by C. M. Lind
There were clinking of glasses followed by the pop of a cork leaving a bottle. Soli opened her eyes. The woman in red was pouring them wine, and Soli’s vision may have been blurred, but she swore the woman had filled them as full as possible.
Jae set the bottle to the side. The woman giggled as she brought her filled glass up in cheers, and Jae, with one hand still wrapped around her, brought his up as well.
“To new experiences, my flower,” said Jae, but as he went to clink their glasses she pulled it away with a playful click of her tongue.
She ran her fingers up the inside of Jae’s arm. “To a night I have been looking forward to.” She tapped her glass forward into his, and they rang off one another.
Soli shuddered, and her stomach felt as if the worms from the soil were writhing within it. What woman would ever have sincerely wanted to bed the infamous Jae Reinout, she didn’t know—but she knew, even when only half in control of her own faculties, when a woman was acting. The woman in red was a consummate actress.
The woman brought her cup to her lips, but she hesitated when Jae was slow to raise his. “Do not make me drink alone, love,” she said followed by a small titter.
“Ladies first.” Jae was staring at his arm, where the woman was touching him with her nails. “After you, my flower.” His eyes went to hers, and he raised his hand to her face, caressing her jaw with the back of his hand.
“You are such a gentleman,” she said with another giggle, continuing to trace her fingers along his arm. She threw back the glass, and after a long, smooth swallow, she smacked her lips loudly.
Jae brought his head down to hers. Cocking it just ever so slightly, he pressed his lips against hers as he squeezed her with his arm.
She appeared to kiss him back, but Soli saw her hand on her glass, clutching it until she was sure it was going to crack in her fingers.
Soli squeezed her eyes shut.
Chapter 70
Randolph kept his eyes on Etienne, and if he knew he was being stared down by Randolph, he didn’t show it. Randolph had always thought that Ety was pleased to be the center of attention at any event, and the Jubilee, at least after Jae disappeared with a woman or two, was one of his few chances to play the social icon.
None of the guests that met with Ety caught Randolph’s eye—until the strange man who had waylaid him earlier caught Ety’s attention.
At the sight, Randolph pushed himself off the wall. He was ready and willing to throw the man, face first, onto the ground right out the front door. Just the thought of the stranger causing any trouble made him crack his knuckles in anticipation.
But the man didn’t grab Ety. He didn’t seem to cause any alarm at all. He leaned in to Ety’s ear and whispered.
Ety nodded, and the two were walking away to the ballroom.
Randolph, beyond confused and with a raised brow, turned to his trusty men, Val and Guy. “You guys are in charge of the door.”
“Yes, sir!” they answered in unison accompanied by a vigorous nod of their heads.
Randolph left the two, confident enough in their abilities to handle a simple guest list. Wherever Ety had run off too, there was no guessing for Randolph how long he would be gone, so he didn’t want to waste time.
Even knowing that an assassin was on the prowl, something else didn’t feel right. His mouth felt dry. There was unsteadiness in his muscles, and his lip was bleeding again.
He had to find Soli.
Chapter 71
Vitoria told herself to be Mara for only a few seconds longer as Jae shoved his slimy, probing tongue into her mouth, twisting around hers like a kraken around a ship. She forced herself to moan, mimicking pleasure, as she fought the gagging in the back of her throat.
She promised herself it would be the last time she would ever fake pleasure ever again, but the vow was little comfort.
Jae pulled his head away, but his body was pressed against hers. With his perfumes he smelled more to her like a lady than the famous lothario of Queensport. The only reminder that he wasn’t a lady was his hardness, which she felt pressed against her thigh.
“The wine tastes divine,” he said.
“Even better from your own glass,” she said with a playful hum. Her stomach felt full. The pressure inside it grew from the poison she drank, and it pushed out against her gown. She swallowed.
“Is that so?” He chuckled. “I much prefer it on your tongue, although you do need some practice, I must admit.”
