“In their hesitation, I spilled their blood into the stone. Their monstrosity had become a curse. It had cursed the castle in which they had built their beastly kingdom to become a sepulcher, an altar to unbearable hunger and thirst. I have never seen so many of my kind turned as much animal as monster all at once.
“I did not venture further north to determine what ravages they had wreaked upon those kingdoms. They will one day be rebuilt when new conquerors brave the Jagged for new land, new glory. I contented myself with ridding the threat and leaving it open for new rulers to suffer whatever curses had seeped into the land from such violent desperation.”
He lowered his eyes, narrowing them in contemplation and grief. “They were pathetic creatures. Terrible things they had done, but they had done it only of necessity. We can become a blight to man as beetles are to crops, as locusts and rats and flies. We are a noble race, but like man, how low we can fall when what we need has been taken from us. I burned the bodies at a funeral pyre, for I saw myself in them, and I could only feel pity at such an unlikely mirror image.”
The king traced the point of his ears with his claws, ran his tongue over his teeth. Though his abstinence was a matter of will, it occurred to Asha that while he did not hate his hungering form, it might not have been the one he preferred to display.
“After searching the surrounding village for any sign of other creatures and finding nothing, I paid my last respects to all the lost kingdoms, then made haste with the wind at my back to return before emissaries were sent after me, before I could too distress my wife and my army with an extended absence…although it seems you fared well without me, despite such terrible deeds by those who should have known better. Rafe, have them bring in the elders. I would have words with them.”
“My pleasure, Your Majesty.” The captain bowed in assent, then beckoned to the wolves at the end of the banquet table nearest the audience chamber doors.
Lysan was one of the wolves who brought the elders into the chamber. The honored men of the kingdom were as chained as the prisoners whom the elders had brought with them to begin their ill-advised coup.
When the elders caught sight of the king—uncowled and unmasked—even the most florid of their faces went Grayling pale.
“Good evening, gentlemen. As you can see, accounts of my overthrow were greatly exaggerated, although the stories of my death are quite true.”
“My lord…” The chief elder tried to kneel in his shackles, while the other elders remained standing.
“Silence.” The king met them in the middle of the room, then directed Lysan and the other warrior leading them—a massive, scarred man with black hair like a mane—to force all of them to their knees.
Then the king placed his boot on the back of the chief elder, forcing him forward onto his hands and indicating that the others should do the same. Their collective paleness colored at such humiliation before a crowd. Perhaps humiliation before such a strange crowd added additional insult, to be shamed before those they would happily shame in the kingdom.
Not least their Grayling queen, who watched with the first stirrings of excitement to see her king debase them. It was wonderful for her to do it herself, yet oddly more invigorating when the king brought them low for her benefit as well as his. It was a gift as much as the knives he had given her, and she cherished it just as much.
“Have my servants been treating you well in your prison?” the king asked, pacing now in front of them. He never once stilled, lest they forget he could attack any of them at any moment.
“We believed you dead, Your Majesty,” the chief elder said. “When we determined that you had been eliminated by your army, we sought to correct the unnatural balance of power.”
“You sought my throne and the power and spoils that accompanied it. You waited for one sign of weakness, one crack in which to slither like an asp into my kingship to destroy the devil that keeps you within his claws. For how can such a pious kingdom claim piety when it is ruled by a demon, no? Is it a demon you see before you, gentlemen? Should I dispense punishment as a demon would?”
“No, Your Majesty.” The chief elder clasped his hands in imploration. The gazes of all the elders darted to the torture implements that filled the other side of the room. “Please, we sought to stop a coup, not start one. You have always been a generous king, giving us your protection, ensuring our prosperity, dispensing your wisdom, and all at such a small price in comparison to other kings of other kingdoms, with their taxes, drafts, meddling, and infantile tantrums.”
“Such a small price.” The king flexed his fingers in a fan of black claws that caught the firelight like onyx. “If only you realized the value of the women you threw to me as farmers toss slop to pigs. You wallow in your arrogance that you offered only crumbs to the demon and tricked him from taking the ones that glittered like jewels upon your arms. I think the jewelry you wear now far more appropriate for what you have made of yourselves and my kingdom.”
“We do not understand, Your Majesty,” the chief elder said. “We swore our loyalty to you. We create laws and enforce them for the good of our people, for order and moral fortitude. We thought you had been murdered, and we sought to punish the murderers.”
“By bringing your own murderers here and unleashing them upon my castle? What did you hope to accomplish by releasing those who had broken the most sacred of your laws? Did you hope to ‘save’ my servants and the objects of my castle with violent men? And did you hope to ‘save’ a king’s whore for your own bed? What value would you have added to her soul with your brand of saving, chief elder?”
Such quick shifts between blanching and flushing could not have been healthy for an older man, Tapestry or Grayborn.
“If you had brought men of law with you, perhaps you could have salvaged your excuse,” the king said with contempt. “But you brought prisoners, men who had committed terrible crimes that had earned them death sentences worse than execution in the town square—corrupted men you throw away to me as surely as you throw away innocent women. You brought prisoners to wreak bloody havoc upon stones that have drunk more blood than you can ever imagine. It was blood that I shed to nourish this land that I conquered—not you, nor your father, nor your grandfather, nor your grandfather’s grandfather. You thought you could steal it in blood, though by rule of law, it would have passed to my wife, who still lived and whom I personally selected to rule in my stead. Do you still claim innocence?”
