The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) (16 page)

“No,” I whispered, walking up to it. The metal under my feet bent and broke. I put a hand on the lid, bracing for the worst, and opened it.

My flame illuminated a withered form inside. Shreds of skin over chips of bone, my love had died waiting, as I had, for a rescue that had never come. A few strands of long blonde hair, and where her neck would be, the remnants of a collar.

“No,” I whispered – and the gentle force of my breath shuddered what was inside to dust – “Airelle!”

I sank to my knees beside what had become her coffin. “My love! Airelle!” I shouted her name. It echoed in the chamber, and as it began to fade, I shouted it again. I would never stop shouting it, some part of me would be screaming her name until I was placed in a grave. “Airelle!”

I crumpled forward as though struck a mortal blow and sobbed, pressing my head against the edge of the lid of the horrible thing that had killed her.

“Zaan?” a soft voice asked behind me.

I turned, eyes wet with tears, and saw the vision of my Queen – then blinked and realized it was only Ilylle, again.

“Zaan, are you okay?” She stepped into the circle of light my flame provided and looked into the coffin. “Is that –“

“My Airelle, and what they have done to her.” I reached inside to touch her one more time and my fingers sifted through her dust.

“I’m so sorry, Zaan,” Ilylle whispered.

“It is not how a Queen should have died – not my Queen. Scared and alone and unremembered.” I was dizzy with the emotions reeling through me: vast sorrow, immense betrayal, and the violent weight of my anger. “I would go back in time and change everything.”

“I know,” Ilylle said. She kneeled beside me and my flame illuminated her face. Tears were streaming down it for my forgotten Queen, and that alone was what made it all right for me to cry. I sobbed and she took me in her arms.

“She died without me,” I said, clinging to Ilylle’s side. “I should have been there. I was meant to be there.”

“It’s not your fault, Zaan – you were betrayed,” she said, holding me close.

“I was supposed to protect her.”

Ilylle stroked her hands across my back and through my hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She was real and warm against me, my head against her shoulder, my mouth mere inches from her neck. The bloodbond roared in me again, and I needed life to come back from such profound death.

I bit her and I hung on.

She made a small noise as my teeth broke her skin. I grabbed her instinctively to keep her still – I didn’t want her to jerk away and tear open her sweet flesh – and her blood began to flow inside my mouth, thick and lush. I sucked at her, rocking my tongue against the wound I’d made, making the sounds of a cornered wild animal -- I needed this – she was mine – until sanity returned and I stiffened, horrified at what I’d done.

She sensed the change in me and her hand wound tight in my hair, still offering her neck, making it all right. I carefully released her and pulled back, caution regained.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” My flame was extinguished and she hadn’t replaced it, but I could imagine her there looking at me with her kind eyes. “This place – it’s awful.”

“It is.” I regained control of myself and my emotions. There was something about her blood that made me feel both mortal and immortal, at the same time. “How did you get in? How did you know I was down here?”

“I heard your call, and I answered.”

“I was calling Airelle.”

“Yes, well –“ she said in the dark, her voice small.

What was it like to discover you were just a copy? I heard the pain of it in Ilylle’s voice. I put my hand out and made flame dance upon it, so that I could see her bowed head.

“But how did you get here?”

“I heard you – and you needed me. So I came.”

“Teleportation?” I looked around the room, and none of the doors were open. “Ilylle, did you use your magic to transport yourself here?”

She looked up and me and nodded.

“Not even Airelle could do that.”

Ilylle’s expression lifted and then fell again – and I realized she was looking at the sarcophagus at my back. “Clearly.”

“Clearly,” I agreed. I rose and turned toward the thing again. Only the fact that Airelle was inside it stopped me from tearing it apart. “That they would do this – to her – to others like her – without consequences for so long –“

“It has to end with me, Zaan.” Her voice was grim. I looked down to find her brow drawn in an unfamiliar line and her chest was heaving – not with pain from the bite I’d inflicted, but with anger. “They cannot do this again. Not to anyone else.”

“They won’t. I swear it.” I offered her my hand to help stand up and she took it, sealing our pact. She stood, her hair wild from our prior fight, and while the wound I’d made was healing, her neck and collar were still stained with blood.

