by Alexa Black
“As you wish.”
The claws tore through Cailyn’s flesh in a biting flash. Pain flared through the wounds. The wetness of blood dripped down her legs.
“Please,” Cailyn tried again.
Teran drew back.
“Wait!”
With one mighty thrust, Teran battered her way in. Cailyn screamed, a raw, wet sound.
The dildo ripped through her. Her nerves sang a cacophony of lust and hurt. Her own panting response made her shiver. All artifice gone, she breathed, ragged and harsh. The air stung her throat as she inhaled.
Behind her, the woman working in her snarled, driven on by something Cailyn couldn’t name.
She forced herself back on the thing inside her. Maybe pretending to want this would hasten Teran’s pleasure. Maybe this would be over sooner that way.
The claws pierced her flanks. Teran drew back, drove deep. Cailyn shrieked as something tore inside her.
Was this what she’d expected, all those months ago? A helldemon, rending and tearing, half metal and half flesh? Was this the cruelty she’d invited, once the seduction was finally finished?
“No!” she cried.
Teran snarled louder and plunged in again.
The pain was nothing to her now, not after such a litany of it. But this wordless desire, this impossible hardness on the heels of torture, gave her vertigo. She choked.
This would destroy everything. Every memory, every seduction, torn to pieces by the thing rending her.
She spat out her stop word, trembled as she cried out. Would the monster behind her listen?
The dildo froze inside her.
She drew in a long breath, the sound of it ragged in the sudden silence. Would Teran understand?
Would she honor it? Lord Keriel had called Cailyn her slave.
After a long moment, Teran withdrew.
A hand tangled itself in her hair. Tears filled her eyes. She blinked them back and stared into ice that barely saw her.
She opened her mouth. Teran was supposed to stop, not—
Before she could speak, Teran shoved her forward. Rough hands parted her hair.
The claws retracted with a sharp click. Fingers pressed the metal at the back of her collar. It unlocked with a soft sound and fell to the ground in front of Cailyn.
Cailyn looked up, but the door had already hissed open. Numb, she watched Teran leave.
“Wait!” she called, a moment too late.
She got to her feet. Her flesh throbbed; pain demanded her attention. Something had torn inside her. It would need to be treated.
Servants swarmed in, supplies and salves in hand. She sat back on the bed and waited for them.
She reached down. Her hand closed around the band of metal. She stared down at it, turned it around in her hands over and over.
The servants closed in around her, gray birds fluttering in concern.
Chapter Forty
Cailyn’s insides stung. The servants had treated her with their usual care, but they couldn’t help the itch as her injury knitted together. Good doctors could minimize that, or simply dull the pain with drugs, but servants weren’t doctors. Even servants extremely well versed in first aid, with plenty of supplies, had limits to their skills.
If they’d had their way, they’d still be tending Cailyn now. But she had an appointment to keep. She rushed down the hall and pounded on Lord Keriel’s door.
It slid open. He stood in the doorway and spread his arms wide in a gesture of welcome.
She sat down, fighting not to wince.
“The recording,” she said. “Where is it?”
He turned away and rummaged around on a shelf on the other side of the room, found something, and turned back to Cailyn.
He kept one hand behind his back. The other held up a thin tablet, just like the one she remembered.
Had he had it all that time?
“It’s right here, Derys. Right here.”
“She confesses?” The words spilled out of Cailyn. “On that recording?”
He nodded and moved toward her. “Of course.”
Cailyn held out her hand. He didn’t move and stared at Cailyn with unblinking eyes. His mouth twitched, and so did the hand that held the tablet.
“My lord?” Cailyn reached for the tablet.
His other hand came down. A heavy weight hit Cailyn full in the head.
She blinked at him, confused, and everything went black.
*
Her eyes cracked open. Her head throbbed. Pain made her want to close her eyes again. She tried to move a hand to the wound, but metal cuffs held her hands fast behind her.
