At last, she’d called my name. And I’d said, “No, my bride. Not Serak…”
I blinked my charred eyelids. In reality. I was awake.
Oh no.It hadn’t been me at all.
After all the years of waiting, of doing all I could to keep the girl I’d loved for one day out of the maw of the Alldyns Vug, she’d called out for me in the dream.
I wished she hadn’t spoken my name. I wished more than anything she’d forgotten I existed. Because he had been there to lull me into answering. My captor, my torturer. My god.
Edan.
The hooks that held me to the wall of the crater, my feet dangling mere feet from the bubbling lake of lava, jerked me upward. The chains that held the cruel anchors in my flesh rattled as the masters cranked the enormous wheel that held me suspended.
The ratcheting of the links being reeled in was almost loud enough to cover the moans and screams of the others who were nailed and bound to the walls nearby.
Answer her, servant. She called for you.
I’d been flayed before, and the pain of it was unforgettable. The voice in my mind felt as if I were being flayed on the inside. I pressed my lips together, determined not to let him speak with my voice. Edan might use me as his avatar, forcing my body to do his evil, but I didn’t have to make it easy for him. And I would never betray Rada.
His wicked laughter scraped at my brain with rusted claws.Too late. You whispered her name in your sleep.Youcalled her out, brought us together. Well done, pathetic servant. Now speak for me. Bind her.
I fought to deny him, but knew there was no use. I was his vessel, his tool. The fire god Edan owned me, body, mind, and soul.
Owned every part of me but my lips, where they had touched her forever ago. My mind slipped into the memory effortlessly, as the chains rattled above me.
“I want to kiss you.” I wasn’t certain where the words had come from. Perhaps her courage was contagious? The young woman in my arms was seventeen, a few years younger than me, but far more confident than I’d ever been.
I’d met her years before, when we were both children. She’d glared at me, then drawn one finger slowly across the front of her neck in an unmistakable threat when I couldn’t help staring. Since then, she’d grown up every bit as vicious, and perfect in ways I’d never imagined anyone could be.
The woman waiting for me to kiss her was one of the most brave, generous, and selfless creatures ever born. An angel with a wicked sense of humor, an even more wicked vocabulary, and a gentle heart that she tried to hide.
I’d been watching her for months, and I knew everything she’d been up to. Saving Omegas, battered women, and orphaned children, and creating secret, safe places for them all to live. Arming them with knowledge and trained, trusted guards. Setting up businesses so they could make their way in the world, when it was safe to come out of hiding.
She was a goddess. Which meant I had no business near her. He would know. He would seek her out. I knew all this, but I could not stop touching her, as if some magnetic field were pulling me to her.
She was an inescapable force, like a whirlpool the size of the moon.
“It would be my first,” she mumbled, those eyes flashing at me like warm steel. “First kisses oughta be gifts, right?” Her tongue crept out, swiping over her lips as she stood and approached me, the air around us thick with the scent of mint and rain, growing things and hope.
I needed to push her away before I tainted her with my darkness, my past. Before he felt her presence, and realized who she was, what she was. An Omega.
I had to tell her no. He was imprisoned on Pict, but the fire god was always watching. Even if I could keep him from seeing through my eyes, he could use any flame, anywhere, to see into the world.
She moved before I could find a way to refuse her. As her lips met mine, all my good intentions fell away like ash, and my lips burned with holy fire.
I had feared I would taint her, but she was the one leaving an indelible mark on me. Her kiss filled my mouth with the taste of sweet mint and my heart with a sense of fearlessness and hope.
Even if it ended in my death, and I knew it would, I would not betray her. Never.
Edan’s command reverberated in my skull.Speak to her, servant!
“No.” That one rasped word took all my courage to form. He couldn’t compel me to move my lips, but he could force the breath from me and do worse. Stop my lungs, my heart, loosen my bowels, drive the blood to erupt from my veins and sizzle in the pit below. He could keep me alive for it all, and had done so over and over again.
He’d had years to perfect the possession.
How many, you disobedient wretch? How many will it take before you obey?He forced my head to turn to the platform on the far edge of the wall, where two of the masters, flames dancing in their eyes, dragged one of the older breeders to the edge of the lava. Before I could draw a scalding breath to answer, they’d thrown her into the smaller lake of fire on that side of the maw. It was a shallow pool and took far longer to consume her.
I’d known her well. Talia, the mother of four of the younger Omegas. The scent of her passing, a thick aroma of burning gardenias, filled the maw. I felt the fire god’s breath move my hair as he sucked it into his being.
