by Guin Archer
Sighing, I gave in.
Back to the dais and the nightmarish Jiktau.
The stars were beautiful.
I floated on my back in the frigid water, looking up into the clear night’s sky. I could see my breath wafting up for several inches before it dissipated. Between the fog of it and the sparkle of the stars, I was borderline entranced.
The best part, though?
It was quiet.
With most of them submerged in the water, I couldn’t hear the bells. For the first time in weeks, there was blissful silence from my body. All there was was the muted whump of water lapping against my cheeks and nothing else. Even the Udon and its late-night revelers were silenced. It felt like I was floating in the sky instead of a pool away from both the Udonak and Granzee. At peace, if only for a moment, without prying or covetous eyes always on me.
It was nice.
The pool wasn’t very deep, but I still had to fight to keep my head above water if I wasn’t treading. It was one of the bigger pools, about the size of a large pond. When Sekhmet carried me back into the Udonak, she’d taken the long way about it to check in with the juveniles of the herd. Doing that carried us past the pool I was in now. There had been slaves clustered around it at the time, murmuring freely between each other as they cleaned clothes and bedsheets. Knowing they were using the pool to clean and not for drinking made me feel better about sneaking away to go for a midnight swim.
Not that I was really sneaking.
Sekhmet was napping on shore – or she was pretending to nap. I’d been quiet, as quiet as I could be with bells on, tiptoeing past the tent that housed my slaves. Much to my surprise, too, there weren’t any Zikta openly guarding my pillau. Instead, there’d been only my Big Mama.
She was more than happy to carry me where I wanted to go.
Closing my eyes for a minute, I tried to keep my body and mind relaxed and not think about the remainder of my day on the dais. It was all to no avail. It was imprinted on the backs of my eyelids and scored into my nonexistent retinas.
The amount of youngsters – dear God, I sounded like an old fucking woman calling them that – who went through the Jiktau was insane. Totally and disgustingly insane. And they knew that’s what they had to look forward to! Being cherrypicked by a monstrous beast to, more than likely, get the shit knocked out of them along with a couple dozen teeth. There were Lubrei who lost their teeth, too. I knew that because one’s tusk soared out of the pit and landed at my feet on the dais like some sacrificial offering.
No. Thanks.
Me and my gang used to watch MMA on occasion, but that was still above-board. There were people that figuratively and literally hit below the belt, but they were few and far between, all things considered. Not so with the Jiktau.
Would-be Zikta went in knowing they were going to be pulverized.
It was more gruesome violence than I cared for and I had zero desire to see it happen again, yet I was expected to sit pretty at this shit for three days. Three! Not okay. Not okay at all.
The water moving oddly jarred me into opening my eyes. Blinking confusedly up, I saw Tohtahk Kor’s newly silvered eyes looking back down at me. I felt his big hands come up between my shoulderblades and under my tailbone, a supportive surface to keep me afloat when I would’ve otherwise sputtered. My outstretched hand nearest him skimmed his hard back when I jerked and the heat from his body was shiver-worthy against my dropped temperature.
“You will catch sick, kisa-uu,” he rumbled in his volcanic voice. There wasn’t any censor in it, though. I think some of that was because he was clearly enjoying sneaking peeks at my upraised breasts and bare coochie through the dark water.
His hands kneaded my back faintly.
“Why are you out here?” Okay, I was rude. So sue me.
“I would not be anywhere else,” he tossed back simply. I felt a finger press into the crack of my ass. I jolted my pelvis away from that delving digit. A sideways smirk touched against one of his tusks and he bowed his head to me. “Apologies, uum Taytani.”
He didn’t sound the least bit sorry. Then again, was any man in any world ever sorry for getting to grope a woman’s ass, permission given or not? I didn’t think so.
So, I ignored his insincerity and veered onto something I wanted to know for a while now.
“What does kisa-uu mean?”
Call me crazy, but something about his whole demeanor warmed. He lowered himself further into the water so only the tops of his shoulders and head remained out of the pool. His hands never moved away from my back. Then, he brought his bullring over to my cheek and nuzzled against it languidly.
