“I will rule better than you have!” I shattered another glass, and organs unspooled onto the floor.
“How do you know? Because Yzin told you so? That ignorant fool?”
“Come out and fight me, Railan!” Zaan yelled.
“Why should I, when I don’t have to?” Railan said, and around us, machinery thrummed. The same sound I heard-felt when I stepped into the dream-cradle, just as it turned on. “How do you think I keep them all docile and waiting?”
“Ilylle!” Zaan warned, before turning to smoke.
“No!” I surged my power out and shook the walls, and the vats around me broke with the force of it, gallons of fluid and tissues souping the floor. But past that, the cradle-apparatus ate my power up, and kept draining. My anger created a vast power inside of me, but it wasn’t endless. “Zaan –“ I turned, looking for him to regather, but he was still gone. “Zaan?”
The door in front of me opened, revealing Railan standing inside. “My disruptor ate your Zaibann – and you won’t be far behind.”
It felt like it was cutting the parts of me that were most me out with a hot blade – or maybe that was just the loss of Zaan. “How will you live forever without me – without them?” I gestured to the remnants of all the other clones on the floor.
“I can make a few other girls easily enough. Harvest them young, now that I’m only feeding myself,” he said with a shrug. He made a gesture, the thrumming got louder, and I fell to my knees in the gory slush.
“And Aranda?” I asked, trying to hold parts of myself in.
“We’ll use old images of you. No one need ever know the truth, not for another hundred years.”
“Someone will find out the truth. Someone will stop you.”
“Once you’re gone, my Queen, no one will know.” He made another gesture and the disruptor’s onslaught doubled. I fell face down in the sloshing liquid, utterly bereft of strength. I closed my eyes, exhaled my last breath and inhaled wetly, fully expecting to drown.
Instead, I found that I could breathe. I floated in the waters, buoyed up just as my stillborn sisters had been, suspended inside all of their jars. I wondered what this strange liquid surrounding me was – blood, birthing fluid, tears? Whatever it was sheltered me now, holding me safe and protected like a hand.
I’d taken my own life for granted for three hundred years – and then I’d complained and fought against it. My sisters here had never had that chance, half-formed, stunted, trapped by Railan. But I could feel them striving as they wrapped around me, trying to become.
I was enveloped in a slow moving consciousness that was abundantly me. Everything around me a part of myself -- and I was a piece of all of it. I gave myself over to it, and together we were more powerful than Railan could have ever imagined.
“Sisters, come,” I willed into the water, and they answered me. Arms and legs, livers and hearts, a slurry of everything that could have been Airelle or Ilylle, and everything that never was – skin and tissue and bone pressing together, joining.
I would have thought that it would hurt, but instead it felt like coming home.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Things sparked. Hearts beat. Muscles moved. Blood flowed.
We formed into something absolutely other that was still precisely who we were – possessed of one wide body, six arms, eight legs, and twenty beating hearts. We rose from the murk as one as Railan sank back in horror.
“Railan, you have eons of evil to answer for,” three voices spoke from three separate heads, and I didn’t know or care which one was mine.
“How can you – what are you –“ His voice rose in panic. The thrumming of the disruptor increased, I felt it buffeting the outer layers of our skin, but we were too much for it. With all our powers combined we were the endless well that would never be drained – and before he could close the door, we crawled up the stairs to drag him down to our level.
The disruptor’s full force hit him and he screamed, dwindling before our eyes. “Off! Off!” he shouted, and his hidden machinery obeyed.
“We are Airelle,” we told him as one.
“No -- you’re dead – you all should be dead!” he said, thrashing inside our six-armed grasp.
“The one who should be dead is you,” we said, and started to pull.
“Ilylle!” Zaan reformed beside us as he shouted our name.
We hesitated and looked down, and I saw Zaan through six different eyes. “You live,” I said, and my single heart thrilled to see him.
