Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3

by Aurelia T. Evans

  Asha stared up at him, deliberately avoiding the sight of his cock, close though he had brought it to her. The ropes contained most of her trembling. “You speak so gleefully of what will happen to you first.”

  “There is more of me for the disease to feed upon. You have no such reserves.” He pinched her shoulder, where the king’s bites had left her tender. “No wonder the king forwent a casket. Perhaps he thought you were already dead.”

  “When he finds me, you will wish you were. You better kill me after you finish with me, Jace, because if he does not get here first, I will take care of you myself.”

  “Any man marrying you would have denied the kingdom the entertainment of watching the Gray take you, as insidious as the rot.” He ran his fingers along the length of a gray lock in her loose hair. “To kill you now would do the same. You are much more amusing alive than dead. It is the one regret many of us had when the king took you away. And now he has gifted us with you again.”

  “The king did not do this.”

  “Then who did?” Tumin interrupted.

  Jace covered his erection but did not replace it back in his trousers. Tumin wrinkled his nose in distaste.

  “Put that away, executioner. She is not for you.” Tumin stepped up into his elevated bedroom, brushing by the executioner as though wishing he was not there at all.

  “Not yet,” Jace said, though he could not conceal his pain as he stuffed his cock back behind the fastenings.

  “Not yet,” Tumin amended.

  Asha’s dim hope that the chief elder would regard her as a queen—even a figurehead queen—extinguished.

  “Your binding is solid. Leave now,” Tumin said.

  Jace clenched the hand out of Tumin’s sight into a fist. “But—”

  Tumin spoke over him. “Prepare your platform, executioner. Bring it to Snow Lily Square.”

  “But—”

  “You have a task to complete.” Tumin’s reptilian gaze sharpened into a weapon capable of taking on the executioner’s axe.

  Jace finally gave a short bow. “Your Excellency.” He backed off of the bedroom level, the sound of his footsteps fading on the way to the door.

  Tumin sat on the edge of the bed. The feather mattress dipped her slightly toward him, but he reached for one of his pillows and rolled her onto her side so that she could rest more easily facing him. “I apologize for that, Asha. Jace is quite capable in matters of physical labor and unpleasantries, and he knows how to treat a prisoner. But you are not a prisoner.”

  “I feel like one,” Asha said.

  “That is for my own protection. You are not a prisoner, but you are being detained, and you have a history of attacking those you perceive as a threat. As you have no reason to believe I do not mean you any harm, those ropes will remain until we are finished here and bars can hold you instead.”

  “But I am not a prisoner.”

  “You must be contained, Asha of the Gray. That is all. You are an unprecedented variable, my dear. Never has our devil king returned a queen. To the commoners as well as those of us in charge of his kingdom, your return brings uncomfortable questions.” The new chief elder folded his hands in his lap as though lecturing a child. “In rejecting his wife, is our arrangement forfeit? Did you, Asha, defraud us by claiming purity that the king discovered had already been taken? Does the king intend retribution?”

  “The king did not do this.”

  “So you keep saying.” Tumin stood to pace, carrying himself with awareness of the dignity of his profile, although it could hardly be to impress her. “What reason have you to make the claim?”

  “I do not know how I arrived in the marketplace square. I only know that the king would not have put me there.”

  “That is not proof. That is supposition. Even you, Grayling, should know that your assumptions do not constitute fact.”

  “If he had wanted to return me, he would have done so much sooner.”

  “Would he, now?” He turned, facing her squarely, the gentler lines of his face hardening. “Our sources suggest he might not be there at all.”

  Understanding stilled Asha’s subtle attempts to loosen the knots of the ropes around her wrists. “I see. You were not misinformed of his absence, chief elder, but you are behind on your information. He returned less than a week ago.”

  Tumin narrowed his eyes. “You call me ‘chief elder’ rather than ‘interim.’ Then Loren’s mission to investigate the king’s absence and assume control if the wrong element had taken over was not successful. Treason was not his intent, but does his heart yet beat?”

  “Treason was absolutely his intent, as it was for the elders who went with him and those who blessed his mission,” Asha replied. “But he still lives, for now. The prisoners you sent to fight your battle do not. The king’s army is as effective protecting me as they are protecting the kingdom. My congratulations on your promotion, chief elder.”

  “The king would have executed the prisoners anyway. We considered them an acceptable loss. The imprisonment of so many elders, however, is a tragedy. I do not suppose you have the authority to offer a pardon.”

  “I do have the authority. The king gave me the decision. Given they have not returned to you, you know how I chose. Someone had to replace the prisoners we lost.”

  “That was impulsive, Grayling.”

  Asha struggled against her bonds until Tumin came to help her upright. She side-eyed him for the aid, suspicious of his motivation, but she calmed as soon as they at least had the illusion of a civilized conversation. “It was not impulsive. It does not matter if I am a temporary queen or a queen in name only. I married your devil king, and I have no sons to take the crown from me. But the elders thought that, in the absence of a king, they had the right to come in and declare the chief elder king in his stead, while I would remain a queen of convenience alone. If it frightens you more that a Grayling holds authority than a devil, perhaps the kingdom should not so ostracize the women who may become queen and rule if the king suffers an untimely, unlikely death. You will not have your former chief elder returned.”

