Apart from waking that first morning in her strange rooms, Sigil was never left alone. Sovereign was always with her. He even slept at her side—as if certain she would not reach over in the dark and rip out his throat. He held her when she would not move, and spoke softly of things she paid no attention to. The sound of his voice became as common as the sound of waves breaking outside the open balcony doors, ambient music Sigil subconsciously paced her breath to.

Sorrow physically numbed, but the cost of expanding her chest, of drawing in air—each inhale seared beyond her grief. The sensation was welcome. The pain was deserved, such a fate earned for failing her only friend... for losing her home.

Whatever Sovereign had planned for her, whatever horrors, Sigil no longer cared.

He turned her body, rolling her away from the place where glassy eyes stared out towards the sky. He tucked her under his chin.

Blood returned to a leg that had grown sensationless, the man rubbing at Sigil’s hip as if he felt her discomfort.

“It’s time to get out of bed.”

Get out of bed usually entailed Sovereign carrying her to some other quadrant of her dwelling’s four rooms and four seasons. She slept in Summer where the sun set the room alight at dawn. Food was served in fragrant Spring, something always waiting atop the long table no matter the hour. Bathing took place in Winter, in a large heated pool surrounded by dripping mosaic walls cut from ice. In Autumn waited a sitting room, full of objects, hand-selected to amuse her: ancient books with leather bindings—as rare and valuable as the bible Sovereign had offered her on Pax—puzzles strewn about, an alcove filled with fire, surrounded by black marble almost as imposing as the man who lay her on the nearby divan.

No tech existed beyond outdated lighting systems that did little more than glow. No access panels, no holographic entertainment relays. The nearest thing to scientific achievement was a large winding clock built into the Autumn room’s massive window. As the hours dragged by, the huge hands moved, changing the shadows of the room to mimic leaves falling from a tree.

Secluded with the Irdesian Emperor, his Brothers would seep into other seasons—leaving food, laying out the simple attire Sovereign would pull over her head once they were finished in the bathing pool. She sensed their proximity, yet never saw a one.

Karhl, his psyche familiar to her, would approach the nearest. Yet he never fully intruded.

He just wanted her to know he was there.

The emotions she sensed from the lurking Lord Commander were always steady, always reassuring. In fact, there were no minds anywhere near her that were not absolutely composed.

No matter which room she was placed in, sleep consumed most of her hours. In Winter’s heated pool she would doze against Sovereign’s chest as he bathed her, the food in Spring swallowed by a sleepy, disinterested woman.

And in Autumn, stretched out on the soft divan, cradled, she could blank out amidst the scents of leather and flame. Or it may have been the habit of the male who sat at the end of the cushions, who held her feet on his lap, rubbing them lazily, which made slumber easy.

She put up no resistance, and made no effort to flee what she had termed her ‘due punishment.’

What would be the point? Where would she go? There was nothing but an empty universe outside those rooms, a big vast space of loneliness and inevitable suffering. She deserved to be trapped with the enemy. She deserved whatever they had in store for her.

Sigil did not even respond when perfunctory sex was ‘applied’.

With each mating, Sovereign did little to seduce beyond assuring her comfort before he filled her with the liquid that maintained sanity. When it was finished, he always kneeled between her spread thighs, their bodies still deeply joined, and would trace a kneading grip over her every muscle. That was where he took his time, unwinding all that unaddressed tension that made Sigil’s shoulders stoop.

She wished he wouldn’t.

The common occurrence of sex she could abide. Even in grief, Sigil grasped the purpose of living day-to-day outside the omnipresent worry utter madness might consume her at any moment. All the better to feel the pain of her loss; coherency was the perfect punishment. She would even spread willingly when Sovereign lifted her robe, lying still to assure every moment of her sorrow was purely felt.

The communion was so cursory it seemed an endurable chore, and that is what made the ensuing touches so unwelcome. The Emperor paid attention to every part of her flesh while she remained spread, full of him, and limp. He rubbed from fingertips to toes, paid meticulous attention, all the while cooing nonsense she ignored.

Half the time she fell asleep... but that was the thing about time: it wore on. It changed perception, until Sigil began to feel what Sovereign was doing.

