The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) (7 page)

But I didn’t stop her because she did look like Airelle. My Airelle never would have spoken so quietly or put up with my bursts of anger, but her fingers wrapped me and my body answered. She wasn’t
her
, but she smelled the same, and if I closed my eyes --

“See?” she said, as I stiffened in her hand.

“You ruin it when you speak,” I growled, and she shut up – but her hand didn’t slow.

She played up and down me, her hand like Airelle’s, skillful, deft. But Airelle would have had her other hand in my hair, wound tight, making me beg her for release, praying for a drop of blood. At the memories of so many nights lost with her, exchanging pain for pleasure, my cock swelled, and the hand stroking it pulled faster in response.

I took hold of the edge of the table and came with a groan, imagining Airelle at my side, my Queen the temptress, always taunting, teasing, driving me mad – and I inhaled deeply, praying that by the time I exhaled circumstances would have changed.

But no, when I opened my eyes I saw her there, staring at the lacy wetness of my seed in her palm.

“What happened? Have I hurt you?” She showed her hand to me.

The spell – such as it was – was broken, and I was disgusted with myself for my hope.

“You have made me come, my Queen.” Another thing to hate her for.

“But Joshan –“ she looked to her male servant and then again to me. “He doesn’t leak.”

I looked to the man in the doorway. He was as tall as I was, all muscle bound, watching what happened without comment – without jealousy. “You’ve fucked him? And he’s never spilled seed inside you before?”

She shook her head.

More Rix-sorcery.

I took my head and put it in between my hands, elbows on the table. I really was in Draugulos. I must have dishonored myself somehow. I started laughing harshly. “They’re not real.”

The girl looked from me to her servant. “What are you saying?”

“They’re not real! None of this is!” I stood, throwing the table across the room, foodstuffs sloshing onto the ground. “You, thing, come with me.” I grabbed hold of the servant girl’s waist and hauled her aloft. “I don’t know what kind of demon puppet you are, but I intend to find out.”

#

This wasn’t how I thought things would go at all.

“Stop that! Come back here at once!” I shouted at my King – and he completely ignored me.

No one had ever done that before.

I stood still for a second, befuddled, and then chased after him so quickly my seat tipped back and fell over. “What are you going to do with her? Where are you going?” He’d slung Beza over one shoulder, her hair dragging along the ground behind her like a trail of blood.

“If what you say is true, I have twenty-thousand years to catch up on. I’ll be starting with her. And if I am in Draugulos, my actions have no consequence, for I am already doomed.”

I ran around to stand in front of him. “You are my King! I demand you act like one!”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ve never met a King before. How ought I to act?”

And my children’s tales betrayed me. “I – I – I don’t know.”

Zaan sidestepped me and kept walking, and stopped when we reached a chamber with a wide couch. He threw Beza down on it and she bounced on the cushions.

“She’s not real. None of this is real.”

“She is too real. You are – aren’t you Beza?”

Beza looked up at me. “I am real, my Queen,” she answered, without any fear in her voice.

If I were in Beza’s position, I would be horrified. A gnawing fear started in my stomach and I put my hands there, wiping Zaan’s seed off on my dress. If he was right – what did that mean for me? For everything I ever knew?

Zaan stood in front of her, unbuckling his armor. He pulled his chest piece off, and took off the robe beneath it, revealing a broad, muscular, scar-covered back.

Who had ever whipped a King? I put my hand to my mouth to hold back a gasp – and then ran around to put myself in front of Beza. “I don’t care. She’s real to me. I won’t let you hurt her.”

He set his folded robe on the ground near his armor and then looked at me, his braid trailing over one shoulder now.

“I thought you would be different. The stories say we’re King and Queen of Aranda and we live happily ever after.”

He snorted in disgust. “Are all the books you read child’s tales?”

“No.” I quickly shook my head. Some of the books Yzin had been bringing me lately were quite grim – though not as frightening as unleashing my own angry Zaibann. “But the ones that ones that mention you and me are,” I said. “So I’m sorry that I don’t know how you ought to be – but I know that you shouldn’t do this.”

