Chapter Text
The echoing cacophony of distant screams and xenos weapons had long since faded to a blanket of quiet, sporadically cut through by gurgling shouts and barks of harsh laughter. Slow footsteps cleaved through the lingering fog, metal scratching metal, barely at the edge of hearing. Odessa von Valancius stopped trying to dislocate her thumb as she held her breath to listen, but the blood pounding in her head made focus impossible.
She leaned against the side of the cold table for support, and for the shelter of the small bit of darkness there. She breathed. She closed her eyes and held her breath, and she listened again. For a moment, she was back in Hundred Dreams Crossroads, on that accursed void station where he’d caught her. Footsteps closing in as the agony of the Dracon’s poison flooded her lungs, burned her blood, and seared every cell in her body.
For a moment, she writhed at his feet again, too shattered even to scream.
But much as she might have wished it, hiding from them didn’t make the footsteps go away. They only grew louder, and Odessa forced her eyes open.
Across from her sheltering table was another with drawers and shelves, scattered with implements of torture and murder she hadn’t been able to arm herself with no matter how she stretched or contorted or pulled on her chains. Old blood stains were so well aged into its cracks and crevices as to look black in the dim light.
Behind the table, spikes sticking up from the floor and chains hanging from the ceiling formed the only walls in her little room. Bodies in various states of dying and decay hung from them, the only other décor, her only company, and the only wretched thing she could smell. When she thought of it, the stench made her gag, and so she did not think. Did not look. She’d seen far worse, smelled worse too, but she’d never been the one chained to it.
Beyond the spikes was nothing but a suicidal drop, the air foggy and glowing red. She was locked to the table and couldn’t see what was below, but the dark silhouettes of massive chains dragged across the hazy gaps between platforms far above.
The footsteps were closer now, bladed metal boots treading the path to her destruction, and all that burned inside her was fury. She twisted her bound arms, the spikes inside her cuffs dug into her bloody, throbbing wrists. She braced one arm between her knees as she pulled, swallowing a cry of agony. Burying it with the rage.
The Inquisition. Self-righteous, self-important psychopaths who couldn’t even keep their own agents on a leash—
“There you are.”
A shameful thrill slithered down her spine at the teasing, lilting tone of his sonorous voice, slicked now with a lazy, pain-drunk slur. She’d heard that voice in dreams that should have been nightmares ever since his siege on Dargonus. Should have been nightmares, but they were far too carnal. She should have been terrified, but apart from the throbbing pain and the anger burning a hole right through her gut, her only fear was for the people she’d unwittingly led into his claws.
For him, she felt nothing but frantic, savage anticipation.
Odessa had waited so long to wreck him, but now she was the one wearing his chains. Her black dragon. Spitting venom. Burning down her world and flying her away to his. Marazhai Aezyrraesh, the Dracon of the Reaving Tempest and Ruiner of Everything Odessa von Valancius Ever Was.
Or maybe not the Dracon anymore. The sham trial he’d subjected her to was a blur of muddy reality and incoherent hallucination that she couldn’t fully parse through the throbbing. She had confessed to crimes, heinous sins she never committed. But what she’d said hadn’t mattered, not really. The trial hadn’t been about her at all, but about his ambition. She’d only been a pawn in his vengeance against someone she’d never even heard of. And now she’d be his prize.
“I can feel your fury,” Marazhai taunted from the other side of the wall of spikes and bodies. “Is that a gift for me, or for the one who betrayed you into my hands?”
If only Idira could have seen more, not the bastard black dragon but his spies, lurking in Odessa’s own home, waiting for their master’s command to cast the net so they could lead her into it.
Unless this was the Emperor’s justice, finding her in the shape of a Drukhari warlord. The irony would have been laughable, if she had it within her to laugh.
“Why you, little mon-keigh? You, who have done nothing but vex me since the moment I first laid eyes on you? Who nearly ruined me, without the barest understanding of how or why?”