The sun was setting the day she took the trouble of moving her eyes. She actually looked at him, as if to ask why he’d even bothered trying to offer comfort. Sovereign had held her gaze, smiling as if to tempt his captive to voice such thoughts, and continued kneading her forearm. She said nothing, simply watched. When Sovereign’s strokes neared where he’d just filled her with seed, where he still remained embedded in her quim, as if to test the waters, his thumb pressed her flaccid clit.

Holding her eyes, measured feather-light pressure coaxed Sigil’s little nub to harden.

A playful pinch and he whispered, “You’re allowed to feel pleasure. I long to give it to you, but I won’t force it.”

Flicking her bud faster, seeing a twitch in the woman’s hips, her slit squeezed his cock. He didn’t offer more, no firm grip on her breast, no grind of his groin against her, just that maddening, perfect friction rubbing tight circles over rapt nerve endings. Every opportunity was offered for Sigil to slap his hand away. Instead, her breath changed, and a broken grunt caught in her throat.

The wave of accompanying wetness bathed his dick, Sovereign already lying atop her to praise and soothe her orgasm.

“Precious, beloved.”

She whimpered, hiccupping and pathetic. Drawing out more, Sovereign pressed kiss after kiss over damp cheeks, riding on the waves of the first emotion his Sigil had shared since the day she woke after so many decades asleep. Reaching between their bodies, his fingers danced as they always did to prepare her. She was still wet, seeping out his ejaculation and the remnants of her orgasm from her squirming. Toying where his shaft invaded, taking time to trace the more delicate stretch of her lips, he felt her leg spread wider. At first invitation, his throbbing cock pistoned hard enough to jar her.

Sovereign moaned, low and grainy, to feel a response, any response.

There was no tender rocking, no sedate caution. Teeth over her jugular he violated that small tight place with ragged pounding. Jack hammering, soaring to hear Sigil’s every breath coated in a cry, he drew her higher. A swirled nipple was sucked into his mouth, a lick between her bouncing breasts, a taste of her parted lips, and a warning. “You want this.”

It hurt beautifully.

Or was that pleasure?

Her hips were jerking, Sigil’s body exacting in its reaction to being fucked after so many eons of sedate friction. Lips at Sovereign’s ear, feeling each violent thrust as he brought her to his lap and held her spread wide, Sigil did what he loved most. She begged, “Please.”

Violence broke out—inhuman speed that would have damaged any Convert female beyond repair—Sovereign had her bowed over his arms. Familiar with her brand of pleasure, he collared her throat in one tight hand, so she might see stars as her walls crumbled and her body was taken beyond any sensation another might attempt to give her.

Head thrown back, her nails hooked Sovereign’s shoulders as hips ground in time with jarring thrusts. Bouncing on a thick cock, feeling more than superficial gratification, sick with life and death and the continuation of breath when nothing else mattered, she fractured.

Her hair was tugged aside, the man snaking his head far enough around her form to lock his teeth on her nape and bite with vigor. The jolt rocked Sigil the instant vertebrae parted. With her clit throbbing, a twist of muscle strained to tighten and keep each inch of Sovereign’s cock in her body—to pull it deeper, to fill the void.

Hearing her choked gasps, Sovereign sprayed against her vacant womb, shooting his mark as deep inside her jerking body as he could. And Sigil, the moment she felt the initial wave of come erupting from the base of such a demanding organ, tightened her legs about his waist.

He gnawed further at her nape, roaring something awful as he lapped at the pinch of skin between his teeth, shoving in as hard as he could.

When he unhinged his jaw, loosened his strangle on her throat, when the female’s first deep breath ended her quaking orgasm, Sigil did not weep. Instead, she looked at him as if she did not know he’d even been in the room.

Brushing back hair from her damp forehead, Sovereign grinned wickedly, enjoying that last flickering suck of her cunt milking everything it could get.

“Beloved, you’ve made me proud. You are very brave.”

Why had he called her brave? What was brave in surrender?

After laying her down, Sovereign held her as he always did, their legs entwined. But that night, Sigil found no peace in sleep’s oblivion.

Looking at the line of him in the dark, seeing with eyes designed to adjust to low light, Sigil found no answer in Sovereign’s musculature, his inky waved hair, or the angles of his face. Scooting back, attempting to disengage from his touch, what she found instead was Sovereign’s eyes open and locked right on her.

He watched her every move, but he said nothing.

The increase in her heart rate was abnormal. Confusion followed. After several uneven breaths, Sigil turned away. He closed the space. Solid, muscular chest pressed to her back, Sovereign’s arm once again settled over her waist.