  Tumin considered his perfectly tended nails. “That is unfortunate.”

  “And I killed his vizier, so I hope you have one of your own.”

  “Now you see why I have you bound.”

  “It does not surprise you that I took a man’s life?”

  “You were always capable,” Tumin said. “Only a fool would consider your stature and relative weakness the sole qualities necessary to defend yourself. A rat no more the size of my foot can do considerable damage, even kill. I am no fool, Asha.”

  “I am nothing but a rat to you.”

  “Whatever you are, it is feral. You know your manners, Grayling, but you wield them like needles. I do not begrudge you your grudges. You are what you are, and it was not made to be loyal to the kingdom. But I have a responsibility to determine if our kingdom is at risk. If you do not believe the king is the cause of your sudden reappearance, I need to know what is.”

  “You are at risk the longer you keep me here. Take me to the castle with haste, and perhaps there will be no repercussions.”

  “If you do not know with certainty that the king is not responsible, I cannot do that,” Tumin replied. “I can wait for nightfall and no more. The devil only walks our streets after sundown, and I am patient. But if nightfall does not bring the king straight to you to retrieve his property, I have no choice.”

  “It only takes a few hours to ride to the castle. The servants will know me and admit me if the king wants me back.”

  Tumin pointed at her as though an accuser. “You say ‘if.’ Then you are not sure.”

  “I am unsure who brought me. But if the king wanted me gone, he would have told me. He said nothing of sending me back. We have cultivated affection, chief elder, not distance. Our marriage is no longer a reluctant one.”

  “That does not foster my trust, Grayling.”

  “You cannot serve a devil king, then conde
mn him for being a devil. Nor can you grow Graylings from children to become his wives, then condemn them for being wives,” she said coldly. “Your hypocrisy does you no credit.”

  “You know he plans to kill you.”

  “I am no fool either, chief elder. I would rather have the year with him than relieve the previous nineteen with all the people in this kingdom like you.”

  Tumin gazed upon her with suspicion, but she matched him blink for blink.

  “Would you like something to eat and drink? I can have the servant send something up to us. No silver for you, unfortunately, but you can tidy your hands afterward.”

  “Please.” She hoped that cold needle pricked deep.

  One of the guards unbound her arms only to tie her down to the chair at Tumin’s dinner table. After all the days eating at the king’s banquet table, it seemed odd to her that the table held itself up of its own accord. She bit back her comment. She doubted the elders were aware that men comprised much of the king’s furniture.

  A meal routine to her now, but rare indeed when last she was in the kingdom, arrived for her and the chief elder to share. He poured wine and served her the meat, potatoes, carrots, and slices of bread that he then served to himself. Suspicious though he was, he showed her utmost courtesy. Most elders would not have bothered with such niceties for a Grayling about to eat with her fingers.

  As soon as the chief elder had dismissed the guard and the servant, he sat down to his own meal. “If the king is not responsible for your reappearance—and I am not yet convinced that is the case—who do you think brought you here? Members of his army? His servants? Enemies of whom we are not aware?”

  “I fell asleep in my bed, chief elder, and I woke up on the stone. I do not remember whether I was transferred by foot, horse, carriage, or through the air on the wings of a demon. I have no memory of any plots against the king’s wife or the king himself. I doubt the king’s army had anything to do with it either. They had the king’s entire absence to throw me back to the Gray without his knowledge.”

  “Yet you are here. One of your assumptions about the king and his men must be erroneous.”

  “Or we do not have the full picture by looking only to the present inhabitants of the castle.”

  “Are there many who could have stolen into the king’s castle without his or his army’s or servants’ knowledge and taken you away?” Tumin asked.

  Asha chewed her beef. Every way she turned the puzzle with pure, cold logic, it all led back to the king as the architect of the mystery.

  But she had been taken from the castle after the king had shown well more than perfunctory affection for her and his captain. Jealousy would not have sent her from him. If he had wanted to keep her to himself, all he had to have done was forbidden her from other lovers, not encouraged her to acquire more varied carnal knowledge. If he had been displeased with her for any reason, he could have corrected her behavior or kept her at a cordial distance. And if the captain had resented her before, his actions from the last night suggested he had changed his opinion.

  There was one other possibility that nibbled and frayed the edge of her thoughts. It had the cadence of truth to hide an origin of fear, but when she ruminated upon it, nausea twisted in her belly.

  The king and the captain could have taken everything from her that they had wanted. The year from Longest Night could have been intended solely as a process of wearing a wife down until she had given the king and his captain everything, yielded everything. And she had finished uncommonly quickly.

  Perhaps she had failed some other test that she was not aware of taking, one that denied her the opportunity to become the monster her husband was or even the chance to have a wolf bite her into joining the warrior pack.

  The things that the king and the captain had said hurt when she remembered them, because she had to face the possibility that the men she had believed never hid unpleasant truth from her had lied from the very beginning, lied with every word they had spoken, every deed done.

