“I know,” Ilylle said. She kneeled beside me and my flame illuminated her face. Tears were streaming down it for my forgotten Queen, and that alone was what made it all right for me to cry. I sobbed and she took me in her arms.
“She died without me,” I said, clinging to Ilylle’s side. “I should have been there. I was meant to be there.”
“It’s not your fault, Zaan – you were betrayed,” she said, holding me close.
“I was supposed to protect her.”
Ilylle stroked her hands across my back and through my hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She was real and warm against me, my head against her shoulder, my mouth mere inches from her neck. The bloodbond roared in me again, and I needed life to come back from such profound death.
I bit her and I hung on.
She made a small noise as my teeth broke her skin. I grabbed her instinctively to keep her still – I didn’t want her to jerk away and tear open her sweet flesh – and her blood began to flow inside my mouth, thick and lush. I sucked at her, rocking my tongue against the wound I’d made, making the sounds of a cornered wild animal -- I needed this – she was mine – until sanity returned and I stiffened, horrified at what I’d done.
She sensed the change in me and her hand wound tight in my hair, still offering her neck, making it all right. I carefully released her and pulled back, caution regained.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” My flame was extinguished and she hadn’t replaced it, but I could imagine her there looking at me with her kind eyes. “This place – it’s awful.”
“It is.” I regained control of myself and my emotions. There was something about her blood that made me feel both mortal and immortal, at the same time. “How did you get in? How did you know I was down here?”
“I heard your call, and I answered.”
“I was calling Airelle.”
“Yes, well –“ she said in the dark, her voice small.
What was it like to discover you were just a copy? I heard the pain of it in Ilylle’s voice. I put my hand out and made flame dance upon it, so that I could see her bowed head.
“But how did you get here?”
“I heard you – and you needed me. So I came.”
“Teleportation?” I looked around the room, and none of the doors were open. “Ilylle, did you use your magic to transport yourself here?”
She looked up and me and nodded.
“Not even Airelle could do that.”
Ilylle’s expression lifted and then fell again – and I realized she was looking at the sarcophagus at my back. “Clearly.”
“Clearly,” I agreed. I rose and turned toward the thing again. Only the fact that Airelle was inside it stopped me from tearing it apart. “That they would do this – to her – to others like her – without consequences for so long –“
“It has to end with me, Zaan.” Her voice was grim. I looked down to find her brow drawn in an unfamiliar line and her chest was heaving – not with pain from the bite I’d inflicted, but with anger. “They cannot do this again. Not to anyone else.”
“They won’t. I swear it.” I offered her my hand to help stand up and she took it, sealing our pact. She stood, her hair wild from our prior fight, and while the wound I’d made was healing, her neck and collar were still stained with blood.
In that moment she was the image of Airelle, so close it took my breath away, then she moved and she was Ilylle again, proud and kind.
“How do I get back?” she asked.
“Wait until my return, and I’ll call.” I was phasing into smoke, but retook form more solidly. “This time, my call will be for you.”
She nodded.
I let myself go incorporeal, faded around Ilylle, and sank into Airelle’s tomb again, blowing through her remains, suffusing myself with her, whispering the old words, “This is not a good-bye, but a parting,” before flowing over the lip of the coffin and underneath the door.
With the power of Ilylle’s blood I traversed the palace quickly and reformed inside her chamber, not far away from Joshan. I could feel Ilylle in the dungeon Airelle was left in, and this time I called for her, like to like, the woman I was bloodbound to. I pulled on the piece of her tethered to me – and felt her pull shiver through my body as she answered back. Then a moment of blankness, and she reformed at my side.
“My Queen,” I said with a nod.
She flicked a hand along her blood-stained dress, a low imitation of a curtsy. “My King.”
Joshan was apparently unperturbed at two different people reforming nearby, but at seeing Ilylle he broke into a wide smile. “My Queen, the dream cradle awaits.”
Ilylle stood still with horror.
“No,” I answered him. I could see it there, the disgusting implement they’d used to enslave Airelle – no Queen of mine was ever getting into one again. I drew up power inside myself and crossed the room to ruin the device.
“Hold,” Ilylle said from behind me.
“You know what it is. What it does. I will not let you get into it.” Ilylle’s looked almost exactly like Airelle’s. Of course it did, why change something that clearly worked? I could destroy it with a blow, a kick, a thought --
“If we destroy it, they’ll know.”
I looked back at her. “Let the fight begin now, Ilylle –“
“It’s been almost two days. They expect me to use it. We have to keep up pretense.” She walked around me and put herself between me and the cradle.
“Are you insane? What if –“
“I know what if,” she said calmly. “I saw her too.” But she put one foot into the cradle nonetheless. “This is what I have to do, Zaan. Lives are depending on me.”
“People you don’t even know –“ I protested.
“My people, nonetheless.”
I walked up to her, ready to snatch her out of the cradle at the slightest sign. What moved in me now wasn’t just the bond of our blood but something deeper and more intense. “I, also, depend on you.”
She gave me the softest saddest smile, and in that moment looked almost exactly like Airelle had when she first suggested that my people turn to stone. “And I, you. So please stand guard,” she said, and lay down in the cradle, bringing its lid down.