The sound of surf, the constant breeze, and the soft breaths of the man once again in sleep... Sigil finally had an opinion about them. They were too loud, too real, distracting from where her mind should be wallowing in the memory of Que.

Laying there through the subsequent hours went from tedious to uncomfortable. She was hungry, aching, forlorn, and lost when the man at her back finally stirred. The instant he tried to lift her so they might bathe, she moved out of his reach.

“Hush, beloved.” He had her wrist in his grip before Sigil could evade completely. “There is no need to panic. You’re safe here.”

Safe from what?

Tired eyes looked to where he dared to restrain her, and Sigil found her arm very thin, her muscles reduced.

As if reading her thoughts, Sovereign explained, “You’re weak because you hardly eat,”

Voice rough from disuse, Sigil grunted. “Let go.”

He did, Sigil slipping awkwardly from the bed.

Sovereign smiled at her. “You look tired. Have you slept?”

“No.” Why had she answered him? Why did her voice sound foreign?

Dark brows rose, the bastard finding her reply curious. “And you’re hungry...”

Even with his hands offering succor, even with calm emotions projecting from the male, she was wary of him. Every word Sovereign had ever spoken in her presence carried the weight of extreme intention. He was molding a response, guiding, breaking—a force Sigil found intimidating and equally disturbing—especially as Sovereign was internally triumphant beyond his handsome, carefully organized expression.

Had Que seen her at that moment, backing away—not from Sovereign, but from whatever was hurtling around inside her when she looked at him—he would have been disappointed.

Only the weak refused to face their flaws.

Sovereign was her flaws personified.

Watching as he cautiously approached, Sigil tried to articulate her thoughts. “Que is dead. I saw his head in a box.”

Immediately in Sovereign’s embrace, crushed so she might have something to fight besides herself, he implored, “Let me help you, Sigil.”

Hands that had become familiar went right to her nape and rubbed hard enough involuntary muscle relaxation almost made her sag to the ground.

Sigil accused, “You bit me.”

Warm lips pressed to her hairline, Sovereign smiled. “Not hard. And you came beautifully as I did. It is time now for you to make peace with what you are, reconcile your regrets, and embrace this new life. In the five months since you woke, have I given you one reason to fear? Have I hurt you? You know you are safe with me.”

Five months? That wasn’t possible.

“You told me you wouldn’t bite me... you lied.”

Sovereign felt no guilt for closing his teeth on her neck. “Long ago, under different circumstances, I did. But if that’s what it took to wake you up, then I would break that oath a thousand times over. Should you wish to punish me for it, grow stronger. As of now, you stand no chance of victory on any scale.”

The emperor could not be more right.

He pulled her to Winter. While they bathed, Sigil wouldn’t let him touch her, hissing if Sovereign tried to help, and absolutely refusing to let him comb out her hair.

After dressing quickly, with the day’s gown hanging from one shoulder and stuck to damp skin, Sigil left him to find food in Spring.

Much more than food awaited her.

Karhl stood from the table’s head seat the instant she paced through the archway. Two work roughened palms took her face, fingers lacing into dripping silvery hair, and a warm mouth crashed down to claim hers.

The urgency of his unanticipated attention, the forthright possession, Karhl was relentless. If a man could hold centuries of longing for a woman and pour it into one kiss, that was surely what he bestowed on her.

And then it was over, both of them breathing hard. Realizing she stood stiff as a lightning struck tree, Sigil lowered stiff arms from where they hovered stiff at her sides, and felt Sovereign’s consciousness enter the room behind her.

Karhl seemed unmoved that a third had joined their private moment, too busy studying her face, tracing her swollen lower lip with one large thumb. “I have missed you.” He still spoke with little expression, hiding far more jubilant emotions behind the quasi-Axirlan mask.

Behind her there was the heat of another body, then the quick, sure tugs of a comb through wet hair.

“Sigil was eager to find you. She ran straight out of the bath.”

A fire roared in sea glass eyes, and Karhl looked down at his female, found pert nipples showing dark pink through wet fabric. “Have her boy fetch her something dry.”

Boy? Jerla...

“No.” Sigil walked away from the one untangling her hair and the giant pleased to his core to see her, and took the seat at the head of the table.

She began to eat.

