Chapter Twenty-three
The world intruded on Eva’s quiet, dark, and warm oblivion little by little, unwelcome and wrong. As always, first came sound. But there wasn’t much of that. Only the recognizable sounds of leather soles on a hard surface, the crackling of a controlled fire, and the chink of ice cubes in a glass container. It wasn’t enough for her to get her bearings.
The next thing she noticed was the smell. It smelled like sandalwood again, like that indescribable scent of night, and of the wood smoke from the fire. There was also the scent of leather. And, more subtly… of blood.
It was her blood, she knew. She must be injured.
The pain of those injuries was the third thing she noticed. There was a dull but persistent ache in her shoulders, running through both arms, and a sharper but equally persistent throb at each wrist. Her muscles ached. She had a bit of a headache, but thankfully nothing as bad as the migraines humans often talked about. Dragons didn’t get those.
The pain in the rest of her body was getting worse, though. Her brow furrowed, and regardless of how badly she wanted to keep her eyes closed to block out what she was so afraid she would see, she knew she needed to open them and assess her situation.
With a steadying of her will, she did just that. She opened her eyes, blinking against the dim light of the fireplace and recessed lighting of the very same apartment in Japan that Arach had taken her to previously. The only differences now were the two thick and sparkling chains that connected her wrists in a wide “Y” to strong metal beams in the ceiling of the living room. How had she not noticed those before? Or the thick metal hooks that hung from them?
Because they hadn’t been here before, her mind told her in resignation. Arach could probably create things at will. He was stupid strong. She had never gone up against an opponent like him. She had no idea what the fuck he was, but she knew he was probably going to be the death of her.
Automatically, she attempted to call up a bit of magic to free her wrists. As she expected, it didn’t work. And as she also expected, her battle with the Traitor had seen her once more drained of most of her power.
With palpable trepidation, Eva’s gaze followed the lines of the chains to her wrists, where equally thick and shimmering cuffs had been tightly secured. A thin trickle of blood descended from her right wrist. She’d obviously been hanging for a while, and the edges of the cuffs had not been smoothed down. They were cruel and harsh. Like Arach.
Now she looked down at her body, not knowing what to expect, but knowing it would be bad. She was unduly relieved when she found she was still fully clothed. More or less. She wore everything but her leather jacket. Scorch marks, rips, tears, and ash marred the once fine clothing, a road map of the trip of pain she’d taken in her battle with the Traitor.
She could feel his eyes on her, and her stomach was tight with horrified apprehension. I’m trapped, she thought. I lost. This is it.
A rainbow hue of images flashed before her mind, each one a painful thing he could do to her, each one worse than the last. She wondered what he would start with. Would he rip off her fingernails? Dismember her? Skin her? Peel off her eyelids, rip out her hair, or cut out her tongue? And she wondered how much she could take before she went mad.
Look him in the eyes, Eva, she told herself. At least you’ll know who to haunt when it’s over.
Finally, Eva raised her head and met Arach’s gaze.
He had been watching her all along, and with quiet and keen interest. He seemed fascinated by her gradual realization of her current situation. He was taking great pleasure in the play of emotion on her face. He’d witnessed her attempted spell to escape, and he continued to watch her now as she was obviously realizing there was no escape.
He was sitting on one of the leather sofas, his ankle on his knee, his arm draped over the back of the couch, his demeanor utterly and sickeningly relaxed.
“Comfy?” he asked.
“Fuck off, dick pus.”
Arach laughed. He actually threw back his head and laughed. Then he sat up, all grace and insanity, and strode rapidly toward her on long legs. Eva tensed up, readying for the worst. But a few feet away, his eyes slipped from her face to her neck, and then traveled up her arms to her wrists and hands. His gaze narrowed. Eva glanced up at her hands. They were steaming.
What the hell?
She was actually steaming. Holy shit, she thought as she looked down at herself. Her skin was so hot, it was boiling the moisture in the air into vapor. Thin, wispy streams of heated, foggy air curled up from every exposed bit of flesh on her body. She blinked as she realized her eyes were burning and tearing up too.
Every exposed part of my body including my face.
“Interesting,” said Arach with a curious expression. His eyes glittered with bad ideas. “You are just full of surprises, little Legendary.”
Oh gods, thank you, she thought helplessly but hopefully. She had no idea how she had triggered this defensive mechanism; she’d thought she was drained. But whatever had caused it, she was whole-heartedly relieved for it. Please don’t let him touch me. Maybe he won’t touch me!
He turned and slowly moved around her like a shark circling its prey, and when she could no longer see him, she felt her heart hammer against her ribcage. She was sure it would leave it bruised.
The sound of his shoes on the marble stopped directly behind her. Eva immediately tried to turn, but the chains were tight and widely spaced, effective in their restraint. So instead she glanced up at her right arm. The stream of blood had grown thicker and dripped faster in the ambient heat of her body’s new temperature.
She watched it for a moment, then winced when Arach moved in to gently run a finger up the length of her arm, taking the blood. His touch was cold against her magically fevered skin. She gritted her teeth and bore it out.
Then he moved away, and she closed her eyes as all signs of him once more disappeared. But she heard him. She heard him taste her… and the low growl-like sound he made just behind her right ear was enough proof that he liked it when she bled.
“I have a proposition for you, my beauty,” he told her, that underlying hunger still darkening the edges of his voice. “Are you interested in hearing it?”
He’d moved closer, and now she could feel him only inches away, towering over her from behind like a shadow.
“Sure, I’ll give you a curling-iron colonoscopy,” she told him. “All you had to do was ask.”
He chuckled, the sound strange because he was so close, a mere breath from her ear, and his arm was beginning to slide around her waist. Clearly, the unnatural heat of her skin wasn’t scaring him off.
“You should not so freely give me ideas, little one. Besides… do you know how hot your skin is right now?”
She knew he meant that if her skin wasn’t burning him, much less bothering him, a curling iron wouldn’t either.
He stepped back from her, removing his hand, and Eva closed her eyes in quiet thanks. “No, I’ve got something a little less invasive but far more effective in mind,” he said as he again paced around her. But this time he looked at the floor as if lost in thought. “I want you to freely turn your fated king away. Spurn Calidum and agree to wed me instead. If you do, I will let him live. And I will let your young friend Mimi live. And so on and so forth. You get the picture.”
Eva looked at him sidelong. “Why in the gods’ realms would I ever agree to something so stupid? We both know you’re going to try to hurt them anyway – and I do stress ‘try.’ You must be off your meds.” She sent feelers of her magic out as she spoke, hoping to multitask her way to an escape. She was looking for a weak spot, any spot, something she could focus on and hopefully get through. But said feelers were as thin as cotton candy. Again, she had no clue how she’d heated up her skin, because she appeared to be running on empty.
Arach stopped in front of her and said, “No, Eva.”
His words had an echo, they were so powerful. The blood drained from her face, all attempt at magic stopped. He drew near, one step – two – and he was towering over her, and she was looking up at him in undiluted fear.
“I am going to hurt them. All of them. You have no choice in that matter. You only get to decide whether I end their misery when I’ve finished with them….” His hand cupped her cheek. It was cold as ice against her fevered skin. “Or let them live with the scars.”