“Ashla Townsend.”
“Ashla Townsend,” he repeated carefully. “I thank you for your help.” He paused just long enough to give her a chill. “You aren’t likely to see him again, Miss Townsend. I think I must be fair and warn you of that.”
“Why?” The query was heavy with petulance, but she was too shocked and upset by the news to measure her response. “Is he going to die or something?”
“It is possible, but unlikely,” he said, instilling no real confidence, and no false hope, either. Ashla appreciated that. It bore a mark of honesty she rarely saw, even if it gave her no comfort.
“But then why can’t he come back?” she wanted to know, inescapably realizing there were depths of secrets going on between these three men that they didn’t want her to be any part of. Trace hadn’t willingly wanted to leave her, no, but neither had he taken the option of bringing her with him.
They didn’t want her there, wherever there was.
“It takes time to heal from this, and his mind and body will be too fragile for travels back this way. However…”
Whatever he was going to say, he dismissed it after a moment with a shake of his head.
“Hey, look,” she sniffed with a shrug of bravado as she turned her head to stare away from him, and, even more pointedly, away from Trace, “I don’t expect anything. I just foolishly hope for the impossible. I guess I’m masochistic like that. Excuse me.”
Ashla moved away quickly, hurrying to snatch up enough of her clothes to make herself decent before she scurried for the doors. She couldn’t stay there and watch them drag Trace away from her, knowing all the while that she had made it possible—even if it was for the best. And she couldn’t stay alone in the suite that was redolent with the heady smell of their frantically paced sex. She simply could not bear to find herself once more plunged in solitude, yet with reminders of living with Trace all around her. Even if it had only been two days, they had been the first days in a blend of seemingly endless time that had stood out and claimed themselves wildly different from the others. Everything about them, and the man who had marked them and her as his, had been full of a color and dimension that she had never known before, and that she might not ever know again by the sound of Magnus’s warnings.
However, in spite of her preemptive efforts, Ashla would discover the excision taking place was going to be much, much more difficult for her than she had feared.
Chapter 10
It was like a knife that had been plunged through the back of his skull was being slowly pulled free, with jolting jerks every now and again as the tightness of the bone around the blade hindered its removal. He was hot, burning with the purposeful searing of the dual forges on either side of him that first made him sweat and then boiled the sweat so it would burn as it rolled down the length of his skin. It was “black” fire, a fire made of chemically treated wood that burned with dark flames. It had been discovered back in the times before technology, a way of keeping the Shadowdwellers from freezing to death as they were forced to live in places where winter lived the longest, bringing nighttime with it for twenty-four hours a day at times. They could keep warm without poisoning themselves and burning to a crisp just from the ambient light flames gave off.
The fire’s true purpose, of course, was to heat the metal chains attached to the manacles that kept him bound to the floor by his wrists, upper arms, thighs, and ankles. He had been forced into a position of subservience, the stone floor digging into his knees and shins until they were raw and numb, but in the grand scheme of things it was the least notable discomfort.
“You are a traitor,” that persistent voice whispered from a place close behind him that he could not see. “A fascist who thinks he can twist our people under the dictatorial rule of two pretty little puppets. But they are without you now, faltering and crying out for direction and”—the laugh came with bitter humor—“left only with a half-blind woman to guide them! Poetic, don’t you think?”
“Rika has more sight in her smallest finger than an anarchist like you will ever know in all of your days,” he ground out in defiant reply, even though it meant speaking with dehydrated and painfully smoke-and heat-seared vocal cords.
“So loyal. Such a good dog.” The obligatory hand came out to pat him on the head in two sharp movements that didn’t hurt, but hardly qualified as kind or encouraging.
The sound of light fabric sweeping the floor helped him track movement until his captor finally stepped into his visual range, limited by the blinders mask he wore. It was made of leather and rivets, its only purpose to rob him of a key sense, leaving just enough so he could see the tableau of tortures that might befall him where they were set out in an array straight in front of him.