I paced a line in front of the cradle. Could I have gotten into it, after seeing my Airelle? I didn’t think I could. But she had. Like a man walking onto a gallows, or off a plank in the middle of the sea. Railan’s men could be here in moments, with another magic-eater to disrupt me and lash the lid of that beast down, with her trapped inside its belly.
She had to have known the risks and accepted them. Why had I ever spent so much time hating her when she was capable of this? So eager to find flaws with her, comparing her to Airelle, that I couldn’t see all the ways she was alike?
And yet different, too – Ilylle was her own being. She had done the best with what she had, and had come so far, so bravely, in such a short time. I sat down on the ground, with my back to her cradle. Anything that wanted to hurt her would literally have to go through me.
“Beza, bring me a meal.”
“Yes, my King,” the metal-puppet said.
I crossed my legs and waited for dinner or death, whichever came first.
Chapter Fifteen
Time passed as I paced around the cradle. Longer than I liked. The colors on Ilylle’s walls ebbed and flowed like the tide, mimicking the passage of light outdoors, day into night and back again.
Had she ever been in this long before? How could she stand it? Was she all right? I didn’t need to sleep to have nightmares, every time I blinked I imagined opening up the lid of her cradle to find her drained to dust inside.
My poor Airelle – her pride was another way she and Ilylle were alike. How could she have let herself be tormented for so long? Why hadn’t she killed herself when she’d had the chance?
Everyone with magic was able to point it inward – it was one of the bu
rdens of the power, always knowing how easy it was to burn yourself away with it. I knew Airelle wasn’t afraid of pain – which left me with a horrific realization.
Airelle knew if she died there’d be no one left to save me.
I was the reason she’d been trapped. She must have hoped beyond hope that someday she’d find a way free and rescue me. Hours, months, years, spent inside that monstrosity -- I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Ilylle.
She would have to turn me into stone again for Yzin’s plan to work – and I would have to convince her to leave me there, if it meant saving herself.
I could not lose two Queens in one lifetime.
#
This time, I remembered my dreams. I was swirling with power, sinking in a boat at sea, drowning, water on all sides pressing in.
When I woke I flung the lid of the cradle back and gulped in air. Zaan rushed to my side and pulled me out with a stricken expression on his face, setting me carefully on my bed. “Are you all right?”
I looked down at myself and then nodded slowly. “I…think so. I feel very weak though – how much time passed?”
“Too long. Tide’s Day is tomorrow.” Everything about him was serious – his face, his bearing. He’d sat outside the cradle for two days, standing guard, preparing for a threat that hadn’t come, coping with the loss of his love.
“Oh,” I breathed, and got my bearings. I had never been in the cradle that long before. Had Ralian been trying to drain the last bit of strength from me? One last time to stop me from finding my true potential out? “Is -- is everyone ready?”
“I don’t know. Yzin hasn’t returned and I haven’t left your side.”
“Thank you,” I said with a slight nod.
“You’re welcome.” His gaze traveled over all of me. “Are you well?”
“I’m whole. Just weak.” I hugged myself and ran my hands up and down my arms.
“We have time to make you strong.”
His voice was flat when he said it, with no undertone of anticipation, and he reached for the buckles of his armor. I hadn’t seen his chest since he’d proved Beza unreal to me – I watched him take off the layers of leather bracings and pull the shirt underneath off over his head. He stayed standing at the far end of the bed, his expression stern – like he was trapped in stone again already. I rose up and crawled over to him, reaching out a tentative hand out to trace one of his scars.
“How did you get this?”
He looked down, following the movement of my hand. “It’s one of the incentives to learn how to transform – eventually you’d rather become smoke than have a priest beat you again.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It was at the time. It served its purpose, though.” His head was bowed and his hands went for the buckles at his waist.
“And your armor? How does it transform with you –“ I asked, my voice rising nervously. He stopped unbuckling things and pierced me with a look, and I rocked back, scooting incrementally away. “Are you mad at me?”
His expression softened for a moment and then drew tight. “I just want to make you strong again, Ilylle.” He mounted the bed and pushed the rest of his armor down, revealing a swelling cock. “If there is a time for kindness, when all this is through, then I can afford to be. But for now –“ he reached forward to take the hem of my dress up in both hands and pulled, making the fabric tear up in a jagged line. “You will have to make due with what I can give you.”
Then he reached up the bed, grabbed my hips, and pulled me down to him. Our legs were tangled for a moment until he’d put one of mine on either side of his thighs. He hovered over me, holding himself up on his arms, looking angrily down.
I’m not sure what I was then – my magic swirled inside me, making me ache, but I was scared.
Zaan leaned forward, his face directly over mine. “If the choice comes down to me or you, promise me you’ll save yourself.”
I shook my head without thinking. “No.”
“Promise me,” he growled, “or I won’t let you turn me back to stone and all is lost.”
I grit my teeth together. “That’s not fair.”
“I am not kind nor fair today then.” He reached and wound one hand in my hair tight, taking control of my head, sending electric shivers of good-pain-fear down my spine. “Promise me.”
