by Lee Ramsay
Sweat streamed across his body as they reached a landing beyond which no steps rose. His breathing was labored, and even Urzgeth appeared winded. The huntsman’s boot thumped an irregular carved stone, triggering a click that brought a section of the wall swinging inward.
Sunlight flooded the stairway, gold and brilliant and painful as it poured through floor-to-ceiling windows. Tears sprang to his eyes as brilliance lanced into his skull and the sun’s radiant heat beat on him. Despite the discomfort, his heart leaped.
“Come,” Urzgeth growled. It was only as the aged huntsman grabbed him by the arm that he realized he had not acted on the command despite the Dushken giving it twice.
Tristan stumbled as his toe caught the edge of the emerald green carpet running the length of the hallway, and his knees and palms throbbed as they smacked the floor. He did not care, and stared in bewilderment at the contrasting vibrancy against his skin’s pallor, the faded brown freckles on his forearms, and the pinkness of his fingernails.
Annoyed, the alpha hooked the young man’s arm and dragged him to his feet. He stumbled along beside the huntsman, barely able to see through the tears running down his face.
The Dushken led him through gilded doors painted brilliant white and decorated with a coat of arms. Tristan noticed slight differences in the heraldic device from those over the beds in Ankara’s dungeon pleasure chambers; the raven lacked a crown, and the head faced the opposite direction.
Had he any doubt as to what lay beyond, a glimpse of the chambers confirmed his suspicions. Sathra’s suite of rooms was larger and far more opulent than those he had been given under the pretext of being Gwistain’s squire. Instinctively, he knew Ankara preferred elegant simplicity and favored darker colors; the furniture here was embellished and gilded, the woods painted white, and the cushions upholstered in blood-red velvet. Deep red and brilliant white roses bloomed in silver planters, filling the air with cloying sweetness.
Dazed, the young man trailed Urzgeth through a study filled with bookcases and a polished wooden desk. Open doors led onto a balcony facing pine-cloaked mountains, framed by gauzy curtains which billowed in a summer-warm breeze, and birdsong reached ears accustomed to the relative silence of the labyrinthine dungeons.
They passed through a bathing chamber with a vast sunken tub and walls lined with polished mirrors. Crossing the tiled floor, he caught sight of his reflection. Trimmed to chin length, the deep auburn waves of his hair stood stark against his pallid skin. Shadows deepened his eyes beneath a knotted brow. Months of captivity had burned away youthful softness; deep lines framed his lips, and his cheekbones rose high and hard above gaunt cheeks. All the fat had run from his body, and his ribs stood out beneath skin crisscrossed with angry red scars, crude black stitches, and clouds of blue-black bruises.
Another set of double doors opened on Sathra’s dressing room; silks and velvets worth Dorishad’s yearly income draped chaises and chairs or lay discarded on the floor. Beyond this room lay the bedchamber, with a bed twice the size of the one in which he had slept. A blood-red and black velvet coverlet had been turned back, exposing white satin sheets and pillows mounded against the headboard. Here, too, doors opened onto a balcony; a warm summer breeze carried the tang of pine and the waterfall’s muted roar into the room.
“Wait,” Urzgeth commanded, then made his way back through the suite of rooms to the foyer.
Tristan did not care where he was or why. Breathing deep, he replaced the greasy scent of burning torches clogging his lungs for months with fresh air. It was summer’s end when he crossed Anahar’s border with Gwistain and Groush, and he had been imprisoned within days of reaching Feinthresh Castle. At least nine months had passed, filled with starvation, molestation, torture, and being used as bait to train young Dushken. For almost a year, he had seen neither sun nor sky.
No doubt he would be returned to the dungeons when Sathra finished with him. Hungry for the light and fearful of missing a moment of it, he opened his eyes to savor every moment.