He watched the slide of a slipper and the light flutter of paj under her skirt as she came just that far. She never came into full view, never showed her face, and it was an effective frustration. Trace wanted a face to attach his fury to. He had never wanted anything so badly in all of his life.
Except for Ashla. She has skin like a soft dream, so smooth and warm that even the flaws of her healing wounds could go unnoticed. She has a scent I crave, and a taste bordering on the divine. My body aches for her even now, with a more savage heat than either of these forges could rival.
“Perhaps I should reward you for your devotion,” she mocked, bending close behind his ear to speak to him in an enticing voice. “What do you suppose you deserve?” Her hand drifted down his neck, forcing him to grit his teeth as his skin crawled in revulsion. He was tied too tightly to successfully shake her off, and he had learned not to waste his energy. In spite of himself, she was training him to act exactly as she wanted him to. The idea of that did far more damage to him than all her devious little tortures did, but he supposed she already knew that. She knew that destroying his mind was the ultimate path to destroying him.
“You know,” she purred as her teeth bit the rim of his ear, “if you and yours lose the war, it leaves me the option of doing whatever I want to you in the end. Of course, even if it doesn’t end, in a year or so you will pass out of usefulness anyway. I mean, by then your information will be obsolete or I will have turned you into my personal pretty little lapdog. I like to say without ego that I have faith in the latter.” Trace felt long, elegantly manicured nails running down his spine, the bitch’s natural talons on his skin a disgustingly familiar sensation by now. Her touch was meant to be seductive, slow, and searching as it ran back up over his sweat-slick skin.
Seductive is Ashla’s touch, the way her hands tremble with her excitement! Ingenuous and shy, her fair features flushing pink with pleasure—that was irresistible seduction! To be tortured with the promise of that for the rest of my days; there would be the power to tame me to a woman’s side. And I have barely begun to know her, to feel her. I could barely pause for breath, she so excited me, never mind taking the time to do everything…
…everything I should have.
“What are you thinking?” his captor asked with genuine and hungry curiosity. “That expression of distress, it was out of place and not of my doing. Tell me, what were you thinking? I speak of war, betrayal, and death, and you don’t even flinch. I speak of breaking you and torturing you and a dozen other torments, but you just grit your teeth in preparation. Now, out of nowhere, that painfully poignant expression, eyes downcast, and…is it regret clouding those onyx eyes, Ajai? Yes, I believe it is. What is it you regret, Ajai Trace? Your choices? Your life? That you sacrificed living it for this vain little war of yours? That you may die without spawning a single child to carry on the pride of your family? That you never took a woman to your heart and home?”
Her nails slowly curled under her palm against his spine, and Trace stiffened as the true claws came out. Like a ninja’s metal crampons, these strapped around her palm, leaving an exposed set of metal tines that curved up from the back of her hand in four stainless steel blades he knew were sharp enough to cut, but not sharp enough to ma
ke the cut painless for even a second. A good blade, a sharp blade, severed nerves so quickly and with such precision that you felt nothing for a decent amount of time. But a slightly duller blade…
The tips of the tines nipped into his skin. He couldn’t see, but he could feel from experience that she was avoiding the scarring from the last time she had plowed furrows up the length of his back. The scarring dulled the local nerves, and she simply wouldn’t have it. She wanted to be sure every nerve was fresh and raw and ready for her. Trace’s hands curled into fists as he braced himself against inevitability.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” she whispered softly, her breath cool against his hot skin. “Tell me to stop. No information or begging or anything like that is necessary. Just tell me to stop and I will.”
She pushed her fist forward and the blades punctured his skin. The sound of his teeth grinding together joined the hard crack of burning wood and the roar of flames. Now it was no longer sweat, but beads of blood welling from his skin and rolling down his back. He didn’t need to see it to know it.
