“I said, ‘I’ve made my choice, your highness’,” I repeat, not bothering to quell the anger in my voice.
The tether on Aspen’s rage snaps. He grabs me by the elbows and shoves me up against the wall of the cell. A vein stands out on his forehead, alive and ugly. His lips smash against one another, and I know he is grinding his teeth. His touch hurts. Burns.
“Let go of me, bastard!” I snap.
He does. Storms to the cell door. Calls the jailer. Curses when the nervous man fumbles with the keys. The cell door slams shut after he exits. I wait for him to leave.
Aspen spares me one look. His eyes stir the fear inside me. They are inhuman. Shiny. Glowing with a fierce, unreadable hunger. A hunger for my blood.
“Go to hell, Kyla,” he whispers and leaves as quietly as he came.
Chapter X
The jailer comes to my cell early in the morning and finds me awake and leaning against the wall, my dress almost completely torn away by fearless rodents in the night.
“‘Big as a demon god, aren’t they?’” he laughs and tosses me a sack. I catch it before it can join the filth on the cell floor.
“‘I wouldn’t know.’”
“‘You will soon.’” And he leaves me with the chilling reminder that the Wilds are hell.
The sack holds a simple tunic of a blackish gray color with a strip of rawhide to tie around its waist. The cold night – and the rodents – having stripped me of all modesty during the night, I strip and pull on the tunic. It is comforting to have something over my chest, even if the tunic doesn’t cover my shoulders and rests an inch or so above the knee. A pair of brown sandals lies at the bottom. The sack holds nothing else and when the guards came to tie me, they take it. My hands are bound tightly with rawhide, and I am escorted from my cell.
The solar is not empty any longer. The podium is still there – still stained in my blood. I’m certain Celectate Wood left it there as a reminder. The High Lords remain in their chairs upon my entrance. The crowd murmurs softly and then grows louder. Their voices are hollow and rough with rage. The guards draw closer for my protection. However, they cannot protect me from the onslaught of words – words that cut deeper than anything.
“High-class bitch!”
“Getting what she deserves.”
“Going to hell, she is.”
“Noble swine. Serves her right.”
Atop the podium, a stake has been raised instead of Calaisar’s altar. It is a piece of metal six feet high and stands like a menacing pillar of pain. The steps clank underneath my feet as I ascend the platform and face the giant glass window that looks out over the vast northern region of Kelba. The top of the trees is lit by the rising sun.
The guards back away from me and surround the podium, their lances raised in the air warningly.
Celectate Wood enters and the crowd welcomes his arrival. High Lords bow as he passes. Even Lord Singh. My Father remains standing upright, his eyes on the floor, his lips trembling. Kelba’s ruler pays him no mind.
The Celectate is dressed in flowing, blood red robes. Aspen is dressed in black and follows his father with his head down, looking mournful and sullen. The Celectate mounts the podium and doesn’t even look at me, before turning to the crowd.
“We have proceeded with the proper way of things. Kyla Bone’s case has been judged adeptly through the Community elders. Their votes are being tallied. She is being accused of high treason.” His voice is like death’s knell.
The crowd stirs.
A boy approaches with a glass bowl. Slips of paper rest inside it. I count twelve. Twelve High Lord. Twelve votes. How many want my death? How many hated my father enough to sentence me?
One by one, Celectate Wood reaches inside the bowl. The first two want my death. My throat closes in on itself as Celectate Wood smiles victoriously. He’s got every High Lord in his palm. I will be convicted.
The next three wish for my release. My heart skips a beat. One is my father’s. Celectate Wood frowns, looking surprised and angry at once.
The next three ask for my death. Darkness blurs my vision.
Three more want me released. Celectate Wood’s displeasure has grown and he turns seething eyes to the High Lords. None of them flinches beneath his gaze. If he will have revenge on those who wish my release, they will not make it easy on him.
One slip remains in the jar. I lick my dry lips. If it wishes my release, I can be set free. The Community will abolish my crime. I can go home. But if it wishes my death – the Celectate can determine my fate.
Celectate Wood pulls the slip from the jar. Slowly opens it. Reads the word.
The crowd explodes into chaos as people begin to shout, chant, or speak all at once.
I gasp for air.
Guilty. Guilty, the slip says.
