Page 18
The laughter that exploded from him might as well have been a fist to my stomach, knocking the wind straight out of me. I was stammering, clamoring for air to fill lungs that felt as if he was squeezing them.
“Of course, of course, Captain. I’m sure Rictus extracted every drop of your stores to allow you to secure this gem.” He was turning to another woman, this one just as stunningly beautiful as his sister.
She wore a velvet dress of rich purple and black, bisected directly down the middle. Silver coronas burst from the seams of her gown, shimmering beads dusting the purple half.
He tucked the black-bedecked arm into the crook of his elbow and then turned thunderous, dangerous eyes to me. “What do you think, my love? Should I cut her tongue out or her mind?”
Her gaze was soft, doting, and easy. There was no venom in this woman. I’d be surprised if there was even a thought behind those pale jade eyes. “Exalted Majesty, if the sound of her voice is turned in treachery against you, pluck it from her. Keep her tongue, though. You’ve always loved plowing the rivers of a daoire’s throat.”
I blinked, staring at her. The fuck did she just say?
The King laughed and kissed her on the temple before turning back to me. “What is her name, Raven?”
The Raven hesitated and then leaned over, whispering into the King’s ear. He nodded and smirked to me before leaning forward and whispering for my ears only. “Sóna Mac Raith, when in my presence, from now until the day you die, no words or sounds will pass your lips.”
Fire licked between my cells and ignited an inferno in my blood that was quickly extinguished, leaving me panting for air.
“The gift is lovely, Captain. Thank you. Take it to my chambers and have it bathed and dressed in something befitting its station.” He turned back to the woman on his arm and patted her hand like a cherished lapdog. “These humans, they wander into Fae, and we must house them, feed them, and teach them manners. They are all but wild animals!”
“You are most gracious and benevolent, my love,” the woman purred as she and the King retreated from me.
Fuck you! I screamed . . . Only the sound did not come out. I pushed and clawed at my throat, trying to force the words free. Air rushed across still vocal cords that refused to vibrate the smallest bit. I had been making sounds every day of my entire life, yet I couldn’t fix my lips to even scream. I curled in with the power in which I tried to yell at the retreating back of the King. My nails dug into the tender flesh of my neck, pushing, scraping, begging for anything to happen at all.
It wasn’t until the doubleted back of the King and the velvet-clad shoulders of his woman disappeared beyond a dark wooden door that my voice returned, and when it did, it came in a rush. The scream poured out of me like a flood, drowning everyone around me and beating great drums in my ears. I shredded my impertinent vocal cords against the power of my impotent rage until I could feel blood vessels popping in my head and eyes.
Steel bands wrapped in velvety silken fur encircled my shoulders, drawing me prone, and held me against the polished wood of the throne room floor. Another banded across my mouth and robbed me of everything. I hated this. I hated being weak and at the mercy of everyone around me. I needed to find my own power, before the only power left to me was carving my own flesh away.
Dark-brown leather boots came into view and then a black-swathed knee. “Calm yourself, Cricket. Or this will get more unseemly. Go, take your bath and get dressed in real clothing.”
A leather-gloved finger tucked my long hair behind my pointed ear. “I will come to you before you go to the King. Would you like that?”
I tilted my head up as much as the kin’tha would allow me, my nose dominating my field of vision as I tried to level a deadly glare on him.
“Touch me again, and I’ll tear your fingers off with my bare teeth,” I snapped into the muffle of the fur around my mouth.
He grinned, a slow devilish thing that promised he would enjoy my attempt, even if it would be just an attempt. The kin’tha raised me slowly, long enough that, when he bent to whisper in my ear, it was easily missed by others. “Before long, Cricket, you’ll be begging for me to do far more than touch you.”
The evil bitch my body had been sculpted into clenched at the image of me begging him to touch me.
Thankfully, at least for now, my tongue was still my own. “Hold your breath, Raven. Let’s see which of us last longer.”
Chapter 8
The kin’tha carried me down hallway after hallway, my head turned up so all I could see were the passing bemused features of Fae all around me and ceilings. I had no sense of direction nor how to get back to the throne room or even back down into the warrens.
I was aware of the two guards who had taken me to the throne room, leading the kin’tha, but all I could see were the beams of the ceiling. I counted them as we passed, my anger growing somewhere around one hundred fifty.
When the kin’tha finally let me go, it was a gentle unfolding of its limbs settling back into its massive cat form. Only this time, they were not cat ears that it took on but the wide ears of a fennec fox.
I narrowed my eyes on it, but before I could question it further, I was drawn into the steamy room and pushed into a hot bath by a pair of rough hands. My head was held under water, and I thrashed. Arms and legs wildly sought to connect with the owner of the hand that palmed my skull with such easy strength.
Just as quickly as I had been pulled into the water, I was finally let go as my lungs screamed for air, and I shot up, ready to punch whomever it was that had been holding me. I didn’t need to, though. The Raven was there, a sword drawn and its tip pressed into the chin of the Laundress. Her face twisted in hate aimed directly at me.
“I will say again, daoire, your purpose is to wash. It is not to mete out justice as you see fit. Whose job is that?”
The ease in his voice sent icy fingers crawling up my spine, making a fool of the hot water I stood in. It was the sort of calm I had heard in my own voice before, the serenity of seeing the fork in the road in front of you and resigning yourself to whatever path your foot fell on. It was the calm born of a sense of resignation bound up in a confidence that, no matter what came next, you would walk free of it even if the other person did not.
The Laundress hesitated but a millisecond, abhorrence thickening the air between her and I. What the hell I’d ever done to this woman was beyond me, and I made a note to find out the next time I was in the warrens.
