The Taming

by Imogen Keeper

  Tor nodded happily. That was what he’d wanted in the beginning. He’d happily be tortured for a while—however long Agammo needed to show up with the Premier. And it beat the hell out of having Klym fuck some other guy and be brainwashed into loving him for the rest of her life.

  He garbled his assent.

  Klym cupped her hands over her mouth, shaking her head. “You said you’d let him go. You said you would.” She turned to glare at Spiro. “Please, Spiro. You promised you’d Bond with me.”

  Tor snarled at that, flexing and shifting. “Ungh unhg, gnuh!” That one actually sounded like what he meant.

  The pearl thief reached out with a thick hand and grabbed Klym by the wrist to haul her away from Tor.

  He shoved a shoulder into him, pressing him back, and got a swift kick to the guy’s shin.

  The guard staggered back but didn’t relax his grip.

  “You can’t torture him,” Klym screamed. “Please, Father.” She kicked the guard too, but he wore too much soft-armor, and her shoes weren’t meant for that. The blow didn’t even faze him.

  The pearl thief cocked his rezal, staying well out of Tor’s striking zone. “Step back.”

  Tor stared back at his bloody face, studying his eyes, analyzing and wondering. He jerked his eyebrows, and the guy flinched. He took a cautious step forward, probing to see the man’s skill.

  “Stop,” Spiro shouted huskily from across the room, and Tor turned reluctantly. “Everyone just stop.”

  Merona kept his rezal aimed squarely on him. “He’ll know about their defensive satellites. A regio. He’ll know the locations and capabilities of their security satellites. We could end this. In a heartbeat. Do you know the weapons the Senate has been sitting on? We could finish them,” he snarled.

  The endless beauty of it. Everyone wanted to end the war. Peace to be had through marriage between one couple, or peace through the obliteration of his whole planet. Tor roared impotently into the gag.

  “That wouldn’t end it. And that weapon would never be sanctioned. Why kill the women?” Spiro lifted his weapon, leveled it at Merona. “Put down your weapon, sir. You’re in breach of at least five different laws I could name, sir.”

  Merona jerked his head at the guard holding Klym and swung his rezal at Spiro. So many rezals, two on him, one on Spiro. Everyone stared around the room.

  “Don’t make me do this, sir.” Spiro’s broken voice was low. “Lower your weapons, and we will discuss the treatment of the priso—”

  Whatever he was going to say, he didn’t finish. Merona fired with his rezal and got him right in the chest with one of his damned darts.

  Spiro’s knees hit the ground, and a second later he fell face-first to the floor. His cheeks squished up, and only his eyeballs moved, rolling around wildly.

  Klym shouted, and Tor tried to go to her, but the pearl thief waggled his weapon to the negative, laughing with his bloody mouth.

  A second later, Merona turned on his own daughter and leveled the rezal. “I’m sorry, Klymeni. When you wake up, he will be dead.”

  Merona fired, and Klym went still, her mouth dropping in appalled agony. Shock written so clearly across her features that his heart clenched. His beautiful, sweet, kind-hearted wife always believed in people. And she’d just been shot by her own father.

  A tiny dart quivered on her abdomen. A second later she hit the floor.

  Merona stared at her, his face paling as if even he was surprised by his actions.

  Tor charged, but the pearl thief smacked him in the back of the head with the butt of his rezal so hard he doubled over, his vision blackening. He hit the floor on his knees, screaming through the gag and breathing so hard through his nose that his head spun. He lurched to his feet, throwing his body around, but it was a useless mission.

  Klym sprawled on the floor.

  “Get him into the interrogation room,” Merona said in a dead, flat voice.

  The guard shook the rezal, and Tor walked, as slowly as he could, through the door.

  Spiro’s one eyeball rolled at him helplessly. Klym lay staring lifelessly at the wall.

  The migane pearl thief kept shoving him in the small of the back with the rezal, forcing him to go faster.

