A Wife for the Torturer

by Daniella Wright

  I swallowed hard, desperately wishing he would let me go.

  And yet, goosebumps blossomed on my skin at our proximity.

  “The dragon in me can smell the adrenaline in your veins right now,” he murmured. The tip of his nose skimmed my earlobe and I drew in a sharp breath, sinking back into the wall as if I could be absorbed into the cold metal. “I can practically taste it.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut in terror as he lifted a hand to brush back a strand of hair from my face, worried that he was about to strike me. I couldn’t bring myself to speak; my voice was caught in my throat.

  “I’m not some silly human with a broken mind like Zik,” he hissed. “I’m a dragon Prince, born of the most powerful bloodline the galaxy has seen in centuries. I don’t have dark impulses because I’m sick. I have dark impulses because that’s who I am.”

  Because I clearly felt like dying at that moment, I shook my head and managed to choke out a single word.

  “No.”

  He chuckled, ducking his head so his breath fanned out across my collarbone. I thought of those knife-like teeth his mentioned as his mouth hovered barely an inch from my skin. Would he rip my throat out like some kind of vampire?

  “No?” he repeated. “Listen to me, Ellen Moore. Don’t pretend to understand me. You will only be disappointed.”

  “Markus Alin,” I breathed, somehow managing to find my voice. “How could I understand you? I don’t even think you understand yourself. I’m only trying to help you.”

  Suddenly, both of his hands lifted from the wall around me and then slammed back down hard. I jumped, the blows just barely missing my head. He growled loudly and his eyes started to become golden again.

  Christ. Learn to hold your tongue, Ellen Moore.

  “I don’t need your help,” he grumbled in response.

  I nodded. I couldn’t help it. He needed to hear that someone cared about his wellbeing, that someone was invested in his redemption. “Yes, you do.”

  And then, Markus did the one thing I never expected him to.

  I don’t even think he expected himself to do it.

  He kissed me.

  In the span of half a second, all his rage and frustration melted into something more raw and less easy to ignore. His lips, soft and supple, pressed to mine.

  I was too shocked to respond at first, but my body caught up to what was happening before my mind did. And my body… It wanted him.

  I thawed under his touch, hands reaching up around his neck as his body pressed against mine. He deepened the kiss with a quiet groan and we parted for a moment only to gasp in unison.

  Around us, the ship disappeared. For all I knew, we were floating in open space, the stars twinkling around us, burning pure and bright.

  As quickly as the moment started, it ended. Markus seemed to realize what he’d done and stumbled back, staring at me as if I was the one who’d completely lost it and then kissed him out of the blue.

  “I…,” he said, clearly unable to form complete sentences any longer.

  My breath was coming fast and my body yearned to be close to his again, but I knew what I needed to do.

  I needed to leave. The survivor in me told me it was time to get out of that room.

  So, I did. Without another word, I left Markus behind, still staring dumbly at the place where he’d had me pinned to the wall.

  Chapter 10

  Girl

  Markus

  In the dream, I was a child again.

  It was my seventh birthday, and the castle was quiet. I had the endlessly unfortunate circumstance of being born in the same month as the first heir, Prince Ry. Every member of the Alin royal family was ten miles southeast on the seaside celebrating the twentieth birthday of the Crown Prince of the most powerful dragon shifter bloodline ever known. It would be a lavish celebration, an entire month of parties, galas and dinners. No expenses spared for the dashing, clever Ry.

  No one had noticed when the ninth heir, a little boy with dark eyes and auburn waves stayed in the shadows of the castle, refusing to join everyone else in his oldest brother’s birthday celebrations when he was turning seven.

  Seven was a very important age.

  For example, at seven, my legs were finally long enough to vault me out of the window of my childhood bedroom chambers; it was the perfect way to escape. But, escaping had always been easy for me, anyway. In fact, it could hardly be considered escaping if no one was particularly concerned about keeping you captive, or paying you any attention at all.

  But, something in the dream was a little off. Black, wispy shadows leeched color from the corners of my vision as the seven-year-old version of myself wandered down the grand marble halls of my family’s castle. My little leather shoes clicked on the glossy floor, but it was otherwise silent. Everyone was down at the beach with Ry, letting their dragon wings loose in the summer sun.

  A strange feeling settled in my stomach as I approached the throne room. At seven, I hadn’t spent much time in that room. Still, something was calling to me. The darkness on the edges of my vision murmured to me, whispering for the young boy that I was to approach.

  Suddenly, the dream dissolved from memory into pure imagination.

  I knew that because the moment I stepped into the throne room, I saw the bloodied body of my mother, the Queen, lying dead on the silver carpet beneath the throne.

  But, the Queen wasn’t dead. My mother wasn’t dead. Not in my timeline, nor in the ruined timeline we were heading to in the waking world.

  Or rather, she wasn’t dead yet.

  In the dream, I remained a seven-year-old boy as I stared down at the dead Queen. Her throat had been cut, pure porcelain broken to reveal a cascade of rubies. The blood pooled around my shoes, but I didn’t step away.

