“What do you expect me to do with that?” I ask.
“Um, lock them in?”
There is far more manual labor than I’d accounted for in my temporary situation. “Are you not capable yourself?” I ask rhetorically, moving over to examine the rest of my quarters. I don’t need Aurora to see how affected I am by the tenderness she offers the man on the floor.
A tenderness I have waited a lifetime to extract.
I’d been biding my time, but her knife play with Father put paid to my agenda.
Impatient minx.
I sit, the chair creaks.Merde.This really will not do.
“Send someone to fetch me a chair that is more robust,” I tell Daniel. “Then await more orders.”
“Uh, yes, sir, but…”
“Is acquiring upgraded furniture so taxing? I don’t care if it is. Get it done.”
Daniel’s face fills with thankfully unspoken worries, then he leaves. As the footsteps fade, I rotate to take in the cage tableau.
Aurora has her hands hovering over Bevan’s chest, looking like an angel cast down into Hades.
That has always been my impression of her. A seraph surrounded by darkness, but always shining a light from within.
For years I’ve watched her, but never in such close quarters. This is joy indeed.
“What did you do to him?” she hisses. I want to applaud the intense glare.
“Relax,chérie.It is nothing that will kill him.” I think that’s true, but am not quite certain.Que Sera, Sera.
There are so many things about my new nature that I have not fully explored. But what better place to evaluate these strange abilities than in a container that is ignored by the outside and guarded by men I can control.
No longer scrutinized by ever-watching Conclave eyes. Finally, I can be master of my own experience.
She looks at me with a gaze full of loathing, seemingly oblivious to the heat, filth and stench around her. Who would have ever thought Aurora Drakeward would take such things in her stride?
She was born into a world of silks and servants.
It’s interesting but not fully surprising. Those rich trappings were exactly that. In her father’s house they were a trap.
But not in mine. When I set up our home the finest things will not be designed to contain her.
Her eyes flit constantly between the unconscious man, and me. I won’t hurt her, but she doesn’t know that yet.
“You have a choice, Aurora,” I say. “You can spend your days caged and weeping over the broken ex-boss, or you can accept that the time of his reign has passed, that the Digger collective now belongs to me. That will ensure your freedom from the boxyou are currently in. You can sit by my side and we can wait out your sentence together.”
“I’m staying exactly where I am,” she snaps. “You have no idea what you’ve got ahead of you, François, no idea at all.”
Of course, she is correct. None of my powers involve precognition.
“Very well,ma petite,as you wish.” I raise my voice slightly. “Daniel?”
I’m irritated that my lackey doesn’t immediately reappear.
Instead, I hear some scuffling, then two men and a woman step, uninvited, intomydomain.
The cronies of our fallen wolf.
