“Am I supposed to thank you?”
“I know you would not,” he shot back. “Now hold still and bite this,” he said, offering her a folded towel to bite down on. Ziana shook her head.
“I’ll manage.”
“Suit yourself.”
His hands worked fast, dexterous and thorough in their task. “You’re lucky, you know. Your runes are new and had you damaged them it would be far more difficult for your body to heal naturally.”
“On my world tattoos don’t heal this fast pretty much ever, so this is still much better.”
“Perhaps. But among our people the runes are quite resilient, requiring a fair bit of damage before they are—” His words abruptly cut off, his eyes staring at her chest.
“What?” Ziana said, flustered, her nipples hard as rocks, her cheeks flushing at the intensity of his stare.
Dorrin reached out and touched her chest. Not her breasts, but the new rune tattooed between them. “Your Infala.”
“Hey, watch the hands, buddy. I didn’t burnthatpart.”
“No, you do not understand,” he replied, pulling her from the water and leaning closer, his hot breath on her cold skin making goosebumps erupt in an almost pleasant way. “It’s subtle.Incrediblysubtle. Hidden from all but the most thorough inspection.” He traced his fingers across her skin, following the lines of her new Infala rune.
It was a crazy sensation that shot through her body. As if there was some kind of engine sputtering in her belly, just begging to open its throttle wide and be let loose to unleash its full potential. The tingles ran to her breasts, her arms, her legs, and even her clit as her body struggled to figure out just how to react to the utterly novel feelings she was experiencing.
Dorrin remained laser-focused, his eyes following his fingers as they traced their pattern on her skin.
“It required a Skrizzit of some talent to hide their trick like this.”
That got her attention. “Trick?”
“Your Infala. It has been applied to deceive. This rune is incomplete, though the subterfuge has been expertly hidden.”
“What do you mean, incomplete?”
“The design, while appearing whole, is not properly connected to the binding lines that link it to the rest of your Dotharian runes. Damn! No wonder you are so weak.”
“Hey, manners!”
“I do not mean to insult you. But this explains why, even after receiving the runes, you are not as strong and fast as you should be. I had thought it was just a shortcoming of your race, but now it is clear that it is not your fault. They have handicapped you from the start.”
Ziana didn’t fully understand the whole runes and pigment thing these people all treated with such reverence, but she felt her anger flare all the same. The elites had arranged for her to receive her runes, and they’d made sure she’d be at a disadvantage. Her cheeks reddened and the water suddenly didn’t feel so cold. Cheating was cheating, no matter how they’d done it, but this was too much. They’d used herbodyto do it.
“We have to report them. It was Chancellor Vinchi’s guy who inked me.”
“We will do nothing of the sort.”
“But it’s cheating! It’s wrong!”
Dorrin shut off the water and spun her around, carefully mopping her burned skin dry. “You cannot just accuse the elites. And as a replacement competitor? One lined up for servitude? You may be allowed to compete, but you do not have thesame rights as others. All you will do is draw further unwanted attention to us both.”
“But—”
“I understand your anger, and believe me, I share it. What they have done is an incredible injustice, and one in direct violation of Dotharian law. But your situation is, well, tenuous at best. I’m sorry, Ziana. Truly I am. But we have no choice but to carry on as normal. We have no other realistic options.”
“Ow!” she blurted as he began applying a stinging gel.
“It is a healing substance particularly suited to treating burns. It is quite unpleasant at first, but it will absorb and start to dull the pain soon enough.”
Ziana gritted her teeth and let him do his work, his hands roaming across her skin, applying both pain as well as a little pleasure as the gel did, in fact, start to reduce the pain of the burns.