He stood in front of me, breathing deeply. Zaan was everything I thought he’d be from reading the book, but a hundred times more frightening than I could have ever fathomed. He looked down at Beza again, still prone on the couch where he’d dropped her – she hadn’t even tried to run away.

“She’s not real. I don’t smell any blood in her.”

“Neither do I!” I agreed, even though I didn’t know what blood smelled like. “But her dark place drips honey, same as mine –“

“Dark place?” he said, eyebrows rising, eyes focusing in on me.

“Be-between her legs. Her pussy.” I used the word that he’d used for it earlier.

“You’ve tasted your own slave?” he asked, his lips quirking up.

I nodded hesitantly.

“But this is the only one you have, right?”

I nodded again, wondering how he knew, as he began to shake his head. “No real woman tastes of sweets. Men only say they do to please them.”

“But she does,” I protested.

Zaan smiled wickedly. “Shall I see?” He sat down on the far end of the couch. “Come here, slavegirl.”

Beza looked from me to him and I didn’t know what to say.

“Your King commands it,” Zaan said, his eyes looking at me. At that, Beza did as she was told, crawling nearer, and Zaan pulled her onto his lap.

I realized his skin was against her back, and he wrapped her with one arm. Since I had released him from the stone, I had only felt one small part of him, no more. I was worried for her, but as he brought his other hand up to brush the fabric covering her breast, I also found myself becoming jealous.

He pushed Beza’s hair out of his way so that he could press his face into her neck. One hand kept stroking her breast, as the other met her thigh. “Are you scared, my darling?”

Beza shook her head, “No, my King.”

Zaan glanced up at me to make sure that I was listening. Then he murmured something just for her and rocked back, pulling her with him, kissing her neck.

I almost said something then, worried that he would bite her – just as I felt my magic stir inside at watching them.

She writhed against him, falling back into him like I had seen her fall back into Joshan a hundred times before, raising her arms up so that she could reach for his face and hair. She ground her body against his, as he kissed and licked and nuzzled her, his hand massaging the weight of her breast, his hand on her thigh ever-rising.

“You are warm, for a demon-puppet,” he said, licking a stripe up her neck to whisper in her ear. His hand on her legs reached her hip and then slid over to dive between her thighs, and she moaned as I could only imagine him pushing a finger inside. Her eyes closed and I watched his arm move as he stirred himself into her, feeling her slick heat. And when he pulled his hand out he brought his fingers to his lips and tasted her with a cruel smile.

“Honey indeed.”

He stood, pushing her roughly aside, walking across the room to me. I held my ground. I could smell her scent on him – I’d been intoxicated by it before.

“Be honest -- does the same drip from between your legs? Or do you own the wetness of a real woman?” He stood an arm’s length away and then reached over to smear her juices on my cheek. I stood there, furious at him. If Beza wasn’t real, then what else about my life was a lie? What, if anything, was truth?

Zaan pressed on. “Did you slick honey on my cock? Are you made of candy, girl?”

I shook my head, staring hate at him. “No.”

He nodded his head with a tilt. “Because no woman alive tastes like that.” He cast a glance back to Beza who was innocently looking from him to me. “Shall I wrench her arm off to prove to you she’s not real?”

“No!” I ran across the room and grabbed Beza’s wrist and hauled her to me. Even if she wasn’t real – she was still my servant. “You are my King. If there is to be – fucking – then it should be with me.”

Zaan crossed the distance between us and I fought not to shrink back. “Trust that there will be,” he said, burning me with his gaze, his eyes running over me like hands. “But not tonight. Leave me. Have the male bring me beer if the world still has it.”

He took a step back and I hauled Beza out of the room behind me.

I pulled Beza all the way back to my own sleeping chamber. I had never needed doors before, but now I wished I had them, so I could close them and bar the path. I did not want the Zaibann startling me in the middle of the night.

I sat on the edge of my bed, hands in impotent fists. “He is awful,” I told Beza. Staring into her eyes now, though, I knew what Zaan had said was true. She was kind and loyal, but not any more human than the zoomers that smoothed the rugs at night.