  “No,” she replied quietly. “No one could have stolen me away without the king’s knowledge.”

  “Then you are not the lovesick fool I took you for. Lovesickness does wonders for your color, my dear, but you forsook such emotional blindness when you begged, and I had hoped you had not lost that quality with marriage.” Tumin took a generous drink from his chalice, his arrogance showing in his countenance once more in the curve of his mouth and the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, the way he looked down his nose at her.

  “You think he seduced me with deceit to win my heart as well as my soul before finding the worst way to destroy both.”

  “I think he is a devil, Asha.” His gentleness failed to subsume his patronizing tone. “You knew him to be a devil. You went into the marriage understanding you were a sacrifice to the demon with his clutches around this kingdom. We tolerate him because he is appeased with a single sacrifice in exchange for a year’s protection, but we do not forget what he is. We remain wary of him when he stalks our streets searching for his wife.”

  Asha laughed without smiling. “Why wary, chief elder? He does not stalk your streets. All your daughters are married well before Longest Night. It is our streets where we might glimpse him like a phantom, his robes striking a corner as he runs out of sight.”

  “After all the fear, how could you forget what he was? The devil can offer many things to a soul he wishes to be granted freely to him. He offers comforts, riches, even kindness, if it gets him what he wants.”

  “Then why throw me away? Why not keep me if I intended to give him what he most desired from me? Comforts, riches, kindness, he offered them all to me, and I…” She swallowed, as much in sorrow as discomfort in speaking it out loud. “I handed him my heart on a platter. If he was finished with me, why did he not just kill me like the others?”

  “Perhaps the devil has new games to play. Perhaps he intends you to live out the rest of the year here now that he has what he needs. No need to further entertain you or expend his energy to soothe your vulnerabilities.”

  “That is not adhering to the agreement he has with you. He promises to take an unwanted woman off your hands. I could hardly be the first woman to give him what he wants.”

  “And that is why you are in my quarters, Asha. To unravel the mystery of his motivation.”

  Asha shook her head. “No. You know the king only as a devil. You were not there with him these past few months, nor have you ever been with his people. Who would go to such lengths to harvest a worthless Grayling? Seducing me for a soul is a waste of energy. If I ever had one, I lost it long ago when stepping into a church to worship left furious emptiness in my chest at the lies spewed from the priest’s lips.”

  “A soul is a soul. It does not matter to him if it belongs to a Grayling daughter or a Tapestry son,” Tumin replied, although his troubled brow furrowed.

  “If the king is a devil, he is a poor one. Whether he is the devil or the creature I remember him to be, he would not have done this.”

  “You said yourself it could not have been done by any other.”

  “No other that I can name.”

  “Well, if the king was not responsible for your reappearance, he knows where to find you.” Tumin resumed his meal as though his appetite conquered what little disquiet he carried. “If he does not come for you at nightfall, we will know he orchestrated this unexpected return, and then we must decide what to do with you.”

  “Even if the king discards me, we were not divorced. I am still queen.”

  “You said it yourself—queen in name only. Your authority is what the king gives you. To discard you denies that authority, and a devil can divorce whenever he likes. He has no repercussions for breaking holy bonds. We would deal with you as a Grayling alone, wearing better threads than you left in. That is all.”

  Asha sat up from where she had leaned over her plate. “You cannot possibly mean—”

  “You are ruined, Asha. What do you expect us
to do with you if the king no longer wants you and you already killed a man who thought to bind you in marriage? I am the new chief elder and need no wife at my side, with one still at home. You are no use to me, but you are denied the beggar’s corner now that a man has had you.”

  The fever she had suffered and embraced in the castle had extinguished completely. Though the apartment was warmed by a generous fire, ice seeped through her dead-vined skin, from her fingertips and toes up to her heart and head.

  “How can you claim a higher moral ground than the devil when you would finish the work the devil has started?” Asha asked through clenched teeth.

  Tumin rested his fork on his empty plate, his appetite fully sated. “I merely follow our laws. But the elders are not unsympathetic to your plight, Ashling. We understand that to marry the king was terrible enough. We would not throw you to the brothels without a second thought after throwing you once to the devil. There are more men like the executioner who restrained themselves while you were yet eligible because it amused them. We would not leave you at their mercy without some small protection. You might last longer than you would have while wed to the king. That is all we can offer you, within the confines of the law.”

  “And what, sir, is mercy to you? Is it anything like what you perceive to be sacrifice, which is no sacrifice to you at all?” She jerked against her ropes, knowing to do so would be fruitless. Urgency drove her to fight or fly, though she could do neither. She would accept mangling his arrogant face, though that seemed unlikely as well.

  “If the king does not arrive to retrieve you at nightfall, we will offer you as a wife to any man who will take a ruined woman. If no one accepts your hand, we will put you to auction. Given the interest of many men upon your charmless charms, you will likely earn enough in the auction to support yourself in a private dwelling until the next winter, able to take clients more selectively. After the elders have taken a percentage, of course, for we are not permitted to provide charity of this sort.”