Metal steps echoed on stairs beyond the wall of spikes that wasn’t a wall, nearing the room that wasn’t a room and had been her prison so long she’d passed from hungry to sick to simply empty of everything except the burning. At least they’d removed the mind maggot before they dumped her there, still drugged and hallucinating, and its power to warp her perceptions had faded.
“Why you?” he repeated.
Odessa wondered if he knew. If this was her justice, he might. The Drukhari had stolen Rykad’s sun, maybe he was there. Maybe he watched her condemn an entire hive world to a fiery death. Maybe he was the reason she had to do it. How many people? How many had she failed to save before she gave the order to burn them all alive? Millions? Her eyes clenched shut, and she clutched bloody hands over her eyelids as if not seeing could mean not feeling.
Billions?
She never had the guts to ask.
Odessa opened her eyes and clenched her teeth around her gag to keep silent as she gave one final excruciating pull on her bonds. The spikes dug in deep. Then, through red pain and tears, she saw him.
First the towering sweep of inky hair that crested over his head, bound with what looked like strips of leather and sharpened bones. Then his narrow, subtly inhuman face. Just close enough to be unsettling, with his long pointed ears, one pierced from lobe to tip, the other decked with a single diamond shaped earring. They drew her eyes, and her fingers twitched with a repulsive impulse toward curious touch.
He was every bit as disturbingly beautiful as she remembered, but splattered red over the sickly pallor of his kind. So red the crimson tattoos slashed across and around his eyes were lost. So red it painted over the black kohl that framed them. But not the turquoise that ringed his irises, gleaming in the dark.
And so red she couldn’t tell if his nose was still swollen and bloody from the headbutt she’d blessed him with right before the trial.
His shoulders were covered in bladed, golden pauldrons that ran red too, and made her wonder, absurdly, how he tilted his head without impaling his own skull on the spikes.
A mad giggle struggled to escape the gag that bound her mouth, and she pressed the back of her sticky hand to her lips as if that could contain it. But then he did it, tilting his head in curiosity as the turquoise that ringed his eyes pinned her in place, freezing her quaking body and killing the urge to laugh.
“Why is it that I wade through the viscera of Yremeryss’s holdouts, but the only thought in my mind is you? The deadly little mon-keigh who danced on my sister’s strings until I yanked them all away.”
Odessa had no idea what he was talking about, but that wicked, rumbling voice sent another thrill down her spine.
“Every step has gone exactly as I planned, yet in my moment of triumph, the only thing I crave is your… anticipation.” Marazhai growled the word like he knew they both knew he meant dread.
His boot fell on the top step, and Odessa already had to lift her head to meet his eyes from across the room. He was so tall, and she was so small, curled up as far away as the chains that held her would allow, as deep in the shadows as she could be. He still saw her, or maybe he didn’t have to. He could feel her. How could she hide from a creature who sensed her very fear of him? Her pain? Who craved it and fed from it?
Marazhai glided straight toward her. “Have you enjoyed the anticipation too, my pet?”
Odessa growled because she could not speak. If he heard it, he did not care.
“The walls here…” he glanced around the spikes and bodies, and the open space beyond them that framed the platform, “…ensure that no one misses the screams of the suffering. I hope the music they made for us helped you feel more comfortable in your new home.” His voice was sickeningly sweet.
He bent down from his towering height and reached for her. She pulled away, ignoring the hot thrill that rushed through her gut, but she was trapped as he untied the gag behind her head, heedless of how it pulled her hair and how the clawed fingers of his gauntlet sliced her scalp, leaving stinging pain in their wake. When he pulled the gag away, warm blood trickled through her hair and down the back of her neck.
Odessa tried to speak, and her throat caught on the words. She coughed, but before she could try again he grabbed her chin and pulled her face up, claws sinking into her cheeks as he moved closer.
“I asked you a question, pet. I expect you to answer.”
“I am not your pet. I am a Rogue Trader, head of House von Valancius, Odessa von—”
Marazhai squeezed hard enough to interrupt and wrench a cry from her. “Titled playthings are the most entertaining to humble. Odessa.” He drew her name out with a low purr, as if feeling it with his mouth. “No, that will not do. You have no name except what I give you, pet.”