She blinked at him. “Then perhaps we should take things slow.” She brought her glass up again as a sharp pain shot through her stomach, but the glass hid her momentary grimace. “Do not make me drink alone, my lord.”
“You are right.” He brought the glass to his lips. “I would never make a lady drink alone.”
Her throat was filling with the acidity. Her body cried out to expel the toxic drink, but she smiled instead.
He smiled at her, their eyes meeting as he began to tilt the glass back.
Her eyes shot to the glass for a second before going back to his, but it was too late. He had noticed her lapse. He lowered the glass, glancing back at his arm with a scrunched brow. “You know, my little flower,” he said without warmth, “there is no reason to rush our evening.” He glanced at the bottle of wine—particularly the cork.
Vitoria’s pulse began to thud in her ears, growing stronger and more frightening like approaching thunder on the plains. Her stomach clenched again, sending another spasm of pain she fought to ignore.
She had pressed too hard, and it was already far too late to wait on him.
“How long should we wait, my little flower?” He mused, wrapping his arm around her tighter. “Five minutes? Ten minutes?”
She smiled. “That would be such a waste of our time.”
“Then indulge me,” he said, his hand moving up her back to play with her curls on the back of her neck. “Have another drink.”
“A lady never drinks alone.”
“But,” he said, his fingers running into the back of her hair, “you are no lady, are you, whore?”
Jae grabbed her wig, tearing it back with his hand. It was plastered to her scalp, and it snapped her head back in a frightful jerk. It began to tear away, but not before Jae overturned his whole glass over her mouth. Drops of delicious poison slipped past her lips, up her nose, and into her eyes.
“Take your fill, whore!” he screamed at her as the wig ripped from Vitoria’s head.
Vitoria spat the wine in her mouth back at him, but she felt her nose and eyes burning. She dropped her own glass, and her other hand came straight up, striking the base of her palm into his chin with all her strength.
As she heard the snap of teeth breaking mixed with a yelp, Jae was off of her, retreating a few steps back. His hands were on his face, and his fingers touched his teeth. His large front ones, the central incisors, were cracked at rough, jagged angles. He spit. One chunk fell to the floor in a glob of spit and blood. The other had been lost in the strike.
Vitoria took rapid breaths, wiping the wine from her face with the back of her hand. Every inhalation pinched her diaphragm. Every exhalation left more room for her expanding stomach to spread.
“You fucking bitch!” His eyes bulged as he launched himself at her, his fists lashing out like a madman.
She dodged the first one with nothing but a sidestep. The next one, she pushed to the side with her open hands. The third one struck her like a brick. Crushing her nose completely, leaving a bloodied smear on the left of her face.
Luckily, she had gone with the blow, and she reeled around on him with her own fists raised. She struck out, and her aim went wide. The world around her felt like a melting dream, and her mind and body were not in sync.
She cringed as another shot of pain ran through her. The thunderstorm of her blood grew closer, and the rhythmic, strong pounding in her head was joined by a faint sound that resembled cicadas.
Jae was at her again, throwing himself at he
r like a hound, both hands out to throttle and beat her. He moved like a mass of blurred colors before her.
Her feet moved on their own, stepping to the side to allow him to miss her completely. Her hands were out, and she caught him at his elbow and shoulder. Grounded against him, she brought her left leg down on the back of his knee, buckling him. He dropped down, his arms flailing out to hit her, but she pushed him hard, and he was brought to his knees.
She wasted no time. Ignoring the pain in her abdomen, the buzz in her ears, and the intangibility of reality in that moment, she brought her knee up—aiming for the back of his head, where the spine meets the skull. One shot to snap his spinal cord.
But he rolled away from her, and her knee passed harmlessly through the air.
He laughed at her; his face contorted in pain as air passed over the exposed nerves in his broken teeth. “You stupid bitch,” he said, going to his feet. “You tried to drug me.”
Vitoria was facing him, her feet planted apart, one forward and one back, ready for him to attack.
His face was as red as the blood running down Vitoria’s face. “No one drugs me!” he shouted at her, his hand slashing through the air as he spoke.
