by Aja James
I hold up my bound wrists in demonstration and pause for effect before continuing, “I’m ever so grateful you added the extra length so I can now take myself to the loo to do my business without one of the beefcakes having to bear witness.”
I slant a flirtatious glance at the Protector and bat my eyelashes.
“I know you miss the show, He-man. If you dismiss your female and the kid, I can give you a private viewing.”
He simply stares down at me with no change in expression, his intense green eyes drilling a hole into my forehead.
The healer sighs softly, almost imperceptibly. But I hear her nevertheless, because I’m always sensitively attuned to my surroundings. Especially when there are dangerous, living things in the vicinity.
And just so we’re clear: every living thing is dangerous. If it breathes, it’s a threat.
You should be taking notes. I’m revealing the secrets of my longevity. Be on guard at all times. Never trust anyone.
“The bindings are long and flexible enough for you to sit at the table or rest on the bed,” she gestures to the mentioned furniture. “You don’t have to stay on the floor.”
“But I like the floor,” I retort. “Just because it makes my posterior numb doesn’t mean I don’t like it. Besides, it’s where I belong, isn’t it? Prisoners of war don’t sit like guests at the dinner table or sleep like babies in Westin Heavenly beds.”
“You’re not a prisoner, Binu,” Benjamin interjects, his big blue eyes round with concern. “You’re just visiting. Isn’t that right, Rain? Val?”
He looks innocently to his companions for confirmation.
I imitate his childish naiveté as well as I can by rounding my eyes too and blinking owlishly at my captors, awaiting their response.
The healer regards me as she answers, “No, you are not a prisoner of war. There is no torture planned today, tomorrow or any other day. We provide food, water and comfortable accommodations, wouldn’t you agree?”
“But I can’t leave,” I point out the obvious.
“No, not yet. We would like for you to remain with us for the time being. As our guest.”
So polite, these Pure Ones. So full of shit.
I hold up my bindings again to make my point.
“Do all your guests wear pretty woven bracelets like me?”
The healer quirks her lips.
“No. Only the most esteemed ones.”
Huh. I thought she was completely humorless like her Mate. It’s hard to despise people who put up with my sarcasm and respond in kind.
“Are you hungry, Binu?”
Benjamin ventures a couple of feet closer, but stops when the Protector lays a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“You look hungry.”
I glare at the muscle-bound gladiator (I have no idea if he’s a gladiator, he just looks like one) for touching my boy, and he looks emotionlessly back at me with that same intense stare. The big silent ones are always the meanest, I know from experience.
My eyes dart briefly to his hip, where I can see the handle of his scythe attached to his weapon belt.
Ah, the means of my salvation is so close at hand! I wonder what I can do or say to provoke him to use it.
“I’m not hungry,” I answer Benjamin absentmindedly.
It’s a lie. I’m always hungry. I’ve never eaten enough in my entire existence to not feel the gnawing hunger ravage my insides. But what I need right now isn’t food.
I need Pure blood to survive.
The stuff in my veins is already turning sluggish, snaking along in black streaks that are visible beneath my skin.
Benjamin turns to the healer with genuine concern.
“He’s not well, Rain. I can tell. His skin is all gray and clammy. We have to help him.”
Without warning, a few tendrils of hair unwind from my shackles, the pointy ends inserting into my pores.
“Hey!” I object in an unmanly squeal, “Stop that!”
But as soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel calmer, relaxed. Even sleepy. The damn needles of hair are doing something to me. Messing with my body’s chemistry more effectively than any drug.
More needles insert into my pores, but I barely feel them. They don’t hurt as I expect them to. I have a sense that they act like acupuncture needles in Eastern medicine. But I also know from my earlier struggles that they have the tensile strength of steel cables should I try anything nefarious, and can rip me up from the inside out like stabbing needles through a pin cushion.
“I may need to take a blood sample,” I hear the healer murmur through a dense fog, as I become increasingly drowsy with sleep.
“He appears healthy enough to me, so well put together despite…the situation. But I understand from you, Benji, that it is merely a mirage. You are right. My zhen tell me that he is unwell.”
She assesses me with a shrewd gaze.
“I don’t suppose you would save me the trouble and just tell me what ails you, Binu?”
“Hmm,” I murmur, getting sleepier and sleepier. “What would be the fun in that?”
“Then we will have to do this the hard way,” the healer says resolutely, steel in her voice.
Oh for the love of Loki’s hairy balls! Why do Pure Ones insist on being do-gooders? Why can’t they just let me wither away and die already?
I open my mouth to say something to that effect, but my tongue is swollen to twice its size, and I feel like I have cotton stuffed inside my mouth.
Those damn needles! Making me lose control of my physical self.
The healer comes closer under the watchful gaze of her protective Mate. Strangely, he doesn’t crowd her by following. He gives her space to do what she must. Maybe she’s more lethal than she looks. Or maybe I’m even more helpless than I seem.
She whips a syringe out of nowhere (does she carry those things around in that flowing garb of hers?) and takes hold of my bound wrists.
“Don’t…” I try to say, but only garbled sounds come out.
