Page 35

THIRTY-FIVE

Ashley

My first thought was Micha and Josiah, that they’d been captured. That wasn’t what happened.

A contingent of soldiers gather around the opposite side of the table and they deposited a woman with long, wavy red hair in the center. Her dress was similar to mine, the fabric highly unique and incredibly soft.

Micha wouldn’t want feet on the table .

“What is happening? Is there a woman on the table?” I asked Samuel. I no longer trusted my own eyes.

“There is,” he answered with excitement. “This is common. You’ll start looking forward to it.”

“Huh.”

She didn’t really fight her predicament, having been set down among the platters of food as if she were a centerpiece. It’d never occurred to me to use a person for a decorative accent. The demon world was certainly full of surprises, and I was curious to see what was next.

“She’s pretty,” I stated.

“They always are. That’s the highlight of a sacrifice. If they were flawed, it wouldn’t mean as much or taste as good,” Samuel informed me.

“Wait—what?” I shook my head, temporarily dislodging some of whatever had deadened coherent thought.

He sighed. “She’s a sacrifice, Ashley. She committed a crime, and we will eat her sins. They nourish us.”

Diego and the man I’d seen at Angels, Elijah, stepped up to the table and the room fell into silence.

“I have an announcement,” Diego declared. “I’d like everyone to welcome Lord Elijah. He’ll be filling the space left empty by Ezra’s murder until we find someone suitable.”

Elijah’s brow furrowed just the tiniest bit, and I glanced around. No one else seemed to have noticed his displeasure over the passive aggressive comment and I didn’t think I’d hallucinated it. Samuel’s eyes were fixed firmly on Diego, and he gave no indication anything was amiss.

“As such, you will honor and obey his commands, showing him the reverence the esteemed position demands.”

Everyone bowed their heads, murmuring, “Yes, my lord.” Except me.

I was too busy watching everyone else and furtively glancing at the body slightly wiggling on the table. Thankfully no one noticed.

Except Elijah. He stared with narrowed eyes until I quietly said, “Yes, my lord.” Satisfied, he dropped my gaze.

My hands trembled as I reached for my glass and quickly downed the remainder. The rest of the evening was spent with me feeling as if I were having an out-of-body experience. Wine flowed; blood flowed.

Chunks of the screaming woman were removed from her thighs as Elijah chewed away at her neck. Samuel and Ethan joked and laughed, their voices wrapping around me like steel vines. If Samuel hadn’t held me on his lap, an arm firmly tucked around him, I would’ve been under the table.

Tears were shed when I remembered being under a desk and then I asked him not to let me fall before I asked if he had a bow and arrow because he sort of looked like the guy from Lord of the Rings.

“She’s wasted, you need to take her home,” Ethan complained, his voice sounding as if he were at the end of a tunnel.

“She’s fine, I’ve got her.”

“She thinks you’re a movie star.”

“And that’s bad, how?” Something wet tickled my neck and I giggled. “See, not bad. She’ll be my queen yet,” Samuel whispered in my ear.

His lips moved from my neck to my cheek, gently pressing into my skin. They hovered over my own before I felt their warm brush. “Kiss me,” he said, the vibration sending a trickle down my spine.

My body curved toward him and my fingers found his shoulder, holding on. He took the movement as assent and sucked my lower lip into his mouth, a hand trailing down my side.

His touch felt foreign, and my body went cold. I didn’t want him, and everything felt wrong, so very, very wrong.

“Samuel, stop.” I took his shoulder and try to move him away.

“You will deny me?” He growled.

“I can’t do this.”

He gripped me by my hair, bending my neck so I faced him. “I own you—do not forget this.” Twisting my head and pulling me forward, he forced me toward the mutilated body. “You will be next if you don’t give me what I want.”

“Get off me,” I cried out, shoving him away.

All conversation stopped and all eyes turned to me. In a burst of clarity, I saw the corpse with chunks and bites taken out of it, the gorgeous golden-haired woman beside me cutting into a chunk of flesh before delicately placing it in her mouth. Diego’s blood-stained face and tubing running from the sacrifice’s neck and into a carafe by his side. Elijah’s once perfect face and him patting an ivory napkin against an errant crimson dribble.

I panicked, and so I ran.

“Seize her,” Diego called out, nonplussed.