“Von Valancius,” she finished. Her mouth was sticky, her voice scratchy, and her aching throat so dry she coughed again. “Where are my people? My retinue?”
He gave a thoughtless wave. “I have no idea. Probably dead.”
She expected nothing different, except that he might not have bothered to answer at all, but his words still hit her in the gut. There was no certainty there, but she found herself hoping they were truly dead. That was an infinitely better fate than being captive in Commorragh like her.
Odessa forced her jaw to unclench so she could speak. “If they are, I will find a way to kill you. Once for each of them. That’s five deaths, in case you xenos don’t know how to count. Or perhaps a billion, I don’t know how many lived on Rykad Minoris before you stole their sun, but I don’t think five deaths is enough for you.”
Confusion flashed across his face, quickly replaced by annoyance. “Already speaking nonsense, pet? I haven’t even begun playing with you.”
“You Drukhari stole the sun from the Rykad system,” she accused. “There was an entire hive world there.” Until she blew it up.
“We Drukhari are many, and I was not one who had anything to do with stealing a star.”
Odessa felt a rush of something almost like relief? But no, she wanted him to be at fault for all of it, wished she could believe he was lying, because then all of her hate would have a focus. All of her fury a single target. Under the circumstances, that really ought to have been the creature that raided her capital, kidnapped her, poisoned her, tortured her, possibly murdered her retinue, and by his own admission had only just begun.
But it wasn’t.
Marazhai’s bloody smile didn’t touch his eyes as he tilted her head back and back, until her neck ached, and blood ran from his claws down her cheeks and chin, and she strained even to see him. He ducked his head down and licked the blood from her throat as his grip tightened. A horrifying rush of heat flooded between her thighs, and he laughed quietly – as if he knew. Then his sharp teeth grazed her skin, and she froze with the certainty, or maybe hope, that those teeth would sink into her and end this dream that should have been a nightmare.
He stopped, his lips resting against her neck, his breath warming it.
“I am going to greatly enjoy bleeding this fire out of your veins and educating you on your proper place.” He gasped softly and nipped at her stretched and craning throat. “Such grief. Your despair alone would be enough to entertain me for all of eternity. Only because it is yours.” He released her suddenly, and when she lowered her head, he was on one knee before her. The shadow his long body cast completely engulfed her huddled form, and his eyes burned cold embers as he licked the blood from his lips, her blood and who knew how many others’.
“The despair will be yours,” Odessa whispered. “I’ll make you suffer for everything you’ve done to me. And to my people.”
Marazhai laughed, a warm, languid sound. “Do you truly believe that’s what you desire, my pet? I hear the rush of your heart, feel your rage, but you give off little fear.” He pulled her toward him as he leaned in again, and the edges of his armor dug painfully into the front of her shins and knees. His blood-drenched cheek cleaved to hers as he whispered conspiratorially in her ear. “I know what you felt when I graced your pathetic little world with my raid. When I blessed your gaudy, overwrought, throne of garbage with my touch, you were enraged, yes. Pained. And desperately, shockingly aroused.”
What he needed was another headbutt to the face. Odessa returned his conspiratorial whisper, “The only thing I want from you is blood.”
His knowing smirk threw her so far off guard she didn’t see the casual slap coming. It left her ears ringing, her jaw aching, her cheek burning, and fresh gouges seeping blood down the side of her face. “Be honest when you are with me, mon-keigh. I will always be honest with you.”
“You’re a vile, weak, pathetic pile of grox shit, if I’m required to be honest.” She spewed fury, but it was as much at herself as him. What must have been wrong with her, that when a monster kidnapped her to make her his plaything, his mere presence roused a swell of tingling heat between her thighs?
His eyes widened, but it wasn’t the wrath she hoped to ignite. Instead, he peered down at her with unmasked delight. He had been so easy to bait on Grantis, but seemed better able to restrain himself now. Perhaps because the power rested entirely in his hands, and they both knew it. Or maybe because the only eyes watching were his and hers. Or maybe he really could feel how his proximity affected her.