I hate needles. The hair in my pores is one thing; gigantic needles attached to syringes are quite another. I’ve had enough experience with needles to last me to eternity.
She comes ever closer, leaning over me, smoothing her thumb across an anemic vein in my forearm.
“Please…” I shudder with both fear and disgust at my own weakness.
Begging gets me nowhere. When had anyone ever heeded my pleas? Why don’t I ever learn?
She pauses, syringe poised at the ready, the sharp needle indenting my skin but not yet breaking it.
I try to shake my head, furious and frustrated at my helplessness.
“Don’t…” I try again.
They don’t have to stick me with that thing and analyze my rotten blood to figure out what I need. If they just take the damn hair out of my pores and let me speak, I’ll tell them. I know I missed my chance to answer earlier. But come on! Why would she expect to get a straight answer from me? I play games. It’s what I do!
But now I regret my playfulness. I don’t want to be stuck by that dagger-like syringe. I don’t want to be helpless while they do it.
I roll my eyes toward Benjamin for aid.
Be my angel, little man. Even though I don’t deserve it. Save me. Help me!
He looks at me with those sympathetic guileless blue eyes and opens his mouth.
But I don’t know what he said.
My body goes completely lax a moment before I black out.
Chapter Four: The Death of a Dream
Ninsa and I had three more years together before our luck finally ran out. Or, perhaps it was simply my bad luck that rubbed off on the both of us. I should have known that everything I touch turns to shit sooner or later.
But hope and dreams are insidious things.
They make you complacent and weak, growing undetected within the nebulous voids of your heart and soul like an invisible disease. Before long, you
have thoughts about the future that you never had before. You think that maybe, just for a little while, life might not be so bad.
Oh, the lesson I learned…
Third millennium BC. A village on the outskirts of Akkad.
“Do you think this is the year for me to find my own home?” Ninsa posed the question wistfully, as much to herself as to me.
We were by ourselves in the barley fields several miles away from the orphanage. The sun was just setting over the horizon. The children were often loaned to the village farmers for free labor during harvest season in exchange for a portion of the crops, though most of what we got was the leftover ears. There were five of us who’d been sent to this field to work before dawn, but only Ninsa and I remained after dusk.
The others left early because they were exhausted, and they knew that I would finish the work anyway for all of us (because that was what I did). Between the five of us, we were supposed to cut three acres a day. I alone cut the majority of it, despite being the youngest. I didn’t mind, since I was stronger than the humans even as starved as I was physically. And working longer meant that I got to spend more time alone with Ninsa, because she insisted on staying to help.
“Are you so eager to leave the orphanage?” I asked a little defensively in return, unable to help myself.
What I meant was—are you so eager to leave me.
She nudged me with her knee, as we sat shoulder to shoulder against the wheel of an empty wagon.
“I’d never leave you, An-Nisi, no matter where I went.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I muttered, sounding both annoyed and elated. Because that was exactly what I meant.
“Well, that’s my answer in any case,” she said, undeterred. “And it’s not that I want to leave the orphanage so much as I want to have my own home. Maybe I will be one of the lucky ones. Maybe the man who picks me will be kind and gentle. That is all I want. All I wish for.”
I rolled my eyes in her direction, giving her a sly look.
“So you don’t care about the man’s looks?”
“No,” she said cheerfully. “As long as he’s not hideous, with slimy skin, bad breath, stinky armpits, and overgrown with warts—”
“Like a toad?”
She shuddered all over.
“Ugh. Exactly like a toad. No toads, please.”
“You’ve seen men look like that, I take it?”
“Unfortunately, yes. One such man came by the orphanage the other day and took Mila, poor thing,” Ninsa murmured sympathetically.
Mila was the prettiest girl in the orphanage. She was also the meanest, making Ninsa a target amongst the other children. So, in my opinion, she got what she deserved if she was hitched to a toady husband.
“Hmph,” I grunted noncommittally, completely unsympathetic. “You were saying about your dream husband’s looks?”
“Honestly, that’s all the requirement I have,” Ninsa shrugged. “I don’t care if he’s tall or short, fat or skinny. I don’t care if he has all of his teeth, though I do wish for a youngish man. I would like to have babies of my own, and…well…he has to be young enough to father them.”
“So no grandfatherly toads,” I surmised.
She giggled at my description.
“All I want is an average man,” she emphasized. “Hopefully a diligent worker, but I don’t mind if I have to work hard enough for both of us.”
She sighed.
“But even the average man desperate enough to look for wives in the orphanage would have his pick of the prettier girls. I’ll be the last to go.”
“That’s not true,” I rushed to her defense (even though it was).
“Come now, An-Nisi,” she countered, “I am fourteen summers already. I am the oldest girl here and getting older every day. Even the newer, younger girls have been chosen as wives before me.”
“Maybe you can stay at the orphanage forever,” I suggested in a whisper, afraid I’d offend her with the prospect. “You can stay with me.”
I could see her teasing grin out of the corner of my eye.
“And what? Will you marry me one day, beautiful boy?”
I swallowed uncomfortably. That was never going to happen.
