As afraid of her as she of this world she was in.
“Chain her wrists behind her.”
With more care than she’d expected, the boy helped her sit, adjust until her hands settled numbly at the small of her back, the tingling of her fingers, forgotten in her terror, felt now as her blood pumped freely and fresh fear sped her pulse.
“Bring her.”
She expected to be taken to the palace gates, the whipping posts that lines the front steps to the citadel, the place of punishment for those who went against the khan Roaca and his rule.
There were three posts.
All three had held patrons when she and her mother entered the city.
She didn’t know who they held now.
Only what the great hall held, no screens to separate the khan and his sons from seeing her face this time. The old king sat on his throne, leaning forward as she was brought to him, forced to her knees, no balance this time without her arms to steady her. The heavy strands of his hair, braided to hang in layered rows from his brow, swung with the slow swivel of his head, a thousand snakes swarming across his shoulders like the goddess he worshipped in the deepest sands of their lands.
Ven hadn’t caught the color of his eyes in her cell.
The red-gold glint of them seemed as foreign to her as her mother would claim Ven’s eyes to be to those looking.
She fell into his gaze, lost to the rhythmic undulation of his movements.
Between the two of them, he had the power to compel, the greater magic under his control.
What remained of her will, admittedly very little considering she’d been imprisoned, threatened, and sliced by swords in any attempt to flee, bowed to him, caught in his serpent’s stare.
Her dragon had scarlet eyes, pupils slit from top to bottom, long like a cat’s prowling in the city streets.
Not so, the khan.
His pupils widened until the black nearly obscured the yellows of his iris.
When he stood, she couldn’t say, only that he was standing before her—
No, she was standing before him?
Had she stood herself or been lifted to her feet?
Standing together before the guards.
“What has your line been hiding from mine all these years, little witch? What else can you do that you would have me believe is merely parlor tricks to please the crowd?”
Her lips parted but she had no words to answer.
She didn’t know how she’d done what’d she’d already managed.
“Father, the Khanastani call for her presence. They say she is a goddess. We cannot risk their enmity with the water—”
Quloe looked away, broke the stare that he’d held with her.
Ven blinked. Her head throbbed. The diffused light of the throne room, the grates that covered the windows casting intricately carved vine shadows on the floor, seemed to slither around while her stomach roiled, and she tried to collect herself.
Like being caught in the stare of a cobra bent on an attack.
She raised her head in time to see the khan strike his son, the blow fast and precise.
The red imprint of the king’s hand blossomed across the phai’s cheek. Two marks of blood seeped crimson trails across the prince’s dark skin, marks where the king’s rings had bit into the boy’s flesh. The phai fell to one knee, hands rising to cushion the blow he’d received, wise enough not to bunch his fists in attempted retaliation against his father.
Perhaps he should have attacked.
The khan Roaca stumbled.
Ven’s gaze returned to the man, his swaying body now a foot before her, barely distant enough to reach out and touch, if she were free to touch him, which she was not.
His feet tripped despite the evenness of the floors, despite the fact he should be standing still. He stumbled, hands reaching out to catch himself on the arms of his throne before he fell, and his knee struck the floor.
A bevy of soldiers rushed forward to haul him onto his throne.
Servants came carrying cups and a bowl.
One handed him the glass.
The other knelt and removed the khan’s boots, put his feet into the vessel, upended a cup of liquid over the same.
The king sighed. His head fell back against his chair.
His son slowly forced himself to his feet.
Ven blinked.
Quloe met her gaze, no snake in his eyes, just black pits that stared at her before he snarled. “Get her the hell out of here! I can’t entrap her again today. Take her back to her cells and make sure the mother can’t get to the girl. We don’t need the two plotting more lies against us.”
Plotting lies?
She hadn’t plotted any lies.
Her mother had never lied.
Ven was an herbalist, maybe more skilled than her ancestors when it came to mixing potions, but that was it – potions and tonics and a dragon reformed from sand and stone…
The guards that had pulled her from her cell, that had helped the king to his throne, returned to her side and hauled her from the room.
She didn’t think to struggle.
With her arms behind her back, little understanding of where she was in the citadel, and her mother forcibly kept away from her, Ven wasn’t going anywhere.
Not including her guards or the cell they led her to, down a winding path of stairs through a hallway that had only small holes drilled into the walls for ventilation and light, a light that was dimming now as the sun set and she was pushed past an iron door and left alone in a room, bound and hungry and realizing how very dry her mouth was and the last time she’d had anything to drink.
If she called out, would anyone even answer?
Would they care?
Chapter Fourteen
She ached. Her muscles were sore in her shoulders, wrists chafed from being rubbed raw by the chains wrapped around them. Held in a world of darkness, cold, despite the heat of the sands up above. If only she were in the sea beside him, he would have called their cells the same.