  They got to the elevator, and the whole time he was waiting, waiting, waiting. Come on, Agammo. Where are you?

  They called the elevator. He stared at Klym.

  The elevator doors slid open.

  The guards hustled him onto it.

  What’s taking so long?

  He turned back to see Klym, all that blond hair around her face, her eyes locked on the wall.

  The doors slid shut.

  45

  Just how far would I go?

  KLYM STARED AT the closing doors, the floor pressing up hard and cold beneath her. Spiro didn’t make a sound, but her own breaths echoed in the silent halls, spinning in her ears like a raw wound in the aftermath of all Tor’s irate and muffled shouts. How he must loathe being tied and gagged, a man so used to action and control.

  She squeezed her eyes together and pressed her fingers into the floor. For a single brilliant moment, when Spiro first said Tor was here, she’d allowed herself to believe they’d be happy. His coming here, risking everything, had been stupid, absolutely, but it was probably the single thing he could have ever done to prove that he cared. He’d risked his life, his kingdom, his country for her, so he could take her home and they could build a life together.

  She should have known her father would never let that happen.

  Tor should never have come. It would hurt far more to lose him this time.

  Spiro lay on the floor, beside the blood from the guard’s nose. For that alone, her father deserved to go to Insuractius. Spiro didn’t deserve that.

  For once in her life, she was glad that everyone looked at her and saw nothing but fluff and lace and smiles.

  This was far from over.

  She pressed her hands into the floor and rose awkwardly to her feet in the overlarge gown. The dart dangled from her stays, and as it swung back and forth, it caught the light.

  For the first time in her life, she was grateful for the miserable corset that made breathing impossible, sitting hard, and turned her skin red and welty. She tossed the dart to the floor and bent over Spiro to pull a knife from his belt. “You should have given me one of these when I asked.”

  His one visible eyeball rolled.

  “What is with you? Why is he so fixated on having us Bond?”

  The eyeball rolled again.

  “My father shot me.” Her lips quivered, and she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. She stared at Spiro’s rezal, but she had no idea how to use it, and it seemed more dangerous to rely on it than to go with a knife. She knew knives. She’d held one every single day of her life, three times a day, at every single meal. She trailed her finger down one. This one was bigger and sharper, but it was familiar.

  Her father would let Tor go.

  She ran down the hall to the elevators and punched the call button.

  Where else would clandestine, bloody interviews be conducted other than on the bottom floor?

  The ride was long, and her stomach rolled as the elevator rushed down.

  The doors hissed open to reveal an endless white corridor that stretched in either direction. Muffled voices sounded from the right. How much surveillance did they have in this building so late at night? Was her father alone with the two guards? Or was more security watching her awkward crouched tip-toe lurch down the hall in a dress the size of a hover?

  Tor shouted behind the gag, indignant and furious, and she almost smiled. She’d miss his bellows. So much bluster hid the man who’d given up his freedom and his future to his people.

  If he died here, all that would be for nothing.

  Her fingers flexed on the handle of the knife, and she wondered for the thousandth time what in the world she would do with it. Kill her father? Kill a guard? Kill herself? This time, she
couldn’t meekly hand over the knife and claim not to be responsible for the outcome.

  This was on her.

  His life depended on her.

  And so did Vesta, depending on whatever weapon Spiro and her father had mentioned.

  She crouched outside the door to the interrogation room. Tor stood in the center of the room, glaring at them like he couldn’t quite believe he’d ended up there. His broad shoulders stretched back, the tattoo climbing his neck, his hair, messy around his face. That face. Her heart twisted in her chest. Even gagged and raging, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

  One of the guards ordered him to climb onto the metal table in the center of the room.

  Tor fake-charged one of them, with a jerk of his shoulders, and one of the guards flinched, his finger dancing toward the trigger.

  Klym’s heart pounded. She took a long, deep breath.

  Tor turned and saw her at the moment. He went still. His eyebrows quirked slightly and his whole body shuddered. A weird little whimper sounded in the back of his throat.