First, I was a lowly Pure One, and she was a human. We would never be allowed to marry. Second, I couldn’t imagine being with her to give her those babies she seemed to desire so much. I couldn’t imagine being with anyone.
I was old enough to know what my cock was for by now. Besides being the spigot for my bladder. I’d seen animals rut, and people as well. Both consensual and forced. Sometimes, it happened at the orphanage, when prospective “buyers” wanted to sample the goods right then and there after sealing the deal.
Maybe it was my Pure blood—given the Cardinal Rule of my Kind, I suspected those of us who were born this way might be sexually disinclined. Or maybe it was the ugliness of what I witnessed. Whichever the case, I had absolutely no inclination to stick my cock into anything or anyone apart from finding relief by my own hand.
And last…
I could never marry Ninsa because I’d outlive her indefinitely. I’d watch her grow old and die. I wouldn’t be able to bear it. She was the only good thing I had in the world. She was my friend. My family.
My dream.
“You know we can’t ever marry,” I said finally.
Then rushed to add, “I would if I could. You know I’m…fond of you, Ninsa.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and hugged my arm with both of hers. It seemed to be one of her favorite positions whenever we were together.
“Then I will have to settle for an average, or even below average, human while I dream every night of you, An-Nisi,” she sighed exaggeratedly. “My beautiful, blue-eyed boy.”
I grimaced at her oft-used description of me. There was nothing beautiful about an abomination.
She made a show of rounding her eyes for a closer look.
“Green-eyed. No, gray. Tonight, they look kind of violet-gray in the setting sun. Prettier than rainbows. Brighter than stars.”
I snorted at her nonsense. She loved to tease me.
For a while, we were both silent, simply listening to the crickets chirp in the still, evening air. A deep sense of contentment settled over me, just sitting here beside Ninsa. This was all I wanted out of life. Her companionship. Breathing the same air as my lovely dream.
“An-Nisi…”
I sat up straighter at the serious, considering tone in her voice.
“Would you mind terribly if I kissed you?”
Suddenly, my mouth went dry, before it flooded immediately thereafter with saliva. My heart hammered so hard in my chest I thought it would break my breastbone.
She licked her lips. Pink, perfect, rosebud lips.
“It’s just…If I do marry a below average man who kisses like a fish, or gods forbid, a toad, I’d like to have the pleasant memory of kissing a prince to tie me over.”
I tried to swallow the invisible mallet in my throat, making the bulge in my skinny neck bob awkwardly up and down.
“I’m not a prince,” I whispered in reminder.
I was getting cross-eyed staring unblinkingly at her small, moist mouth. It was so lovely. She was so lovely. Suddenly, I didn’t understand why all the village men didn’t knock down the orphanage doors, begging for her hand in marriage.
If I were human…
“You are to me,” she whispered back, as if speaking too loudly would wake us from this impossible dream.
What? What was I to her? Human? I’d lost track of the conversation.
“Even though I’m an ugly duckling who will never become a swan, when I’m with you, I feel as beautiful as a phoenix, because you’re more gorgeous than a dragon.”
I lurched back a little to frown at her.
“You do realize dragons are not at all attractive,” I pointed out. “They’re nothing but overgrown lizards.�
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She shook her head fervently.
“Not true. They are magical, magnificent creatures.”
“They’re evil.”
“Says who?”
Seriously?
“Haven’t you heard the stories of how they steal children and gobble them up for breakfast, lunch and dinner? How they raze entire villages on a bad-tempered whim? How they—”
She harrumphed.
“Rubbish. They are simply misunderstood. How are they supposed to behave when people treat them like monsters? I bet if someone loved a dragon, the dragon would love right back.”
This was ridiculous! I couldn’t let Ninsa continue through life with such debilitating blinders on.
“You can’t love monsters, Nin—”
Smack.
She kissed me! A big, fat, wet kiss directly on my mouth.
My face immediately went up in flames. My entire body must have been hotter than a fire pit because my skin tingled as if singed.
“You should see the look on your face!” she laughed so hard she was snorting like a hog. “You look…you look…hahahaha!”
I’d recovered enough by now to scowl ferociously at her.
She caught me unawares! I wasn’t prepared for the sneak attack. I couldn’t believe I missed my own first kiss! It happened so quickly I couldn’t tell you anything about it, not when all I remembered was her maniacal laughter.
“It’s not funny,” I muttered.
Which only made her laugh and snort more.
Unable to keep a dour face in light of such overflowing mirth, my own lips curled up in a reluctant smile. Then, I added fuel to the fire by tickling her ribs, making her double over in a renewed bout of breathless laughter. It was the most beautiful sound in the world.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
Ninsa and I abruptly froze at the sound of the stranger’s voice. It was one of the village tradesmen. The toady butcher who’d come to collect Mila for his wife.
I scrambled to my feet as Ninsa also rose.
The toad had four other men with him. They towered over us. It was already too dark to see their expressions clearly, especially with an overcast sky hiding a wan moon. But I didn’t need to see their faces to fear their intentions. I could feel their malice from where I stood with Ninsa, ten feet away.
