by Raven Dark
At the mention of my name, I thought I saw the muscles in Sheriff’s arms tense. While it filled me with warmth to hear Hawk use my name, I got the sense that Sheriff didn’t like that his men no longer saw me as just a slave, worth only the pet names my masters bestowed upon me.
“And? Was anyone hurt?” he asked.
“Not badly, no, sir. Oh, and sir, you should know, Talak Barabas is dead.”
The General’s brows went up. “You let these thickheads kill the Critiian king?” His voice was deadly soft. He eyed each of them, leaning on the desk with his fists. Incidentally—or perhaps not so incidentally—this put his face a lot closer to mine, though his gaze landed back on Hawk. “You let them start a potential war with the Critian people over a slave?”
“Actually—” Pretty Boy started.
Hawk put up his hand. “They weren’t the only ones who fought them. I did as well. And they didn’t kill Talak. His own man did.”
“What?” For an instant, surprise took over Sheriff’s anger.
Hawk took out the ring Ivek had given him and handed it to Sheriff. “His Second killed him. The Critian people now have a new leader, Vol Ivek Tain.”
Sheriff took hold of the ring, looking at the insignia on the front which I couldn’t make out. “It seems you men had quite the adventure.”
“Yes, General.”
He stared at the ring, and I swore I saw something in his eyes then, something wistful.
“Sir,” Hawk added. “Ivek Tain saved my life and released us all, letting us go on as if nothing had happened. He also sends a message. To you. If we ever need his help, he and his men will come. He appeared to be so taken with Setora, he made a point of allying himself with us.”
As soon as Hawk said this, I wished he hadn’t. An unpleasant light flashed in Sheriff’s eyes, immediately settling on me. “Of course he was. It seems your charms know no bounds, do they, slave?”
Unable to say anything that wouldn’t make the situation worse, I glanced at Hawk as if doing so would allow him to take the words back. He said nothing, but to his credit, I thought I saw him give the faintest wince.
Steel’s arm tightened around me protectively. The General’s nostrils flared again when he saw it.
“Hawk, we’ll talk later. Pretty Boy, what is it about this slave that has your brain scrambled?”
I looked at Pretty Boy, curious as to what he’d say, but only saw the tension in his jaw, his eyes a bit wild as Sheriff continued.
“Do you have any idea what you could have done? First, you and Steel take her from the head of the J’nai, risking a war with them. Then you get into a battle with the Critians over her, only this time you could have gotten Steel and Hawk killed. If this Ivek hadn’t stepped in, you would have.”
“With all due respect, Sheriff, I do not agree with your view on this…fucked up situation. Yeah, we stole property from King Dickwad Damien Vale, big fucking deal. We steal shit all the time. All the time,” Pretty Boy said, venom pouring slowly into each word. “And in case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t alone, and this didn’t start as my idea. Everything that goes wrong isn’t always my fault, don’t even play that card, Sheriff.”
“It is most of the time!” Sheriff’s booming bark made me jump. Steel held me closer when he felt me jerk.
“Sir,” Hawk said tightly. “You’re forgetting, I was the one who pressed hardest to go after Setora, not Pretty Boy.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll talk about that later,” Sheriff said to him. “Pretty Boy, Hawk doesn’t have a consistent habit of going against me or pulling others into his hare-brained schemes. Clearly, this slave’s effect on you is dangerous. I’m used to you getting yourself and anyone else who’s with you in trouble, but I never thought you’d completely lose your head over a piece of ass. And that goes for all of you, especially you, Hawk. I expected you of all people to show more sense.”
Pretty Boy turned and started pacing in small circles like a panther. The air was charged with conflict, and I had a horrible feeling that chaos was about the break out.
The General wasn’t done. He glared at me.
“It seems I was right about you, sweetheart. You’re dangerous for my men. You’ve somehow gotten under their skin, fucked with their heads. Addled their brains until they’re willing to risk everything over one little slave.”