Fingers in her mouth, grabbing at whatever was nearest, she chewed and swallowed, careless of what had been expertly prepared, displayed, and offered. Karhl sat at her left, Sovereign at her right, the males partaking of the meal with far more grace than the starving female. They began to speak with one another of government business and conversion strategy. On occasion, one of them would offer her a dish out of her dirty-fingered reach, or they would open the rind of a complicated fruit, crack a shellfish, refill her glass, as if such an exchange were natural.

Sigil ate until her stomach ached, looking over the destruction she’d wrought upon the table as Karhl mixed some beverage with warm water, to set it before her.

“Ango will ease your stomach.”

If she was lucky it might be poison. Thinking so, she met his eyes and swallowed the small offering in one gulp. The ache in her belly subsided. Sigil frowned.

The men went back to talking, perhaps even talking to her, but Sigil’s attention was caught on a foreign sound beyond breaking waves and male voices. Laughter, giddy and fresh—a child’s noise—came from Autumn.

Standing, ignoring the men, she left them to iron out policy, politics, war effort, whatever, and crossed the circular anteroom. Leaning against Autumn’s arched entry, Sigil watched Jerla explore her untouched gifts. A master of self-entertainment, the Tessan boy found everything wonderful, and had no shame in piling up the best by his estimation, to spread out and play with.

There was so much life in that yellow swishing tail, an eagerness to exist. Fascinated, afraid to interrupt his games, Sigil waited as silent as a killer in the dark. Jerla did not notice her for quite some time, and had the stack of treasures he was making not tumbled, he may never have. Sigil was far more startled than him, her hand gripping the archway like a shield before her body.

Eyes, shining in their black totality, caught her, the boy instantly silent.

Recognizing the awkwardness of hiding herself from a child, Sigil straightened and said, “There is food in Spring, if you hunger.”

Talons hovering over a toppled music box, Jerla shook his head. Considering her, reptilian in the angle of his neck, the child blurted, “Lord Commander Karhl shared while you were in the bath.”

“What did you like best?”

Picking up the cause of distorted music, Jerla crooned, “The Turlanqi mouse.”

Which one had that been? Wiping her dirty fingers on the side of her drying gown, Sigil stepped nearer. Her Tessan boy had grown since she’d last seen him.

“Are you happy here?”

Straightening from his pile of sparkling items, Jerla reached for something new and padded over ruby carpet to offer it. An etched board decorated by his talons and painted to show Pax was given with timid enthusiasm. “I made this for you.”

Sigil, seeing their old home through the eyes of a child, found great worth in the artistry. Jerla had not intended it, she was sure, but there was nothing beautiful in Pax’s shape. It seemed fitting; Pax had never been beautiful, but crusted and festering. The only beautiful thing on that board was the intention behind the artwork.

“Do you miss your mother, child?”

She’d upset him, Sigil could sense the disrupted feelings of a boy who bravely kept his expression closed. Trying to smooth it over, she amended, “I have been told you are cared for now. I wanted that for you.”

“Imperial Consort, don’t make me leave.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You want to send me away. You want me to go to the sands. But I want to stay with you.”

Looking at the shy boy, Sigil asked, “Did someone tell you to say that?”

Artfully, Jerla did not answer the question. Instead he shared his own desire for the future. “We could have adventures.”

He had either been well coached or truly meant what he said. It was impossible to sense the outright motivation in a mind so young and simple. Stepping closer, Sigil took the music-box from his hands, looking at the ornate device.

A voice came from behind her, “That was a gift from the wife of Magister Belloy, her name is Delphine, formerly of House Kator.”

Magister was a high rank amongst the Brotherhood; it gave the bearer control over a planet, sometimes even whole systems, if Sigil remembered correctly.

Looking at the frivolous box, she cracked the lid. There was a small plaque inside: I have longed to meet you.

“Human treachery?”

“No.” There was a smile, amusement, in Sovereign’s voice as he approached. “Matron Delphine is a human of merit, well-loved by your Brother. Belloy honors her so highly he petitioned the throne to allow his wife the honor of bearing offspring that would take his name.”

Staring at where Jerla had gone back to playing, where the child ignored them in place of a glowing disk of some strange mineral, Sigil frowned. “If you can breed with humans then why am I here?”

A light stroke on her cheek and Sovereign whispered, “We can’t.  And who he chose to sire his children is a private understanding between Belloy and his wife.”