“I do,” he said, looking up at what I currently was, mystified. “Because of your blood in me. The disruptor tried to pull me apart, but I knew where I belonged. You were my anchor.”
“She’s a monster now, Zaibann, surely you can see that! The thing you love has become the creature I feared!” Railan shouted, as he struggled in our grasp.
“You are what we have feared, for twenty-thousand years,” we said, and began to squeeze again.
“No,” Zaan shook his head, putting his hand on my nearest arm. “Not like this. Killing him is too easy. You know what we need to do.” He gave me a knowing look, and I remembered Airelle, my progenitor, myself.
“Yes,” we answered, with three separate mouths. We wheeled the bulk of our body back and crawled up through the door into the next room with Railan still in our arms. Halfway up he gathered our intent.
“No – do not -- I beg of you –“ He twisted his head back. “Zaibann, this is not all of them – I kept a pure cell line, I’ve been holding it in reserve, should the copies degenerate. I could make the very image of your Airelle – she’d be the most perfect copy I’ve ever done – like your love in word, in thought, in deed! If you kill me, she dies as well, forgotten anew!” His voice rose and broke as he pleaded, and beside us Zaan stiffened. “All you have to do is kill the monster!” Railan shrieked.
We looked at our King. He disappeared to smoke in an instant. Railan thought he’d won and brayed his triumph – and then the disruptor in the clone room thrummed back on, as Zaan reformed again at our side.
“There is no more Airelle. You killed her,” Zaan said.
We threw Railan into the room, and slammed shut the door.
Chapter Nineteen
If I wasn’t Airelle, who was I? I felt infinitely expansive and yet also minutely small – as though I had lived for centuries smashed inside an instant.
“Ilylle,” Zaan said, looking up at us with concern.
“Shhhh,” we advised from our three throats, as everything began to loosen. Seams shifted, skin parted, organs, muscles, bones moved. I condensed, folding in pieces of my sisters from all around me, shrinking in and focused, until I resembled myself again, settling on the two legs and arms that were my own, stepping out of the sloughed skin of my sisters like a newborn.
Zaan’s eyes widened, watching me transform. “You are more powerful than you know.”
“No,” I told him. “I know exactly how powerful I am now.” Pieces of me had been waiting for this moment for twenty thousand years, and I would carry them with me forevermore. “Shall we finish?”
Zaan nodded.
Together we started enough fires that Railan’s palace looked like a sun – or so I assumed since when we exited it was night.
I pulled us back to the Feather Palace and together we reformed. Yzin’s body was the only one intact, the soldiers had placed it on Zaan’s old pedestal. Seeing him, I rushed to his side, and the soldiers moved back for me.
“He’s dead, my Queen,” Elissa said in a somber tone.
The only person who’d ever tried to help me for the first three hundred years of my life. I wound my hand through the bloody fabric of his robe. “Did he know before he died that his plan worked?”
“Who can say?” she answered truthfully.
Zaan put a hand on my shoulder. “He died knowing he’d tried. That’s more than most men get.”
I swallowed back tears, and stood.
The soldiers gawked at me, and I looked down. My gold dress was covered in gore, and there were streaks of red staining my arms – they’d only ever seen me looking perfect on their screens. I wondered what they thought of me now.
“You…mentioned healing him earlier,” Elissa went on, and gestured to the bloody stump of her arm, capped with crude gauze.
“Of course. Take that off.”
A few days ago seeing her wound would have made me ill, but now – I concentrated and waved my hand, willing her to knit. She closed her eyes and sucked in air as though it hurt – but when she dared opened them again, her arm was whole.
“You really are a Queen,” she said in awe.
“I know.” The way she looked at me now – would everyone in Aranda look at me like that? I wasn’t sure how that made me feel. “And the rest of Yzin’s plan? Are we in control?”