“I call You kisa-uu, which means one-of-all. You are all of me.” He emitted a growling purr that was so deep and rich I could feel it vibrate through the water. “It is sweet-calling only for the Pasha who holds my soul within herself.”
That was…that was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. Warmth kindled in my heart that had been not even a flicker before he professed himself so readily and with such conviction.
Fuck him. Fuck him for saying that and whittling away more of my avarice for him.
I swallowed hard and looked away.
His chuckle was soft, but not light. It, too, was nice. Sweet like his words and warm. He twirled me sedately in the water, making us the oddest two dancing partners on Intau. Him, most likely on his knees, and me, sprawled out on my back like the laziest of starfish.
I let it happen. I let it happen because this was even nicer than being alone and floating in the stars.
Now, thanks to him, though I wouldn’t tell him so, I was flying through them.
I imagined myself in a bubble. The whole world was knocking on the walls and trying to get in. If I let the world in, everything would crash down around me again. I’d go back to being constantly afraid and hiding it behind a mouthy, crass, and unflattering exterior because fear didn’t help anyone. Neither did sorrow and self-pity.
In my bubble, right here and right now, I was Calliope again. I didn’t know what it was to die and be reborn again. I’d never known heartache or torture. I didn’t worry about what my next day would bring. I luxuriated in the momentary – and false – feeling of being free.
And Kor? He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t the man that kind-of sort-of raped me last night. I imagined him as the man that cradled and rocked me as I sobbed all my hurt out this morning. I made myself imagine the man his words embodied and not the physical being he actually was.
In my bubble, he was my companion. He was someone that would never hurt me. He was a man I might grow to desire for his depth of feeling and character, but also for the strength that was woven into every fiber of his being.
As he supported me and gave me my wings to help me fly, I imagined him as someone I could love…if only he were real.
I sighed despondently, the shell of my bubble wavering.
“Your sadness is my undoing,” he told me in a voice dredged in its own sorrows and longings. “Your very existence is a blessing for the Lubrei, yet You have not the ability to strengthen from Your own solieta.”
Solieta; I was going with radiance for a definition of that new word.
My lips wobbled into a watery smile. The man sounded like a bard when he bothered to speak in more than bestial grunts. He was narrowly charming in that way. Kind of like my Mac was.
“What do you do all day?” I asked this instead of addressing his poetic statement, mainly for the fact that I didn’t want to pop my bubble just yet. Addressing his words would do more than just pop my bubble…it’d break my wand, too.
“The same as You. Tending to my Udon and Luintak.” He shifted me closer to run his flat nose along my cheek again. “Now I have You to serve as well.”
“I tend to nothing,” I snarked petulantly. I fisted a hand in his weighty fall of hair automatically, but refrained from yanking it in reprimand like I might have with one of my friends. Bubble or not, this male was not my friend.
“I do nothing. I do not know why I am even here.”
“You do much.”
“I do nothing.” My illusion sufficiently shattered by my own blooming frustrations with this man that never answered the important questions, I rolled off his hands. I paddled away a few feet and tread there, watching with a sullen expression as he stayed put. He didn’t so much as stand. He simply observed me with his patented stone-faced gaze.
I scowled at him.
“I do not understand you. One moment you are tender, the next you are fierce and frightening.”
“I am Tohtahk. I am as You say.” He moved in the water, coming closer. I paddled further away to maintain our distance from each other. His mercurial expressions shifted again, this time going darker. “You shy from me as though You still fear me.”
“I do.”
“You should not. Never.” His two-toned voice went growly – the bad, angry kind – and he lunged for me. His height made his attack easy and my escape impossible. His arms locked around me tightly, drawing me uncomfortably close to his body. He hooked a forearm under my ass, hitching my legs around his waist, and the other reached up my spine so his hand could lock around my throat. I was immobilized and gulped back my unease.