Vitoria blinked as the room seemed to momentarily ooze around her. The ferns dripped, appearing like melting drops of green. The shadows grew long and twisty, as if they were dark tentacles reaching out for her. The red and yellow lights pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
She shook her head, banishing the phantoms, and she took another painful breath. In her head she heard prayers. Echoes of a voice praying in a tongue she did not comprehend. It was not the voice she had grown accustomed to. No, she thought, not echoes. There were many voices, men and women, all trying to speak at once. All reciting what sounded like a plea, a prayer, or a song.
Jae was laughing at her. “How long do you have then? Should I just have a sit and wait?”
To Vitoria’s left was a potted plant along the edge of a fern bed. It was a small clay thing overgrown with a bright pink ruffled petunia. She snatched it with her hand and threw it at Jae.
He was too busy laughing to evade it, and it clipped his shoulder. “That,” he boomed, “was my mother’s favorite!”
Vitoria hawked all the blood and spit from her throat at him followed by a sharp laugh. The voices were louder, and she counted at least a score of them.
“Do you know what I do with naughty whores?” Jae asked with a slight whistle coming from his broken teeth. “I teach them manners.”
Vitoria smiled, her jaw hung open to bare her blood covered teeth to him accompanied by a wag of her tongue.
He ran at her, and she struck out at him.
But she was slowing, and it was showing.
He grabbed her wrists; his hands were wound as tightly around her as rope. A wide grin broke on his face, showing his broken teeth and forever ruined smile. He pulled on her, trying to drag her away in a fashion, it seemed to Vitoria, he had done countless times before.
But she didn’t let him. She rounded her hands outward, circling his, and she broke his grip with well-practiced ease. With a snap of her hands, she flung his out, leaving him open to her. Vitoria grabbed him by his doublet and slammed her knee into his groin.
He howled, his jaw jutting out as far as his eyes. Stumbling back, his hand went out, and his fingers grabbed her gown. The dress ripped open, and its many buttons fell across the floor like scattered seeds.
Losing her balance, she was pulled with him, but she used the momentum to continue hurting him. One hand was on his hair, pulling until blood dribbled from the roots, the other struck wherever it could: his neck, back, shoulder, and head.
The strikes began to lose strength. The poison in her moved beyond simple pain, it was now robbing her of her life. The buzz in her head became all she could hear beyond the voices chanting and crying out. She felt filled with wet cement, and every movement made her feel like she was drying out—setting. That soon she wouldn’t be able to move anymore, and all that would be left would be her stiff, cold corpse, beaten by the spoiled libertine of Queensport.
Dying, she believed, wasn’t so bad, but being beaten by him? That she would not allow.
With a roar, Jae threw her off of him, and a sizeable chunk of his hair went with her fingers.
She landed on her back, her head hitting the floor with a loud smack. For a few breaths the lights around her pulsed with her heartbeat so radiantly, that she thought she had died.
Jae, still on his knees and wincing from the pain of her knee strike, looked at her. “You are not fucking worth all this shit.”
There was a voice crying in her. It was pleading, begging not to die. It wasn’t his time, it called out. It wasn’t fair, it pleaded.
You and everyone else, she thought.
“Do not worry.” He took a deep, pained breath. “I will get someone to look after you.” He brought his fingers to his mouth. Feeling his broken teeth again, he cringed in pain. “I want months to pay you back for this.”
Vitoria pushed herself up on one elbow. Her other hand was draped over her, and she felt the lump in her dress where her pocket was.
When Ulrich had visited her the night she escaped, he brought her what she needed for her breakout and then some. As he laid out their picnic and sliced the cheese, did he really know the extent of what he was bringing her? She pulled the cheese wire out from her pocket. Would he still have brought it, had he known?
He had called her stubborn. He hailed her as a survivor. He scolded her never to give up.
She smiled, holding its handles in her palm.
Jae finally got to his knees, but he looked as if he had just passed several kidney stones.