“Of all the strategic locations and networks – but we don’t have enough people to hold them indefinitely. The council had followers, and Aranda has no shortage of opportunists interested in power for their own.” She made a face and cleared her throat. “If I may, my Queen –“
“Ilylle. Anyone in this room may always call me Ilylle.”
“Yzin left a set of instructions – suggestions, really.”
Zaan snorted and I smiled. “Bring them to me. My King and I will give them the consideration they deserve.”
“Thank you…Ilylle,” she said, catching herself. “And, until then?”
I looked around the room. Zaan was at my side, but he knew no more of the world outside than I did – there was so much to learn. But one question needed answering first. “Does Aranda really want a ruler?”
“Even if it doesn’t, it needs one for a time.”
“Should that ruler be me?” I asked. Her eyes widened enormously.
“Yzin vouched for you. He said that you would rule wisely and fair – and you’d have enough power to get us through the chaos of being reborn.”
“Do you agree?” I asked.
She nodded and looked to her fellow soldiers, who nodded too. Then she gave me a nervous grin. “He also said you’d have enough sense to leave government when it was time.”
“Good. I will be a Queen for life, it is who I am. But being a Queen does not mean I have to be a ruler. I won’t have you trade their shackles for mine.” I inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I need a moment to gather myself. Today has been long.”
“Word will get out, my Queen,” one of the men said. “Everyone will know by dawn –“
“Good. Tell them to expect me then. I’ll make an appearance.” I looked down at myself. I would bathe and change dresses between now and then, but I was ready to be clean now. I swept my hands over myself and off again, and all the blood I’d been covered in went with the motion, leaving only fabric and my skin behind.
“Where?” Elissa asked.
“In my reception chamber. I’ll open the doors to the stairs –.”
The man nodded but made a strained face. “But there are no stairs into the palace –“
“There will be once I make them,” I said. His eyebrows rose, and he nodded his head and bowed both at once.
“That’s enough for now. Dawn will be here fast enough,” Zaan said, catching my hand. I looked to it, and then to him, and saw him looking down. My heart swelled. After all this time, so much hoping and waiting -- this was what it felt like to have a King standing by my side.
“Joshan – Beza!” I called, and my two loyal servants appeared. I gestured at the soldiers. “Treat them to all the pleasures the Feather Palace has to offer. Bathe them, feed them, show them all the halls, except for my great chamber.”
“And the reception hall,” Zaan added.
The palace was big enough, I shrugged and smiled, adding, “And then bring them back at dawn.”
Elissa looked over at me, a question on her face. “I am not greeting a land of strangers on my own,” I explained.
The expression she wore then flickered from worried to mystified – and then wound up on hope. I could see it in her eyes, and the way she smiled when she raised her chin.
Beza took the nearest soldier’s hand. “If I may,” she began, leading him out.
“This way,” Joshan said to the rest, gesturing grandly behind her.
Looking nervously to one another, the soldiers followed them out into the hall – and one by one we heard them whooping and congratulating one another on surviving. Zaan turned to me when the echoes of their delight had faded away.
“Do you think that’s wise?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“They’ll see the luxury you’ve been living in here, while they’ve been struggling outside.”
“I intend on sharing my luxury with them. And fixing Aranda – once I understand it. I expect that will take some time.” I’d only seen the smallest piece of it from the burning roof of Railan’s fortress – an endless land of flickering lights, stretching out in all directions. The sensation of freedom had been overwhelming – never in my life had I been so far away from a wall.
Zaan chuckled. “It will take longer than tonight, at least,” he said and pulled my hand.
Ilylle’s Epilogue
I let him pull me out of his chamber and down the hall we’d fought in, all the way to my reception hall, with its throne and gilded doors.
Already, after only a few moments outside, my palace felt small. Or maybe I was bigger now – I looked over to Zaan, and was almost surprised to find myself still the same size, just a little taller than his shoulder. I smiled to myself at my foolishness, and then caught sight of his stern face as he turned to look at me. I straightened my shoulders and raised my chin.
