I rolled my eyes. The stookie angel continued to gab inanely, as he was wont to do. I did not understand half the words that came from his mouth—and neither did anyone else—but that did not stop him. For myself, I was too busy thinking about the revelation Persephone had unwittingly given me whilst she was preparing to kill me.
If Donnchadh is still out there, free of a corporeal body, then Alaire could do anything with him. He could even house the spirit himself.
That thought made me immediately uncomfortable. If that did happen, Alaire’s power would know no bounds. As it currently existed, the Master of the Underground City only had power within its borders. If Alaire joined up with Donnchadh, however, he would be nigh unstoppable. I could only hope he was not yet aware of Donnchadh’s true power. I was fairly certain he believed the spirit supplied nothing more than immortality. How wrong he was.
Something Bill said caught my ear. I snapped my fingers to grab his attention. “Whit did ye jus’ say, stookie angel?”
Bill stopped talking long enough to catch my question. “Fuck, Conan, I said ah bunch o’ shit. Which part are ya referrin’ to?”
“The las’ thing ye said… what was it?”
“What? Ya mean about Skeletorhorn?”
“Aye.”
Skeleletorhorn was the angel’s name for Jason Streethorn, the bigwig of Afterlife Enterprises.
“I said Skeletorhorn is gonna get a fuckin’ earful from me when this bullshit is all over. Like, yo, I’m gonna bring the wrath of the Big Bad Better Business Bureau so far down Alaire’s sleazebum head, it’s gonna come out his ass vehemuchly!”
Streethorn and Alaire…
It was no secret that Alaire desired ultimate control and I could yet not determine if that ultimate control might be directed toward Afterlife Enterprises, itself. But then another thought occurred to me. Was it possible that damned Jason Streethorn, or even Afterlife Enterprises, were somehow in cahoots with Alaire?
The possibilities were many and variable enough that it could only be speculation at this point. But if Alaire intended to make a move on Afterlife Enterprises, the repercussions could be catastrophic, spanning across all planes of existence. Still, even with the power of Donnchadh’s spirit and maybe Persephone (assuming the traitorous bitch did not double-cross him) Alaire would still require more assistance. And could that assistance come in the form of Streethorn, himself?
I never trusted the skinny bastard. He was akin to a weasel, not only in his appearance but also his nature, which was not genuine. I would not have put it past Streethorn to assist Alaire but the question remained: why?
And why do you care?
In days past, the voice in my head would have been that of Donnchadh, goading me or chastising me for not doing something he preferred I do. But this was my voice, the only one I heard now.
I care because Lily would care.
A truth that I attempted to hide from myself for far too long was finally coming out. Deny it though I tried, Lily was my salvation. She was the only way to make amends for the terrible things I had done. Lily was my sole chance at the redemption I long thought impossible to achieve. If she could see the good in a monster such as myself, then mayhap there was still a chance that I could be saved.
If ever I managed to step foot in Fergus Castle again, it would be strictly owing to her influence.
I knew not how it could be possible but there was a fire still burning inside me. A fire that urged me to restore Lily back to herself. The same fire that demanded Persephone and Alaire be stopped. Even as I sat chained to the cold stone wall, starving and lacking the strength of Donnchadh, the fire inside me still burned bright.
Of one thing I was dead certain, Donnchadh was a necessary element.
Chapter Two
Persephone
“You swore to me that Tallis would die!” I protested in a shrill voice I was still growing accustomed to. After all, it had only belonged to me for a very short while, along with this body in which I now resided.
Alaire sat at the table, unmoved and uninterested. “Technically… he will die eventually,” he said without expression, a frozen smile on his face.
I balked at his terrible sense of humor. I knew arguing with him was fruitless after days of ceaseless discussion already; Alaire always did as Alaire pleased.
“How long until he is dead, though?” I spat, my nails digging into the dinner table. An elaborate array of foods was attractively arranged across the length of it: smoked meats, vegetables of every color of the rainbow and steaming hot bread, fresh from the oven, but I would have none of it.
