He’d tell you to do what you need to do to survive.
I hope so because, as silly as it sounds, I hate the thought of disappointing him.
“Hands down,” Raiden says when I instinctively raise my arms to cover my chest. He pushes the chair out of the way and walks around me. I keep my arms at my sides, face forward, afraid any sort of movement will be seen as disobedience. When he comes back around, that terrifying smile is back, and I think I prefer him angry—at least I know that’s real. “Yes. You’ll do nicely.” He hands me my dress. “Put it back on.” I rush to throw the slip of fabric over my head and breathe a sigh of relief when it glides down my body. I may feel exposed in this dress, but it’s a heck of a lot better than being naked.
Raiden takes my hand, lifting it like I’m some debutante at a ball, and walks me over to a chaise longue stuffed into the corner of the room. “Sit. Relax.”
Easy enough for him to say, he’s not the one about to get raped or whatever it is he’s planning to do to me. I sit, but relaxation is another matter entirely. I’m stiff as a board and there is no way around that. Raiden doesn’t seem bothered by it though. He sitsbeside me, still holding my hand. “Do you know what a thrall is, Katya?”
“No—uh—sir,” I stammer.
“A blood fae’s magic comes from the ingestion of blood. As a thrall, it will be your blood we ingest.” There’s a flash of metal as he pulls something from his pocket, then he places a long, silvery cylinder threaded with ornate filigree and bearing a wickedly pointed tip, over his index finger—like a metal claw. It’s beautiful, yet terrifying, and I shrink back.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I say. Gods, I sound so pitiful. Where’s that girl from Ranook who fought off Fredrick and his soldiers, dammit?
Raiden lets out a soft chuckle, his eyes crinkling at the corners again. “This is an ashari. It is what we use for bloodletting. It’s sharp but doesn’t penetrate too deeply. You’ll barely feel it. Actually, most thralls rather enjoy it.”
Enjoy being cut? I highly doubt that. And why exactly do I have to be practically naked for this? I don’t get the chance to respond before a sharp pain pierces my forearm.
Fuck. He stabbed me. Blood beads atop the puncture. Raiden wraps his lips around it and draws it into his mouth. At first, it just feels like some weird male sucking on my arm. Then, something changes.
Warmth begins to pool in my belly, then it expands up my ribcage and down my thighs. My nipples peak and my breasts grow heavy. Arousal floods between my legs, and I squeeze my thighs together, rubbing them back and forth and moaning as tiny explosions go off in my sex.
What’shappening to me? I’m panting and sweaty and I want… I need…
“Please stop,”my mind screams, but my lips only let out a groan. I’ve never felt anything like this before. It’s overwhelming. I’m dripping with arousal, and gods, I need to be touched. I would do anything, anything to feel his fingers inside of me. The word “please” falls from my lips, and I clamp my mouth shut before I beg this stranger to de-virginize me right here on his ugly chaise. I’m completely out of control, this need overtaking any rational thought. I drag my free hand up my ribs, first just brushing the underside of my breasts, then cupping and squeezing, but it isn’t enough. I pinch the hard bud of one nipple and a bolt of electricity shoots through my midsection and straight to my clit.Yes,my body screams, even as my mind reels from humiliation. I continue pinching and tugging and rolling my poor abused nipple, but it isn’t enough. Gods, when will it be enough?
Raiden watches me suffer, his eyes dancing as he drains me dry. He takes a hard pull, and another shot of electricity has me arching my back and sliding my hand down my belly, but I manage to stop myself just short of pushing it between my legs. I bite my lip against the moans threatening to spill out of me. I’m spiraling higher and higher, my core growing tighter and tighter, and right at the point when I think I can’t take it a moment longer, I shatter.
Pleasure bordering on pain explodes in my sex and spreads in waves through my belly, chest and extremities. My body convulses as each wave crashes through me over and over. I’m screaming, tears streaming down my face, and still Raiden’s stuck to my arm like a leech. Finally, the sensations begin to dim, explosions turning to aftershocks turning to tingling. Raiden releases my arm anddrags a hand across his mouth, wiping up a bead of blood clinging to his lower lip. I’m completely wrung out, my eyelids drooping as exhaustion attempts to pull me under. A wide grin spreads across Raiden’s face. Bits of blood pool in the recess of his teeth, giving him the look of something sinister and otherworldly.
“Yes,” he says. “You will do nicely.”
I thought, after that humiliating experience, I’d be taken back to the slave camp.
I thought wrong.
I should have known something was up when Raiden joined me on the boat instead of having his guards handle it on their own. We paddle through the center of town, and when we pass the mines, my heart sinks. I never thought I’d look at hard labor as comforting, but at least I knew what to expect. It’s the unknown that frightens me the most.
