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“I’ll break her in for you either way.”
“No. You won’t. She belongs to the master alone, and he doesn’t want anyone’s hands or eyes on her. Get. Out.”
Gaius’s voice was a brutal blade. Enough that the Rowanflame took all of one second to move into action. He grabbed his clothes hanging on steel rods pegged into the cave wall and shook the water from his wings before he vanished through another tunnel. Wherever we were, it was vast with a never-ending string of tunnels. Without help, I’d never make it out of here alive.
“Stand at your stations. No one enters,” barked Gaius to the other guards.
They marched to the entrances of the room without hesitation. Gaius had rank.
“Tend to her,” he snapped to the two young women, standing like statues next to the steaming pool the Rowanflame had just vacated.
Both of them were delicate and dark-skinned with pale green eyes. They were from Primus, a human-only province to the West. Their coloring was unmistakably that of the native people there. The two young women, close to my age, wore identical white, gossamer tunics, roped with gold belts around their waists. Their hair was braided into many plaits, coiled and pinned to fall in a stream down their backs. I couldn’t help but notice the bitemarks on their necks and shoulders. Not skin-breaking bites. Morgon-marking bites. They also bore gold-linked chains around their necks with a dangling loop in the front. Most probably to chain them up at night. Were they concubines of some sort? How many lovers were they forced to have? My stomach twisted into a tight knot.
They stepped forward to gently take my arm, guiding me toward the other side of the pool.
“Dress her in a maiden’s gown,” commanded Gaius. “But no throat-chain.”
I glanced over my shoulder, pleading with my eyes. “Gaius,” I whispered, knowing he could hear me with his dragon sense of hearing. “Do you know who I am?”
He gave me a sharp shake of the head, his eyes softening a fraction, before his voice bellowed across the cave. “Do as you’re told, woman, and you will live.”
His words were an order, one the others listening at the doors would hear and understand to be another harsh command. But I read in his eyes that it was a promise. I would live. I nodded, signifying that I understood, even though I still trembled from this suffocating atmosphere of brutal domination.
Gaius turned, giving us his back, but not moving away from the pool. I noticed he didn’t have the MG tattoo on the nape of his neck. He must be in a special unit for undercover work. Of course he wouldn’t have anything on his body to break his cover.
The two girls started to undress me, lifting my sweater.
“I can do it myself. Please.” I pulled away and removed my own clothes.
They frowned at the empty harness around my waist, hidden under my sweater. Too bad I didn’t still have that Volt gun. I’d blast every bastard in this place. I shed everything except my medal. I eased into the steaming pool. So bizarre to have these silent women rub soap on my skin and shampoo my hair. As if I were in another time and era altogether.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
They didn’t respond and continued washing me with gentle hands.
“Can you not speak to me?”
The one soaping my arm shook her head before averting her eyes again. They were both so pretty and meek, though one of them had a look of defiance marking her cold expression. It broke my heart thinking of them in this insane captivity, serving as sex-slaves to these monstrous men. I bit my lip to avoid screaming, trying to keep my temper under control. I needed to be level-headed and focused.
They took their time shampooing my hair several times and bathing me with soap, smelling of rose and mint. They wrapped me in a robe and guided me behind a rock formation that served as a private dressing area. Shocked to find the area raised above the cavern floor, tiled in red and decorated with a white, fluffy carpet, I stood there until one of them nudged me up to the platform.
One of them urged me to sit on a pedestal with a smile. I did. She was the softer of the two. They must be sisters or relations of some kind. The shape of their eyes and mouths were so similar.
They combed and braided my hair, weaving gold ribbons into my plaits, letting them fall loosely around my shoulders.
The gentler one leaned close to me and whispered, “It will hurt less if you don’t fight.”
“That’s a lie, Lena,” snapped the other. “It will hurt all the same.” Flinty steel glittered in her eyes before she cast them down as before. “Now quiet, Lena, before the commander renders punishment.”
I glanced back to where Gaius still stood facing outward near the pool.
“Does he punish you?” I asked.
The angry one held me in her green gaze, hard and cruel. “They all do.”
As they applied powder and rouge to my face, a sickening nausea curdled in my stomach. What if Gaius had already switched sides? They said he punished them. Did he do it as part of being undercover? Was that part of the Morgon Guard rules? To keep the cover at all costs, even committing the same heinous crimes of those he was trying to catch?
The one called Lena used a lip-brush to gloss my lips with oil from a blue vial.
