“Empaths are dangerous,” Sasha agreed, folding her hands before her once more. “They’ve no training to protect them. Nothing but a legendary hunger to feed on energy. Forgoing food, they take sustenance from the energy around them. Unable to stop, they become slaves to that thirst. Killing at will, utterly absent discretion. That you’re alive at all is an incredible stroke of good fortune, for while the legends differ on how, they all have the exact same roots. An empath escapes training in the temple, matures without guidance, and kills hundreds before she is put down by those who might have been sisters.”
I shivered, but it wasn’t the freezing burn of hatred pumping through my veins—it was fear. A whisper of somethingotherlingering just out of reach. But I forced it back, and said, “So priestessescanuse their gifts for war.”
“Priestesses can do a lot of things,” she hedged. “None of them available toyou.”
“So, what?” I laughed, clipped low and bitter. “You mean for me to accept my fate as a slave. Let him use me to kill?” Head shaking, I set my feet, sweating and trembling. Reeking of spent seed and stolen innocence. “I won’t do it. If you won’t help me, I’ll find a way to kill him myself.”
At this, Sasha stood. Touching my wrist with fingers that were cool and soothing. “I can only presume your time spent in the forest—alone—is what kept you from succumbing to the curse of an empath. And now?” she said, and I blinked. Slow and drowsy. “In the middle of a war, surrounded by power and death? It can only be your bond with the young captain.”
I took a breath, matching her steady inhale. “Why?”
“You’re an empath, Mila,” she said again, thumb stroking over my heated flesh. “You need a counterbalance. A shield between you and the world you’ll be driven to consume. Asher is that correction. The elite to your priestess.” A serene smile spread across her lips. One I couldn’t help but match. “Where we feed, they purge. Expending more energy than they possess, it was rare for them to live beyond their twenties before the advances in technology.”
“Before they conquered Tritan inside of a week,” I said, but the sentiment lacked the cutting edge of bitter resentment.
She shrugged. “You cannot kill him without also killing yourself. Not now, and probably not before.”
Searing hurt saw me lurch away from the sedative in her touch. “My death means nothing if he dies with me,” I snapped. “The captain will pay for what he did to me. What he’s done.”
For a moment, Sasha simply watched me tremble. And then, “What did he do?”
I sneered, turning so she couldn’t see. Couldn’t feel the writhing hurt.
The skin of my inner thighs pulled where they rubbed. Chafing where they’d grown tacky with drying sperm.
“I won’t do anything that helps him kill,” I said instead. Fists clenched at my sides, bruised shoulder throbbing in time with my temper. “I absolutely refuse.”
“You’re no good to anyone dead.”
“And the alternative iswhat? Offer comfort to those he kills as they lay dying when I could slaughter elites without discretionbut you won’t tell me how?” Darkness swirled at my peripherals, my stomach snarling a deep, primal hunger that needed to be fed. I scoffed, spittle misting the air between us. “You’ve never even seen an empath before. You’ve noideaif these so-called legends hold a whisper of truth, and no notion of what training me might look like. If it’s even possible.”
A smirk creased her lips, then. “And who,” she asked, “do you think might tell him it’s safe to use your power, should we be successful here? Who’s the closest thing anyone has to an authority on priestessesorempaths, if not me?”
I sucked a breath between my teeth, every drop of my attention shifting to her face.
“Empaths are dangerous. Volatile,” she murmured, a low, wicked timber entering her voice. “A perfect weapon for an elite—especially one like Captain Rawlings who likes to push boundaries. But without absolute confirmation that it’s safe to do so, neither he nor the general will be willing to risk such an asset. Of which there is only one. And who knows?” she drawled. “It might takeyearsto complete your training.”
10
“Clear your mind,” Sasha said, her voice a dull, droning hum. Sending a barb of that soothing energy through my palms, where she held my hands in hers. “Focus on this.”
Taking a breath, I let myself drift. Soothed by the sound of her voice. By her energy, weak though it was—smothered and enslaved by General Tilcot and the chains buried deep in her flesh. “What are you doing?” I asked, drowsy. Complacent and calm.
She pulled at the dark flames seething behind my ribs, wrapping them in a blanket. A shroud of comforting frost that tempered the fires and eased the ache gnawing on my sinew. “Protection,” she murmured. “I’m giving you a shield.”
“Like th’ ones the rebels made,” I slurred, remembering the electric blue shimmer that tasted like hope—until the Caledonians gobbled it up and swallowed it whole.
Sasha hummed, seeming not to understand. “I’m building something you can use to keep yourself separate from the hunger.”
“Mmm not hungry,” I returned, and my eyes drifted closed on a blink that grew long and heavy.
“Yes,” she murmured. “But feeding on nothing but Asher’s energy will only drive your thirst for more.”
My heart lurched. Eyes snapping open as a bubble of fury resurfaced in an instant, my ire provoked. Overwhelming the flimsy barrier of priestess energy before she could finish her task. “I don’t want more,” I hissed. “I want to see him on his knees. Made to crawl”—I shivered, fingers growing tight around those that were frail and dry—“to beg.”
A crease flickered between Sasha’s brows, her forehead misted with a fine layer of dew. “You have to let your anger go, Mila. Learn to bend before you break.”
Pressure pounded at my temples, lodged in the soft spot beneath my jaw, where it reached for my heart with barbed hooks. Taking root.Festering.“Why?” I spat, my breaths coming short and ragged. Jaw flexing as I ground my molars together. “Why am I the one who has to bend?”