We pull up to a dock set in front of a massive monolith hovering approximately ten meters above the river, with offshoots of stone connecting it to the cavern walls on either side. It’s like an inverted mountain made up of what must be thousands of long stalactites merged together—their surfaces sleek and bulbous as though liquid stone had been collecting there over thousands of years—and culminating into an underside reminiscent of a porcupine’s back. Looking at this behemoth, I can believe King Khalmos’ tale of howthe fae came to these caverns because this is something that could only have been created by the hands of a god.
We climb a set of stairs carved into the cavern wall, then cross the stony arm, which is surprisingly flat and wide up close. There we stop at three sets of double doors, each etched with the Ümbros insignia. Raiden opens the door and motions me into a giant arena cut directly out of the stone, with levels upon levels of seating rising so high, I feel nauseous just looking up at them. Raiden rushes off to do who-knows-what, leaving me with a baby-faced soldier who I think may be purposefully lowering his voice to sound tough, when he says, “Come with me.” He escorts me up a flight of stairs to a walled off area in the stands, overlooking an oblong floor covered with sand. There, I’m left with four other girls dressed in the same barely-there slips of fabric, and looking, for all intents and purposes, like they’re going to a funeral. One of them I recognize as the woman the guard raped last night. She’s quiet, docile even, her head bowed, hands clasped at the waist, but her amber-brown eyes burn. At least they haven’t broken her.
The women stand shoulder to shoulder facing the entrance, and with no instructions to go by, I follow their lead and move to stand at the end of the row beside the amber-brown-eyed girl. A few minutes pass, but nobody comes to collect us. I glance down the line of women. None of them have so much as budged, so figuring they know something I don’t, I remain still.
A few more minutes pass. Fae—males, females and children—are now beginning to fill the seats. More time passes, and directly across the arena from where we stand, King Khalmos enters his own personal box section—nearly twice the size of this one—and sits his pampered butt on a big cushy chair. Still, we wait.I’m getting stiff from standing in the same position for so long, so I surreptitiously wiggle my fingers and toes, bounce on the balls of my feet and stretch my neck from side to side. Morgana, take me, how much longer are we going to have to stand like this? Are they testing us, or have they simply forgotten we exist? I want to ask the girl standing beside me, but her eyes are glued to her feet, and I certainly don’t want to do anything that’ll get her, or myself, in trouble. But I’m seriously starting to get anxious now. More time passes and finally, I’ve had enough. I move to step forward but am stopped by a hand clamping down on my wrist. The brown-eyed girl shakes her head, the movement almost imperceptible, and lets go. She’s helping me. I don’t know that I deserve her help after the nothing I did for her last night, but I’d be a fool to ignore it. I quickly resume my position just as Raiden steps into the box.
It was a test, and I almost failed.Idiot.
Following behind him are five males similarly dressed in colorful silks that remind me of pajamas, their long nails lacquered to a high shine and that same metal cylinder with a pointed end—the ashari—decorating their index fingers. The five of us are not introduced to the new arrivals. We aren’t even given leave to move or speak. Raiden gestures for the males to cluster in front of us while he proceeds to walk down the line of females, listing our attributes and inspecting us like livestock.
“This human, as you can see,” Raiden says, gesturing to the first woman in line—a brunette with dead brown eyes, “has highly symmetrical features. Turn around,” he says to the girl, and she obeys. “Her skin is flawless, and her hair is a rich golden brown.” He moves on to the next woman in line, leaving the brunette with her back to the males, then the next. When he reaches thebrown-eyed woman standing beside me, his tone changes. His pitch goes a tiny bit higher, and his words come fast, as though he’s excited. “Ah, this one is a rare gift indeed. This beautiful deep brown covers every inch of her body besides her teeth and the whites of her eyes, and don’t let those rounded ears fool you, she’s half-fae.”
The males murmur in appreciation, and I just want to slap each and every one of them. It’s disgusting. I feel like screaming, “She’s a person, not a pig.” Not that it would help. In fact, I’m fairly certain a move like that would end very badly for me, but my blood is boiling at the arrogance of these people. Who do they think they are to treat others this way? You’d think, given their history, they’d be more sympathetic to the plight of the powerless. Instead, they reduce us to chattel.
“And I’ve saved the best for last,” Raiden says as he moves toward me, his hand extended like a salesman presenting his prized product. “Not only is this one fae.” Half fae, but I’m not going to correct him. “She is half magi witch.”
Now the males are really getting excited. There’s more murmuring and nodding, along with salacious smiles that make my skin crawl. Raiden directs us to stand against the back wall and the males all crowd around him before we’ve even had a chance to move. I can’t get a handle on what they’re saying, but the frenzied look in their eyes is discomfiting, to say the least. My head’s beginning to hurt, and I realize it’s because I’ve been clenching my teeth so hard this entire time. I make a point of relaxing my jaw and wiggling it back and forth. It doesn’t help in the least.