“But you do know...” He’d have to in order to maintain total control. “More importantly, does she know they are not his?”

Sovereign only smirked, eyes alight, and assured, “And you are here because I adore you.” Wiping where food crumbled from her skirt, he continued, “Even smeared with breakfast.”

“I’m here,” Sigil sighed, walking deeper into the room, “because I deserve to be here.”

“Exactly.” The man turned to her to face him, eyes fervent as he took her limp hand. “You deserve to be here, beloved. You’ll understand that in time.”

First Karhl had poured oceans of feeling over her, all sealed in a kiss. Now, Sovereign was doing the same, stroking damp hair from her face.

She deserved torment, not monsters pretending to be lambs. Turning to view the Tessan boy, Sigil asked, “Does Jerla know I killed his mother?”

The child looked up, heartbroken.

“It was an accident, but it was my fault. Did you know that, boy? Did they tell you that you are here to amuse the creature who murdered your only family?’

The boy fled the room in such a state, Sovereign hissed. “Was that necessary? You feel it is acceptable to torment a child in such a way?”

Glacial eyes swimming under accumulating feeling flashed. “He wanted to join me on adventures! You’ve poisoned his mind into loving me!”

“Sigil, consider what you’ve just done. You were his hero, something to hold onto, and you took that away out of spite. Do not lie to me, or yourself, by claiming disclosure was better for him, that it will improve his life in any way. You robbed that child! Could you not be the figurehead of his admiration? Could you not have let him be happy?”

Sovereign’s attempt to compound her guilt earned the truth from Sigil’s lips. “I am dangerous. Jerla should never have been allowed anywhere near me! And he certainly should not have been coaxed to admire me!”

The man’s frustration was palpable. “You are all he has left, no matter the oddity of your tie. Learn to curb your impulses and forget the castigation the dead Axirlan forced you to swallow. There is nothing wrong with what you are.”

Yanking from his grip, Sigil slunk away, furious to hear Que spoken of as a tyrant. “And what would you have me do for the boy? Bounce him on my knee? Make a replacement companion for him?”

Sovereign let her have her space. “Arden is to be your companion, Karhl your guardian. They will help you navigate society and your position in it. Jerla will be whatever you wish for him to be, but cruelty does not suit you, Sigil.”

Guilt began to overshadow her resentment. “I killed his mother. I slaughtered everyone on Pax. And it wasn’t the first time I was responsible for such destruction.”

“Drinta killed them by attempting to wield a weapon far out of her control. Furthermore, your psionics have been repaired—a frenzied burst of that magnitude is not something you need to fear anymore. And I know you fear yourself. That is why you have made no attempt to test your new limits. It is time to grow past juvenile denial of your new situation and embrace your role here.”

Why did she feel this whole thing had been staged, as if she had been played by an expert? “You knew what I would say to Jerla. You knew he shouldn’t be exposed to me.”

Sincerity was all too acute in Sovereign’s emotions. “I hoped for better.”

“Who is going to comfort the boy?”

“Arden is close with your Jerla.” Sovereign shifted his face into expressionlessness. “He will tend him well enough.”

The Herald possessed a silver tongue and would say exactly the right thing to bring Jerla back into loving a woman he should hate. Confused by why that thought offered equal parts comfort and distress, Sigil sighed and went to pick up the child’s abandoned mess.

Putting the objects back where Jerla had found them, she tried to ignore how closely Sovereign was watching her—as if her actions betrayed something she couldn’t quite touch on.

She stopped at an inlaid game board, toying with the pieces, wondering if Jerla could teach her how to play the game. That was a good way to win a child’s favor, wasn’t it?

So much light played off the game piece pinched between her fingers, such a shine it seemed keen to dazzle and manipulate her attention, just as she considered manipulating Jerla. A fist formed around the little figure, so tight Sigil’s fingers ached. Furious at what she’d done, a gathering blue psionic charge distorted the air around her hand. On a whim, she threw the board, dashing the pieces against the wall with little more than a thought.

And then it was over. No excruciating bursts of energy came on the heels of her anger; no wild abandon tore the room apart.

A wash of strange heat moved over the side of her skull.

It was as Sovereign said... she’d been repaired, muted, weakened.

Dropping the token from her grip, glacial eyes moved towards her spectator, and Sigil snarled lowly, “I hate you.”

Every word was true. Sigil hated him almost as much as she hated herself.