  And then, much to my surprise, an unstoppable urge to run overtook me. It wasn’t the horror of a young boy, but a very real and tangible desire to unsee what I was experiencing in front of me.

  Thankfully, at that very moment, I woke up.

  I sat up straight, the room dark. It took me a full minute to remember that I was on an airship traveling through time, and not a boy again, back on my home planet, seeing the dead Queen - who was not really dead - on the carpet of the throne room.

  Dropping my head in my hands, I sighed heavily and tried to shake off the image of my mother bleeding out in front of me.

  What had gotten into me? Wasn’t that what I’d planned all along? Quick and easy, a quickly cut throat for each and every one of them?

  So, why did the sight of it fill me with nothing but an all-powerful and unflinching sense of wrong?

  I checked the communication device on my wrist and saw that it was still several hours before sunrise. Glancing out of the large window that spanned the entire length of the back wall of the room, I saw nothing but darkness. We must have been between timelines, or traveling through a particularly dark part of the universe. Regardless, there was no way I was getting back to sleep. It was like the image of my dead mother had been burned on the inside of my eyelids.

  That really pissed me off, because that meant that Ellen had probably been right all along. Which also meant that I acted like a total asshole for no reason.

  I snorted quietly to myself. I was so stupid. Kissing some pretty human girl moments after trying to convince her I was the scariest person she’d ever met. Not to mention, believing myself when I told myself over and over that there was no way I’d be disturbed by the sight of my dead family members because, if I was killing them in a ruined timeline, it was actually real. They weren’t really dead. It was almost the entire point of dark tourism.

  Dragging myself out of bed, I threw on a sweater and stepped out into the hall, leaving my boots unlaced as I tried to quietly move throughout the ship. I shuffled past the door to Zik’s fantasy torture room carefully. Not a single sound came from within, either because all nine of those people were already dead, or because the Rogues had done a really good job at ma
king sure it was soundproof. I didn’t feel like investigating the design of the room much further, so I hurried along in the darkness.

  I was just as quiet when passing Rosa’s room. Her reason for embarking on a trip with the Rogues had been the most shocking one yet. She’d all but disappeared into her room the moment she returned from the ruined timeline of her home planet, a little baby girl in her arms. Her name was Emily, and she was the daughter that Rosa had lost in her original timeline.

  The shame that had itched in my chest at the thought of such an innocent reason for breaking the law to become a dark tourist threatened to take over again. Rosa, despite her quirks and her roughness, was full of light. She was a good person.

  I never imagined I’d be able to call myself a good person. Some people were bad and some were good. I just happened to not be the latter.

  Badness was inside me from the moment I was born. A certain darkness that had been inherited alongside my Alin blood; unfortunately, the dark warped me much more than the rest of my family. It made them terrifying and strong; it made me a monster.

  With a sigh, I wandered into the common room.

  However, I wasn’t alone.

  A familiar silhouette was perched by the wide windows, staring out at the tiny pinpricks of distant stars and planets. Dark curls spilled down her back, and though her face was turned toward the galaxy and away from me, I knew instantly by the defiant set of her shoulders that it was Ellen.

  I approached timidly, not wanting to scare her or to start another fight. Admittedly, she’d surprised me a few hours ago. Not many people had the guts to argue with a dragon Prince, let alone any kind of dragon shifter. She was either incredibly brave or frightfully stupid.

  I cleared my throat quietly. Ellen didn’t jump. She was, after all, a survivor. It was her main purpose to be fully aware of everything around her. Maybe she hadn’t known it was me, but she had been aware of another person’s presence the second they walked into the common room.

  “Hi,” she said without turning to look at me. Her voice was soft like the darkness around us.

  I sat down beside her on the windowsill, mirroring her position and leaning against the windowpane. She had both of her legs pulled up to her chest in an unconscious defensive stance. Always ready to protect herself.

  “Sorry about earlier,” I said, foregoing any kind of greeting. “I don’t know what got into me. I guess I’m kind of…going through a rough time.”

  Ellen snorted quietly. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  I winced. She was right. How did I have the audacity to complain about my life as a spoiled Prince when she’d been ripped from her parents, her loved ones and the only life she’d ever known?

  “Right,” I replied, keeping my voice low. “Sorry.”

  She was quiet for a moment, but I waited for her to speak. “It’s okay,” she finally told me, tearing her eyes away from the deep, black world outside to meet my gaze. Piercing green flashed in the dark, lighting up my own starless irises.

  “What’s okay?”

  “What happened earlier,” she explained. “Sometimes arguments are good. Productive. Sometimes they’re the only way to have a breakthrough, and someone just needs to be brave enough to push another person to the edge.”

  I sighed and pressed my forehead to the cold glass. “I dreamed I saw my mother. Dead, that is.”

  “And how do you feel about that?” she asked.

  The corner of my mouth quirked up in the tiniest of smirks as Ellen bit back a small smile of her own.