Pretty Boy cursed, and the next thing I knew, Hawk had Pretty Boy by the arms, yelling at him to calm down. Steel tightened his hold on me.
Maker help me, I was used to men talking about me like a piece of meat, without worth. Such was the way of the world for over a century when it came to women. But there was something about the accusation in Sheriff’s words, the implication that I had some kind of power over his men that got to me.
If he thought of me as a spy before, a plant sent in to mess with his operation, I hated to think what he thought about me now.
“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Sheriff said with menace. “All three of you have been pussy-whipped.”
For his part, Hawk said nothing, making no move to defend himself, and as I glanced back at him, I envied his remarkable, trained restraint.
I didn’t have the same strength.
I cleared my throat. “Master, I assure you, I feel terrible that these men risked their lives for me. You’re right, they could have been killed, and for that you have my apologies. I will do whatever I have to in order to make it up to them and show you that I am worth their efforts to save me.”
“Oh, you will, will you?” He seated himself slowly in his high-back ornate chair, and once more, it struck me how he made the seat seem like a throne. “Sweetheart, no slave is worth the lives of three good men. Not even a Violet. Especially when those men have thrown aside their loyalty to their club, their General, and their brothers to rescue her. You can’t understand what these men have done, don’t pretend to.”
“Sir.” Steel let me go and moved forward. “She chose us. When the new leader of the Critians asked her who she wanted to go with, she chose us, Sheriff.” Steel’s voice held a bit of awe even though I could tell he, like Pretty Boy, was fuming with temper.
Sheriff’s jaw clenched, his eyes searching mine. Whatever he saw there didn’t please him.
He nodded to Steel and Pretty Boy. “The point is moot. You two pull any more stunts that go against the good of the Dark Legion’s brotherhood, and I’ll hang you both. Get her out of my sight. Now.”
Anger boiled within me, my mind spinning with a riot of emotions. I’d learned early on there was no point in a slave becoming angry with her masters. Society demanded that a man behave a certain way, trapping them in their own cycle of actions every bit as much as a woman. But never was I so close to throwing out all conventions, as unfair and barbaric as they were, as I was right now.
Something about Sheriff—about the way he looked at me as if I had the power to take down nations and bewitch kings—that got under my skin and boiled my blood like no other. Somehow, the fact that he radiated such power and influence gave that animosity a heated edge, like hot steel.
I barely heard the rest of what was said, nor the harsh retort Pretty Boy shot back at his General, before we were out in the waiting room.
“Hawk, you stay here. I’m not done with you,” Sheriff said when he headed after us for the door.
Hawk’s shoulders dropped, and I thought he sighed inaudibly.
Pretty Boy shut the door to the office, his jaw tight. He gave Steel a meaningful look but said nothing.
“Is Hawk going to be okay?” I asked, unable to help feeling for him.
“Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine.” Pretty shook off whatever thoughts he had and slipped back into his normal, playful self. He gave me a grin and a swat on my bottom. “Sheriff’s just letting off steam. Come on, Princess. There’s going to be a big gathering tonight, you’ll need to get ready for it. Plus, I want to swing by Doc’s place and get that burn on your back looked at.”
“Ye
s, Master.”
At the thought of what had happened in Sheriff’s office, unease overrode my anger. “Masters, did Sheriff really mean what he said? Would he hang you for helping me again?”
“Nah.” Steel rubbed my lower back. “Tonight at the party, you’ll see, he’ll be fine. He’ll be raising a glass with us just like he always does. He’s got a hair up his ass, is all. That said, we should probably stay on his good side for a while, Pretty Boy.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” He hugged me close and plundered my mouth.
Steel shook his head at him.
I still had the feeling that they were keeping something from me, but maybe it was better not to know—I had enough to deal with right now.
After visiting Doc and getting checked out with a stunned assurance from him that the wound was gone except for a faint scar, Pretty Boy and Steel dropped me off with Cherry a short time later. Standing in the dim light at the opening of the slave quarters tunnel, Cherry pulled me over to her with a mother’s grip.