Any other time he had been kept waiting, the tension built within him. Too often, he felt as though he were a wet rag, wrung until nothing more would dribble from him before being folded another way and squeezed for every drop. Always before, he found himself in a strange dread of anticipation. This time was different. Whatever Sathra wanted of him did not matter. He had been given a glimpse of the sun-drenched world and refused to waste a moment wondering what the younger sorceress intended.
Tristan hardly noticed the passage of time. His skin prickled as the breeze stirred through the window. A fly hummed through the room and landed on his shoulder. His muscles twitched at the rishka-heightened sensation of it crawling across his skin.
The door to the apartments clicked open, followed by soft voices. A moment later, hard soles clicked on the bathing chamber’s marble floor. Heavy skirts swished as the noblewoman entered the dressing chamber, and the double doors closed behind her with a click.
“Come here, Tristan.”
He turned, sluggish yet compelled to obey. His eyes strained for the window before focusing on the young sorceress.
Blood red skirts fell from Sathra’s slender hips, trimmed in a broad swath of black embroidered in silver roses. A matching short-waisted velvet coat draped her shoulders, black satin cuffs pinioned near her elbows with embossed silver buttons. The coat’s front was undone, revealing a form-fitting leather corset bearing her House’s coat of arms in silver and gold. Her braided mahogany twisted into a bun beneath a high crowned, short-brimmed black hat and secured with a hatpin.
Her face had undergone subtle changes from months feeding on the prisoners’ essence. Lovely when he met her, her features were now almost symmetrical; all but a few minor blemishes had vanished from her alabaster skin. Carmine accentuated perfectly proportioned lips, making them apple red against the near-translucence of her pallor, and her icy-blue eyes glowed within their kohl lining.
Tristan’s teeth gritted as she stepped close, her perfume enveloping him as she studied him for several long moments.
“You are a most perplexing individual,” she said at length, pulling her gloves off and tossing them on the bed. “You claim to be nothing more than a nameless orphan, yet you have consumed my kinswoman’s attention – and vex and fascinate her in equal measure. Do you realize she has spent more time with you in the last two months than anything else, leaving me to attend affairs of state much sooner than she planned?”
His left hand twitched against his thigh and fell still.
An exasperated sigh slipped through Sathra’s lips as she removed her hat and tossed it aside. Laying the silver hair sticks securing her bun on a table beside the door, she pulled the twine at the end of her braid and began unplaiting her hair. “To be frank, it pleases me to have her out of the way. It is sooner than I expected, and why you should be the source of her distraction escapes me. Despite her claims, you are neither special to look upon nor particularly clever.”
A twinge of amusement tickled him. At least we can agree about our confusion.
“I’d say the old bird has gone senile if she were anyone else. I might have ignored her preoccupation as a preference, if not for meetings I attended yesterday and then again this morning.” She shrugged out of her coat as she circled him and let it drop to the floor. “You are hiding something – something she very much wants to learn, though I suspect she knows more than she lets on. Others, too, have taken a keen interest in you.”
Tristan stared over her head. Had Ankara somehow learned he was Anthoun’s ward son – and if she had, did it matter? Something told him it was important she never know who raised him. He had resisted surrendering the information despite the rishka. As he learned the depths of Ankara’s cruelty, he struggled to keep his origins a secret to protect all who called Dorishad home.
Perhaps Gwistain had surrendered the information, and the idea frightened him. If a prince could break under Ankara’s interrogation, what hope does a nothing l
ike me have?
“I thought it strange for Marcus to hail you so familiarly whilst we toured the textile district. Why would a representative of Merid speak to a Ravvosi in such a manner? There is no love between your nation and his.” His foot slid backward as the noblewoman laid the tips of his fingers on his chest and pushed. “Then I thought you might be a Meridan spy placed within the House of Ravvos, but that made little sense. You were too ignorant; had someone troubled to place you so highly, they would have educated you on the niceties noble bearing – and attached you to someone worthwhile. Gwistain is nothing, so sending a spy to Anahar with him makes little sense. You would learn nothing of value.”