His at least had meat to sustain him.
She wallowed in her hunger.
He had the use of his hands to at least reach out, touch, hold.
Her fingers had gone numb long ago. How long until the damage became permanent?
He didn’t know, nor did she.
There were seven hundred and twenty-six bricks on the wall to her left, seven hundred and twenty-two to her right. Her head rested against one at her back, neck too stiff to count more than that. Only the door mattered on the wall before her, the iron door with its riveted bars of steel holding it together, holding it in place, holding her inside.
At least in the sea, he had never felt the fear of too little space to move through. The endless expanse of the oceans afforded him the knowledge that when he was freed, there were infinite places he could explore.
Her breathing labored as the seven hundred bricks closed in around her. He forced his panting breaths to slow, steady inhales that calmed the rise and fall of her chest.
She had not reached for him in her captivity.
Or had he reached for her, and that was why he found himself in her mind, imprisoned alongside her in this room, physically bigger than the first chamber he’d broken true conversation with her in, yet the meaning of its walls far more restrictive.
Why are we here?
I don’t know.
How do we get free?
I don’t know.
His questions or hers, the answer was always the same, had always been the same for time unending.
Ouros began his count again.
Bricks.
At least it was something, stuck in her head, bound with her in this dungeon, so much worse than his own.
Is it though? Is this a worse dungeon than yours?
The waters stilled around Ouros, the current, never ceasing, hesitated a moment before resuming its unending beat against his scales.
He blinked.
She blinked.
She snorted, and he felt the gust of her breath as though it came from his own lungs. I am aware of you as you are, the dream that has destroyed all that I am. I should have listened to my mother. I should never have sought you out, thought about you. Now I am damned for the act.
I had no mother to warn me from your kin my many lifetimes ago. He too was damned for the act of seeking them out.
You were killing my people. Amece had no choice.
The tight scales over Ouros eyes hardened further. Protection against an enemy during an attack. A reaction of emotion he couldn’t control when his fangs ached to tear at the lies she told. I killed no one! I never touched a human!
Your storms killed thousands. Drowned and froze and tore them apart in the great winds and floods you called onto the land.
Storms? You would blame a storm’s fury on me?
You called them into being, dragon—
Ouros. My name is Ouros.
He felt her draw back, pull away, the mental bridge forged between them shuddering as she drew into herself at the mention of his name.
A name, which made him more than a beast.
But that’s all she saw, wasn’t it? All any of her kind had ever seen when looking upon him. A creature of power to be used and controlled and condemned for that same strength they coveted.
Storms are my nature, girl. They are a part of my being as blood and bone is part of yours. I am fire and rain and wind and earth. But a storm is a thing outside of my power, its demands separate from my own.
But you can control them!
Ouros laughed or laughed as well as he was able considering the shock of her statement. I do not control the storms, girl. I am the storm, but I do not control it. It is a part of my nature given life, but not me, without my will, a thing on its own.
Your words make no sense.
He shook his head, and the dark walls of her prison reformed in watery blocks disrupted by the school of tuna breaking through their depths. Closing his eyes to the fish brought him back to her, though why he found the cold stone a more welcome retreat than the freedom of his seas, he couldn’t say.
How best to explain that which she had no concept of?
This witch, who didn’t know what power she held…
You do not know. You do not understand all that you are, do you? Ouros shifted, twisted until he laid on his side in the sand, the shark wound buried in the ground, a safer place than exposed to the elements despite the grit biting at his sensitive hide. He willed his mind apart, his eyes to focus back on the nothing of dreams, the rich blackness of a night dark sea and the visions of freedom that it brought. I am a different creature of creation than you are, girl. Not the birth of new life, but life itself. I am magic and power. I am the elements that make up this world. You are the sculptor. It has always been the place of your kind, to shape the magic you hold within you to whatever purpose you desire. My strength lies in being.
I do not—
I know. He sighed.
He did not understand either.
If he were above water, able to touch the winds with his breath, a cyclone would have formed with his exhale, destructive in its nature, and yet not intended as such. A tear would bring the rains. The press of his foot to the earth a tremor that could shake the world apart.
But he was chained in iron beneath the sea, apart from all that was meant to be his to command.
Powerless with his power bound within him.
Until she’d stolen it, and he’d watched death approach in the taking.
Until she’d returned it, and he’d seen what she’d created with his majesty.
They have imprisoned you for the magic wielded. They fear you for it. Amece was feared. I had believed that…
He allowed the thought to trail off, the old longing still new in his heart.
Ouros had thought that the blood djinn would be a good mate for him. One of power and cunning and creation, able to hold her own with him.
They should have been well suited to each other.
