A discrete cough made me jerk, startled.
I blinked and found the Lieutenant General standing before me. Hands still clasped behind his back. A sickly, pleased smile oozing across his lips when I focused on his face in slow, halting ticks.
“Apparently,” he began anew, “you’ve forgotten a very simple fact. These slaves are assets owned by the empire. An asset you are permitted to use in your service to the crown.” Elegant, cool fingers curled beneath my chin, and he guided my head back, so he might look deeply into my eyes and see the nothingness inside. “But they belong to the Emperorfirst, and we cannot abide rebellion of this nature without dealing swift, irrevocable justice for the disobedience and insult to the crown.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the ghost move. Drifting closer, she approached her master as if summoned. The dirty gold at her throat and wrists gleaming as the Lieutenant General drew on her power and slipped into my skin. Meaning to taste. To touch what did not belong to him.
But I was secreted away, utterly beyond his reach.
He couldn’t penetrate the leviathan’s thick skin, or slip through his greedy coils to see what lay beneath, and the Lieutenant General wasn’t nearly refined enough to sense the deception woven into me on a foundational level.
He smiled all the same, pleased by my apparent placid obedience. “Commendable,” he murmured, giving the captain a tight nod of approval before he turned to the other elites once more. “These slaves shall be fitted with suppressor cuffs. The question of their obedience entirely removed from the equation.”
For a moment, not a sound escaped either priestess or elite.
Until pandemonium filled the gap.
The elites spoke all at once, their voices clambering to be heard. One escalating over the next, until the yelling began to swell.
“You can’t do that!” Patelle snarled above the rest, his Caledonian complexion going ashy. His fists tight balls clenched at his sides.
“And why not?” the Lieutenant General drawled, turning to face the other man head-on. His head tilted slightly to the side. “I think you’ll find it’s a fine compromise.” He swung one hand toward the nameless priestess who wore his mark, lips quirked and full of smug arrogance as everyone looked at the pitiful creature who made his cheeks glow with pride. “Free access to their many charms, and above all, unflinching loyalty to the empire.”
Even on my island, I felt the revulsion. The horror.
I looked to the ghost. To the hollow spots at her shoulders, where the joints sagged from disuse. Her glassy, empty gaze framed by sheets of thin, silver hair.
The priestesses are all gone. Taken. Enslaved. So much potential left untapped, each one holds a secret the empire can never possess…
My breath hitched in my throat. A whisper of cold fire plucked at the back of my mind, begging for violence and untold carnage—
The captain spun me to face him. One fist bunched in the fine hairs at my nape, while the other found an anchor on my breastbone. Fingers spread, he forced heat through my skin. Drowning me in choking fumes of unsullied might.
Unable to resist, I went limp against him. Gazing into a black sun, my bones went rubbery and loose. Melting around his rigid frame and cutting, harsh angles.
Insulating me in heavy blankets of frost, he pulled on every unseen weapon. Tugged at every thread he’d woven so much deeper than bone as he dressed me in layer upon layer of cool, drugging calm.
Every advantage unquestionablyhis. My throat and wrists ablaze with forced obedience, he robbed me of any hint of rebellion. Snuffed out the fight with a snarl of command and followed through on every promise of retaliation.
It wasn’t a cage meant to hold me forever.
But it was enough.
A distraction that swallowed time and distorted my perception of reality, for my next blink brought me to a dining room all but emptied of outraged elites and horrified priestesses. The temptation to seek vengeance removed while I’d been consumed by a greater threat, and only the vaguest memory of a clipped, “That will be all, gentlemen. Dismissed.”
Aside from the Lieutenant General and his ghost, only Asher and I remained.
“Have a seat,” the Lieutenant General said, motioning toward several clustered chairs at the end of a large banquette table. Claiming the head of the table for himself, he spread a crisp manilla folder out before him and began to read.
His every muscle tight, braced for battle, the captain took the offered seat and left me standing in his peripheral. Slightly to the left, and back, but locked in within easy reach, where he could see my every breath. Fingers steepled, chin resting on his thumbs, he cleared his throat and said, “May I ask what this is about?”
Instead of answering, the Lieutenant General licked his thumb and flipped a page. Stormy eyes flicking over the text, he hummed then turned another.
“Quite the impressive resume,” he said at length. Still reading, his brows jumped as he nodded. Lips quirked. “Several tours in the West—which is nothing to sneer at. Commendations from ranking officers. Impeccable record out-pacing even bonded elites tasked with similar exercises, but—” He glanced up, eyes flicking over to me. Framed by a frown, before his gaze returned to the captain’s file. “But the instant you claimed this girl, it all stops when it should have launched you into a new category altogether. Suspended from duty for‘extraordinary risk to empire property, and inability to use his power without also killing the girl.’Can you explain this?”
The captain cleared his throat, leaning forward in his chair. “I can, sir,” he said, split between holding me in thrall, and dealing with his commanding officer—the only outward sign a damp brow and flushed cheeks. “As I said earlier, Mila was never trained as a priestess. Never taught to throttle her gifts, and remained totally ignorant of her potential until I put my mark on her throat. And then her flaws became mine.”
Frowning, the Lieutenant General hummed. Calculating, he tapped the index finger of his left hand, before he said, “Go on.”