“Get your ass over here, girl. Let me look at you.” She looked me over, even walking around me as she assessed me. “Damn, girl, you’re dressed like a crew whore. Are you all right, Violet?” she said, firing Steel and Pretty Boy a look.
“I’m fine, Cherry. It’s good to see you again.” I squeezed her hands in mine.
She looked suddenly awkward, face turning scarlet. She covered it with another look at my masters. “I’m surprised you two kept her alive.”
“Watch your mouth, woman,” Steel growled, “or we’ll have Crash whip your little ass.”
Her mouth dropped twice, then slowly closed. Cherry, at a loss for words. That was a first.
“Cherry, make her look good for tonight,” Pretty Boy said. “Someone will collect her in a few hours.”
Steel pulled me in for a kiss, not caring at all that we had an audience. Pretty Boy came up behind me, kissing my neck.
“Maker’s tits,” I heard Cherry mumbled under her breath.
My masters bid me goodbye, reminding Cherry not to let me out of her sight. Then they departed.
“Come on then,” she said, leading me inside. The same torches on the rock walls illuminated the tunnels of the slave quarters in a familiar, pleasant glow, hard packed dirt solid under my feet.
Ah, home at last.
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but those mother hens did good. Hawk, too.”
“Mother hens?” I chuckled at the odd description.
“Yeah, don’t you see the way they’ve gone puppy-eyed, fussing over you?” She made an exaggerated goofy-eyed look over her shoulder at me as we entered her tiny room. “You’ve got them hooked, Violet.”
But the words didn’t carry the same accusation they would have days ago.
I laughed. “They are starting to hover, aren’t they?” I thought about Pretty Boy and Steel taking care of me last night and that morning, bathing me, feeding me. I knew it wasn’t normal, and I almost believed that they really were worried about me.
“And since Hawk didn’t show up here with the other two, I’m guessing he’s in Sheriff’s office getting chewed out by him right now.”
“He is.” Guilt tugged at me, wishing I could help him.
“Here, we’ll take you for a bath first. You look like you’ve spent the last hour riding through a sandstorm.” She gathered a towel, a frock and one of those black toothbrush bags. “You must have really gotten under Hawk’s skin if he went against Sheriff to rescue you.”
“Sheriff sure thinks I did.”
Picking up on the recrimination in my voice, she cocked her head at me on our way out of her room. “Let me guess. He thinks you’ve made his men so lovesick they aren’t thinking straight.”
I nodded, amazed at her ability to pick up on things so well.
She sighed, then lapsed into silence. I had the feeling she was thinking.
Cherry didn’t speak again until we were both stripped and sitting in the small, five-person slave’s pool, backs to the wall. I noticed she once more went out of her way to keep her back to me, hiding the multitude of scars that covered her there.
“Don’t worry about Sheriff. He’s a great leader, just as good as Dice was, I’m told, but he’s an ass when it comes to women. More than most. Ordinarily, I’d tell you to just stay out of his way and you’d be fine, but I guess you can’t since you’re his.”
I couldn’t tell if she looked pitying or not.
“Why is he so…?”
“Such a jerk?”
Training drilled into me never to speak as though a man was in the wrong, but the description made me smile. “He hates me.”
“Sheriff hates everyone.”
“No, I mean, he really, really hates me. He thinks…”
She waited as she lathered her hair and handed me the shampoo.
“He thinks Damien sent me here as a plant.”
Cherry groaned, her emerald eyes rolling so far back in her head, I was surprised she didn’t strain her eye muscles. “Not that again. For fuck’s sake, his paranoia knows no bounds. You know why, don’t you? It’s Damien. He hates him, and anything connected to him. I guarantee, when he looks at you, he sees Damien’s face.”
“I had that feeling.” I dumped shampoo into my palm and washed the grit and sand out of my hair. “What do I do about him? I can’t live like this, with him hating me.”
“You do what you always do. You worm your way into his heart, just like you have with everyone else, Violet. Once you have his respect, he’ll bend over backward for you, just like he does with his men. You’ll see.”
