heat and cold that rushed through her face in turns.
“Sir, what’s happening?” Tongue thick and sticky with the remnants of sweet wine, the words smeared past her lips to stumble over Otaso’s collar when he cradled her against the broad expanse of his chest. Something he hadn’t done since she was small, when she’d fall asleep in the broad chair kept by the fireplace for his use, hoping to see a face other than Immari’s.
Given no response, Aida’s head lolled. Falling back on the limp arch of her neck to watch the far away ceiling soar past. Jostled with every purposeful stride, Aida’s hand pressed against the ache of her stomach, the corset digging into delicate insides that resented such treatment. She wanted it gone.
“Soon, my little fawn. Do not distract me so,” Otaso rasped against her cheek, tearing Aida’s hands away from their fumbling at the front of her gown.
Aida whined as liquid flames surged through her on a roar of thunder. A jagged pain crackling through her spine, making her writhe and arch. It crawled beneath her skin, a prickling sting that came in waves. Every move to ease the growing agony denied, she found herself locked tight in Otaso’s arms. Kicking feet sending her skirts flailing into the air, a banner of denial that snapped with the next rush of crimson blotting out her vision.
Hearing the scream from a long way off, echoing its devastation to pound through her eardrums and into her bones, Aida’s clutching hands slid limp from her guardian’s robes as he settled her undulating body upon the wide dais. Digging palms slid in squealing stutters across the glossy black surface, her shriek adding to the tempest warring within as the taut line of her heel connected with the rough edge.
“Be still!”
Otaso’s command failed to calm, the grating bellow of it twisting down her spine. Wrenching it upwards until Aida feared she’d snap in two. Bloody smears clouded the edges of her vision, tunneling to the dimmed sight of a great dome. Sweeping arches sparked and exploded in bursts of red. Crimson, scarlet, amaranthine, cardinal, all of them swirling together to dance wild across the ashen brick before crashing together. A storm without to match the one within.
Otaso’s wide shoulders blocked out the sight, shadow icy cold as it seeped over her skin. Hands caught, he snarled something, but whether to her or someone else, Aida would never know. Lost in the wracking sensations ripping her apart bit by bit, she hoped only the raw ruin of her throat continued to scream as another layer of pain added itself to the fray.
Thrashing contained, her arms became locked to the stone. Pressed into the unforgiving darkness at wrist and elbow though she continued to writhe. Shoulders threatening to tear free until more pressure came. Bands of iron locking her joints to the icy stone, Aida’s eyes flew wide as a gust of chill air made itself known in the torrents of heat melting her bones.
A single moment of clarity, a breath dragged into aching lungs that burned with a different type of fire. This one from the frigid depths, the coldest winter wind searing delicate tissue. Somehow she saw him there at her feet, pushing at her thighs. Otaso’s face twisted with something hideous, robes in tattered shreds around arms that glowed brilliant, red as an apple and as bright as the sun. Shearing from his flesh into hers where he gripped the quivering muscle. Molaro and Vasari crowded around the dais, mouths moving though she did not hear their words.
A voice strained to be heard, a murmuring cadence somehow not drowned in all the frenzy continuing around her. Soft and sweet, it grew louder, yet still indiscernible in the violent turmoil.
Another breath froze her lungs, those iron bands loose and yielding. The stone she lay upon felt soft and thick, malleable as warm dough. Melting into the implacable sturdiness, she drew another breath to fill her lungs to bursting. Otaso spread her wide, shuffling between the pale length of her legs with teeth bared in a victorious snarl.
He’d given her everything, never left her wanting for anything except the small, useless pleasures of the sun on her face and the warm dust on her skin. She only had to succumb to him. He would have what he wanted, craved for so very long.
A tear fell from the brittle sweep of her lashes, smearing through kohl and powder. Scoring her cheek with the effervescent chill of it. The oddness of it momentary, the vague memory of her misery always hot and salty, never hurting this much, dashed away as another slipped free.
Aida didn’t want this, whatever it was or would become. She could not lie idle under him as he stole away even the flicker of hope.
Scream shrill, it ricocheted through the room.
Stone splintered, the crack of it shuddering through the dome before great chunks plummeted to the floor in thunderous hammers. Wood and glass fell before their weight, their sounds of destruction added to the melee. Otaso bellowed, eyes alight with his power and rage as he wrenched Aida closer. Skin peeled from the backs of her legs as they scraped over the rough edge of stone, she screamed again.