“So what now?”
His lips curved, showing the tips of fangs. “In five hours you’ll belong to Aranda -- but until then, you belong to me.”
My magic pulsed through me in an almost physical wave. I looked around at the room. “Here?”
“Here,” he said, voice low, and fell on me.
His arms wrapped me as his mouth met mine and I fell back under his weight – his tongue pushing mine, his hands at waist and breast – until my needs made me greedy and I was pushing him back, racing my hands up underneath pieces of his armor to feel skin and muscle underneath. Hands found buckles as fabric was torn, dropped, kicked, until we were naked in front of each other, our magic swirling around as our hands and mouths sought one another out. Fangs scraped my lips and I didn’t care – I ran my hands up into his hair and held his mouth to mine, rubbing my whole body against him, elated to feel so much skin on skin. One of his arms held my back, the other hand cupped my ass, and between us his cock grew hard. I reached down to stroke it as he picked me up, stumbling the both of us toward a wall. I knew what he meant to do to me once we got there, so I pressed him back with my powers.
“Ilylle –“ he protested – until he saw me kneel.
I took him in my mouth in the center of my throne room, and his hands clutched at my hair and shoulders as I sucked on him.
“Ilylle,” he panted my name, looking down. He was so deliciously hard as I stroked my tongue along the bottom of his cock. He moaned low and his grip tightened, trying to pull me back on as I pushed off to talk.
“I could torment you for hours now, and it would still be fair.”
He was almost swaying. “I’ve created a monster.”
“You don’t even know,” I warned him, with a grin. He made a strangled sound, and then laughed, swooping down to pick me up.
This time I didn’t fight him – I wanted to go wherever he led. He stormed us up to the dais where my throne was, set me down, and spun me, pushing me down over the seat with my ass still up. His hands kneaded me and I trembled, waiting for the moment when I would feel him push in – but it didn’t come. Instead he knelt down, pushed my thighs wide, and started licking me my pussy from front to back.
I moaned and rose up on my tip-toes, bending further to sho
w more of myself to him. He made animal sounds, lapping and sucking, as I cradled my breasts in their opposite hands, pulling at my own nipples to heighten each sensation. My – all of me – my head spun as my voice rose in volume and my cries became more frequent, my legs shaking, my magic winding tight. Then he made a self-satisfied noise and pulled back, slapping my ass, hard.
Shocked back to reality I looked over my shoulder at him. “What was that?”
“A prelude to this,” he said, standing, and he slid himself inside.
It was all I could manage to hold onto my throne as each of his thrusts rocked me. His cock found places in me I hadn’t known before, his strokes stretching me wide – then he pulled back to tease me, bobbing his head in and out. I groaned and sank backwards, trying to taking more of him in, until he redoubled himself, holding onto the throne’s back over my head. Each wave wound me tighter and all I wanted to do was scream – but then he reached down and grabbed hold of my hair, roughly hauling me up to hold me to his chest.
“Do you feel taken now, my Queen?” he rumbled in my ear.
It was all I could do to nod. My whole body was ready, waiting, starved.
“Good,” he murmured, and pulled out.
It was my turn to make a strangled sound. “Not again, Zaan –“ I said, stumbling forward without him.
“Definitely not,” he said, moving to my side, pulling me in front of him as he sank to sit atop the throne. He rocked his hips forward as his cock jutted up and reached for my hips – I gathered his intent and straddled him and the throne awkwardly, thighs spread wide. I reached for the throne’s back to lift myself up and he reached between us to guide himself back inside.
I moaned as I lowered down, feeling him settle himself back in where he belonged, where it was right. I squeezed my ass and thighs to pulse up and down, as he reached a hand between us to play a thumb on my bright spot. I gasped and started rolling against him, riding my hips into his, suddenly in charge, rocking up and down with infinitely small thrusts.
The Hated (Sleeping With Monsters Book 3) Page 15