In that moment she was the image of Airelle, so close it took my breath away, then she moved and she was Ilylle again, proud and kind.

“How do I get back?” she asked.

“Wait until my return, and I’ll call.” I was phasing into smoke, but retook form more solidly. “This time, my call will be for you.”

She nodded.

I let myself go incorporeal, faded around Ilylle, and sank into Airelle’s tomb again, blowing through her remains, suffusing myself with her, whispering the old words, “This is not a good-bye, but a parting,” before flowing over the lip of the coffin and underneath the door.

With the power of Ilylle’s blood I traversed the palace quickly and reformed inside her chamber, not far away from Joshan. I could feel Ilylle in the dungeon Airelle was left in, and this time I called for her, like to like, the woman I was bloodbound to. I pulled on the piece of her tethered to me – and felt her pull shiver through my body as she answered back. Then a moment of blankness, and she reformed at my side.

“My Queen,” I said with a nod.

She flicked a hand along her blood-stained dress, a low imitation of a curtsy. “My King.”

Joshan was apparently unperturbed at two different people reforming nearby, but at seeing Ilylle he broke into a wide smile. “My Queen, the dream cradle awaits.”

Ilylle stood still with horror.

“No,” I answered him. I could see it there, the disgusting implement they’d used to enslave Airelle – no Queen of mine was ever getting into one again. I drew up power inside myself and crossed the room to ruin the device.

“Hold,” Ilylle said from behind me.

“You know what it is. What it does. I will not let you get into it.” Ilylle’s looked almost exactly like Airelle’s. Of course it did, why change something that clearly worked? I could destroy it with a blow, a kick, a thought --

“If we destroy it, they’ll know.”

I looked back at her. “Let the fight begin now, Ilylle –“

“It’s been almost two days. They expect me to use it. We have to keep up pretense.” She walked around me and put herself between me and the cradle.

“Are you insane? What if –“

“I know what if,” she said calmly. “I saw her too.” But she put one foot into the cradle nonetheless. “This is what I have to do, Zaan. Lives are depending on me.”

“People you don’t even know –“ I protested.

“My people, nonetheless.”

I walked up to her, ready to snatch her out of the cradle at the slightest sign. What moved in me now wasn’t just the bond of our blood but something deeper and more intense. “I, also, depend on you.”

She gave me the softest saddest smile, and in that moment looked almost exactly like Airelle had when she first suggested that my people turn to stone. “And I, you. So please stand guard,” she said, and lay down in the cradle, bringing its lid down.

I paced a line in front of the cradle. Could I have gotten into it, after seeing my Airelle? I didn’t think I could. But she had. Like a man walking onto a gallows, or off a plank in the middle of the sea. Railan’s men could be here in moments, with another magic-eater to disrupt me and lash the lid of that beast down, with her trapped inside its belly.

She had to have known the risks and accepted them. Why had I ever spent so much time hating her when she was capable of this? So eager to find flaws with her, comparing her to Airelle, that I couldn’t see all the ways she was alike?

And yet different, too – Ilylle was her own being. She had done the best with what she had, and had come so far, so bravely, in such a short time. I sat down on the ground, with my back to her cradle. Anything that wanted to hurt her would literally have to go through me.

“Beza, bring me a meal.”

“Yes, my King,” the metal-puppet said.

I crossed my legs and waited for dinner or death, whichever came first.

Chapter Fifteen

Time passed as I paced around the cradle. Longer than I liked. The colors on Ilylle’s walls ebbed and flowed like the tide, mimicking the passage of light outdoors, day into night and back again.

Had she ever been in this long before? How could she stand it? Was she all right? I didn’t need to sleep to have nightmares, every time I blinked I imagined opening up the lid of her cradle to find her drained to dust inside.

My poor Airelle – her pride was another way she and Ilylle were alike. How could she have let herself be tormented for so long? Why hadn’t she killed herself when she’d had the chance?

Everyone with magic was able to point it inward – it was one of the burdens of the power, always knowing how easy it was to burn yourself away with it. I knew Airelle wasn’t afraid of pain – which left me with a horrific realization.

Airelle knew if she died there’d be no one left to save me.