If I couldn’t turn him back to stone, none of Yzin’s plan would work. More people would die, the councilmen would still live, and they would do this to another girl. “I promise,” I gasped out, as the pain made my eyes water.
“Good,” Zaan said, and set to fucking me.
His knees pushed my thighs out and his hips lowered and his cock pushed against the entrance of my pussy. He took one of my hands, and then the other, holding them down with one of his over my head so that I couldn’t struggle with him.
I wouldn’t have. I needed him again. Being in the same room with him, muchless the same bed, raked the embers of magic inside me, and I could feel the strength I’d lost to the cradle rebuilding. He reached down to angle himself to take me, as I tilted my hips up, begging him to push in – and then he stopped, leaning back and releasing my wrists.
“I’m sorry -- I forgot -- you’ve only been with the puppet – “
“And you, once. When you were stone.” I pushed myself up on my elbows, heart racing, breathing hard. “Whatever you need to do to me, Zaan, I can take it.”
My Zaibann warrior made a strangled sound, and leaned back in.
His cock was in me in a moment as his body curved and I cried out at feeling him slide into me. There was something about the way he filled me – like Joshan never had – or maybe it was all the sensations that came with it, knowing he needed me, that he craved my blood – within thrusts, I gathered my feet under my knees so that I could thrust back, taking his cock each time it was given.
He kissed me, hard, and I felt his fangs scratch my tongue and scrape my lips – it was like he was devouring me, but it was all right, because I needed him just as badly. I held onto his back, felt the ripple and curve of his muscles there, reached down to grab his ass to feel him thrust into me, and then freed myself of his mouth to start kissing him back, tasting as much of him as I could, his chin, his neck, his shoulder, biting him for all the times he’d bitten me, listening to the low groans rumbling through his body every time his cock rowed forward.
If I rocked my hips just right I could rub myself against him more, and soon with each thrust there was a hiccup of time where I ground against him hard. I felt my magic tighten in my belly, in my chest, as one of his hands kneaded my breast and he leaned down to suck my nipple hard. I started to moan and my body started to do what it needed to, hungry on its own, my hips bobbing faster, rubbing harder against him. Zaan groaned again and looked down at me with dark eyes.
“Keep it. Keep it in you. Don’t let it out.”
I knew what he meant – I tried to hold onto the magic as it fought me for control, wanting to come out of me in a screaming rush.
“You can do it, Ilylle. Be its master,” he said, without relenting.
“Za-an –“ His name broke in my throat and my hands clenched over his shoulders and my hips sprang up and held there, taking all of his cock in and rubbing against him. “Zaan, yes – Zaan!” I bit my own lip then shouted his name again. “Zaan!”
He made low growling sounds at this, continuing to fuck me through. My power whirled out of me for an uncontrolled instant – and then just as quickly flew back in. I shuddered beneath him, quaking, feeling ecstatic and divine.
“Good, Ilylle,” he murmured, pushing my hair out of my face. “Good.” He took two more strokes in me, and then pulled out.
I was too dizzy to realize what had happened for a moment, as he started put his armor back on. Then I realized – “Wait – you –“
“When you turn me into stone, I have to be hard.”
“No –“ I shook my head. I was strong now – I didn’t need the fucki
ng anymore, but I didn’t want to be left like this. “Zaan –“
He stopped and looked at me. “What was your first lesson?”
I thought back quickly. “To take what I want, or be content with what I’m given.”
He nodded, fastening another buckle. “Are you not content?”
“No.” I rose up in bed, pulling the rest of my poor torn dress off, crawling over to him. If he would not put his seed inside me, I would suck it out of him again. My power swirled around me, crackling like electricity. I could make him fuck me again, I knew it.
He watched me, his eyes traveling over my body as I neared. When I was close enough to touch, he put his hand out, trailing his fingers through the veil of my hair. “If you do that you will break me, Ilylle.”
I sat back abashed, as he continued to pull on his clothes. His actions were deliberate, familiar, but I could read the tension in him. Just as I had had to conquer the cradle, he would have to conquer being remade stone. He finished the last buckle, and I reached for my dress, hopping off my bed.
“Stay naked. It makes it easier for me to stay this way.”
“If it helps you.” I leaned in and kissed him. His armor was cold, the buckles and leather made my nipples light up, and I felt his cock rub against me as I rose up on my toes.
He breathed heavily as I rocked back. “That helps, too. Let’s go.”
We walked back to his display chamber. Neither one of us had been back since he’d bitten me, although the zoomers had moved all the furniture, preparing for the ceremony. All the seats were arranged in rows at the back half of the room, with an isle down the center that we walked down until we reached his empty pedestal.
Zaan stepped up onto it. “How did I look?”
“Worried. A little angry. Kind of like now.” I reached up and pushed his braid to hang down his back.
“You’ve got to shield yourself from them, Ilylle. If they know how powerful you are now, they’ll never come near you, they’ll kill you from afar. Keep your power hidden at all times -- pretend to be the girl you were when I first met you here.”
I looked around, imagining who I used to be. So much had happened since then. I might as well have been a copy when I’d first fucked him, idiotic and innocent -- I knew so much more now. “I’m not like her anymore.”
The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) Page 13