The edge of the soft mattress pressed against the back of his knees, causing him to sit as the pressure of her touch overbalanced him. His fingers twitched as they rested on the coverlet, curling inward until the fabric bunched in his hands.
“The familiarity of Marcus’ greeting would have ruined your utility as a spy. It was as though he expected to see you, or someone who looked like you.” Rich brown hair brushed her shoulders as Sathra shook her head. “Until yesterday, I had seen no one who resembles you in build and coloring. As part of a bargain struck with Ankara, they demanded I hand you over.”
Though his expression remained blank, Tristan’s mind raced as she confirmed conclusions he had reached shortly after his imprisonment. Marcus was indeed Meridan, and there were other players in a game Sathra knew nothing about. He found her mention of someone resembling him curious.
“Of course, I refused to do so,” she said as she reached behind her back and undid her corset’s laces. The leather sagged as the knot eased, and cordage hissed through grommets with sharp tugs of her fingers. The red satin lining fell away from the curve of her breast and torso, leaving pressure marks where boning had pressed into her flesh, and she cast the garment aside. “Ankara is not here to countermand me, but I suspect she, too, would refuse to hand you over.”
Undoing her skirts’ laces, the noblewoman let them slide down her thighs to pool on the floor before dropping the finer underskirt. Her finger rose beneath his chin to lift his eyes to her stern face. “As you can imagine, I have several problems. A game is being played to which I am not privy, and you are a piece in it. Ankara has also forbidden me from tasting what she takes from you – and from what I have seen of her torments, your essence must be quite potent by now. I will learn what is so special about you.”
The bed creaked beneath their combined weight as the noblewoman fell silent and straddled his legs. She pressed his shoulders down to the mattress with one hand on his chest, and the smooth skin of her inner thighs glided across his skin as she moved up his body. The curve of her buttocks flexed as she rested her weight on him, causing his flesh to stir. She wrapped her palm around the shaft of his manhood and stroked it, coaxing it to rigidity as her eyes closed and her tongue flicked across her lips. The slick heat between her thighs replaced the coolness of her touch, and pleasure sang through his nerves as her body parted around him. A flush crept across her breasts as she ground her pelvis against his, and her delicate-skinned nipples stiffened. She groaned and rocked against him, her rising heat strengthening the scent of the oils worked into her skin as her slickness feathered the length of his turgid shaft.
Accustomed to the sight and sensation, Tristan ignored her and focused on the coverlet gripped in his hands. Rishka deprived its victims of all but the most rudimentary motor control; never before had his fingers behaved as they did now. Quick to sever the mind from the flesh that housed it, the drug was slow to recede. He did not know why the rishka was easing; the dose Urzgeth had given him in the water had tasted no weaker – but he was not one to question it.
Pain flared across his nerves as Sathra lay atop him and sank her teeth into the curve of his shoulder. The pleasure of her body parting around him and breasts flattening against his chest was a contrast to the sawing of her teeth; the comingled sensations blurred in his senses as they straddled the line dividing them. The undulating movement of her muscles and the silky flow of her unbound hair flowing across his sweating skin aroused his body’s primal urges, and the scrape of her fingernails scoring his ribs added spice to the joining of their flesh.
Blood flowed from the indentations of her bite. Her tongue lapped it away, and the saliva left behind cooled his heated flesh in the breeze from the open balcony. The velvety sheath gripping his shaft quivered as pleasure chased through her. The small emerald pendant dangling from the silver chain around her neck glittered as she gasped and shuddered.
Loathing seared his veins. Shoving the pleasure of perverted intimacy racing through his veins aside, he focused on his hands. Tendons strained as he fought their involuntary clench, and the fingers slowly unfurled against the bedspread’s luxuriant nap. Teeth gritted against hope, he ordered the digits to flex and tighten once more – and found the effort to do so easier than anticipated.
By the tightening of his flesh, he knew his climax was approaching. Sathra recognized the signs as well and increased the rhythm of her thrusts. Her breasts swayed as she arched her back and pulled him deeper into herself, their skin meeting and parting with a suck of sweat. The humid musk of her arousal undercut the spice of her perfume. The pendant pulsed with a profane emerald light as her lips parted, the words to the enchantment which would siphon off his essence rising with her panted breaths.