I was the reason she’d been trapped. She must have hoped beyond hope that someday she’d find a way free and rescue me. Hours, months, years, spent inside that monstrosity -- I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Ilylle.

She would have to turn me into stone again for Yzin’s plan to work – and I would have to convince her to leave me there, if it meant saving herself.

I could not lose two Queens in one lifetime.

#

This time, I remembered my dreams. I was swirling with power, sinking in a boat at sea, drowning, water on all sides pressing in.

When I woke I flung the lid of the cradle back and gulped in air. Zaan rushed to my side and pulled me out with a stricken expression on his face, setting me carefully on my bed. “Are you all right?”

I looked down at myself and then nodded slowly. “I…think so. I feel very weak though – how much time passed?”

“Too long. Tide’s Day is tomorrow.” Everything about him was serious – his face, his bearing. He’d sat outside the cradle for two days, standing guard, preparing for a threat that hadn’t come, coping with the loss of his love.

“Oh,” I breathed, and got my bearings. I had never been in the cradle that long before. Had Ralian been trying to drain the last bit of strength from me? One last time to stop me from finding my true potential out? “Is -- is everyone ready?”

“I don’t know. Yzin hasn’t returned and I haven’t left your side.”

“Thank you,” I said with a slight nod.

“You’re welcome.” His gaze traveled over all of me. “Are you well?”

“I’m whole. Just weak.” I hugged myself and ran my hands up and down my arms.

“We have time to make you strong.”

His voice was flat when he said it, with no undertone of anticipation, and he reached for the buckles of his armor. I hadn’t seen his chest since he’d proved Beza unreal to me – I watched him take off the layers of leather bracings and pull the shirt underneath off over his head. He stayed standing at the far end of the bed, his expression stern – like he was trapped in stone again
already. I rose up and crawled over to him, reaching out a tentative hand out to trace one of his scars.

“How did you get this?”

He looked down, following the movement of my hand. “It’s one of the incentives to learn how to transform – eventually you’d rather become smoke than have a priest beat you again.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It was at the time. It served its purpose, though.” His head was bowed and his hands went for the buckles at his waist.

“And your armor? How does it transform with you –“ I asked, my voice rising nervously. He stopped unbuckling things and pierced me with a look, and I rocked back, scooting incrementally away. “Are you mad at me?”

His expression softened for a moment and then drew tight. “I just want to make you strong again, Ilylle.” He mounted the bed and pushed the rest of his armor down, revealing a swelling cock. “If there is a time for kindness, when all this is through, then I can afford to be. But for now –“ he reached forward to take the hem of my dress up in both hands and pulled, making the fabric tear up in a jagged line. “You will have to make due with what I can give you.”

Then he reached up the bed, grabbed my hips, and pulled me down to him. Our legs were tangled for a moment until he’d put one of mine on either side of his thighs. He hovered over me, holding himself up on his arms, looking angrily down.

I’m not sure what I was then – my magic swirled inside me, making me ache, but I was scared.

Zaan leaned forward, his face directly over mine. “If the choice comes down to me or you, promise me you’ll save yourself.”

I shook my head without thinking. “No.”

“Promise me,” he growled, “or I won’t let you turn me back to stone and all is lost.”

I grit my teeth together. “That’s not fair.”

“I am not kind nor fair today then.” He reached and wound one hand in my hair tight, taking control of my head, sending electric shivers of good-pain-fear down my spine. “Promise me.”

If I couldn’t turn him back to stone, none of Yzin’s plan would work. More people would die, the councilmen would still live, and they would do this to another girl. “I promise,” I gasped out, as the pain made my eyes water.

“Good,” Zaan said, and set to fucking me.

His knees pushed my thighs out and his hips lowered and his cock pushed against the entrance of my pussy. He took one of my hands, and then the other, holding them down with one of his over my head so that I couldn’t struggle with him.

I wouldn’t have. I needed him again. Being in the same room with him, muchless the same bed, raked the embers of magic inside me, and I could feel the strength I’d lost to the cradle rebuilding. He reached down to angle himself to take me, as I tilted my hips up, begging him to push in – and then he stopped, leaning back and releasing my wrists.