by Sara Thorn
“The only one pathetic here is you,” I hissed.
Athan seemed to find my insolence amusing. He pushed Dregon’s hand away from me and led me to his bedroom instead. As I walked alongside Athan, I wished that I was just going back with Dregon. At least he was the kind of evil that I could see, not one disguised under the attractive wrappings of someone I used to trust.
When we got to his bedroom, he closed and locked the door behind us, and panic started to grow within me. Cassius was gone, Quinn was chained-up in the great room, and Sen was dead. I had no one left to rescue me from Athan, aside from myself. He reached for a pile of deep-red velvet draped across his bed and handed it to me.
“I think that this will suit you much better than the slave garb Dregon put you in the last time you were here,” he said. His smile looked carnivorous as he stared at a place on my body somewhere below eye-level. “You won’t be sleeping on the floor anymore, either. You’ll sleep in my bed with me.”
I felt like I was going to be sick. “Am I supposed to be grateful to you for these things?” I asked as I took the dress from his hands and immediately threw it onto the floor between us.
“I don’t care if you’re grateful or not,” he said. “But you will be obedient.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You will be if you want to see Cassius.”
He held my stare and knew that it was something I couldn’t refuse. He was right. By letting him see how much Cassius and I had begun to care about each other, we had given him every leverage that he needed to undo us.
“Now put on the damn dress. I want to see what it looks like on you.”
***
The velvet dress was the deep-red color of fresh blood. It made me think about what Cassius had said regarding bloodlust, and I wondered how long Athan could go before needing to feed on the human who was now commanded to share his bed. The dress was thick and soft, and it hugged every curve of my body. The bodice plummeted into a deep V-neckline, which pushed my breasts together on either side of my cleavage and dropped nearly to my belly button, leaving a long strip of exposed skin that ran down my torso. The sleeves were capped and reached only to the top of my shoulders, where tiny strands of black beads then cascaded onto the tops of my arms. The plush fabric wrapped around me and dropped all the way down to the floor so that when I walked, it was difficult not to catch the dress beneath my feet.
Athan gave me a pair of shoes, too, a steeply heeled pair of black leather boots. They were my favorite part since the first thing I imagined when I looked at them was the thought of planting one of the heels straight into his eye socket and watching his eyeball pop like a grape that was squeezed between your fingers too hard. I thought—as he watched me dress—that he mistook my slight smile as some small enjoyment of the gifts he had given me, when in fact, I despised all of it so much that I was looking forward to tearing it all off and running away naked as long as it got me out of here.
“Beautiful,” he said as if he appreciated a curated work of art when he looked at me. He walked behind me, and I could feel his vile breath against the back of my neck. His hands swept against my shoulders as he lifted my hair and piled it into some sort of twist on the top of my head, affixing it there with a jeweled clip and letting stray pieces fall against my open chest.
“Now we’re ready,” he said.
“Ready for what?”
“To go see Cassius.”
My heart began to race, and I tried not to look so eager that he changed his mind about taking me to see Cassius in some sort of cruel taunt. I couldn’t stop my heartbeat from speeding up, though, and I think he noticed.
“This is going to be so enjoyable,” he sneered.
I followed behind Athan quickly as we walked down the corridors toward wherever he was keeping Cassius. I tried not to trip over the lengths of velvet that kept rolling under my feet on the floor. I expected that he would be holding Cassius in one of his prisons, but instead of going farther down into the dungeons, we stopped in front of what looked like just another bedroom. Athan pulled a key from his pocket and pushed open the door, letting me walk inside ahead of him as he closed the door behind us.
I clasped my hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming when I saw Cassius. He was naked and on his knees, each arm and leg spread apart and chained to either the wall or the floor with thick, metal shackles. His dropped head looked up when I walked in, and he immediately saw the horror on my face.
“It’s okay, Mara,” he said to me in a taxed voice. “I’m all right.”
Athan laughed from behind me. “If this is your version of being all right, you have a lot to aspire to.”
I ignored Athan completely and dropped to my knees in front of Cassius. He was bloodied and battered, and I could see his muscles spasming from being strung up. I held his head against my chest and buried my face against the top of his head.
“Let him go,” I snarled at Athan through my tears. “Let him go, and I will do what you want.”
“But this is what I want,” Athan said with delight. “Seeing my bastard half-brother hanging here and you sobbing over him, which makes him even more upset, I am sure; this is exactly what I relish in.”
“Think again about who the bastard is amongst the two of us,” Cassius said under his breath.
I heard Athan make an indignant snorting sound.
“Touch him,” he said to me.
“What?”
“You heard me, touch him,” Athan pointed toward the hulking cock that hung between Cassius’s open legs.
I stayed exactly as I was, cradling Cassius’s head against me and refusing to do anything for a show in order to appease Athan’s perverse delights. I could see that my inaction was starting to irritate him.