Strained by a confusion of pleasure and pain, hate, and fury, the rishka’s hold on him snapped like an overstrained fishing line. One hand flew into her hair, the fingers tangling in the thick mass and twisting; the other strangled her startled shriek by seizing her by the throat. His thumb and fingers dug into the hollows behind her jaw, and the web connecting them compressed her windpipe.
Tristan rolled her onto her back to leverage his greater size against her healthier strength with a violent twist of his torso. Strands of mahogany hair tore from her scalp as he wrenched his hand free and brought it to bear on her throat. Her body bucked beneath him as she fought for breath; a fingernail broke as she clawed at his forearms and drummed his spine with her heels.
A streamer of saliva dribbled across her purpling face as his lips peeled back in a grimace of savage pleasure. Months of impotent terror and fury strengthened his muscles, and he savaged her loins while pressing her skull into the mattress’s yielding softness. Blood stood out from the gouges raked into his arms, but he dared not ease the pressure as her windpipe compressed and the joints in her neck creaked under the strain.
A growl of animal satisfaction rose from his chest as his release built, born both from her helpless thrashing and the heady exultation of vengeance.
He never felt the cresting sensation. Drawn by unanticipated sounds from Sathra’s bedchamber, Urzgeth shattered the doors with a kick and bounded to the bedside. The alpha drove his fist into the side of Tristan’s head with enough force to blast him into the blackness of unconsciousness.
Chapter 40
Chains rattled as Tristan stirred. As consciousness returned, he cataloged his hurts and found himself unable to move. His head throbbed, and his heartbeat pushed the aching slivers from his temples through his bruised jaw and the strained muscles of his neck. Pain tore at his shoulders and wrists; manacles circled his wrists, and chains secured to the wall drew his arms out to his sides. His ankles were also restrained, causing an unpleasant ache to radiate through his knees and hips as his legs were pulled apart. A narrow stone shelf jutting from the wall supported his buttocks; had his legs been unbound, he would not have been able to slide from the small seat due to the steel collar securing his neck to the wall. Irregular stones jutted from the wall, digging into his spine and adding to his discomfort.
A soft, mocking laugh echoed from the walls. Torches mounted in iron sconces flared with a brilliant crackle, forcing him to blink through a blur of stinging tears.
Ankara stepped toward him, the hem of her robe whispering against the cell’s floor. “You do not disapp
oint. I was not anticipating quite the result my experiment produced – but when does a hypothesis on an unknown topic ever prove accurate?”
His throat bobbed against the collar around his throat as he swallowed and tried to find his voice. “What...”
“It is unsurprising you do not remember, given how hard Urzgeth struck you. I do not know who is more surprised by what happened – you, him, or Sathra. She will not forget what happened any time soon, given you almost crushed her larynx. It may be some time before her voice recovers.”
Memory returned in a rush, and his body spasmed with a sharp intake of breath as the lingering fog in his mind cleared.
“As I was saying, my experiment did not go quite as I intended. I expected Sathra to attempt to uncover your identity again since she handled it so poorly the first time. My forbidding her to do so made her wonder what I find so intriguing about you. What I failed to anticipate was her being stupid enough to bring you to her chambers. At least she had the sense to keep Urzgeth nearby, or she would be dead and you would be free.” The sorceress laced her fingers on her belly and slouched into a comfortable chair set to face him. Her voice drawled with amusement as she made a faux expression of regret. “I am so sorry the chance to escape did not present itself.”
“Fuck you.”
“We will get to that later, I assure you; it may be a little awkward with the chains, but I am afraid it is unavoidable. Now that you have surrendered to your baser nature, it will be easier to free it again. It is far more satisfying when mind and body act in unison, without civilization’s petty trappings tainting the essence with guilt and conflict. Would you not agree?”