Lord Keriel sat in front of a videoscreen. Cailyn tried to look at it, but looking at it hurt her head. It went black again, and she sighed with relief.
The tablet sat on a table, just out of her reach. Was there anything on it at all? Or was it just a prop from the beginning? He’d never let her look at it.
Lord Keriel crossed over to her, a strange light in his eyes. One hand held a gun.
“My lord,” she croaked through the pain in her head. “Why?”
His hand, a bony spider at the end of a thin arm, fell to her breast. She recoiled but couldn’t twist away.
His hand slid over her flesh. His eyes strayed to the door.
But whoever he was looking for, the distraction proved short-lived. His hand moved down her stomach, toward the space between her legs. His fingers grabbed at her clothing.
She tilted her head and tried to bite.
“Relax,” he hissed. “It’s not you I’m after.”
True to his word, he moved his hand away.
His gaze moved to the table. Cailyn’s followed. On it, she saw another pair of cuffs.
Cailyn bit back a gasp. All his talk of unnatural desire, and here he was using cuffs to set his trap?
And touching her while she was helpless.
“What about your son?” she snapped. “You talked so much about being good to him. You wanted Teran to be a better mother—”
“He left hours ago. I promise I won’t need you for long.”
Cailyn recoiled.
The door slid open. Cailyn felt no relief seeing the familiar silhouette. No thrill seeing the shape of a gun in her deliverer’s hand.
“What is this?” Teran’s voice was rich and musical. Cailyn had heard those tones before, in the midst of passion. She shivered again.
“You haven’t taken enough?” Teran said.
He pressed the gun to Cailyn’s temple. “You know what I want from you, Nivrai. I’ll shoot her if you don’t.”
Teran’s lips curled into a misshapen, twisted little smile. “Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
Cailyn blinked, too stunned to feel betrayed.
Lord Keriel did the same. “What?”
Teran laughed, ugly and cold. “I have no interest in submitting to you. Go ahead. Do it.”
Lord Keriel’s mouth worked. It opened and closed, showing the wide pink inside. “You’d let me kill her? You were willing to torture to claim her!”
“I’ve been looking for a reason to kill you, Ben Keriel. What better reason can I have than revenge?”
Lord Keriel’s hand shook. “You really are a monster.”
The claws emerged with a flourish. The ice-gray eyes stared, cold as a creature from legend.
Lord Keriel’s lips moved. Cailyn could barely hear him, but what she caught sounded like a prayer to his patron god.
Teran snickered. “You’re even giving me a reason to do it slowly.”
The hand holding Ben’s gun twitched. Cailyn hoped he’d drop it. “You don’t care about her, then.”
“Of course I care. But look at you.”
His grip tightened. “At me?”
“If you make good on your threat, I kill you. Or you kill me before I manage to do it.”
She frowned. “Either way, you don’t get what you want. You don’t have any
leverage if you kill her.” She stared down at her claws and grinned. “You have no power over me.”
“You’d leave her here with me?” He blinked again. “To my tender mercies?”
“Tender mercies? Do you think you’re scaring me?”
“I’m telling you I’ll—”
“You’d never get your hands dirty.” She snarled. “That would be barbaric.”
Without another word, Teran turned away.
Lord Keriel’s teeth gnashed as he watched Teran go. He shot Cailyn a wild look and slumped to the floor.
He walked back over to Cailyn with the same flat look she’d so recently seen in Teran’s eyes.
He reached out a hand. For a moment, Cailyn thought he might press his fingers to the lock on her bonds and let her go.
His hand fell onto her skin. It gripped the meat of her breast hard enough to bruise. His lips pulled back in a slow snarl. Cailyn thrashed, alarmed at the transformation.
“Then you won’t mind if I use her like you have,” he said.
Cailyn saw Teran’s turn, her silhouette dark against the light coming in from the open door. Silver glinted on her fingertips. Her eyes were bleached pools in a cold face. They looked from Cailyn to Lord Keriel and back again. The beginnings of tears glinted in them.