“Goading your master is poor armor against pain, but an excellent invitation for it.” Marazhai moved so fast that Odessa didn’t know what was happening before he had the chains that bound her wrists clenched in his fists, burying the spikes in her tortured flesh as he hauled her to her feet.
She was too busy trying not to scream from the pain to see what he did, but she heard a click, and the chain that kept her close to the table dropped to the floor. Her tense, aching body unwound as he raised her bound hands, lifting with strength that shouldn’t have been possible for such a slender frame. Her wrists were a constant flood of throbbing, blinding agony as her arms stretched painfully overhead, and her heels left the ground. She pointed her toes down, trying to find support, to ease the pain, but he lifted her just high enough that she couldn’t reach and turned her away from the table so she could find no aid there either.
Odessa bit back the need to scream as she hung limp. Even like that, he dwarfed her.
Marazhai seemed to struggle to drag his gaze away from hers, but once it was free he raked his eyes down her body, stripped of armor, coat, and boots. All of her possessions were gone, and she wore nothing but sturdy pants and a soft, thin undershirt. The pink tip of his tongue barely poked through his bloody lips, lightly held between his teeth as he dragged his gaze back up. From her hips to her stomach, lingering on her breasts, and finally settling on the chains tattooed around her forearms, that were currently streaked with blood from her wrists. The turquoise rings around his black irises brightened as he studied them, and when he gave her a meaningful look, his mouth broke into a tragic grin.
“Oh my pet,” Marazhai breathed. “You must always have known you belonged here with me, to have these chains permanently ornamenting your skin? I’m going to keep you forever. You will be a reminder of this day, of my victory. And it will be a reward for you too, for the role you so poignantly played in it.”
“A hundred years or a thousand—” she gasped, “—is more time to slit your throat.” Those chains had nothing to do with him. Nothing.
“You actually believe you could, don’t you? Breaking your arrogance down to the marrow will be especially delicious.” He seemed to lose his train of thought as he brushed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, then lowered his hand and pressed his palm to her heart. “But now, I want your answer. Did you enjoy the screams of Yremeryss’s dying lackies?”
“The sound of you xenos slaughtering each other is a song to my ears.” She coughed, an agonizing knot clenching in her chest.
Marazhai chuckled. “It’s a pity you couldn’t join in on the bloodshed then. Perhaps once you’re properly trained.” He released her wrists.
Odessa landed awkwardly and nearly fell, catching herself on his armor and slicing her fingers on the sharp plates. She jerked her hands away as she straightened, but when she looked up, he was studying her thoughtfully.
“You have not consumed food or drink in some time, have you?” Marazhai waited until she shook her head, then clicked his tongue. “I can’t have my new toy breaking too quickly.” He herded her into the table that had been her shelter and gave her chest an unceremonious shove. She fell back, leaning against it. “Get up.” He gestured sharply at the table. “On your knees.”
Odessa’s breath caught. Under other circumstances, she might have had a fighting chance against him, but unarmed, with her hands bound, her body weak and unsteady, and her implants unable to make up for the damage and exhaustion, she stood no chance. If she disobeyed, he’d just hurt her and make her do what he wanted anyway. If she did what he wanted, he’d still hurt her, and she’d have to live with the shame – although maybe not for long.
But…Marazhai didn’t really know if her retinue were dead or not, which meant he hadn’t killed them himself. It was possible they were still alive, and even though it looked beyond unlikely that she’d ever see them again, much less find a way to save them, there was only one way she’d ever have a chance to try.
Odessa was slow to pull herself up, fighting her pride for every inch as she raised her legs onto the cold surface beside her. She tucked them beneath herself and sat on her feet, only for Marazhai to catch her neck and pull her upright. Kneeling like that, on the elevated surface, she was still not tall enough to meet him eye to eye.
“You said you want blood from me, my pet. Do you want to taste it?” Marazhai looked down his nose at her, eyes never leaving hers as he bent closer. “The bloody dance you brought about.” His face was so near that his quickened breaths stirred the air across her skin, and his lips were so close she couldn’t look anywhere else. Couldn’t think of anything else.