Amece should have stood with him, and yet she’d chosen the humans over what they could have had together.
She’d used their bond to trap him forever.
The soft press of her hand to his cheek. A form he’d taken to lay at her side, her magic reforming his bones and wings into a likeness she could hold to her breast.
At least he had not been cursed to bear the same shape in his imprisonment.
Now her descendant suffered his same fate.
But why did the thought of this girl’s imprisonment leave him tasting only bitterness on his tongue?
And not the bitterness of the briny waters around him.
I am sorry…for what she did to you.
Ouros grunted though he doubted she heard the sound. Why? You no more know her reasoning than I do.
It is always easier to hide away that which is different, than to find a way to accept it, to bring it close to your heart. It is the only reason my people have needed to separate those who are unlike them. A storm god would have been the greatest outcast of all.
I am no storm god.
So you say.
That she chose to deliberately disbelieve him made him growl.
What more could she want from him?
If he was a god, as she claimed, surely he would have been able to free himself from his bonds?
But no!
He was still chained to the sea bed, unable even to touch the breath of a wind above land. He had to rely on the simple-minded fish that swam past him to do his bidding, their thoughts easy enough to manipulate that it cost him little effort to do so, but it was a weak thing.
He missed the storms that brewed up with his emotions. He missed the feel of rain against his face or the crash of thunder overland.
There was nothing of the same in the sea.
What is your name, girl? Which human descendant are you that so brazenly took a dragon’s scale and called to the beast at the edge of the sea?
I never called to you!
He snorted.
The puff of steam that rose before him caught a school of plankton in its net. With his head down, at rest, the whales that usually stayed far from him decided to chance his wrath and take advantage of the disoriented micro-fish.
Ouros could easily have swiped a claw at the sea giant that passed so close to his cheek he felt the graze of its flesh against him, but he refrained.
You stood at the seashore and asked if I was here. I had no means to answer you then.
Her mind turned, the walls that caged her fading to the memory of the sand between her toes, the rush of the surf just a few feet before her, the white scarf she’d lost to his undesired domain.
You were supposed to be just a myth.
Clearly, he was not.
She stiffened, and he felt his muscles tense in commiserated concern.
The heavy thud of bodies nearing her cell door, surprisingly loud despite the heavy bricks between them, echoed around her, and Ouros flexed his hands, not sure why he wanted to fight.
The iron door screeched as it ground open on the dirt stained flagstone flooring.
You’re name, girl! Before the connection fades!
Havence. My name is Havence. You can call me Ven.
Ven.
She sucked in a breath, her shoulders drawing tight as light assaulted her eyes and the dream dark he’d been floating in shattered at the sound of steel drawing forth from a scabbard.
Ouros tried to grab for the girl, pull her to safety against his breast, his scales harder than any blade a human could have crafted. He reached for her, but the link between their minds broke, and he held in his grip the tentacles of an octopus whose ink clouded the sea around him until he released his prey from his grasp.
Except she wasn’t prey…
And he hadn’t been reaching to harm her like he should want.
Chapter Fifteen
&nbs
p; There was something wrong about the guards who walked into her cell.
Though most who encountered her, knowing who and what she was, approached with wariness and a little disdain, these men looked different, seemingly more afraid of what was waiting for them outside the cell than who was within it.
The youngest of the lot, no more than a boy, really, wiped his arm against his forehead, hand trembling, sweat dripping down his brow.
Ven had never seen a man sweat like that, never seen nerves drawn so taught that the fever beneath the skin couldn’t be contained.
She moved to rise on one knee, her shoulders aching at the movement.
“Please could I have some wa—”
“Kill the bitch!”
For a moment, she didn’t understand the man’s words, what the ringing of steel from his scabbard meant, the movements of his companions that followed his lead.
She didn’t understand any of it, as the guard lunged forward, and her body reacted before her mind made the decision, falling to the side though the blade slashed over her arm and drew a line of blood across her skin.
The soldier was quick, and she was tired and injured.
He moved to lunge again, and she cried out, not knowing how else to respond.
Of the many things she’d faced in her life, coming to this city had been the worst.
The waste that the khan and his sycophants exacted at the cost of the poor. Their distrust of her and her mother, when all Ven and her line had ever done was work for the betterment of their people.
The dragon scale—
—but not the dragon.
She rolled into the legs of the one most intent upon her demise.
He could not hack at her with his weapon if it put his own body in peril! Surely, he would see the madness of such a scheme and it would buy her a moment to recover, to think?
Of course, that didn’t take into account his companions, or the slick handed soldier whose blade didn’t seem to care that his captain was in the way of his target.
Havence sucked in her breath.
The sword came down, blood dripping where it struck the old soldier on its path towards her neck.
She closed her eyes.
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