Vitoria pulled herself up, taking the handles of the wire in both hands. She took another pinching, painful breath.
“Go ahead. Try,” Jae said, backing up a few steps to lean against the glass dome of the solarium. “If you can even walk.”
Vitoria’s feet moved like they never had before, fighting the stiffness that had been setting in her muscles, bone, and blood. She screeched, blood still running from her shattered nose, as she lunged at him—until her foot slipped on one of the fallen buttons.
She toppled forward, and Jae took the opportunity to grab her, battering her left hand against the glass. On the second hit, her left hand opened and the handle fell free from her palm. As the handle slipped, he picked her off her feet and slammed her against the glass. She tucked her chin, so her back, not her head, took the blows, and the glass rattled in its beehive-like iron frame.
He slammed her again and the glass began to crack underneath her.
She thought of the thudding of James underneath her fists.
Her breath escaped her in the second slam, but she held the handle tightly in her right hand. No matter what, she knew, she couldn’t lose it.
A third slam and the glass behind her shattered. Iron and glass sliced through her gown and, just as easily, through her skin and muscle—only stopping for the bones of her shoulder blades. She gasped, her trembling mouth falling open.
Jae gulped air, and his tired arms shuddered as he slid her down the broken glass dome. More glass and iron slashed her as she slid, and the pieces already lodged inside of her tried to burrow deeper.
As she splatted onto the floor, her back only held up by the remains of the glass behind her, Jae joined her, sitting a few feet away with a smug smile upon his face—far enough away to avoid sitting on the piles of broken glass that she landed upon. “It does not look like we will have much longer, my little flower.” He gulped and took another deep breath.
Her lung felt pinched, or perhaps even skewered, and she gasped little, brief breaths as she turned her head left to him. Even in her state, she managed to lob one last proper glob of bloody spit right in his face.
His eyes shot shut in surprise, just as she hoped.
She grabbed a shard with her left hand, and she brought it to his neck, stabbing it down ha
rd like a knife. The glass dug deeply into her palm, but she held it as tightly as she could, sinking it right next to his collarbone a few inches.
His eyes went wide. His hand shot to the shard to rip it out, but she had already let it go, grabbing another from the pile she sat on. As he pulled the shard free, he yelped in pained disbelief.
Vitoria brought the second shard down, slashing his forearm. Blood bloomed on the sleeve of his tunic, and he dropped the glass in his hand.
She pulled the shard back again for another swipe, but he was on her, throwing himself at her with his arms outstretched. She let him grab her, and, instead of fighting him off, she let him practically crawl upon her, his hands clenching around her throat.
He was so close to her, it was easy to slip her long shard right where she needed it to go, stabbing into the underside of his arm, and perforating his brachial artery.
He gasped as she pulled the shard out, and hot blood poured out of him like a red waterfall. His right hand was the first to loosen around her neck, and it shot to his gushing wound, trying to plug the relentless hole. He couldn’t fight her off as she rolled him over until she was on top of him.
His bulging eyes were fluttering as his blood pooled around him, creeping into the fallen glass and soaking into the ends of Vitoria’s gown.
His shaking, pale left hand came up to her throat again, in one last thrash of anger and disbelief.
She ignored it as she dangled the wire in front of his eyes. “Now,” she swallowed hard, nearly buckling over from the full, distended pain in her stomach. She felt as though her organs were going to pop one by one, like overfilled wineskins. “We must make sure you are thoroughly dead.”
She wrapped the wire around his neck, entirely circling it like a hangman’s’ noose. She held both ends, twisted together, in her clutched hands.
He wheezed, and a panicked pathetic sound emerged from him, as if he could not find his breath. “Why?”
“Because,” she said, “all I have is my word.”
She rolled him over once, and he was inches away from the edge of the broken glass wall. She pushed him, but his hand shot out, grabbing at the broken iron of the frame. She pushed again, and her muscles felt as if they were ripping apart inside of her like old dried fibers twisted until they snapped.