Stranger. Danger. This is why I shouldn’t have let him into my bubble to begin with. Terrifying heathen.
“You are Innintani. You fell from Your home for us. You fell from Skyvryn for me.” He dipped his head and hiked me up at the same time. He brought our brows together and, with his hand shackling my neck, I had nowhere to go. His silver eyes bore at least halfway through me to my soul. “This is why You are pure and precious to us. You shunned Your palace to bless the Lubrei. It is the sacred duty of my Tauren, now, to tend to You as You have done for us.”
But I wasn’t doing anything! Worse, I’d fallen all right, but not from Skyvryn. I didn’t have a palace and I didn’t choose this nightmare. It was sentenced to me. A sentence I suffered for every waking moment.
I didn’t say anything, though. He didn’t allow me to. He continued on because, apparently, he wasn’t nearly finished.
“You, Calliope, are mine to cherish. For forever, uum kisa-uu. Never will You leave me.”
My stomach flipped and dropped at the same time. I felt like his callused hand had reached into my chest and taken the breath right from my lungs. Those fucking tears I’d unleashed just that morning had opened a spigot I couldn’t close again and my eyes stung.
He said my name.
“Y-you know my name?”
“You gave it to me, uum Taytani. Teased me with it and now it tortures me endlessly.” He kissed me in his orc-ish way and I was too stupefied to do anything but stare through hazy eyes. “Uumat. Uumat.”
“Please let me go,” I whispered in a voice that was too broken for my liking. I wanted to sound firm and strong. I wanted my backbone back.
He stole it from me with too many pretty words.
“We will go to bed now,” he husked, pulling me even closer instead of letting me run. I fidgeted and cringed and did every pathetic thing I hated in simpering ninnies. But I couldn’t help it.
Still…
“I will not allow you to rape me again.” His body turned to stone under me and his hands pinched painfully where they gripped, but he didn’t hurt me in a purposeful way…I don’t think. More he was responding according to instinct and his gut reaction to hearing something he didn’t like was to harden for battle.
I’d need to remember that, or rather keep it to the front of my mind instead of disregarding it, for the future.
“We go to bed now.”
And we did. His arms around me, blankets swaddling my chilled skin, and his face buried in my neck as he spooned my naked back. His breaths were deep and even in my hair, his hands splayed in a display of ownership across my midriff and over my crotch.
Sleep didn’t come quickly for me, not that I expected it to. Not with him wrapped around me like he was my second skin. Not, either, with his kindness and truth tempting inhibitions to shake loose deep within me.
His touch, against my will, was erotic and it aroused. He did nothing with it, though we both knew he could. One whiff of his pheromones and I’d be done in.
When he didn’t offer me the proverbial apple, I felt sick for wishing he would.
By daybreak, I managed only a couple hours of sleep and my erstwhile paramour was gone by the time my attendants came in to prepare me for another day.
I realized, as I lay in the cushioned fort he erected around me on the pallet, that I was fighting in a war that I was never going to win. Up until that moment, my foe had always been faceless and untouchable. Now, though, it had a body. Still untouchable, but I knew what…or rather who…I was up against.
I didn’t need to see my own reflection in the mirror to know it was me.
Fuck.
Chapter Eleven
Three Days Later
The skol was a parasite.
As I remained seated on my throne, Kor – for once – standing at my side instead of trudging off to oversee the Udon, I kept my hand flattened over my mouth. I tried to keep the appendage limp so it didn’t look so much like I was trying to keep my vomit contained.
As bad as the Jiktau itself was – and longer, too, since it lasted half a day more than Gaddi said it would – the rite of receiving their first skols was worse.
With the Tohtahk looming over them to the front of the dais, the new Zikta stepped forward in lines of twenty to a waiting group of leanly-shaped, elder Zikta. The elders had large clay pots beside them that were at least four feet deep. They would take a dagger, which was later given to the youngsters, and score a deep laceration in their skins just over their right thighs. Then, reaching into the pots, a black, slimy, squid-looking-thing would be pulled out. The creature was then pressed against their bleeding wound so it could sink itself in.