Samuel was another matter. Fire reigned in his eyes as he stormed toward me while I wrestled against the soldiers. “Let her go,” he ordered the men. “I will handle this.”

The second they released me; I whirled around intending to escape the madman heading my way. Before I made it more than ten feet, something wrapped around my ankles and curled upward, paralyzing my muscles until the only thing I could move were my eyes.

“My apologies, this won’t happen again,” he said, glancing at his leader.

Diego gave a curt nod and conversation resumed, my outburst quickly forgotten. “Don’t hurt me,” I tried to say, but no words came out of my mouth.

“You want to act like a bitch, you’ll be treated like one,” Samuel said, lifting me from the floor. “You embarrassed me, and you’ll pay the consequences.”

When we got back to his house, he shut me in a golden cage that must’ve been a perfect five-foot cube. I couldn’t lay down or stand up, and was trapped sitting on bars just wide enough my muscles couldn’t relax.

“Please don’t leave me in here,” I begged him, my vision swimming with tears and my brain seeming to sag as whatever had affected me earlier began to wane. “Please.”

“What part of your situation do you not understand? I will not hesitate to sacrifice you for the good of my people. You can either choose to participate and cooperate, or you can die.”

“I want to go home.” I knew it was impossible to return. There was nothing there for me. If I was going to die, I’d much rather do it somewhere my parents could bury me.

When I was younger, there were many times I didn’t expect to live very long. The idea had always kind of hung out in the back of my mind, the knowledge my lifestyle would eventually catch up with me. I’d made peace with it. It wasn’t a depressing thought for me—the event of my death. But it was a disappointment.

I wasn’t quite ready to go and there were still things I wanted to do. The act of dying wasn’t nearly as scary to me as the idea I’d never accomplish what I wanted to. I wanted to have more adventures, though I could do without the eating of human flesh. I’d been thinking tamer activities, like skydiving or something. Not cannibalism or ripping people to shreds.

And I wanted to fall in love, and have a grand romance, as corny as it sounded. Swept off my feet and all that. Maybe a proclamation on a big screen in Times Square like they did in the movies or something. Something big; something noteworthy I could tell stories about.

Samuel offered none of that and his idea of adventure was a bit questionable. What had that redhead on the table even done?

He crouched in front of my cage. “You are home, prisoner.”

“I’m going to get out of here and I’m going to kill you.” My words were much braver than I felt. He held his hand out and I felt my face press into the bars, whatever power he wielded compelling me forward unwillingly.

“I’m never letting you go. Your only way out is if I kill you myself. You’d do well to remember I hold the power of life and death, and your threat is punishable by execution.”

My mouth rubbed against a gleaming bar. “I meant what I said.”

Samuel stood up and yelled for Mandy. “Get me water,” he ordered when she arrived. She sneered at me, her mouth twisting like she’d sucked on a lemon.

Her footsteps trailed away, and she quickly returned, handing him a container. He waved a hand over it before bringing it in front of my face. “Drink,” he demanded.

“No,” I said, but it was useless.

My mouth opened without permission, swallowing down the contents while he poured. I’d lost control of my body to the point I couldn’t choke or gag. I was powerless. Powerless to remove myself from the cage or stop the assault on my body or my mind. It was clear he’d drugged me, but I wasn’t certain it was solely from the drinks and food I’d ingested. For all I knew, when he’d sucked on my neck, he’d transferred an ethereal drug or other effect.

He released his hold, and I fell on my side, liquid sloshing in my belly. “You won’t be able to vomit it up so don’t bother.”

“You’ve been drugging me,” I accused him. "You say you want me, but do you really want someone you have to try and force to want you too?”

“The method doesn’t matter.” He whirled around and walked away, leaving me alone in a shiny cage in the middle of a large room.

The effects of whatever he was poisoning me with began edging in, bringing a fuzzy feeling to the corners of my mind that I fought off as hard as I could. Already, the meager light was starting to look odd, the beams dipping and twirling, seemingly melting in the kaleidoscope of my brain.

I was running out of time.

I tried each golden bar, wrapping my hands around the cool melting and tugging on the bars before twisting and turning, all to no avail. How he’d gotten me in the box was magic—there was no door, no entryway, and no visible latch.

He’d flick his hand and whatever he wanted bowed to his command, the power of the universe within his grasp. When I talked to the box, nothing happened. When I wiggled my fingers, no change took effect. It was just like Ethan sneered; I contained no magic.