“If you don’t, you might start to convince me that you take pleasure in pain of this magnitude. There is no reason not to ask me to stop. You are simply being stubborn or you are truly a masochist. If the latter is the case, then perhaps I should be—”
She abruptly slid her free hand under his arm around his ribs, the crampon on the back of that hand scraping the underside of his arm as she did this, and he felt her kneeling behind him to improve her reach. When her hand rode down the plane of his belly on a direct path, he tensed violently against his bonds. She always kept him nude, so it was easy for her to wrap her fingers around his flaccid sex. The blades on the back of her fist nipped and bit against his thigh, but he doubted it was an oversight on her part. She did nothing without purpose. Nothing without plan. His torturer was quite clever and accomplished and took great joy in her work.
“Hmm,” she mused. “Let’s see if you really are a masochist.”
Blades furrowed slowly into his skin, and she had gone only a couple of centimeters before Trace gave out and let himself roar with pain.
“Ajai Trace!”
Trace awoke with a clawing gasp, the violent memory burning him straight through even as he emerged in a completely different reality. He reached out to either side blindly, grabbing for whatever he could, and found himself caught in two sturdy clasps of strong flesh that felt familiar and grounding all at once. By the time he calmed enough to focus, he could see Guin and Magnus leaning over him with dreadful grimness and frank unease in their eyes.
“You’re going to be sick,” Magnus predicted quietly, already reaching to help him sit up even as Trace felt the sudden onrush of violent nausea wrenching through him like an invading alien force. With his companions supporting him and a handmaiden providing a basin, Trace fulfilled Magnus’s prophecy.
Karri, Magnus’s handmaiden, quickly left to hand off the basin for another, this one filled with a wash sprinkled with a fresh mixture of herbs and oils in it. She submerged a cloth and then gently bathed his face, neck, and chest. The aroma of the herbs instantly quelled his rebelling belly, and Trace took in his first easy breath in what felt like ages.
A distinctive jarring sensation went through them all, rocking everyone. Trace looked at the narrow room they occupied with widening eyes.
“Are we on the road?” he demanded, his throat scratching harshly against the words.
“For about two nights now,” Guin confirmed.
“Two nights?” Trace turned, trying to jerk free of supporting hands even as he kicked for leverage against the mattress of the bed they had him in. “Where are we?” he demanded.
“Canada.”
Canada.
North. They were heading north. They had been all along, ever since lighter days had hit New Zealand. The entire royal household was migrating to Alaska via New York after a…
“The conference,” he said. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember it?” Magnus asked.
“I was there?” Trace felt a little ill again as he tried to mine his mind for the missing memory.
“Yes. It was somewhat forgettable. However, do you remember what happened afterward?” Guin asked him. “With Baylor?”
Baylor.
Ajai Trace, word is that the Chancellor’s vizier is not content with the immaturity with which his lord is managing the power of the realm…that perhaps you wish to see that change so we’re not managed forever by a man who is little more than an adolescent at heart…or by the hand of a woman.
“Sedition,” Trace whispered, just as he had barked it at Baylor right before he had drawn his weapon. He had reacted with emotion, destroying a chance to infiltrate the seditious vein that might be running through the Senate. It had been a foolish and illogical move, but there were times when Trace’s mind clicked on reactive cylinders held over from the wars. They were not even a decade out of those conflicts, after all. Almost, but not quite. They had fought amongst one another for centuries, bitching and bickering and scrabbling in territorial wars and such, but the actual blade-to-blade and death-to-death war had lasted twenty years. It was a long time to live at the hub of every plot, every battle, and every defensive strategy. It would be many more years before veterans like him stopped carrying multiple weapons around with them.
His eyes tracked the closest walls near the bed, and sure enough, his katana stood propped in the corner, shining with readiness. To see it was to unlock the memory of the brutal fight with Baylor that had almost cost him his life if not for—
“Ashla! Where is Ashla?”
“Where you left her, my son,” Magnus said quietly, “in New York.”
Ashla. He had left her behind. The strange little wraith who had healed him in a dire moment, proving herself to be more dimensional than any real human he had ever encountered. She had felt warm to the touch, defying all rules of humans in Shadowscape, and had smelled like…
Sex.