“No,” Teran whispered.
She walked back into the room with slow, measured strides. She slid to her knees in front of Lord Keriel with a grace that made Cailyn gasp in protest.
“It’s me you want.” Her eyes sparkled with contempt as she opened her hand. Her gun fell to the floor. “Let Cailyn go.”
Lord Keriel picked up the cuffs on the table. He eyed Teran’s claws as he crossed to Cailyn and pressed his fingertips to the lock.
Cailyn stood, too stunned to do anything but stare. Teran knelt before her enemy, the hawk-eyes sharp, the face twisted with hatred.
“Go,” Teran snarled. “It’s nothing he hasn’t done before.”
Cailyn crossed the room with strides fueled by despair.
Her foot caught on Teran’s gun. She looked down at it, then back up at Teran. The cuffs locked Teran’s wrists behind her. Her claws, extended and gleaming, twitched as she watched Lord Keriel free his member from his clothing.
Still snarling, Teran lowered her head.
Cailyn didn’t think. She dove for the gun and yelled.
Lord Keriel turned to face her. She fired again and again.
She didn’t stop until he fell. Bright red spurted from his head. She watched him twitch, then let herself blink when he went still.
Her eyes met Teran’s. Swallowing her revulsion, she reached out for Ben’s hand and pressed his lifeless finger to the lock.
The cuffs opened and fell. Teran rushed to Ben’s body and pried the gun out of his hand.
“Come on,” she said. “We have no time to lose.”
Cailyn cast a longing look at the tablet on the table.
She shook her head and hurried on. Teran had submitted to Lord Keriel to save her. That would have to be enough. Her own hands had trusted that. Her mind would have to follow.
*
Gathering the servants proved easier than Cailyn expected. Teran had made plans, long ago, for a getaway from Nivrai, should even her own planet prove unsafe for her someday. She’d half-assumed some rumor would catch up with her for years.
The rumor that she’d killed Mariel for pleasure long ago. The rumor that she wanted to kill Lord Keriel.
The servants had joined them without question. One sat silent as ever behind the helm of their shuttle.
Teran had kept the cuffs. Lord Keriel had keyed them to his fingerprints. Teran could at least claim that she and Cailyn had needed to defend themselves.
It gave them time. Cailyn slipped away to her quarters to watch the stars in a window and think. It made her head throb, but she needed to do it.
Needed to think about many things. Escape. Alibis. Defenses. Lies.
But all she could think of was Dion. He’d been so curious. He’d wanted to know what they did, what they knew of one another, what they enjoyed.
Now Teran’s whore, loyal to the last, had killed his father.
But when she thought of Lord Keriel, she could only remember the light in his eyes as he advanced on Teran, the cold hatred in Teran’s voice. Cailyn’s hands twitched like they still held Teran’s gun.
Was it really so easy to kill? Or would what she’d done catch up with her as she snuck through tunnels under Nivrai? Would she remember the blood, the hole in his head? Would she slump against the wall, her every cell steeped in sudden understanding?
She was numb to it now. All she could think of now was a curly-haired boy, shuffling his feet as he stood in the doorway. She remembered dark eyes. Teran said he hid gray ones under lenses.
She heard footsteps behind her. She welcomed them. She belonged to Teran now, in a way she never had with that collar clasped around her neck.
Teran’s whore. She’d hated those words. And now she’d killed for her.
Teran’s whore. So be it.
“I wanted to kill Lord Keriel.” Teran purred into Cailyn’s ear. It sounded like romance.
Cailyn choked but didn’t pull away. Claws slit her clothes; steel-tipped fingers skated sharp along her flesh.
She’d become the monster the Councils had made Teran. What reason could she have to pull away?
“I always thought I would do it,” Teran said. “Someday when I didn’t care enough to protect myself.”
Cailyn arched her head. Steel thorns pressed against her neck.
“Just one thing,” she said.