The chief elder’s mouth moved, but he had been struck as dumb as his fellow elders, who stared up at their devil king with unshielded shock.
The king closed the chief elder’s mouth with his claw on the man’s chin. “I thought not.”
The chief elder strained backward from the deadly tip, but the king forced the black claw to dent the man’s flesh, then pierce through, just enough to draw drops of blood down into the inner curve.
The king hissed, baring his teeth when the scent of it struck. He turned his claw to capture the blood and keep it from falling, yet though he brought it to his mouth, he did not taste.
Instead, he turned to Asha and beckoned with his free hand. “Come to me, my queen, if you will.”
Asha clenched her hands in her lap, but his tender voice was like the gown against her skin—even the roughness was soft. The hint of suggestion caressed her cheek but did not penetrate. He did not demand that she put on a show for the elders as she had for most of her life; there was no need to impress any in the room, neither wolves nor elders. If he had intended to put on a show, this was the show he offered—that he, with all the power in the kingdom, would not command his queen before the elders, who had to obey his every word.
She did not hurry to him, and he did not impart urgency with the shift of his unbloody claws through the air to call her closer.
“You have tasted life, my love, have you not? They have seen you taste it before their eyes.” The king stroked the line of her cheekbone, before trailing his claws down her arm.
Without warning, he wrapped his arm around her waist to bring her hard against his hip, reawakening her heat with surprising haste. “By all accounts, it did not satisfy you as it does me, but did it offend?”
“I would not beg, my lord, but if you offer, I would not object,” Asha said.
He brought the slight cup of his claw to her mouth and tipped it down. The blood slid through the grooves to color her lower lip. She swiped her tongue across the drops—a little sweet, a little salty, unobjectionable if not irresistible.
The king’s own mouth parted, his black tongue darting between his teeth. In his eyes, she saw herself reflected, and beyond the reflection, his desire burned as his body could not. He stripped her of the gown and had her spread and moaning and bleeding and drinking for him in the imagination that danced just behind the darkness.
Inspired by his hunger, she leaned forward to take the entire length of claw into her mouth, risking the soft, vulnerable flesh inside. The smooth side slid over her blood-coated tongue. But when she pulled back again, the claw was free of anything but trace blood only he would be able to detect.
The king disregarded the elders to capture her mouth with his kiss, taking in the last remnants of blood, although she had swallowed most while his claw still threatened her tongue. He groaned to taste it on her, grasped her skirts to pull her against him with feral intensity she would expect from the captain rather than him. She cried out into the kiss, depending on his grasp to keep her upright when the rigidity of her spine seemed to melt.
“Whore.”
The king took his time breaking the kiss, deliberate in his reluctance as he slowly released his possession of her mouth, ensuring nothing of her had escaped his touch. He turned a furious gaze to the chief elder, who apparently had learned nothing of keeping hold of his own tongue when he had watched hers in such danger.
“Wife,” the king corrected. “A wife whose sensual indulgence you coveted only yesterday. Hypocrisy, not righteousness, chokes you now, chief elder. I have seen and heard enough to determine my queen and my captain passed fair judgment—for you to take the place of the prisoners you would have given to me, had you adhered to our pact. Those prisoners satiated the appetites of my warriors. You shall satiate my wife’s appetites in those poor souls’ stead, once she has transformed into a monster to make you shiver in fear as much as desire. I eagerly anticipate sampling your fear upon her lips, gentlemen.”
“No, no…”
“Please, I beg of you…”
“Your Majesty, if you would just…”
“Silence,” the king said again, cutting through the protests like a sword. “Friends, take them back to the dungeon, where they shall live out their abbreviated days. Have the servants keep them healthy, and no more.”
“Please! I have a wife…”
“I have sons…”
“I have a daughter if you…”
The king bared his teeth. “Were your numbers not severely diminished from what my queen will crave when she finally changes, I would slice each of your throats to end your pathetic, impotent whimpering. Take them away.”
Lysan and the other wolf grabbed the ends of the chains to drag the elders when they did not contribute to their own sentence. Though a dozen men, the wolves dragged them without effort down the length of the carpet before the burn of the fabric against the elders’ skin proved too unpleasant and some struggled to stand. But by the time they reached the stone flags in the corridor, it was too late for them to accept their fate with dignity. The wolves moved too quickly, and they had not the time to gain purchase.
It pleased Asha to watch them trip, crawl, slide like weak animals over cobblestones. It pleased her even more when the wolves took them beyond her sight.
The king appeared troubled as he turned on his heel to make his way back to his throne. The captain followed him at the king’s pace. Asha trailed more slowly.
The captain knelt before the throne again as soon as the king stepped onto the platform. “Do you expect a larger-scale mutiny from your kingdom, Your Majesty? You long suspected that they spied upon you, but they have confirmed eyes upon the castle, if not within it. Do you believe it is yet time?”