“How, though? Everything I do only seems to make it worse, like it proves I’m the perfect plant.”
Cherry shook her head. “Let me tell you something about men like him, Violet. Something Damien’s hoity toity maids would never have taught you, because they wouldn’t have expected you to end up with savages like us. Men like Sheriff, leaders like that? They don’t want the perfect, refined woman. They want one who isn’t afraid to get dirty like them. Who’ll curse and swear like a pirate, and fuck like a harlot. One who doesn’t mind blood on her hands. They want a princess at the party, and a whore in the bed. If he thinks you believe you’re too good for him, he’ll tear you down.”
Giving myself time to think on her words, I dunked under, rinsing my hair. I didn’t know how to be rough and gritty and dirty like that. Like her. I came up and looked at her.
“Will you teach me, Cherry? Teach me to be…”
“Like me, you mean?”
“Well, I…um. I didn’t mean…”
She chuckled, finishing with the soap and handing it to me, then rinsing off. “Sure, Violet. I’ll teach you. I’m always up for turning a good girl bad. Now tell me what happened yesterday, from the beginning.”
I finished washing while I told her the basics of my kidnapping, and we left the pool, but even after we returned to the slave quarters to get ready for the party, my thoughts were still racing. For the first time in my life, doubt ate at me for my ability to earn someone’s trust. I wasn’t sure the General would ever respect or trust me. And if he didn’t, I might have to live with having one master who despised me for the rest of my life.
Chapter 5
Traitor
After bathing, Cherry and I returned to the slave quarters to prepare for the party. I’d expected her to insist on putting me in the same sort of low-cut black dress and high heels I’d been in at the barbeque, but she didn’t. Instead, when I’d told her about the clothes Pretty Boy and Steel had bought for me out at the bazaar, she insisted on seeing them.
After convincing two guards to escort us, we went to Pretty Boy’s rooms while he and Steel were in the mines. We went through all the packages, oohing and awing at all the fine garments. Then we took a selection of them back to her room. In a couple of hours, when I’d been primped and plucked and made up to her satisfaction, she waited with me at the entrance to the slave tunnels for whoe
ver Pretty Boy was going to send for me.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I glanced down at the very different clothing to what I’d been used to wearing while in the Grotto. “I’ve never seen slaves wearing anything like these. I think Pretty Boy and Steel intended them to be for private use. Are they regulation?”
Cherry’s hand waved in a so-so gesture. “It’s a grey area.”
“A grey area?” Dread slid through me as my mind flashed back to the memory of Sheriff’s belt across my backside. “Cherry, I don’t want—"
“Time to go.” Cherry nodded toward the two men crossing the field, by the looks of them, two of Hawk’s guardsmen like last time. I rolled my eyes at her, begging her to reconsider, but her eyes just twinkled.
“Sheriff won’t like this. He—"
“Sure he will.” She turned me and pushed me toward the guards. “You look fabulous, Violet. Have fun.”
“But—” I turned to look down the tunnel and cut off. Cherry had already disappeared. “Maker’s mercy.” I sighed.
By the time I looked out at the green, the guards had entered the tunnel, signaling for me to come with them.
“I’m ready,” I told them, even though I wasn’t.
They looked me over, brows raising in surprise. What was left of my self confidence fell away. I didn’t see how in the world my current state of dress would change the General’s mind about me at all.
Expecting to be led into a clubhouse filled with a party in full swing, I froze at the entrance when I saw what awaited me. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought I was in the wrong cavern.
As before, the many torches on the walls cast the large clubhouse cavern in a bright, fiery glow, and children sat among the men, but that’s where the similarity to the night of the barbeque ended.
Across the cavern, I could see the exit that led out to the green where the barbeque had been held, but it was empty, except for a guard who milled around the entrance. I had a weird feeling he was barring the way but trying to look like he wasn’t. At another entrance straight across the room, another guard stood talking to a couple of men there, but neither man held drinks like everyone else, and they were almost the only men standing.
