The last time I saw him he had just sent a contingent to retrieve the general and Awri’s clumsy human guest from the forest. Just as before, deep lines are etched into his face and the male looks like he’s never smiled a day in his life.
He has a full head of long white hair plaited in a series of twists and braids that combine at the nape of his neck into a thick tail, falling to his midback. His hands are heavily scarred, as is what little flesh I can see exposed around the collar at his neck. The scars are unnatural, not born of war, at least not in the way one usually obtains a war wound. These are evidence of the male’s torture.
Toren’s eyes follow my own across the marred flesh of his hands. He holds them out and turns them over slowly, the silver-white lines catching the light coming in from the windows.
“A gift from the La’tari,” he says and my back becomes rigid. “What? You don’t approve?”
“Of torture?” I balk.
“Of the actions of your king.”
There is no safe way for me to answer him. As a La’tari subject, the king’s actions are far above my reproach, and fates know I have no ideawhat he did to end up in a La’tari prison. Still, there are very few crimes I personally deem worthy of torture, and it seems unlikely Toren committed any of those and still ended up in the general’s ranks.
“Nothing to say in defense of your sovereign?” The male quirks an eyebrow as he looms over me.
“I’m not here for a lesson in politics,” I say, forcing myself to rise to my full height, even if the male still towers over me. “Or to hear your sad war stories.”
Riah clears her throat, shifting nervously beside me.
“I suppose not,” he says, flicking a spec of invisible dust off his uniform. “Why exactlyareyou here?”
“I came to check in on Siserie.” Not a lie.
I’m not sure how it’s possible but his frown deepens. “Xeyvian did mention he’d put the female’s sentence in the hands of a La’tarian.”
“Tread lightly, Toren,” Riah says, and I startle at the tone she takes with her superior. “Feyn’leij ajna.”
The male’s eyes widen, and I begin to wonder if I should have asked the sisters to teach me to speak feyn as well as sprite. I’m sure they are fluent in the tongue. Whatever she said to Toren has the male reaching for a key and leading us deeper into the bowels of the barracks without another pointed word about where I came from.
Beyond the officers’ quarters the halls quickly grow dark, the natural moisture from the earth penetrates the walls of carved stone and dankens the air with a musty aroma. A twinge of guilt settles in my gut as I consider the life Siserie will live if I leave her here, even if only a few days have passed since she began serving her sentence. That little spark of regret fades the moment Toren opens the door to her cell.
The lovely feyn sits in a small wooden chair in the corner of her room, a modest but comfortable looking cot across from her. Lamplight flickers on the wall where I feel the absence of a window, and a half-eaten tray of fresh fruit and cheese sits on a sturdy table beside her.Theymight call it a prison, but it is every bit the room I was raised in.
“Not much of a prison,” I whisper to Riah under my breath.
“Maybe not by La’tari standards,” Toren says behind me, “but inA’kori we believe that not everyone deserving of a cell should be punished as if they’ve committed a war crime.”
Fair enough.
Siserie startles when she sees me standing in the doorway, but recovers quickly, her posture straightening. She raises her chin to look down her nose at me when she says, “Come to gloat?”
I can hardly blame her for the assumption, and perhaps it would be crueler to admit to the female that she has hardly crossed my mind since I’d last seen her.
“I came to end your sentence,” I say.
A quick glance at Riah tells me that the lieutenant might have preferred if I’d decided to let the female serve out her sentence a little longer. I suppose to an immortal, a few days in a comfortable cell hardly qualifies as punishment.
“Why would you?” Siserie asks.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I reply.
Is she really going to argue with me about this?
She scoffs, lifting herself from the chair in one elegant motion. I’m struck painfully by the practiced grace of many lifetimes, as she saunters toward me, a seductive sway to her hips.
“I know what you are to him, and while the very idea of an ungifted mortal sharing his bed sickens me, that is all you will ever be.Durah.Mortal. Fleeting.” She stands so close I can feel the heat radiating off her body. “In two hundred years, you will be nothing but a distant memory. The sound of your voice, the feeling of your touch, your beauty, all too difficult for him to recall.” Her lips peel back in something resembling a grin, or perhaps a snarl. “But I will remain, unblemished by the iron will of time, still beautiful, still—”
“Full of yourself?” I quip, and Riah chokes on a laugh beside me. “Pining after a male that will never want you regardless of the millennia that pass.”