  Her father’s back was to her.

  Could she stab her own father?

  Tor stared back at her. No one else had seen her yet. She held up her hand and showed him the knife. He shook his head tightly.

  How far would she go for Tor?

  He shook his head harder.

  Very far.

  Her father stood only a few feet away, a rezal in his right hand.

  She flexed her grip around the knife, tested its weight, frowned at the angle, imagined the motion she’d need to raise it.

  With her hands gripped tight around the handle, she tiptoed up, moving silently, closer than she’d been to him in years, close enough to smell the herbal tonic he used when shaving. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been this close to him. Many, many years. Throat clogged with tears, she shoved the blade against his neck, maybe a little harder than necessary.

  “Put down the rezal, Father,” she hissed, and because old habits die hard, she couldn’t suppress the involuntary, “please.”

  He bucked against her, but she’d expected it. She sank her fingers into the wool of his jacket, right over his arm, acutely aware that it was the first time she could remember touching him.

  The guards jerked their weapons at her.

  “Klymeni? Wh—”

  “If you think I won’t do it,” she said, pressing harder with the blade, and a fat drop of red blood slid down the flat of it, “I’ll ask you to remember what I did to escape Spiro. And he never shot me.”

  “You would choose them over your own father?” Her father’s whole body went still. “They murdered your mother.” His voice was so low, she barely heard it.

  “Not Tor.” A second drop oozed down the blade like a crimson pearl to wet her palm. “Put down the rezal.”

  He let out a protracted wheezy sigh. “You won’t stab me.”

  Tor grunted behind his gag, and she couldn’t tell if he was in favor of her stabbing him or not. His whole body had gone still. She’d never noticed it before, but he was always in motion, vibrating with energy and life, stroking her plant, stroking her, twitching his fingers, bouncing his leg, squeezing her waist, toying with her hair, a hundred tiny motions, as if he were testing the fiber of the universe around him. But not now. He was so still it was as if he’d stopped breathing.

  “Are you so certain?” she whispered. “I’m not.”

  He lowered the rezal so its point faced the floor. “When you were little, you used to sit on my lap sometimes while I worked. You always did exactly what was asked of you. Such a good girl.”

  She didn’t remember that. Couldn’t imagine a child being brave enough to go near him. “You allowed that?”

  The muscle of his shoulder tensed. “And you look so much like her. It was like looking at a ghost. And you were always so lonely.” He moved slowly, lowering the weapon to the floor, and she moved with him, keeping the blade against his throat. “The Bonding will make you happy. It will give you a family.”

  “I have a family,” she whispered, staring at Tor. “On Vesta.”

  “You don’t understand. With the Bond, you’d never be alone again. Trust me.” His voice broke on the last word, almost plaintive.

  “You just shot me.”

  “To protect you. Throwing away the chance to have a Bond is like throwing your life away. I had high hopes for Agammo, but he didn’t turn out as I’d expected. Spiro is one of the finest men I know.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  Tor didn’t move a muscle. One of the guards shifted, and the creak of his boots was as loud as a scream.

  “There are lots of good men, Father. And only one I want. And you want to torture him.”

  “They killed thousands of women. He has information.”

  She locked her knees to stop them from shaking. “Twenty-two years ago, the Alliance ordered an attack on another planet. Tor wasn’t there. He wants to stop them. Order the guards to drop their weapons, too.”

  He shifted against her, so she sank the blade a little deeper, grabbing a hold of the back of his jacket for purchase, so he couldn’t twist away.

  “Once you’re Bonded to Spiro, you’ll forget about him.”

  “Would you want to forget Mother?”

  A shudder racked through his body. “I’ve been holding on for two things since the day she died. Revenge against the Vestige and the promise that someday you would be Bonded, and I could stop.”

  Her knees shook in the awkward position, on tiptoe with a knife jammed in her father’s throat, the preternatural calm she’d felt in the hallway eroding.

