That from this, I might never recover.
My very last thing of value given in exchange for a prize I hadn’t seen. Gambled away on the words of a woman who’d betrayed me—who’d cost me my freedom—for a chance to know the last wishes of a woman who’d died in my place.
The captain frowned, his interest piqued, and sent a barb of curiosity rippling through my system.
An unconscious search that fed him the details of my turbulent emotions, but not their source.
“Tell me,” he murmured, frowning as he slid one hand up. Under my arm, scooping beneath my nape to cradle the back of my skull. Making me look, when I tried to squirm away. Tried to hide the salty burn of shame scalding my eyes.
“I—” My voice caught, hoarse with the cries he’d wrenched from my throat. “It’ll be”—I swallowed—“good? Between us?”
Head tilting, he stared down at me with that bottomless gaze. Curious. A little alien. Still haunted by the beast, still slavering for the hunt.
I tried again. “You won’t… won’t give me to your men when you’re bored?” I asked, giving voice to the vulnerable, trembling pieces he’d flipped over. The ugly things he’d forced into the light, exposed, left to wriggle and worm. “Won’t let them earn a turn to treat me like a whore if—when—I slip?”
Something soft flitted between his brows. “No, Mila,” he murmured, petting stray wisps of silver-blonde hair back from my face. “You’ll beg, but only for me.”
I nodded, shifting my feet where they were spread around his—and felt the seal stretching gooey petals break. A trickle of warm come gushed from my depths, an intimate lick that oozed where he had begun to soften. Where I gaped for him.
Willingly.
Heat burned in my cheeks, tears blurring my waterline as I nodded again and tried to hide my face so he couldn’t watch the next words tumble forth. “Will you make me forget?” I whispered. Tiny. Fragile. “Everything I’ve lost, so it doesn’t hurt so much to want this? To want… you.”
He moved. Cupping my chin, fingers gentle on the edge of my jaw when he said, “Your fight is over, little warrior.”
Tears spilled over my cheeks, then. Tracking back, to prickle at my temples. “And this is enough?” I asked. “You won’t make me a ghost?” A watery hiccup clattered between my teeth. “With dead eyes and sagging joints? Like the Lieutenant General’s p-priestess?”
At this, he hesitated.
Just long enough that the unmistakeable lash of pity contorted his face.
My breath caught in a trap of frigid horror. “Nooo. Asher, you—youcan’t—”
“It’s over,” he said again, sad, frustrated agony scrawled between his brows. “We’re being sent to the capital.”
I shook my head, letting the tears fall. Trying to bargain. “To train the elites in your methods. So we can s-save the priestesses from a living death like—”
He scoffed, derisive and full of soft scorn. “Have you ever been to the capital, Mila? Have you any idea what it’s like for Tritan slaves there?”
My lips parted, but I couldn’t force a denial through them.
It didn’t matter.
“I warned you,” he murmured, voice hard. A flicker of anger igniting in obsidian depths. “Time and again, over and over. I warned you not to draw attention from men like them. That there would be consequences and they would be horrible for both of us.” His jaw flexed. Nostrils pinched white as he shook his head. “I did everything I could think of. Invented new methods not even imagined by your people or mine, andstill, you fought me at every turn. No matter how futile, how endlessly fucking stupid or hopeless. And now I have no choice. No more plans or last resorts. I have to—”
“Please,” I gasped, weeping quietly as my tiny world began to burn in hopeless, wretched flames. Because I knew what this was, even without my crutch—it was a farewell. “Pleasedon’t do this.”
He touched my lips. Gentle. Almost wistful as he tugged at the bow of my lower lip, avoiding eye contact when he whispered, “I have to break you.”
Keening low in my throat, I shoved at his chest.
He caught my wrist. “Mila—”
“Please,” I rasped again, straining against his weight. “Let me go.” A gasp lodged in my throat, hurting where my lungs were frigid and overfull. “Just to the—I have to pee.”
Watching with guarded eyes, he took a sip of the panic flooding my system. Searching for deceit.
And for a moment, I thought it was well and truly over.