“You can do as I say, or I can call in someone else to do it for me. I can promise that they will be much less gentle than you, though.”
My blood was churning in my veins with rage and disgust. Athan was doing this for no other reason than to torment Cassius. He knew deep inside the pit where his heart should be, that Cassius was the rightful leader of the vampire clans and that he would always be a stronger ruler and a threat to him. He was no better than a schoolyard bully but much, much more powerful than one.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into Cassius’s ear. There was nothing I could do but comply or risk Athan harming him further.
I ran my hand softly down his torso and then between his legs. Even in his current condition, he couldn’t stop himself from reacting to my touch. Maybe it was the bloodlust that he had explained to me before that made his body unable to control itself, or maybe it was the fierce desire that burned inside of both of us for each other. It didn’t matter what it was; it happened anyway. I felt Cassius press his face into my chest as he tried to both feel and not feel my hand around him. A moan so soft that only I could hear escaped his mouth between us. I didn’t move my hand; instead, I just held my fingers around him, trying to make the touch as easy for him to bear as possible. But even just holding him made him swell and throb in my grasp. My breath started to catch in my throat as I wanted more than anything just to be away from here and to ease his suffering by bringing him inside of me. I would have stayed there in that frozen position all day and night just to be with him.
“Perfect,” Athan said once he was satisfied that Cassius had been aroused to a state of torment. “My turn.” He wrenched me backward so sharply that I fell onto my butt against the ground. Cassius looked up with a pained expression as he watched Athan kneel beside me right in front of him and just out of his reach even if he hadn’t been chained.
I sat on the cold ground with my palms against the floor behind me to keep me from falling any farther back. As soon as Athan reached his hand to cup the side of my breast against my dress, I knew what he was trying to do. I pushed his hand away, but he grabbed me again, this time reaching his fingers inside the velvet fabric of my bodice and pinching my nipple between his fingers.
“Get off of her,” Cassius howled as he pulled against the chains that bound him.
Athan moved to straddle me on the floor and pushed against my collarbone until my back was flat against the ground. I stared up at him with vehement disdain as he used his other hand to rub himself until he could show Cassius that he was aroused and ready to take me. The sound of snapping bones and rattling chains filled my ears while Cassius pulled against his restraints.
“I will kill you,” he snarled at Athan with the most poisonous tone I had ever heard come out of his mouth. “I will cut you piece by piece, one chunk of flesh at a time if you touch her.”
“Seems to me that I already am touching her,” Athan derided. “But, you’re right. I don’t want to get too carried away here in front of you, brother. After all, I’m not planning on sharing this delight with you.”
Athan stood up and then pulled me up by my arm alongside him. My shoulder popped out of its socket, but the only pain I felt was the acute stabbing in my chest in response to what had just happened. Cassius stared at me helplessly and looked like a feverish animal ready for slaughter as Athan pulled me out of the room with him. I could hear Cassius’s screams of rage echo throughout the halls as we left.
When we got back to Athan’s room, I prepared to have to fight him off of me in any way possible. He would not have me. I would die trying to prevent it if I had to. But to my surprise, he released my arm and then poured himself a drink and sat down at a small table near his bedside. I stood in the doorway with my heart pounding in my ears. People talk about fight or flight mode, and I was pretty sure I was experiencing both options simultaneously.
“Care for a drink?” he asked as he held a glass out toward me.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked without moving.
“Nothing.
“But I thought—”
“That was for Cassius’s benefit only,” he said. “Not mine. I have no intention of violating you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I stepped forward and took the drink from his hand, only because I needed something to calm my nerves before I had an aneurysm. I sat down at the table across from him and realized something that I hadn’t fully understood before this moment. The only way not to lose at this game Athan was playing was to join it.
“So even if I agreed to make love to you, you would still not have me?” I asked.
“No. I, nor any other vampire, should ever have sex with a human. I’m sure you’re aware of what can happen.”
“You’re referring to the creation of dhampir?” I asked, remembering that Athan wanted only pure-blooded vampires in his vision for a new world.
“Yes.”
“So all of that was simply to torture Cassius.”
“Yes.”
“And how long are you planning to torture him before you either decide to kill him or let him go?” The question burned at my mouth at the mere thought of it.
“Until he dies a most agonizing and tormenting death, strung-up against my wall in a delicate balance of painful and agonizing pleasure. Until he begs me for death, or until he begs you for death. You see, Cassius may be the dhampir atrocity, but I am the monster.”
Chapter Seven
For the next few days, Athan seemed too busy with his plans for dominion to have time for more afflictions of torment to wield upon Cassius and me.
I stole away at every moment that I could to go sit with Cassius and comfort him. I snuck sponges to wash him, and water flasks and food to nourish him, beneath the folds of my dress. I sat and held him, and it seemed to be the only moments of sleep that he could capture when his head was against my chest. I couldn’t bear to watch him endure another moment chained to this wall as his body began to stiffen from fatigue. His endurance was waning, and I had to do something before it was too late to save him. The only thing I could think of was to try to get to Quinn for help, although I wasn’t sure how much help he could offer considering his current situation as well.
