Dread fluttered through my chest.
“Leave me here,” I whispered, hanging on the edge of opportunity or disaster, for all I really needed was a few precious moments of solitude. “Don’t make me do this,” I pressed. “It’s not safe.” And then, sitting up when he rolled to the edge of the bed, clutching dark sheets to my collarbones, I added, “This is a mistake,” as I watched him go. “A deadly one.”
The captain nodded. Agreeing, heartily. “The potential for disaster has not escaped me, Mila. Unfortunately, your presence at Harper’s funeral is not an option. They need to see you.” Muscles bunching and flexing when he pulled crisp, formal blacks from his closet and stepped into his pants with a little hop. “My golden priestess. Tamed. Contrite.” He took a step that cast a shadow over my face as he adjusted his cufflinks, buttoned neck to navel. “Controlled.”
A bubble of panic burst in my chest at the thought of all those people gathered together in grief.
Already, I could taste it.
Knew their energy would hang on the breeze, heavy enough that I might lick the air and lose myself from one breath to the next. A conduit to their suffering, and through me… destruction.
I wanted it, just as badly as I wanted to hide in the dark until the sun burned out, and I told him so. “But I can’t control—”
“Ican,” he murmured, and knelt on the bed. Catching my chin with the back of his knuckles, he gobbled up every spare inch of my attention, and said, “Remember?” before he took my cold, clammy fingers in those that were rough and warm. Thumb tracing my wrist, where the line between gold and flesh was blurred with a subtle gleam of power. Hinting at all that went unsaid, that he alone held the empath in thrall. He alone was equal to the task that had almost killed me. “I’ll know. Before you do.”
I swallowed.
Because I didn’t have a choice.
Not in this.
But then… neither did he.
The arrangements had been made. There was a spectacle to be made of grief, just another scene in the grand theatre that was Caledonian politics.
The next hours saw me fed, dressed, and painted.
Perched on the captain’s desk, I sat trembling in the morning sunlight. My feet tucked beneath my skirts as Alicia fussed with my makeup. Before me, the remains of yet another lavish meal that had been served before dawn.
Dressed in swathes of crisp black silks rimmed in gold, the captain watched me with long legs sprawled out before him. Hooked at the ankles, his fingers pressed to his lips. Observing me, inside and out. Silent and still, except for the occasional clipped adjustments he ordered Alicia to make.
“Stand up,” he said, head tilting to the side. Eyes narrowed, he picked at the cuticle of his thumb as Alicia adjusted my skirts until they hung in an artful, obscene swirl.
It was the most revealing of any dress I’d yet been made to wear. Twisted into elegant ropes, the wrap flirted with indecency in all it did not conceal. Bared all the way to the top of my pubic bone, criss-crossed to hide my nipples, my entire torso was exposed, and yet, arguably it was also the first time my movement hadn’t been restricted by the accursed dress.
All of it to the captain’s precise specifications. An hour of predawn meddling and preening before an eye far more critical than mine.
An act.
An elaborate distraction of the flesh, my presence was a display so he might show off his golden priestess and the power that flooded my veins with unconscious ease.
Power that no longer burned.
Power I craved enough to sit still and obedient as he fed me slow, drugging tendrils of elite magic. Sedating me with a steady drip of what I wished to guzzle until I burst.
All of it an effort to hide in plain sight, so they might be distracted by the glitter, and not see how frayed the edges had grown.
A brisk knock rapped at the bedroom door, and without entering, Marco said, “We’re ready.”
The captain stood. Taking slow, prowling steps until he was close enough to touch, he sent rough fingers trailing down. Bumping and catching as they traced from my shoulder cap to my palm, he collected my fingers, and said, “Ready?”
My breath caught, but I didn’t bother to answer.
Because it didn’t matter that Iwasn’tready.
I didn’t matter at all.
“Shall I”—Alicia cleared her throat—“tidy up while you’re gone, sir?”
