A smirk creased the edge of my lips, and I flashed him the point of modified canines. “Can you blame me?”
“I say we take a priestess or two,” he retorted, not moved by my morbid sense of humor. “Give them freedom before death.”
“What’syoursolution, Captain Rawlings?” I asked, too tired to rise to the bait. Too stubborn to simply walk into the maw of death without any real effort to avoid it.
To this, he had nothing to say. Nothing but a deepening scowl and a jaw that worked around a mouth full of nothing.
I jerked my chin at the royal summons. “What is a live demonstration?”
“It’s an execution. The public slaying of an enemy to the empire.” He lifted one shoulder and didn’t blink. “A captured rebel soldier.”
“That’s sick,” I whispered.
“No more macabre than draining a fellow energy wielder to save ourselves.”
Swallowing the retort, I said, “And this is what you people call entertainment? Amusing enough to bring some fancy royal man here to watch a defenseless soldier die?”
“Not usually,” he said, and smirked. “No.”
I collapsed into the chair and pulled the summons toward me once more. Seeing without reading. My eyes flicked over the scrawling loops and elegant curls of ink on crumpled paper. “Then what’s different now?”
“You.” And with all the subtly of a coiled predator, he added, “The sort of power I can wield with a priestess who isn’t. A so-called empath. The empire isveryinterested to know what sort of tactical capabilities might come of my bond. If it can be replicated without slaughtering our stock of priestesses.”
What little blood remained in my cheeks drained away, leaving me dizzy with the weight of such implications. That I reallywasunequal to this game played by men born and bred for war.
“I did warn you, Mila. Not to draw attention to yourself. Not to piss off Harper or give him reason to retaliate.” Rounding the desk in three rolling strides, the captain loomed above me. Fingers twisting into the locks of silver-blonde hair that had been my downfall. “This is his revenge. He knows I can’t use your power without killing you.”
I licked lips gone dry. “Using it will kill us both. Asher, there’snothingleft.”
“Harperalsoknows,” he continued, and pulled me close, “that a refusal before the emperor’s brother will get him exactly what he’s wanted all along.” He laughed, then, and it was a bitter, hateful thing. “I’ll be stripped of my rank. My pension.You.”
For the first time, I blinked and saw something more than the monster. Something deeper than the elite soldier aroused by the pain he might inflict.
I couldn’t name it.
Wasn’t nearly ready to do more than acknowledge it existed.
So instead, I said, “Then our options are few. Embrace what I am. Unleash the empath and take an elite”—I cleared my throat—“a… priestess, or a dozen powerless citizens andsurvive. Or die trapped. Victims of Tilcot’s game.”
That same tentative knock rapped on the heavy oaken door. Alicia’s return signaling the end of our debate.
Questions left unanswered.
Become what this horrible place demanded of its slaves—desperate and coy, whores for the slightest scrap of power—or fall.
Together.
As enemies, fucked raw by the empire.
Bound together by secrets and blood magic.
Deeply and forever.
“What do we do?” I whispered, hardly daring to give the question life.
His eyes flicked over my face. Brushed over my lips for an instant, before he met my gaze with one that threatened to swallow me whole.
And then, simply, “We pray.”