I waited for a moment when Athan had gone to speak with Dregon, and then snuck silently into the great room where Quinn was being held. As soon as he saw me, his eyes darted around the room, and he whispered a warning for me to leave.
“What are you doing here?” he said in a hushed voice. “You can’t be seen talking to me; you need to leave.”
“Not until you help me,” I said. “Cassius is going to die. He can’t last much longer here; I need to get him out.”
Quinn held up his wrists to show me the shackles burned relentlessly against his flesh. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said.
When I looked at his hands, I saw that the tips of his fingers were a deep blackish purple. I lifted up his fingers carefully as the smell of burnt flesh wafted beneath my nose.
“What did this to you?” I asked.
“Shadow magic,” he said. “Athan has enslaved me into his personal service and is using my unique abilities to wield shadow magic for him. I’m one of the only fae with practice in the art of such magic, and it’s a power that he’s never had access to before.”
“And the magic is what did this to your fingers?”
“No, it’s what Athan has had me do with the magic that has corrupted my flesh. Just like you heard me say to Cassius, there’s a cost to atone for with every magical transaction. Some are a fair exchange, while others will rot you from the inside out.”
“Is it reversible?” I started to panic again. Now both Quinn and Cassius were in danger of dying. We had to get out of here.
“Not in the way you would understand.”
I wanted to ask him to explain what that meant, but I heard footsteps coming toward the room, so I backed up and quickly sat down in one of the chairs at the long table at the center of the great room.
“Mara,” Athan said as he entered the room with Dregon. “I’m surprised to see you here.” He eyed Quinn, who was standing perfectly still and looking down at his charred ankles.
“I was waiting for you,” I lied.
“I find that hard to believe,” Dregon huffed.
Athan laughed and brushed his comment aside. “Oh, I don’t know. Some women like a powerful, albeit cruel, man to bend to.”
I thought to myself about how much I would enjoy watching Cassius rip Athan apart someday.
Athan came around the table and brought brandy to both me and Dregon, who had seated himself several chairs away from me. I guess he didn’t trust himself not to want to strike me again and needed to put some space between us to keep from giving in to his impulse.
“You guys sure do drink a lot,” I remarked as I took a sip of the sweet, stinging brandy.
It was barely afternoon, but I supposed being a vampire meant that days and nights were of no concern. The passing of time meant little when you were an immortal who lived in the dark. Apparently, I was of no consequence as the two of them continued the conversation they had started outside this room and ignored me completely.
“The pure-blooded lineage will need to be combed through with precision,” Athan said to Dregon across the table. “Once the last few remaining dhampir have been killed off, there will be no more talk of this prophesy which has become the bane of my existence.”
“I don’t know why you gave it so much space in your head to begin with,” Dregon chastised. “To think that a dhampir could one day unite both the mortal and supernatural worlds is a ridiculous notion. To believe that your brother would be this such chosen one and rule over all of existence as king was just simply stupid.”
“Careful,” Athan said as he looked over the edge of his glass at Dregon.
That was my first hint at the discord that might be between them, possibly enough to sew mistrust and turn Athan against Dregon. Athan didn’t like being challenged, no matter from whom.
“I would be a fool not to elimin
ate Cassius at the mere possibility that it could be him. What kind of ruler would allow a threat to remain, no matter how small the truth of it might be?”
“You’re right,” Dregon apologized. “Forgive me.” He may have sounded repentant, but the look in Dregon’s eyes said otherwise. It reeked of the things he had told me previously while I was under his service, the things about rising against Athan when the time presented itself and taking rule for himself.
This was something that I could use and quite possibly find our way out of here.
“Can I have a different dress?” I interjected randomly into their conversation.
Both men looked at me in surprise.
“I didn’t think you cared much about material things,” Athan said skeptically.
“I don’t,” I said. “But this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I would be more comfortable in something new.”
Athan chuckled at that remark. “Of course, my lovely pet. But you realize that I will taint the next dress just the same when we go to visit your poor, anguished lover again later tonight. I’ve rather missed our little ritual of sexual angst.”
“Do what you want,” I replied with as much cold apathy as possible. “I just want a new dress.”
Athan laughed and stood up at the table as he offered me his hand.
“Where are you going?” Dregon asked, surprised that Athan would do something that I asked.
“To get the woman a dress,” he grinned.
***
“This one should suit you nicely,” Athan said as he pulled a thin, dark-blue silk camisole out from his closet.
I wondered how many women he had once kept in this room for there to be so many dresses hanging inside his own closet. I started to remove the red velvet and was actually glad to have something less cumbersome to walk around in, although changing dresses had nothing to do with what I was attempting.