“He is your King, my Queen,” Beza said innocently.

“Leave me,” I said, and she turned to do as I commanded. “But do not go to him, nor let him touch you.”

“My Queen,” she said nodding, then left.

#

I watched her go, pulling the Rix-abomination behind her. What had happened to this world in my long absence?

I had to admit that it was long, now. Unless this entire palace was some sort of elaborate trap.

But if so – why that girl?

She was a pale shadow of Airelle and I was bound to her by blood. She clearly didn’t know what the binding was – I needed more power over her before she did. Something to trade.

I needed a way out.

One of the accursed metal creatures raced by me on all eight legs, and I turned to follow it.

It walked down endless halls, through open doors, past others of its kind, scrubbing things clean, trimming living branches, grooming caged beasts, until it reached a wall with a handspan gap at the bottom. I watched in amazement as it folded itself down, lowering until it could slide sideways and duck underneath, like an insect scurrying from a sudden light.

Well, well.

I sat down. Airelle and the pathetic impostor weren’t the only ones with powers. I placed my hands in my lap and called on my magic, speaking the meditative words in the old tongue.

“Zaibann are creatures of the wind. We come and go as we please, and no man can halt our passage.”

I felt the pieces of myself lighten and pull apart. I occupied the same space that I had before, but I was as air now, a cloud-like consciousness controlled only through sheer force of mind.

I sank, collapsing in on myself in a smoke, and followed the metal-thing out.

The tunnels I was in as a mist were as extensive as the ones I had walked in earlier. The metal – how I hated being encased in it! – threaded through the walls so that the Rix-creatures could bring in supplies and haul out waste. I knew the Chamber of the Sun my men and I had
dug was set inside deep stone, so any time a tunnel branched, I lifted up. The entire system couldn’t be perfectly sealed – if it was, that sad girl and her machinated friends would have suffocated, not to mention all the animals.

I rose, conscious of how much time it was taking me, and how much of my strength I was using, knowing I would need enough strength to go back – and I cursed myself for waking with such ravenous need, never thinking that I might be tricked. My anger made me vibrate, so much so that I almost missed it – the waft of a faint breeze.

I pushed myself toward it and hovered right in front of the draft. There was always the chance I could be dissipated so much that I could never reassemble, so I waited, testing cautiously, until I found a gap between the metal panels and leaked ever so slowly outside.

I reassembled my form on the edge of a metal shell – there was no need to waste my powers more than I had, not when my body could heal quickly – and I slid down down, tumbling along the shell’s edge for what seemed like miles before I dropped to the ground.

The fall was long enough that even I was stunned upon landing, and when I caught my breath the air tasted like ash. Like after the battle of Hotalle, when Airelle lit up the city’s walls and the fires smoked for weeks.

Draugulos indeed.

I looked around. It was night, but the area around me was lit with an unearthly glow. Whose magic was this that illuminated me? Surely not
hers
. I saw lights that weren’t flames atop poles -- more Rix-made abominations.

Then I heard a sound from behind. I turned as a loud creature raced straight at me on two wheels, ridden by a hidden man in armor. He shouted something, muffled by his helmet, and veered around. I stood there, feeling the wind from his passage.

The things we had fought – the things my men died for – they were everywhere.

Was our entire war for nothing? Had my slumber been in vain?

I stalked away from the palace’s metal wall, looking for darkness to hide in.

I walked down long alleys that stank of refuse and defecation. There were no pictures of this place on the palace’s screens – was all Aranda like this, now? I passed doors that held back sounds of people and music like I had never heard, walked over men sleeping in small groups wearing shreds of clothing, too inebriated to feel rats nipping at their fingers.

Lights flickered on a wider boulevard ahead – as much as I hated Rixan objects, I flew towards them like a moth.

What had happened to the world? And why didn’t that girl inside the palace know? What was the point of keeping her so innocent – and who gained from keeping her trapped there?

I looked up and couldn’t see any stars. Had the world lost those, too, while I slept?

I heard a sound from close behind me – scurrying feet. Like a rat, but man-sized. I turned.