How many times had too much amasec let her admit to herself that she wondered what Marazhai’s lips would taste like? Drukhari were so far from human, but at the same time eerily close – at least in appearance – compared to other xenos. How different would it be to kiss one?
Apart from the elevated risk of being tortured to death for it.
Odessa glanced at his nose, unfortunately healed, but so close to her mouth now. And his long, graceful ear, pierced almost from base to tip, was terribly near to her teeth. After she’d broken his nose while in an even more pathetic state than she was presently, she’d have thought he’d learn a bit of caution.
A stab of fury lurched through her chest, and her jaw tightened, but she must have given her thoughts away, because before she even decided if she’d cave to the impulse, the hand around her neck squeezed, and Marazhai pulled ever so slightly away.
She grabbed his wrist. Her throat burned in his fist, her ears ringing so loudly she barely heard him speak.
“Next time you think of harming me in a way I do not command, I will take all your teeth.” He didn’t release her, and she clawed at his gauntlets with her manacled hands, leaving fresh bloody smears and adding red stains to the brown of filth and dried blood on her own skin. “Nod if you understand.”
Odessa’s chest spasmed, grasping for air that wasn’t there. She should do it. She should obey. She wouldn’t obey. She couldn’t. But then the uncertainty hit her. Her retinue – dragged here by betrayal, yes, but also by her misplaced trust. If they were alive, it was her failure that had doomed them. And her responsibility to find them. To do that, she needed to live.
She nodded.
“Nod if you will obey.”
She choked and pawed at his chest and further sliced her bloody fingers, but what little strength she had was already bled away.
“Nod.” Marazhai’s voice hardened.
Odessa nodded.
Instant relief flooded her lungs, along with a full, ragged breath, but the pain hardly faded. She gasped, falling to sit on her feet again as she fought for air and swayed in place. She reached for the nearest support and clutched one of the sharp plates of armor that guarded his chest. Even when she realized what it was, she didn’t let go. She couldn’t let him go without risking the further humiliation of collapsing in front of him.
A single point of pain blossomed under her chin. The tip of one of his claws pressed her upright, until she was just below face to face with him again, panting and trying not to meet his wide, hungry eyes.
Marazhai didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. She tried to collect herself, but she didn’t dare risk waiting for her breath to slow or racing pulse to ease.
Odessa leaned forward and licked his bloody cheek.
Drukhari blood, sticky and bright red coated her tongue. Her stomach turned more at the thought than the taste, and she pulled away. His head turned ever so slightly, but his stillness made it clear he expected her to continue. And she did, lapping at the blood of his slaughtered enemies, slowly revealing the pale skin of his cheek and the black collar that framed his jaw. She traced the edge of it with her tongue, all the way up to his ear and wrapped her lips around his earlobe to suck the blood away.
Marazhai shivered. She felt it through her hand on his chest.
The thought came that with her lips already on his ear, he probably couldn’t stop her from mangling it, but her teeth were a heavy price to pay for an injury that wouldn’t maim him, or even last long with the power of their fleshcraft. So she released a slow, warm breath against his face and dragged her tongue up the edge of his ear, dipping between each piercing as a foul thrill rolled through her, and drawing a low groan from him as she flicked the very tip.
That groan started a traitorous flood of heat pooling between her legs, and he slid a hand around her waist to pull her closer. She licked his cheek again, then shifted toward the other side, briefly forgetting herself as she boldly ran her tongue over the twisted curve of his mouth. He parted his lips just enough to let her tongue pass between them, to scratch herself lightly on his sharp teeth.
“What does their death taste like?” Marazhai breathed into her open mouth, and she froze. “To you?”
Odessa had been in so many fights and battles that the taste of blood had ceased to be remarkable decades before, but this was stronger than she was used to. Still coppery and salty, but thicker. More intense. That probably wasn’t the answer he wanted, and as much as she didn’t want to give him what he wanted, she had to think of her retinue.
“It tastes like…” She flailed for what he might want to hear, for what she knew of him. Unbridled arrogance, violence, cunning, wrathfulness, and…dominance. “Your triumph,” she said.
