“Good girl.”
With little ceremony, he unlocked my bonds. Strong hands slipped beneath my armpits, and he hauled me up. All but dragged me down a narrow set of rickety stairs, despite the way I stumbled in his wake. He delivered me to a small concrete room with no windows that smelled of cleaning products and mold.
Concrete floors and walls.
A cold-room for food storage.
Absent any hint of comfort.
With a push, I stumbled into the small room, clutching at my naked skin. Trembling for too many reasons to count.
“I do hope these sleeping quarters are to your satisfaction.”
I tossed a glare over my shoulder and turned away, my entire body aching with exhaustion.
“Slave,” he barked. His voice was a clap of thunder in the tiny room.
I hadn’t noticed the whip wound around his waist, but I very nearly screamed when he began to uncoil it.
“Yes!” I said, palms raised, voice a dry croak.
“Yes,what, slave?”
Tears flooded my lash line, but I let my head fall. To hide in plain sight. “Yes,sir.”
“Good girl,” he said again, staring for a while longer.
And then, almost as an afterthought, I felt him reach out. A tendril of energy stretching toward me, trying to feel what I hid beneath the surface.
Head spinning, I went white. The blood drained from my face all at once. A terrifying thought flicked through the fog between my ears.
If the most powerful priestesses could manipulate energy the same way an elite could, would the opposite be true for the elites?
If Captain Rawlings could feel my energy, it would only be a matter of time before he realized I wasn’t Eloran.
Notjusta loose Tritan.
A priestess.
I cleared my throat to break his concentration, let my hands fall, and exposed my breasts to his evil glare. Using one vulnerability to cloak another, my modest feminine wiles used to distract. To redirect.
To my horror, I felt a sudden lessening of strength in the small room. That seething energy receding, back to its master.
He stepped over the threshold, filling it with his essence. “Do you have something to say, pet?”
“No, sir.” My voice was barely audible, but a smug grin flickered across his features, nevertheless.
“So pretty,” he mused, stroking a finger over my lips. Touch falling, he caught my left nipple between forefinger and thumb. Pinched until I squirmed. “You’ll make a fine pleasure slave someday soon. Until then, a few hours in the hole should be just the thing for your faulty memory, hmm?”
He left me then, closing the heavy door behind him.
Plunging me into complete darkness that was somehow brighter without him to fill that small space.
8
Collapsing, my knees went out from under me.
It was only a matter of time before he knew—what I was, what I could do. Not long before I was made to turn against my own people. Made to hunt the refugees fleeing the empire, my modest power turned against the helpless masses.
