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I shouldn’t know fear.
But my heart is racing and my breath is coming short when Yedina leads me to her bedroom at the back of the building, the largest room by far. Here, she could entertain a dozen volvath or one eager gilak if she were so inclined.
As opposed to the others, this one is illuminated with crackling chaos magic.
My body goes rigid when the door swings open, and my gaze falls upon Laura, strung up helplessly to the wall beside the bed, her limbs taut with the strain. Her eyes are closed, and there’s a stone gag in her mouth to keep her from speaking.
She seems to rouse at the sound of the door closing behind us, and when her gaze falls upon me, her eyes widen to saucers. Tears spill over, and her voice is muffled by the heavy stone in her mouth.
I tense as if to spring.
Laura is naked, and this close, I can smell a trace of her blood. Just as I’m about to close the distance, Yedina slips between us. She puts her hands on my chest again as if she can stop me with her frail limbs. “Rej, wait.”
My upper lip curls to reveal my sharp teeth. “Get out of my way.”
“Please,” she purrs, catching my face in her soft hands. “I’m not as greedy as you make me out to be. If you just let me show you how generous I am-”
“Generous?” The word burns on my tongue. I snatch her wrists and toss them, sending her back a step with the momentum. “You are selfish and short sighted, Yedina. You have made an enemy because of your actions today.
“If you thought you had any chance with me, you were fooling yourself.”
There is no audience here for her to appeal to. No one to see her pout. No one to gauge her wounded pride and find her lacking. She has no reason to put on this façade, and yet she persists. Impossibly. Irrationally.
“That’s not true,” she whispers, her voice barely audible beneath the pounding in my ears. Her dark eyes are filled with sadness I can’t believe she truly feels. She can only play at emotions like a child with a knife, as dangerous to others as she is to herself. “You just can’t see how perfect we can be together. You and I, Rej, all of Ti’lith would bow down to our power.
“This city could not have a superior King and Queen.”
A hot breath billows out of me, and I can’t help but laugh, leaning back on my heels. “Is that what you’ve wanted this whole time?”
“Yes,” her satisfaction is palpable. “Keep your plaything for all I care, but give me an heir. A child we can raise together, that’ll be stronger than even Asmodeus, himself. We can change the course of this new world, Rej, but I need you. I need the royal blood that flows through your veins, and we can take the monster that sits on the throne.”
My mind spins with the tale she weaves. Taking on my father? She must be mad to consider such a thing. “Your words are heresy, Yedina, and I will not entertain you or your machinations any longer.
“If you do not give her to me, I will not hesitate to-”
“Kill me?” she finishes softly, tilting her head as if the declaration confuses her. “You would not dare. The whole of the Council will be on you. I am a matron, and you are just a royal brat that doesn’t know his place.
“As it was before,” she murmurs, threading her fingers through her wild red hair. “-it should be again. You males have never quite grasped the burden of power. We matrons were built for it, where you were fashioned to keep us safe.
“It is all you’re worth.”
The shackles rattle against the wall, tearing my attention away from Yedina and her wild accounts. “Laura,” I murmur, moving to release her from the matron’s imprisonment. Already, there is blood welling from nicks on her chest, and her thighs are striped with angry red lines. “You’ve hurt her.”
“Nothing she couldn’t bear,” Yedina says, linking her arm in mine as if to observe Laura with me. “She is useless to your father’s cause, I hear. Barren. Unable to give you the children you deserve.”
I shake her off and go to Laura. “You’ll be alright,” I tell her, trying to work the magicked shackles. “I’ll get you down from there and we’ll go home together.”
Tears overflow as she leans into my touch.
“If you prefer,” comes Yedina’s delicate tone. “-we can play with her together.”
Frisson chases up my spine when I can’t free Laura by natural means. Yedina has made the locks foolproof, bound tight with chaos magic that bites into Laura’s soft skin.
“I’m willing to share,” she murmurs, linking her arms around me and digging her sharp nails into my tunic, the cloth shredding beneath them. “-if that’s what you want, though I’m not sure what you find appealing about a creature that seems so… fragile.
“You have a choice, my love.” As she releases me, the air fizzles with chaos magic, and the hairs in my nostrils burn on an inhale. “You could have everything…
“…or nothing at all.”