“Do you not trust me to end his life?” Alaire asked me from under his raised eyebrows.
“Do not dare question my trust; how long did I wait for you!? How much trust do you think it took for me to wait in that… that… hell before you could find a body and soul pure enough for me to occupy?!”
Thinking of the circumstances that led me to this moment always made the skin on my throat itch. It was Tallis’s fault. Even though I had once been his queen, he’d skewered me like a wild animal and left me to bleed out when I tried to take what was rightfully mine—the throne. Were it not for Alaire, I would have died there and been forgotten forever.
The questions were all rhetorical now, of course. Alaire was well aware of how many hundreds of years I had to hide inside the crown while I waited for him to find the perfect vessel in which to transpose my soul.
Quickly glancing down, I thought once again that the wait was well worth it. Flawlessly clear skin, a perfect, hourglass shape, breasts that made most men temporarily lose their ability to speak… Truly, this body was beyond splendid. And it was all mine.
“Well, you didn’t have much of a choice, as I recall,” Alaire said, his stupid smile still in full effect. It was meant to mock me, I was certain, but I just ignored it… for now. “Would you rather I left you to die instead?”
My mouth dropped open in shock. “How dare you!”
I grabbed a plate laden with sliced fruits and flung it at the nearest wall, screaming incoherently as the plate shattered into shards of porcelain, while an orange slice clung stubbornly to the wall. It eventually slid down at a frustratingly languid pace, the juice streaking the mortar as it descended.
The rage in me felt unfamiliar but also highly pleasurable. I had little choice in what happened to me. But damn it all! I still wanted Tallis to pay for what he’d done. My former lover left me to die like a pauper and for that, I would forever hate him…
I found myself staring at my liege and savior, unflappable as ever with his blonde, close-cropped hair and cold blue eyes. I was quite disgusted over how much I owed him. Now and forever, I was a queen and, as such, I never wanted to owe anyone anything. But perhaps… just perhaps… Alaire was a little bit different. He was on my side and he proved it by bringing me back from the brink of death. I owed it solely to him that I was standing here now and able to have this satisfying fit of rage.
A not-so-insignificant part of me fought the urge to throw myself at the self-satisfied bastard who sat across from me, acting as though nothing was amiss. That part of me wanted to go mad from his touch and feel every part of him inside me. Yet something… I knew not what… but something so foreign in my consciousness imagined taking a shard of the broken plate and cutting his alabaster skin from his muscles. I slammed my hands down and kicked away from the table, unable to deal with all the raw emotions raging through me.
“Why don’t you just calm down and eat?” Alaire suggested before he put a piece of meat in his mouth. “After all, I don’t want you to waste away.”
My chair clattered as I seized it like I had the table. “Stop it with this insolence!” I bellowed, my fingernails digging into the mahogany of the chair back. “Explain to me why Tallis isn’t dead yet!”
Alaire leaned forward, putting his hands together and placing them on the table in front of him. “Of course, my dear, raging, sweet…” His lips barely moved
as his voice trailed off and his eyes tracked my now-pacing body. I knew he was enjoying the show.
We had left Tallis Black, the former Master of the Underground City and recently turned reclusive Afterlife Enterprises stooge, chained to a wall to contemplate his newly regained humanity. I changed into a sheer, emerald dress. Even more than the black frock, it outlined my form in the extreme. Every curve of my superb breasts and hips were so visible that I may as well have been naked. My original form, the one that belonged to Persephone in body as well as in soul, was undeniably beautiful. But this body…oh! It was beyond stunning.
Alaire had done well.
How had this all come to be? The woman whose soul once inhabited this body had been foolish enough to lust after my crown. The moment she touched it, a bridge between our souls enabled me to take her body as my own.
But returning to Alaire… It drove me wild to know he desired me so. It had been so long since I felt a man’s lust or his touch. But it also made the rest of his behavior so damnably infuriating.