Some humans must, or he wouldn’t have said it. How convenient it would’ve been if I were one of those lucky souls.

When I began yelling for help, the wraiths arrived. This time they screeched and threw themselves at me, the structure of the cage be presenting zero barrier to their trailing bodies and aerial assault. I found myself curled in the fetal position, my arms over my head blocking the drag of their tattered robes.

All of my senses were captured by the cry of the disembodied beings and the mania of the drugs and soon, it became too much. My mind started to shut down and I curled in on myself, the body doing what it could to protect my now fragile psyche.

Samuel was going to break me.

* * *

There was no telling how much time had gone by, but I woke up to a bottle of water being tipped into my eager throat. The sun was streaming through a window, burning my eyes and I blinked.

“Good morning, Ashley,” Samuel said. Once the container was empty it clattered to the bottom of the cage.

He waved his hand, and an opening appeared before he dragged my stumbling body out. “Mandy, dress her. We have much to do.”

The woman took me by the upper arm and led me down a hallway to my original bedroom. The room I’d stayed in before all the shit got even shittier. Before I fully understood what I’d done. I’d gotten out of bad circumstances before, and I still had a smidgen of confidence I’d navigate this one as well. The only problem was I didn’t know where I’d go.

Samuel had once mentioned other Realms, and that had become my weak but hopeful plan—figure out how to get to one of them and start over. Stay low, stay to myself, start over. It sounded actionable on paper.

Mandy tore through my hair with a brush, and I let her. Whatever he’d given me this time had a sedative effect, so far. I wasn’t hallucinating and for that, I was grateful. Harder and harder, she pulled the brush through my hair, and I watched in the mirror by my side as my hair began growing puffier and puffier. I couldn’t bring myself to care, nor could I feel the pain I knew I should’ve been feeling.

“What did he give me?” I asked the woman.

“He gave you what you needed,” she replied.

“He can’t do that.” We both knew I wasn’t talking about the drugs.

She shushed me before she said, “You’ll appreciate it before too long.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask more questions, but the calming effect enveloped me fully, causing me to comply with her every directive.

After a few minutes, she’d transformed my curls into slick waves that tumbled around my shoulders, my hair parted in the middle. She held out her arm for leverage as she had me change into a black gown made of some type of feathers, the bustline sparkling with onyx stones. My hand rested on her shoulder while she laced up the stilettos gracing my feet.

“Put these on,” she said, holding out her hand.

She dropped dangling earring that matched the gems on my dress into my palm and I fixed them to my ears. “I look good,” I said, my voice soft and slow, while I stared at my reflection. I looked like I was going to a ball in a dark kingdom. The urge to ask what the fancy clothing’s purpose was sat on the tip of my tongue but every time I went to ask, I forgot and got caught up eyeing the soft plumes that feathered around me.

“You look like a queen.”

“I think you’re right about something for once,” I said, immediately forgetting the comment I was responding to.

She rolled her eyes and lead me out of the bedroom, straight to Samuel. “You’re a vision,” he purred, dragging his fingers along my collarbone. “And look at you, so soft and compliant, the defiance erased from your eyes.”

He swiveled his head to Mandy. “Well done, she is perfection.”

Mandy bowed her head and said, “Thank you, my lord,” before she scurried away.

“Come,” he said.

I placed my hand in his outstretched palm.

* * *

The hall of the palace had been filled with velvety black lilies and creamy white gardenia flowers. They wound around columns and dangled from the bowers in swaying curtains, the soft orange mist drifting around the petals. The dining table sat bare of food, leaving twisting ivy vines and gleaming platters gracing the surface.

“Ahh! There you are, my dear.” Diego suddenly appeared in front of me before he clasped me and twirled me around. “Gorgeous,” he proclaimed. “You’ve done well, Lord Samuel.”

“Thank you, High Lord.” I glanced at Samuel, who bowed several inches at the waist. “She is amenable.”

Diego’s eyes crinkled softly, a pleased smile on his face while Samuel appeared content, the normal furrow between his brows absent for once. My whole body felt relaxed, a pleasant hum coddling my mind while I watched everything going on around me.

Others were in the room, dressed in finery, sipping blood and wine from etched champagne glasses. Whispers curled around me, born on a light draft, while the sounds of harps and violins floated through the space.