  “Don’t you therapize me!” I joked. “You humans think you’re such an emotionally superior race.”

  The sound of Ellen’s giggle was like music to my ears.

  “I’m also sorry about…the other thing,” I added, shifting nervously.

  Ellen glanced away. “The kiss?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “That.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, I know I have a bad reputation that precedes me, but I’m not… I’m not like that. I don’t just, like, force myself on women when I’m angry,” I struggled to explain myself. I was also struck by the reality that I was even trying to explain myself to a woman of interest. I’d never bothered to indulge the courtesy before in my life. “Honestly, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it…the whole time. It was like the one thing that broke through my anger in that moment.”

  Though it was dark, I swore I could see the slightest blush rise to Ellen’s cheeks.

  “Like I said,” she responded, refusing to meet my eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  I grinned. “So, you liked it?”

  Ellen’s mouth broke into a smile, but she still seemed to be refusing to meet my eyes.

  “I’m not going to feed your ego,” she replied, voice tinged with humor.

  “So, that’s a yes,” I said, nudging her shoe with mine.

  She snorted and shook her head. She was so beautiful, even in such poor lighting. Her beauty was almost angelic, it was so pure and unruffled. I’d never been so enamored with a girl. She had a strange effect on me, this Ellen Moore.

  For the next hour, as a dozen distant suns rose on a dozen faraway horizons, Ellen and I sat in silence, just the toes of our boots touching on the windowsill. It was the most comfortable I’d felt around another person. Usually, I was trying to prove myself, or disappear in the shadows or perform for intergalactic social circles. No one ever let me simply just be the way that Ellen did. There was something so free of judgment in her gaze; though I knew she yearned for me to show her the light that she swore was inside me, she wasn’t going to force it out of me.

  She would wait patiently for me to become a good person.

  And, for the first time, with her, I wanted to be a good person.

  Chapter 11

  Fascination

  Ellen

  I was alone in the Rogue command center, poring over the data screens in front of me. It was the same room I’d been in yesterday when I learned the truth about Markus’ plans for his ruined timeline and his entire family.

  Last night in the common room after our fight had been something I’d never experienced before. It went without saying, but I’d never had much time for romance back in my timeline on Earth. We were all trying desperately to survive, which did involve reproduction to an extent, but our society hadn’t quite reached a stable enough stage where a baby could be expected to survive, let alone a pregnant mother throughout the entire nine months.

  I wondered, though, if I had been left behind on Earth and not picked up by the Rogues, if I would someday carry someone’s baby, for the sake of our civilization.

  Sighing quietly to myself, I scrolled through the search results on the bright screen in front of me. I hadn’t been able to sleep after Markus found me in the common room, so instead of tossing and turning, I decided to come in here and get a headstart on the next day’s training. Hopefully, Loretta would be impressed. She was a tough egg to crack.

  Loretta was supposed to be teaching me how Lee sought out potential clients using the same Quantum drive that helped both the Time Agency and the Rogues find ruined timelines. She had explained that it was Lee’s specialty, his ability to find those who were so desperately unhappy in their own timeline that they craved a certain adventure in another world entirely. I had to admit, annoying as he was, Lee was good at reading people. He understood them.

  It probably had something to do with the fact that he was a total psychopath. He’d spent his entire life watching people closely enough to be able to mimic them and pass as a regular person that he became an expert at knowing the finer details of everyone’s psyche.

  I wondered how he found Markus and convinced him to become a dark tourist. After all, being a Rogue wasn’t just about the trip itself, or even just being able to find the right type of person to pay for the trip. It was about persuading them to break the law, to risk being thrown
in jail for decades at the hands of the intergalactic Time Agency. It was about making them see that they craved something darker.

  I wasn’t sure I was up to it.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t my intention to make a career out of being like Lee or Loretta.

  After I managed to get out of here and put an end to the monstrous, illegal activities I’d witnessed, I wasn’t sure was my next step would be, but I knew it wasn’t going to have anything to do with unlawful intergalactic travel. I just couldn’t picture myself tolerating the kind of stuff that the Rogues did for their clients, especially when it came to the services they provided to horrible animals like Zik.

  But, it wasn’t like I could go back to my original timeline. It was set to be destroyed in a matter of months. I certainly couldn’t go to any other timeline that parallel versions of myself existed in. Loretta had explained that seeing an exact copy of oneself, but from a different dimension, could do serious damage to someone’s mental stability.

  I assumed Markus, when he was done with his ridiculous, evil, foolish plan in his ruined timeline, would go back home. Maybe he would be happier and satisfied. But, I wasn’t sure. When he’d admitted that the sight of his dead mother in his nightmare made him feel so wrong inside, it became even more obvious to me that Markus would never be able to stomach actually killing his family, even if it wasn’t going to have any lasting consequences in a surviving timeline.

  He was a good person deep down. I could see it. There was a light in him.

  But there was also darkness in him. Undeniable shadow, twisted and warped into something that scared me a little bit. If I was being honest though, it also fascinated me.