A low laugh shook Marazhai’s chest. “You pretend to concede the game too quickly. A moment ago you were going to slit my throat, and now I’m to believe you taste my victory in the blood of my enemies?” But his cheeks were flushed pink, and he smiled when he purred, “Continue.”
Marazhai’s hand slid from her waist to her hip as Odessa moved past his mouth to clean his other cheek. A shock of pain exploded under his touch, and she shrieked, but before she could pull back or look at what he’d done, he grabbed her throat with his other hand and held her in place, heedless of the claws digging into her already bloodied neck.
“For the lie,” he murmured. “Now,” he released her throat, “continue.”
Her lips trembled around another whimper as the pain cut slowly down her leg, but she’d suffered worse, and she forced herself into motion, dragging her tongue up his cheek while he withdrew whatever he’d used to cut her and drove it into her thigh again. She couldn’t contain a wail at the second assault, but the cruel twist of his lips softened as the rise and fall of his chest accelerated under her hand.
Odessa ran her tongue over his cheekbone, and he pulled whatever he’d stabbed her with free again as she reached the curve of his other earlobe. She moved slower that time, waiting for a third shock of pain that never came as she caught the tip of her tongue in the single earring, giving it a light tug before sweeping upward, curling around the edge of his ear as she licked the blood away.
Marazhai’s breath hitched, and he shivered again, but that time his arm slid around her low back as he straightened, pressing her chest flush against his. She struggled not to cry out again when he drove the clawed fingers of his gauntlet into her side. Points and lashes of pain cut through her thin undershirt and thicker pants, where his armor stabbed into her thighs, her stomach, and her forearms that were pinned between his body and hers.
He looked down with lidded eyes, through long, thick lashes, breathing almost as hard as she did and staring at her open mouth.
“Do not hold back when you scream. I want to hear the truth of everything I make you feel.” His claws dug deeper into her side as he tightened his hold, watching her mouth.
The shock of pain wrang a pathetic cry from her, but she let it out that time, and he gave her bottom lip a single, piercing tap, then grabbed her chin.
“Just like that.” He swept down, lips crushing hers as he squeezed to force her mouth open. But he didn’t have to, because she opened it herself. She let him shove his hot tongue over hers, invading, exploring, and sharing the tang of blood. She let his teeth pierce her lip and pull, hard enough to make her shriek.
Marazhai’s first real kiss was nothing and everything like she’d imagined it would be. Passionate and painful, sharp and forceful and soft and possessive in turns. She hadn’t imagine it would be so bloody, but in retrospect, that was an obvious mistake.
The pain of the intrusion was nothing to the pain of being crushed against his bladed armor, and every time she gave in and gave him her screams, it only seemed to drive him to bite harder, to squeeze her tighter, until blood ran down her chin, and her chest ached from the struggle to breathe.
He stopped, barely withdrawing from her aching, bitten mouth. He panted in time with her gasping breath and licked her open lips.
“I—” Marazhai drew in a long, shaking breath. “I was not going to use it on you yet.” His voice caught. “I was not going to use it until you had earned it, but…” He captured her swollen lower lip with his teeth again, groaning as he bit harder, slowly increasing the pressure until she whimpered into his mouth. “This day is one I will never forget,” he panted. “You will never forget it. It should…” he cupped the back of her head, his hand sliding down her hair before rising and gliding gently down again. He was petting her.
The urge to stab him was almost as strong as the desire to cup the back of his hand and hold it against her head. Instead, Odessa shivered under his touch and didn’t react at all. Her retinue. That was why. She couldn’t die here. She couldn’t give him a reason to maim or kill or break her. Not that he needed one.
No, she needed him to want to not break her.
“It should be perfect.” Marazhai released her suddenly, and she swayed back, nearly falling despite already being on her knees. “Strip.”
Odessa’s hands clenched into fists.
She had fantasized about him for so long, but not like this. They would have met somewhere neutral, where neither held sway, to fight and then to fuck, naturally, when neither could quite manage to kill the other. But this was different. She had no power here. And no illusions a Drukhari would take her wants, her boundaries or needs into account when she had no way to force him.
