The Noble contemplated it. "No. I imagine our Prince would like one who knows her way around his cock," he argued. "A rare foreign girl with new tricks to pleasure him with."
Nyssa nearly hurled.
The woman considered her again. She stepped forward and reached out for Nyssa's chin, to which Nyssa resisted moving. The woman grabbed her face in her large hand, squeezed her cheeks, and forced Nyssa's head up.
"I would say she knows her way around someone's cock due to the faint markings on her throat," the woman declared. The abrupt way she shoved Nyssa's face then nearly made her fall off balance. But the woman turned to her husband, and she said, "Permission to break her how I see fit, my dear."
The right corner of the Noble's lip quirked, and his arm slithered around his wife's waist once more. "Permission granted."
The display of their jointed affection made Nyssa stare at the Porters standing by the door. She noted the armored shoulder pads on them as the Noble and his wife apparently forgot about everyone else in the room, and he pulled her leg up around his waist, hand very noticeably diving into her and making her moan against his throat.
Nyssa swallowed the vomit in her throat and started counting her breaths.
Forcing her attention to the walls. To the doors. To the size of the guards' swords and every weak point in their armor. She forced herself into her own head as the wife dropped to her knees and took the Noble's cock in her mouth.
She would have given her left hand to have her sister's ability to disconnect her core and press herself into another creature to escape. But she knew she couldn't if even she did. She needed to be present. She needed to stay alert of the dangers around her. She needed to learn everything she could.
The knowledge that she didn't have this ability didn't stop her from reaching and pushing herself outside. Begging for the connection to anything that wasn't her own reality. She had to start somewhere. She had to get her abilities back, starting with her own eagle.
There was a crest on a red flag on the wall. Two moons with a sword pointed across them. Nyssa focused her eyes on the moons.
The world blurred around her as her gaze fluttered, and she let her mind dissociate from her body to reach for her eagle. She would not close her eyes. She would not forget where she was. She would not block it out. But she needed her eagle.
A flicker.
A flicker of that energy.
A flicker of the comfort she'd been accustomed to her entire life.
She called out to it, willing her chest not to heave with the jubilation she felt.
But the energy faltered as a fire going out. And all she heard was the screech of him in the air as he called back to her.
At least he was there. As small as it was, that was the comfort that kept her chin high and her back straight. And so she counted the breaths in her head. In for four, out for six, and when she got to twenty-four, she started all over again.
Twenty-four days since her sister was burned.
Twenty-four nights since Haerland's true King gave his life.
Twenty-four sunsets she'd blundered through without knowing what to do next.
One.
One day in the hands of Man.
The first day of her new beginning that she would not fail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DORIAN TOSSED HIS short blade up and out of his hand, over and over, as he looked over the crowd that had gathered in the stadium for his first Ring Trial. It was a nervous tick he'd not realized he did until Draven had pointed it out to him during their travels.
"Nerves getting the best of you?" Draven asked.
"How do you know I'm nervous?" Dorian said.
Draven gave an upwards nod to the blade in his hand. "You're fidgeting."
"I'm not," Dorian argued.
