Acid burned the back of my throat. Teeth clenched, jaw flexing, I watched her go—left to wrestle the ghosts she’d brought back to life.
Only one thought echoing louder than all the rest.
This was just the opening bid in yet another sick, Caledonian game.
A game with a secret with a time limit.
But this time, the first move wasmine.
16
We ate.
In silence, except for the inelegant sounds I made as I stuffed myself to bursting at last. I knew he was watching my every move, alert to something amiss, for he was with me. Always. That he sensed every potential deception as it grew in my heart. Ready to stop any action before it might ripen.
I stuffed any scrap of emotion down deep, and focused on nothing but how much I could fit into my mouth. That I was ravenous, desperate to consume something that wasn’t charity from Asher. His energy, his… body.
When at last I could take a breath that was free of the constant ache of hunger, Asher cleared his throat.
“What will happen to Sasha’s body?” I blurted. Far from subtle, a distraction that ached almost as badly as the truth I didn’t want to admit.
That I was a monster with no control…
… except for the leash I’d handed to my enemy.
He sighed. “She’ll be buried with Harper. Rather…” He grimaced. “As there wasn’t much of anything left of him, she’ll be buried in his place.”
I scoffed. “The Head Priestess isnotburied. A proper Tritan burial—”
“She was a slave, Mila,” he murmured, fingers tracing the rim of a glass. “And she killed a general.”
“It’s an insult,” I whispered. “Desecration.”
He lifted one dark brow, and said, “Didn’t take you to be a particularly devout supporter of the Tritan faith, given that you rejected their teachings and shunned the call of sisterhood.”
It was a barb that landed true—more than he might ever know.
Anguish made me twist away from the hurt. The guilt, for it didn’t matter how many slaves I’d freed, that I’d spent years trying to atone for abandoning my people during the war. It wasn’t enough.
He frowned. Perplexed by the strength of my reaction. “Mila—”
“I have to pee,” I blurted, bolting before he could dare to offer comfort or force me to explain.
And he let me go, because he was already with me. Monitoring me from within, poisoning me to suit his tastes, so he might feast on my energy and glut himself on my excess.
I shut the bathroom door and let go a shaky breath as the lock clicked into place, sitting in a moment of rare privacy. Perched on the toilet in a room where Asher had fucked me completely breathless, only hours before. I couldn’t bring myself to glance at the shower stall. Couldn’t muster the courage to turn that tap and indulge myself beneath the heated spray, even to wash away his seed. Not in there. Where he’d laid me out and set my every nerve on fire. Filling my mind with pornographic filth as he whispered depravity against my lips, my ears—then filled my pussy with the salty burn that stained so much deeper than everything else.
It was righttherethat I’d gone and done the one thing I’d tried so hard to resist.
Where I’d let him flip that coin at last and fuckingbeggedfor it through tears and desperate, clutching fingers.
And I knew, then. That he’d been right from the moment he’d set the terms of our game.
I was unequal to the challenge that was Captain Asher Rawlings.
Utterly.
And now he held all the power. Every last drop.
