How the fuck was I going to question herandkeep my senses?
Chapter 9
Aurelia
Icame to consciousness slowly, uncomfortable in my position but feeling strangely fucking amazing. All the tension in my body had magically released. No aches and pains plagued my limbs and the stiffness I always carried in my lower back had completely dissipated. Something bit into my wrists, though, holding them together underneath me. My face rested on something soft, a blanket maybe, and the hard ground lay beneath my body. Nothing stretched overhead. I was open to the elements.
Memories flashed within my mind. The emberflies, running, the cottage, Granny...
Pain began to creep in around the edges of my awareness so I needed to take stock before it blotted out my consciousness completely. I couldn’t afford to lose myself to grief right now. I was clearly a hostage; I needed to assess my surroundings.
After wielding the axe I’d seen the stranger. The handsome, delicious-smelling, and incredibly real stranger. I’d moved to attack him, I remembered that much. Then everything went black. The attack had never landed.
I struggled to sit up, comforted by mellow yellow light emanating from two points overhead—lanterns, it looked like, suspended from the branches of trees in an unfamiliar area. A nightbird screeched somewhere off to the right, hidden within the darkness of deep night.
In front of me sat a person in a vibrant jacket with purple velvet lapels and matching velvet slacks. Shiny black shoes with a sort of tassel in gold adorned his feet, and a spear was hooked under his arm and leveled at my face.
“Good almost-morning, Highness. How did you sleep?” he asked pleasantly. Then he grimaced, a silly, pencil-thin mustache pulling tight over full lips. “Oops. Sorry, wrong job. Let me try again. Good almost-morning, prisoner. I hope your shackles are to your liking?”
I blinked at him for a moment, somewhat confused. I’d traveled a fair bit, driven from one home to the next before I’d found Granny, but those had always been poor villages and bankrupt towns. No one had ever had the sort of finery that existed in front of me. The man looked regal, despite sitting on a slightly wonky, battered chair in the forest of a humble, if well-provisioned village.
I had to say, the rich styled themselves very... colorfully. Or maybe he habitually used hallucinogens and his jacket was a constant source of entertainment. Either way, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of things.
“Are those...” I squinted in the low light. “Do you have...penises stitched into your jacket?”
“My goodness, look at you! You wake up with your limbs tied, in a strange place, and you immediately notice the cocks littering my jacket!” He tsked at me, leaning back with a smile. “I can already tell you’re going to push my limits.” He turned his face to the side a little, still looking at me, his smile now coy. “Yes, they are dicks. I have forty-three dicks on me at present. Given you’rea prisoner and have nothing else to do, I figured I’d give you a task while you wait for the alpha. Find all the dicks!”
His smile practically glittered and, strangely, it seemed utterly genuine. Almost comforting.
I said nothing. Showed no emotion. Everything I was feeling sank down into my depths, hidden away lest it give my captors more poison for the tips of their weapons. An easy trick, really. A learned trait, almost, something I’d been doing since before my teens. These people, no matter how extravagant, wouldn’t get any information from me.
The man winked, as though we were sharing a joke. “Give me all you’ve got, love,” he said. “It’s been an absoluteboreof a journey. I thought I might get away for a bit, knock out this detail and check in with my home kingdom. You know, just to see if it was still a piece of shit. It is, obviously. But the alpha is very...”
He made some sort of gesture and an expression that didn’t do much to help me understand his meaning.
“But now...” He smoothed his velvet lapels with a slow hand. “This makes more sense, doesn’t it? I think it does. I was in a demon sex castle—and then a demon sex dungeon!—for too long to live a sedentary life. Put me to the test, my darling. I am ready and waiting.”
He crossed an ankle over his knee and pursed his lips at me, as though still conveying some sort of message.
My mind had stuttered over “demon sex castle” and now I just stared blankly. The only thing I could grasp was that this man’s jacket would throw Raz for an absolute loop. He’d hate the very sight of it at first, but after using the product yet again, he’d be enraptured. With that jacket, he wouldn’t be so worried about the glow of a flower...
A wave of pain and worry washed through me, wondering what happened to the town. To Raz. We weren’t friends—hedidn’t even like me—but we’d been work associates for years. I cared what happened to him, to his family. I hoped he was okay and that they’d leave him be.
The memory of finding Granny swept through my mind again and I withered from the onslaught. I’d lost my only family. Again. With her, I would also lose the only community that had welcomed me, maybe grudgingly, but mostly peacefully. They hadn’t run me out. That was saying something for someone like me.
An image welled up in my mind, threatening to pull me under. My mother’s face. All the blood. The flames.
Run, Aurelia. Save yourself. Run! Don’t look back. Don’t think of me—of this—until you get to safety, do you hear me? Keep going until you finally make a new life for yourself.Her grip on my arms had been so tight. Her expression, blood trailing down her cheeks like tears, so urgent.Only then can you think of me, do you understand, Aurelia?Only thenshould you remember me.Not before. Resurrect me in your memories and I will live again, but only if you survive this day. I’m counting on you, my heart. Run now! Please, RUN!
I blinked through sudden tears, the man before me swimming in my vision.
He put his hand to his heart, leaning forward a little, peering at my face. The tip of the spear inched forward, still directed at me.
Keep going until you finally make a new life for yourself.
It was happening again. My world was burning around me.
Get to safety.