  Stop. She knew what he meant, and the thought made her heart twist. He’d been holding on for her. How hard must it have been for him, all these years. She’d seen it on his face in the cell upstairs. She looked like the ghost of a woman he’d loved and lost. And if it hadn’t been for her, he’d have given up long ago.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, sensed her softening, her father’s muscles bunched.

  She twisted her grip on the knife.

  She met Tor’s eyes, bottomless and black. She thought about what he’d said to her about finding someone who wanted her enough to come for her. He had. She thought about how her entire life, she’d wanted someone to stand up for her, to have a family, and she remembered the holo of the people of the Roq standing up for her to Pijuan. She had a family. A real one. A man with way too many not-wives and a mother like a lizard and insane politics. People who laughed and danced and a man who made her whole body come to life. And they weren’t perfect. They weren’t organized or gentle. They were raucous and rough.

  Tor’s brows pulled together.

  She leaned up on her toes. “She’d have wanted me to be happy.”

  At that exact second, a voice spoke from behind her. “Drop the knife.”

  Whatever she’d been about to do, she’d never find out.

  46

  Peace was the side perk

  FUCKING FINALLY. Tor sighed around the gag.

  It was the damned Premier. Three of his men angled rezals at everyone in the room.

  Klym’s eyes kept darting back and forth between everyone as if she expected at any moment that one of them would attack.

  She had a look on her face he’d seen hundreds of times, the look people got when they’d accepted a horrible fate, like a life sentence on Insuractius, only to get sudden hope of a reprieve.

  Her lower lip shook, and he wanted to kiss it, or touch it, anything. But the damned gag and cuffs made him useless.

  She lowered the knife slowly from her father’s neck, blood pooling along her hand, and stepped away. She made a keening sound.

  His face ashen, Merona backed away to stand by his guards, who’d lowered their weapons instantly.

  Shoulders heaving, Tor dropped to his knees in front of her. And even then, she was so much shorter than him that her lips were at his eye level.

  They tr
embled.

  His explosive heart beat too loud to hear much of anything, everything else just faded away.

  She stared down at her shaking hands. The knife clattered to the floor.

  He garbled behind the gag, but she didn’t understand, so he crouched low and butted the back of the gag against her palm.

  She jumped at the contact, but slowly her fingers threaded along his scalp, still shaky, but there. Touching him. Finally.

  Moving on his knees, digging his shoulder into her ribcage, he backed her up so she leaned against the wall.

  Whatever was going on at the doorway, he could vaguely see through his peripheral vision, the Premier’s personal security detail had removed all weapons. Agammo with all his sausage curls was there, his little mouth popping open and closed.

  Tor didn’t care about any of them. He closed his eyes and dropped his face against the silky gray fabric of the dress right between her breasts and sucked in a breath of Klym, drew her deep into his lungs like having her there would keep her there, safe and his. Levidicus fruit, smooth silk, and warm skin. Vinyassa, he’d missed her. Her fingertips moved, and he shuddered as the latch at the base of his neck snapped open and the straps that held the ball-gag in place lowered.

  She pulled the ball from his mouth.

  He wiped his mouth on his shoulder. There were probably a hundred things he could say, and even more that he should say, but only one stuck in his craw. And it was a big one. “You were going to fucking Bond with another man?”

  His voice came out nothing more than a pathetic, hoarse whisper.

  She startled at the tone of his voice. “To save your life?” She took his face in her hands, her cold, soft fingers, sticky with blood, sliding over his cheeks. “Yes. I’d do anything.”

  “Not that.”

  “I can’t believe you came here,” she whispered.

  “I can’t believe you left me,” he whispered back, the anger fading under her touch.

  “I left to save you.”

  He pushed her back with his chest against hers, in the closest thing he could manage to a hug while on his knees, with his hands tied behind his back. “I don’t like your methods of saving me.” He’d mimicked her line.