Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 64359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“The intention was never to kill you. The point was for you to sacrifice yourself. You did that. You surrendered yourself to me. You gave your blood. You took my seed. You lost your dignity and your ego. You gave up every little bit of yourself. You no longer know why you live…”
“I’ve never known why I live,” I say. “Why do I feel so good?”
Emrys smiles. “You do feel good, don’t you? You feel lighter, stronger, healthier?”
Yes. All those things. I feel the way I remember feeling only when I was very young, but I feel them more deeply and more intensely than before.
“What did you do to me?”
“I rewarded you,” he says. “You have earned it.”
“How did you reward me?”
He smiles enigmatically and declines to reply. I know there’s no way he is going to actually tell me what he did. Whatever happened took place when I was insensate. I am grateful to be alive, and I am even more grateful to feel good.
I stretch and squirm in his arms, feeling a kind of settled warmth. He holds me close, strokes my hair, and makes me feel petted and cosseted. The fear I experienced when I first met him, the desperate running from him, it all culminated here.
“That’s a good girl,” he praises me. “You have proven to be quite the surprise, little one. What started as a scam has turned out to be an excellent investment. It almost makes me curious. What happened to your name, human? What twisted and broke you? What turned you from a generally useless little lump of meat into this scheming creature good only for sacrifice?”
“My king…” Aristo appears. He seems to be allowed to wander in and out of Emrys’ most intimate areas without permission.
Then again, I have spent the last few days chained to a plinth and being ravaged for anybody to see. Privacy is not in abundance among the valkers.
“Yes?”
“There is a creature claiming he has legal jurisdiction over the queen.”
“That will be the Sheriff,” Emrys says. “I sent him off on a side quest, but you can let him in. We can’t keep him at bay forever.”
I let out a sigh knowing that this, too, was inevitable. There is no escaping fate, or the numahn Sheriff.
“He wants to kill me,” I remind Emrys.
“I wanted to kill you too,” he reminds me. “He might change his mind.”
He is not going to change his mind.
At any other time, I would be terrified, but I think Emrys might have drunk away my fear. I lie in Emrys’ sheltering arms and I peek out between the thick strands of his hair as the most terrible creature I have ever known is allowed into our presence.
Sheriff comes striding into what I suppose must be some bedroom cum meeting chamber. Valker interior design is hard to make out when so much of it is really oriented around fuckable surfaces.
“Well, hello,” he says in that casual drawl that might make you think he wasn’t such a bad guy if you knew absolutely nothing about him at all. “There you are, Emily.”
I cringe as he uses the name the numahns gave me. Emrys was right. I am without a name, because I will always reject any imposed upon me.
“Emily? That is your name?” Emrys snorts. “That will not do. We cannot be Emrys and Emily. It’s almost cute. That’s completely unacceptable. You’ll have to choose another.”
“I’ve been choosing another for as long as I can remember. Emily is not my name. He is the last person who would ever have the right to name me.”
“I am getting the strong sense you two know one another,” Emrys says.
“He is the one who did it,” I tell my king. “He is the one who made me what I am.”
“Ungrateful brat!” Sheriff laughs. “I am the one who saved your life.”
“You didn’t save me from anything. You saved me to use me. You’re sick.”
I am finally getting to say things I wished I had said many years ago. I am not afraid. There is nothing and nobody who can possibly get me while I’m here in Emrys’ arms. Not even the great Sheriff.
“You’ve had your use of her,” Sheriff says. “I agreed to give you enough time to complete your homecoming ritual, and I did that. Now it is time to surrender her. We had an agreement.”
“I don’t know that we did,” Emrys says. He sits up in bed and gestures for Aristo to hand him a rod of hard-pressed bloodweed. The servant does as his king demands and provides a light. Red smoke curls into the air between us. I am still lying on the bed, protected by Emrys. He has one languid arm draped over my waist in a casual gesture which belies his readiness to do great harm. Anticipation, even.