“No.” The king lowered himself onto the throne, the ridge of his brow still furrowed. “A handful of bureaucrats does not equal an uprising, and you handily eliminated the most dangerous men of the kingdom when you consumed the prisoners. There is a reason I do not call my kingdom to arms. They should not be able to defend themselves, or else they would have no need for me to defend. I have made good on my word, and they have not quite breached theirs. The voice of the leaders is not the voice of the people. Were people to take their cue from the elders to march upon my fortress, then this earth I have claimed would consume more bloodshed. For now, I and the earth are sated with peace. Yes, Asha?”
Asha stood before the platform, cognizant of the captain’s gaze ambivalent upon her as he remained on his knee. “It does not distress you that I bit the throat out of a man before formally sentencing the rebels? Or that I permitted the wolves to eat the men they saved me from rather than preserve them for my transformation?”
“Of course not. We might have to find you other men and women to consume, which means that the next time the wolves return, they may need to sacrifice some of the prisoners of war who choose to martyr themselves. Your short reign has been fierce and fair, little Ashling. Such ferocity no longer suits me as it once did, but I would gladly defer to you should you wish to swing a blade in the future, supposing the elders in my dungeon are not the first to test the waters of revolution.”
A growl vibrated through her feet. If the king felt it—and she had no reason to suspect he could not—it did not worry him. If anything, the gentle curve of his lips widened slightly.
“And the executioner?” she said. “You do not mind that I broke his face and permitted your captain to puncture his festering cock to keep him civil?”
“Are there any other encounters you would share to whet my appetite for you more, wife?”
“Does it distress you that I have taken other lovers while still your queen? You have said that it does not, but…”
“The only distress caused is that I could not witness these last few weeks for my own eyes. They are forever lost to me. It causes me physical pain that I could not participate in your thorny growth, my winter rose, that I could not nurture your bloody fervor as I do theirs.”
“There is still time.” Asha stepped onto the platform, a rare moment when she could look down upon her king rather than feel so much smaller and more delicate. Even while he sat, she was eggshell porcelain in comparison, but his easy slouch and warm attention made him seem deceptively nonthreatening in comparison to her chilly formality. “There are still things I have not done, my lord. Things only you can do to me.”
“Yes,” he replied quietly. “Many things you have not yet done. A few that only I can offer.”
Asha grasped the jeweled handle of her dagger and slid it from its sheath. She ran the wicked edge against her lip where he had offered her human blood, down the line of her throat, then over the velvet without cutting the fabric. She stopped it before it could trail beyond her navel, catching the very tip with her finger as her tongue had caught his claw.
She cut across her fingertip. Her eyelids fluttered with the pain, although it was not as stinging as it would be when her flesh finally realized it had been rent. She had dug longer marks into her skin with her own nails before, and both tooth and claw had reached deeper. Nothing compared, however, to the way the king’s body subtly changed from relaxed to predatory in the matter of a heartbeat. His mouth appeared wet when his lips parted, saliva clinging to his teeth.
Asha cleaned the blade against her white fingers and replaced it at her side. Relishing his avid attention, she squeezed wells of blood from the small wound and smeared her thumb and third finger against the liquid to spread it until her hand appeared partially gloved.
Then s
he outstretched her hand to him, as he had offered his claw. “Will you take my blood, my lord?”
The king did not move. Without breath, he could have been hewn from a lighter stain of black wood as the throne he sat upon.
“Do you understand what you ask of me? There is no turning back, Asha, not from my bite.”
“I can turn back from nothing, and I would not turn back from this. I almost begged for your teeth when you returned, when you finally kissed me. I would never have us apart again. I would have the mark of you with me until death. Or did I miscalculate? Have you no desire to mark my flesh, my lord?”
A drop welled on her downturned fingertip. The stem thinned, stretched, broke. The king darted his hand out almost faster than she could see to catch it in his palm.
“Such rubies should not be wasted, my queen.”
“Then do not waste them. It is not such a long distance between what we have already done and complete submission. Do you know why I give it to you?”
He lowered his head to his palm and caught the droplet with the pointed tip of his tongue. Closing his eyes with a groan, he surged from the throne.
Asha stumbled back, startled rather than afraid. “I give my submission to you because, with the single exception of the wedding, you never took it from me.”
“I would mark every inch of your skin with my teeth. I would cover you in red more thoroughly than any gown you could use to entice me. Fate willing, you shall bathe in blood that is not your own before you even turn.” The king grasped her arm with strength he might not have known he failed to restrain. Then he jerked her hand up to his face and closed his mouth around her bleeding fingers.
This time he was not there to catch her when her legs gave way. Asha fell to her knees before him, and he bent to keep her fingers in his mouth, bowing to her as she knelt to him.
He dipped over her fingers, his devotion to each drop of blood spilled a delicious perversion of what she had already done to debase herself to him. If this was half how it felt when a woman serviced a man, she could understand why some men only desired a woman on her knees. Yet she was on her knees now, and though her blood satisfied his hunger, there was no mistaking from the rake of his teeth, the attention of his tongue, the movement of his body, and the sounds that he made that there was another hunger unsatisfied.
Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3 Page 3