The newbies usually sneered or growled as the skol wriggled in. Even with all their wounds from their tussles with the Mahzri, they looked to be in the most agony from the skol. Some even released howling roars as the parasite spread and changed color under their skins.
I was close enough that I could hear squelching sounds from the thing, suckerless tentacles weaving through their tissues and the occasional crack that sounded suspiciously like bone breaking.
It was awful.
Sitting directly behind Kor and having an uninterrupted view of his silvered skol on his back, I felt the bile in my stomach inch up higher. From his shoulders to his ass, he had skol and I imagined how beyond horrific the pain must’ve been to receive it/them. Tattoos could hurt, yeah, but not like the skol had to.
There had to have been at least five-hundred Zikta made that afternoon and I saw every single one of them be initiated.
When it was done – finally – the marked males stood shoulder to shoulder and pounded their right fists over their chests, grunting and shouting in a distinctly male way.
Kor turned to me and held out his hand. I rose from between Sekhmet and Hathor – Big Mama’s mama – and strode towards him. My hand was shaking when I slid it along his callused palm. He reeled me in slowly to tuck me into his side. My silver and lavender dress matched the pleated kilt he wore today. We looked like a color-coordinated couple of some trans-dimensional gossip magazine.
He roared. The Zikta quieted, but kept up a steady grunt that was like a drumbeat.
“From this sol forward, you serve the Udon. You serve me. You serve your Innintani!” The others bellowed so loudly, I jolted from it. Kor just held me tighter, one of his hands swiping my upper arm and making the serah there sing. “We are brago! Your bodies, your lives, and your kii are the Udon! You are the Udon! Protect Luintak! Guard our lands against the unbelieving, gather our tribute – take what is ours – fuck our biis’a, and sire los’kah upon them to serve the One as our ancestors did.
“Our Innintani is here! The One has smiled upon us! Rejoice, brago. Rejoice and bow to our Tatya
ni, the Blessing of Intau! Auum Taytani!”
“Auum Taytani!”
The roaring was insane. Not just from the new Zikta, either. It seemed as if all of Granzee and the Udon heard the Tohtahk’s words and responded to it. Their thunderous bellows were heard far and wide, echoed by the trumpets of the Mahzri.
My ears rang. My knees felt weak as shit.
Especially when they did bow.
Rather than linger on the dais and calm the mayhem he’d caused, Kor handed me down to where Gaddi was beaming on her cushions. Kneeling above me, the warlord didn’t smile or show any sort of kindness or tenderness in his expression when peering down at me. He did, however, run his hand over my hair, chiming those bells as much as he had the ones on my arms.
“Go with Your biis’a now, uum Taytani. Go and revel with Your Tauren. They wish to see You.”
See me? See me?! I’ve been sitting on a fucking throne for almost four goddamn days, my tits mostly out, and they think they haven’t seen me?! Argh!
I didn’t put voice to my internal monologue, though. I didn’t even nod to show him I agreed. I just locked an arm around one of Gaddi’s and practically dragged her ass away from the arena. The throng parted to allow us through unmolested.
Thank God.
I felt Kor’s eyes boring into my back, even after I was sure he wouldn’t be able to actually see me anymore. The titan came to my bed every night and forced me into lying with him, his body wrapped around mine like a second skin. He didn’t try to fuck me again, however. Not that I didn’t feel his monster-dick pressed between our bodies. I did. He just wasn’t pushing me.
I didn’t know how to handle it. Nor did I know how to cope with the ratcheting tension that climbed between us.
As much as I didn’t want to be thrust into sexual servitude and as much as I hated that I could both loath and love his fucking in equal measure, I was beginning to feel needy with want. Never, not once in my years on this plane, did I crave sex. I’d thought it’d been raped right out of me, but apparently not. After that night, a night which shall go down in infamy as the best-worst night of my life, it felt like a switch’d been flipped in me. I wanted sex. Worse, I wanted him to have sex with.