“I want assurances.” The strength of her own voice surprised her, and made it marginally easier to find the will to sit without falling as she did her best to put on that indomitable Rogue Trader mask she’d been forced to wear. It never fit well, and now she had no weapons, no armor, no retinue, no Abelard to give her words authority by his mere presence, and no Voidship to back her up. But it was her mask, and she wasn’t ready to yield it when doing so would mean she wasn’t Rogue Trader, and the people she led here weren’t her retinue. What would she have to live for then?
Marazhai’s smirk sagged into a sneer, though the heat in his eyes only burned hotter. “Are you trying to negotiate, pet? It was already too late the last time.”
Odessa gathered herself up as tall as she could, which wasn’t very, even for a human facing a Drukhari. Before his towering height, the attempt would have been laughable under less dire circumstances.
“That’s right, you want a ‘pet,’ not a broken—”
Marazhai caught her throat and pulled her close again, but he didn’t squeeze. His eyes burned cold, and it could have been as much from fury as desire when he hissed out, “Here is your assurance, little mon-keigh. I am going to wring every drop of pain and pleasure that I can out of your weak, little body and soul, and I am going to make it last as long as your feeble mon-keigh heart can take. And because I am both particularly cross and extremely pleased with you, I’m going to make you enjoy it, and ensure that you remain sane enough to understand everything I am doing to you for a long, long time. So I will be—” the wicked smirk returned, replacing his sneer, “—I will be gentle.” He shoved her back, and she barely avoided falling again. “But if you don’t want the only clothing you’ve been granted to be shredded and soaked with blood, and believe me, I will not mind if it is, take off your shirt.”
Odessa’s racing heart had warmed her, but as if she was cold, she shivered. She clenched her teeth to hide it as she fingered the hem of her undershirt and curled inward under the force of his burning stare.
“I can’t,” she stammered.
Marazhai’s eyes flashed, his lip curling with fury until she lifted her hands, still shackled together.
“I can’t.”
He froze, arm raised to do something she couldn’t be sure she would have survived, and the fury bled out of him. But the lazy indulgence didn’t immediately return. Nor did the heat. When he stepped toward her, his face was a blank slate except the dilated eyes and the flush in his cheeks.
He held out an open palm, and she set her hands on it, letting the shackle fall across his fingers. He loomed closer, and her head tipped back to hold his eyes as he unlocked the shackles. The spikes easing from her skin was a small relief in a torrent of pain, then they fell to the floor with a clatter, leaving her bruised, bleeding, sweaty wrists suddenly exposed to the cold air. Incongruously soothing on her skin, even as the tension deep down made the ache within burn hotter.
But she didn’t dare slow down to try to enjoy her freedom or ease the pain. She caught the hem of her shirt with weak, shaking hands, and pulled it up. He stepped back and looked down, watching as the rising fabric bared her lower stomach, then the hourglass of her waist. His tongue darted across his lips when she gasped in pain as the soft fabric raked over the cuts and gouges that already marred her skin.
Odessa slowed when her arms reached her breasts, but she drew in a sharp breath and whipped the shirt over her head. Dark strands of tousled hair fell over her eyes, and she was breathing hard again by the time she dropped the shirt on the table.
Marazhai took in every bare inch of her, no hint of anger remaining on his face, only intense, delighted curiosity. He gently brushed the hair back from her eyes. “Tell me about the scars your past enemies gave you. Before I replace them with mine.”
Odessa swayed back, sitting on her feet and carefully watching his expression. “Which scars do you want to know about?”
She had to play along. To please him. Drukhari, in their madness, had technology capable of horrors the worst Inquisitors only dreamed they could match, and if she was to ever have a chance to learn what really happened to her retinue, or to help them if they weren’t already dead, she couldn’t do it as a sentient footstool or a skinless pain doll hanging from a hook in his room.
So she had to play his game. That was the only reason she had capitulated so quickly, so completely. And when he’d grabbed her throat and shot down her demands, the fire that ignited deep inside her had to be fury – entirely fury – because it couldn’t possibly have been raging desire.