“Why haven’t you killed Tallis yet?” I demanded again, no longer interested in verbal sparring. I wanted the answer and I wanted it now.
“At this point, it is more a matter of personal pleasure to see Tallis Black in the miserable condition which he has been reduced to.” Alaire picked up a fork and teased the tiramisu that was quickly losing shape in front of him. “I could kill him, of course. I could even let you do the deed as a welcome-home present. But why would I?” He pushed the dessert away and sat back once more. “After all, Afterlife Enterprises has been more than accommodating when it comes to my most recent… activities.”
At his words, a faint memory returned to me. I was walking through an endless desert, harried by the chatter of insane voices. That alien thought sent a shiver up my spine, one that I despised. I didn’t understand the memory so I shelved it inside my head.
Alaire continued. “However if AE ever found out that I let the Yeti die at the hands of a traitor…”
“I am no traitor!” I screamed in protest, coming around the table to stand next to him as I glared down at his face. True to form, he did not even bat an eyelid as he looked up at me. “I am… merely an opportunist,” I corrected him. His only response was a thoughtful hum and an insolent smile.
Oh, I wanted to slap him on the spot. He knew how I hated the word traitor. Yes, I went behind the backs of Tallis and Afterlife Enterprises all those years ago, but only because I was forced into that position. In order to take what was rightfully mine, sacrifices had to be made. The Underground City needed a queen, a position only I was meant to fill.
Alaire leaned back in his seat, rolling his hand through the air. “Do you know that AE wanted me to return you to headquarters after you started your little tryst with Black?”
I did not respond so he continued. “But I took it upon myself to defend you. I told them it wasn’t every day that one of their mortal representatives could manage to catch the eye of the Master of the Underground City. So they agreed to adopt a wait-and-see approach with the understanding that I would report back any future developments.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I snapped.
“My point is simply that I have been protecting you and your interests long before your eyes ever landed on the crown,” he said with a shrug. “Sadly, although I agree with you on the necessity of Black’s imminent death, I need to tread carefully where he is concerned. This subject is a very sensitive one at the moment.”
My shoulders drooped. Something else he knew all too well was how displeased I was on not having my way. “I care not for your excuses, Alaire.”
“Regardless, your displeasure does nothing to change the truth. And the truth is that Tallis Black cannot die by either of our hands, not just yet. There are far too many other things that need to be done first.”
“Such as?” I asked in exasperation. “Are you ever going to inform me of these strategic plans of yours?”
Alaire had always been somewhat tight-lipped about the machinations if they involved my former employer. I never quite understood his obvious allegiance to them but then again, I held no love for AE myself. After all, I was just their errand girl. It’s true that they had rewarded me with material wealth and knowledge not many living people had any right to know. But the real prize was always dangled just out of my reach: immortality. Thus, I had to reach my own heights using my own wits, and now here I was, with no thanks or help from Afterlife Enterprises.
“In due time,” Alaire soothingly replied with one of those damnable knowing smiles. “As I said, it’s a… delicate situation at the moment; one that must be handled with absolute precision and tact.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that your way of insinuating that I do not understand either precision or tact?”
“By no means, not at all,” Alaire answered all too easily. “I simply don’t want you to worry yourself with so many complexities so soon after rejoining me.”
I grunted my disbelief. While Alaire had a valid point, it did not take the venom out of his deception regarding Tallis. Alaire and Tallis both knew how I longed for immortality. Tallis had always been fully confident in the durability of his position, and he’d bluntly refused to give me eternal life. And Alaire, always waiting in the shadow of his former master for a chance to usurp power, had promised me immortality and a place at his side if I helped him gain control of the Underground City.
So far, both men turned out to be severely disappointing.
I eventually sat back down at my end of the table, stiff and silent as a corpse. I regarded the rich food in front of me with the same utter contempt I displayed towards Alaire. All this talk removed any pleasure I might have had toward eating. Now I wanted a different kind of pleasure altogether.