Trace felt shock stiffening his body from his feet upward, as if he had stepped barefoot into liquid nitrogen. In a rush of physical sensation and nerve impulses, everything he had felt from the moment he crossed the room to kiss her the first time came crowding over him, making him struggle for breath and composure in front of his colleagues and father.
No! No, you Light-ridden bastard, you did not do this! Tell them to tell you that you didn’t do this! You didn’t take that fragile and innocent woman to bed knowing it was nothing! That she could have nothing to comfort her, nothing of you to keep beyond those two days because you would never go back! Even if it wasn’t actually real, her mind and her heart, wherever they are, believed it was all real. To take her and then abandon her would seem so cold and callous; so insulting. It could play like light cutting into darkness with her frail ego. With the things a mind as powerful as hers is capable of, a resulting depression amidst so much isolation could be enough to…
“Kill her,” he choked out, starting to struggle in the others’ hands. “Let me go!”
They did so almost instantly, and Trace lurched for the nearest route out of bed. He made it only a foot off the mattress before he was yanked back by his wrists. It was only then he realized he was bound in soft restraints at his wrists and ankles.
There was no measure to the black fury the understanding sent pumping through him.
“You bound me?” The betrayal, the utter disgust in the phrase slapped hard at both men, and they exchanged troubled looks. “You are damn right to look like the miserable, treacherous bastards you are!” Trace roared at them. “How dare you bind me, after knowing what I went through at that sadistic bitch’s hands? How can you stomach yourselves to do such an unholy act? You know! You know I can’t bear this!”
But before he could begin ripping at the cursed leather and lambskin bindings in earnest, Magnus stepped up to him and took his shoulder under his hand. He held firm to avoid being shrugged off, and closed his eyes to the ou
tright panic rushing into the eyes of his son.
“You were in Fade for three days, Trace,” he said in low, level tones as his special power bled through to Trace, working its magic on him with the quick, ruthless strength the religious man was known for. “Truth is Light,” he warned softly, “and it has a vicious burn.”
Burn it did, searing through Trace’s healing mind, now that it could be reasoned with. Only then did the full scope of his time with Ashla make impact, forcing him to understand that the awful truth of what he had done was far worse than he had originally recalled.
He had become a brigand in the worst sense, stealing what he had wanted, taking everything and selfishly giving nothing. He had been weak, crossed a line he shouldn’t have, and then had made it worse and worse with every greedy touch, every inconsiderate invasion into her. Now he remembered each wince of pain, each plea to rest, and each and every one of the aborted pleasures he had made her suffer while single-mindedly taking his own.
“No,” he ground out in disbelief and tortured guilt, which forced Magnus’s power of truth to kick him hard into a rush of confirming memories.
He heard himself begging her with need, felt the glorious redemption he had experienced via his lust every time he had plunged into her. What was perhaps even worse was the understanding that he had promised devotions and unceasing need for her right up to the moment he had forced her to turn against him in order to rescue him. He had been as an animal, intemperate and untamed. He had abandoned skill to biological imperative. He had used and abused a woman who had already been used and abused enough.
Promise me…
The phrase whispered through him just as he reached his worst moment of self-loathing.
Promise me…that you’ll come back to me. Even if it’s just once to tell me you’re okay. Please…
Magnus lowered himself to a single knee beside the bed, leaning in to speak softly in guidance, as was his calling when it came to the truth. “Truth, like faith, can be a raw thing or it can have a great many layers to it…some too subtle or too ethereal for us to grasp on our own. Guilt and loathing of the self is too easy, Trace. For you, at least. Slow yourself. Take a moment.” Magnus glanced up to see Guin had long since taken himself to the farthest dark corner in the small room, and Karri was keeping at a discreet distance as well, allowing the priest the privacy needed to do his work with Trace. “You are not a man who easily allows others to see your thoughts or emotions. Not that you are cold or repressed, as I sometimes fear Guin is, but that your experiences have taught you in hard ways not to give away such an advantage to others.
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