The hands froze.
“Is this what you want, my lady? This, and not—what you did before?”
“What I did before?”
Cailyn swallowed hard. Steel pricked her moving throat. “You were so harsh.”
The points pierced her skin. Blood welled up around them. “I can’t promise you I won’t be harsh.”
Her other hand moved down, found Cailyn’s wetness, and smeared it over the silken flesh.
“I don’t want you to promise that,” Cailyn stammered between heavy breaths. “Just don’t do that again. Don’t go away when you use me. I need you here.”
Teran smiled. “I promise.”
Cailyn’s lips and flesh opened in the same moment, to Teran’s tongue above and fingers below.
She’d remade herself. Teran had begun it, rearranged her passion. But Cailyn had finished it herself. She’d shot a bloody hole in a High Council member’s head. She hadn’t even blinked.
She had no shame left. She howled as her nerves sang, awakened by the touch she’d so long craved, by the steel that pricked her neck.
She threw herself onto the driving fingers, snarled and laughed as she opened to them. They thrilled against every nerve. Waves of light rushed through her flesh. Teran’s mouth swallowed her cries.
The other hand, tipped with steel, reached behind her back. It tore its mark on her skin.
Cailyn came, overwhelmed, crying into the mouth sealing hers. The blood felt good, right, proper: a monster sealing a monstrous pact.
Cailyn huddled closer to Teran, grateful for the claws’ bite.
Chapter Forty-one
The videocall came too soon. There hadn’t been time to rush into the tunnels, fake the documents, alter Cailyn’s fingertips so they wouldn’t match her prints. Dread filled her as a High Council member’s face filled the videoscreen.
What had she expected? This would mean her life. Had she really thought she could slink away, eke out a new life somewhere? Where would she go? Her father was famous even in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Who would she serve, hiding out on backwards planets? Without extensive surgeries to change her appearance, she wouldn’t last days on the run.
She settled into her seat and looked at Teran’s hands. She’d killed someone. Death was coming for her.
Maybe she should let it.
Dazed, she heard
the caller ask Teran if she knew anything about Lord Keriel.
“Should I, my lord?” Teran asked, her tone as crisp as ever.
“We found him dead in his rooms,” he answered, his lips thin and grim. “Shot in the head. The last two people cameras captured headed there were Derys and you.”
“That’s disturbing news indeed, Lord Xanas. What about the camera in his rooms? What did it show you?”
“It wasn’t on.”
“How unfortunate.”
That phrase again. Cailyn bit back a wild laugh that threatened to undo her.
“I was hoping you could tell us about that, Nivrai.”
“My lord, are you telling me I turned off a camera that wasn’t even on when I got there?”
She snickered as he stammered.
“I know there are rumors I have powers, but I wouldn’t expect the Councils to believe them.”
“Nivrai, this is no time for mockery.”
“He disabled that camera himself, my lord. Or destroyed it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You found metal cuffs in his room, didn’t you?”
Xanas nodded.
“Keyed to his fingerprints. When I arrived, he had Cailyn bound in them.”
Cailyn bit back a gasp. How much would Teran tell?
Her eyes darted to the door. Could she find the tunnels herself? Maybe the servants could guide her.
“Easy, Nivrai. I don’t want to hear about lovers’ spats now.”
“He took her hostage. Meant to rape her, or worse. I went there to stop him and found her bound in those.”
“I don’t suppose you have proof of this, Nivrai.”
“No, my Lord Xanas.”
“Then I’m afraid I—”
“But you might.”
The knotted eyebrow rose. “I might?”
“He called Derys to lure her there. If most of the cameras on the planet were working, in my rooms or his, you might discover how he did it.”
Cailyn felt her cheeks flush. The tablet.
She’d wanted it. He’d used it to lure her into this mess. Would they have recordings of that, too, her bald-faced need to know? If she was taken away—put to death—would Teran ever see it? It shamed her now to think she might.