I leaned back in my chair, running a hand between my legs. Fighting a desire to climb over the table and take Alaire, right now, the anger I felt for him was far more palpable. True, I would have preferred to slake my sexual appetite on Tallis instead of his one-time toady any day. But relations with the Bladesmith were right out of the question now. I imagine he was so dazed from the painful experience of having Donnchadh extracted from him that it would render him incapable of staying hard long enough for me to enjoy him properly.
Fingering myself, I pondered who else there was in this blasted castle for me to enjoy. The lusty, little angel was still shackled in the cell next to the Bladesmith… but I could only shudder at that thought. I preferred being cast back into the crown’s icy embrace for another thousand years rather than lying with that wretched example of botched masculinity. That only left Saxon, the loyal, driveling fool who so readily sold out his fellow Retrievers for the promise of power. Not that he was entirely to blame for that, as I did have a certain way with members of the opposite sex. Still, I took great pains not to think about how his betrayal mirrored Alaire’s.
In truth, Saxon would have been just another replaceable idiot were it not for his invaluable knowledge of the world, which I’d been locked away from for so long. Another chill ran up my back as I remembered the dark void of the crown that was my home for nigh on two hundred years.
“What are you doing?” Alaire asked once he realized my hands were busying themselves below my waist.
“Nothing to do with you.” I pushed back from the table once more. “SAXON!”
Several moments passed before I heard the telltale sounds of scurrying. The doors to the dining room swung open and the object of my interest faced me speculatively.
“Yes, my Queen?” Saxon asked, bowing low enough to show me the appropriate respect. Saxon, despite his disheveled appearance, was a terribly handsome man. Granted, he was no Tallis Black, but who was? My personal Judas’s thin body was hard with knotted muscles and his long, unkempt hair was wild, something I also appreciated.
Given how heavily he was breathing, I surmised that he must have run quite quickly and from a great distance to reach his queen when I
beckoned him. Such a good and loyal minion.
I stood up from my chair, leaning against the table and spreading my legs wide enough to pull the bottom of my skirt up past my knees. “Your queen needs you now.”
Saxon gazed at the place between my legs as though it were a cobra poised to strike. No doubt he could see that I was not wearing anything beneath the sparkling gown. He jerked back as if he were surprised just before an expression of desire overtook his countenance. Suddenly, he seemed like someone coming out of a daydream.
“Of course, my Mistress, anything you desire,” he muttered in a voice as hazy as his gaze.
As Saxon neared me with hesitant steps, I could feel Alaire’s eyes on my back.
Good, simmer in your anger, I thought to myself. Let it serve as a reminder that you can always be replaced… in every way.
Saxon paused, looking past me to Alaire. “Will the master be watching?” He hesitated a moment more before adding, “Or will he be participating?”
I leaned my head back to see Alaire’s reaction, which inadvertently exposed more of my bosom to his expressionless gaze. He let out a humorless chuckle and waved his hand desultorily. My hands balled into fists and my chest heaved in preparation to yell at him for being so casual about his queen being taken by someone else. But when Saxon dropped to his knees and I felt him pulling my dress up to my waist, my anger melted away. My sex positively tingled with anticipation. I felt Saxon’s hot breath against my nether lips, the moisture of his steaming tongue enhancing my own wetness.
My legs quaked as he licked and kissed my body’s moist slit. I threw my head back far enough to arc my back in a half-circle. The entire time, I looked at Alaire, my eyes taunting him. He stared back at me with contempt and, dare I say it? Boredom!
“Persephone, enough of this,” he finally uttered with some disgust. I was keenly aware that he never took his eyes off me. “If you so desire, I can take you to bed….”
Ignoring the “master’s” petulance while keeping my eyes locked on him, I told the man at my knees, “Mmmm, yes, my faithful servant, you must pleasure your queen.” I ran my hand through Saxon’s lengthy hair, grabbing two clumpfuls of it with my hands. “Keep going, don’t stop… don’t…”
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