“Are we going to listen to a symphony?” The air held an edge of restrained excitement, and I wished for a pair of elbow length gloves like the ones I spied on one of the women. They were all classy, with their long gowns and not a hair out of place. Red lips perfectly lined. Her shoulders were straight.

I pushed my own back and placed a palm on Samuel’s arm as he answered, “No, love. This is for you.”

He would’ve told me if I wasn’t properly dressed and I knew I looked nice. “Oh, thank you. That’s very nice of you.”

Diego beamed at his friend. “You may get her situated.” He patted Samuel on the back.

I was led to a row of chairs and Samuel helped me down. My skirt was arranged by two attendants, the material flowing over my legs and tucked lightly at the sides so as not to be trapped under my shoes. The seat was shaped like a throne, and I placed my arms on the rests.

The crowd quieted down and took their seats while I gazed at their faces. Many smiled at me, and I lightly returned the gesture while Diego seated himself. Soon others entered the room, skirting a commotion near a side door. The group of soldiers snagged my eye and the urge to investigate further needled the back of my mind.

The noise in the background changed, as if there had been layers of sounds competing for my attention. This bothered me but I didn’t know why. My eyes squeezed shut as I fought against the assault on my mind, desperately seeking the peace I’d enjoyed just moments before.

“Here, love,” Samuel thrust a glass of water in front of me. “Your throat is dry, drink this down quickly. It's time to get started.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, clasping the beverage. I swallowed down the liquid and took a deep breath, shutting my eyes as I patiently waited. Soon, my limbs went languid, and my muscles relaxed as a warm, cozy feeling washed over me. “Perfect,” I said, peering up at my demon with a smile.

“Yes, it is. I should’ve taken this route from the start.” He shook his head with a short laugh. “Better late than never, right?” He trailed a thumb over my lip before backing away.

A deep sigh left me as I took in the crowd again. I spotted the woman who’d sat beside me one evening with her lover and acknowledged her with a little nod. She grinned back. I was already making friends and the thought comforted me. She’d be no Della, of course, but at least I’d have company while Samuel was at work.

Wait—what did he do? Della. I want Della. No sooner had the thoughts popped up than they were dragged away like the outgoing tide.

The atmosphere changed, a feeling of reverence descending as the crowd sat rapt, watching me. Smiles were wiped away when all eyes turned to Elijah, who’d appeared, dark eyes gleaming. He accepted a golden bottle trimmed with black stones from an attendant and poured a thick red liquid into another glass.

Samuel approached me, hands dripping blood and bearing a thin circlet trimmed with short, downturned teeth matching ones that pointed upward, trimmed with red gemstones. He kneeled before me.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away. He bowed his head, the circlet uplifted before me. “Ashley, my queen,” he said, before meeting my gaze. “With this crown, I swear my fealty. I will defend your honor, protect and cherish you all the days of my infernal life. Do you accept?”

“Yes, of course I do,” I whispered. “What are you doing” Get up; everyone’s staring at us.”

Samuel winced before biting his lip. His chest rose and fell, and he stood up, crown in hand. “Stand up, queen,” he said, voice raised.

Rising from my seat, I waited. “She has accepted,” he announced, loud enough for all to hear. “Place your hands on my arms,” he instructed me.

I reached for him, and he lowered the crown. The spikes threaded through my hair and prickled my scalp. Samuel beamed at me and wiped my skin with his thumb, pulling it back to reveal a crimson smear. He licked it and then covered my mouth with his own, kissing me deeply.

Hand in hand, he turned us to face the crowd and Elijah stopped before us, passing the glass he’d filled to the man by my side. “Congratulations, Samuel. May all your days be rewarding.”

Samuel lifted the drink to his lips before passing the glass to me. I took a swallow as the two men watched.

“What is this?” I asked, feeling the remnants of the liquid on my tongue. It tasted sweet, though slightly metallic. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not.

Elijah answered, his gaze tracking to the far side of the room before returning with a hint of amusement, “Ceremonial wine.”

His deep gaze made me uncomfortable and as if he sensed it, Samuel squeezed my fingers, “Come, many guests would love to speak to us.”

The noise on the other side of the room increased in volume and I twisted my head.

The crowd parted and there on the far side of the room, tangled in chains and restrained by men stood a figure from my dreams.