Celectate Wood wastes no time and raises his hands. The crowd immediately goes silent. He’s like a puppeteer who holds all the strings. He gifts a look towards me. I stare back. He can show mercy if he has it inside that hell-cursed heart. He can order me to be released in order to win the hearts of the Kelbans. But when I see his eyes – those demonic, black, cursed eyes – I shove the notion aside. He will not show me mercy.
He smiles languidly. “Such a burdening decision. I do not relish the weight of crushing such a beautiful youth. Such a choice should not be left up to an aging leader like myself. One who has yet to show his strength should determine such a pressing matter. His power. His rule.” My eyes burn. He wouldn’t . . .
“Aspen, my son?”
Aspen ascends the podium, sullen and cold. “Yes, father.”
“I shall leave this choice to you. Her fate is yours to decide.” Celectate Wood steps aside with a mysterious smile, his eyes never leaving my face. He wants to see everything.
Aspen draws close to me. His eyes don’t look at me and stay on the ground as he approaches. Until he’s so close, I could lean forward and brush my head against his chin. His hands are trembling.
Curse the devil. Damn his soul. I long to drive a fist against Celectate Wood’s gleaming white teeth. Only a devil could come up with such a thing. To force his son to decide the fate of the girl he’s loved since childhood . . . to force him to choose between power and me. Aspen knows I won’t have him. Knows I don’t love him. Knows I won’t choose him if the end of the world was near.
“Aspen,” I whisper. “Aspen, don’t . . .” Don’t what? Don’t murder me? Don’t join the devil?
He still won’t look at me.
“Aspen?”
Tears sting my eyes. Because despite how much he disgusts me, despite how I hate his touch, despite the fact that he’s a devil’s son – I don’t want him to be a devil too.
“She defied you, didn’t she, father?” he asks without raising his eyes.
Celectate Wood doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“People have defied you before, haven’t they, father?”
“Yes.”
“How did you answer such treatment?”
Celectate Wood’s eyes flash. “I would not tolerate it.”
Aspen raises his eyes and looks at me. They are empty and bottomless – deep pools of darkness. He truly looks like his father. “Why should I?” he says.
I lose the ability to breathe.
“I pronounce Kyla Bone . . . guilty,” Aspen says in a loud, certain voice throughout the entire room. His eyes never leave my face. I don’t bother to hide the shock or the hurt that rages within me.
“Aspen . . .”
He grabs my face in his hands and pulls me close, cracking our foreheads together. His skin welds against mine and his eyes – his eyes! Gods, it’s like staring into the abyss of hell itself. Ice numbs my senses. His touch vaporizes me. Not even the branding iron could be so hot.
“I want you to remember this!” he growls in a low voice only I can hear. “Remember what you threw away because of your arrogance. You made me love you. Made me want you. You made me need you – and then you ripp
ed me to shreds. You wanted me to bleed. You wanted to hurt me. I loved you. Hear me? I loved you!” His fingers gouge my skin, nails cutting my flesh. “But you are selfish. You are blind to love. You can’t take it. You can only rip it apart.”
“Whatever he’s told you . . .” I gasp, looking between the devil and his son, “. . . whatever he said about me it’s not . . .”
“True?” Aspen asks. He laughs mirthlessly. “That you didn’t want me to hurt? Bleed? Love? Oh, you wanted it. You hated my father so much you thought hurting the son would make up for it. Well, Kyla, you were very, very wrong.”
I can only stare at him. Did I truly want to hurt him? I was disgusted by him . . . but did I want to hurt him? Tear him apart just to anger the Celectate? Was that what I had done?
“You awakened the beast, Kyla!” Aspen snaps, his teeth very close to my lips. Heat radiates from his nostrils. “You’ll pay for it!” He releases me and retreats.
Celectate Wood returns to stand before me. That darkness in his gaze dances with suppressed fury but I see a deeper emotion, one that far belies the dangerous facade he hides behind. He’s afraid. Afraid of what punishing me can do. We both sense the tension in the crowd – in the Community. Punishing me will put complete power farther from his grasp.
Good.
“But I’m a generous man,” he says. “I hate to shed blood and duel out such nasty punishments for those who are too young to see things properly.” He eyes me with intent.
Oh, I understand things properly.
“I will release Kyla Bone.” He smiles. “She will not have to marry my son. She will not need to be ostracized. I only ask for her to apologize, on her knees, and swear loyalty and fealty to me, like a good citizen once more.”
The crowd nods approvingly – the offer is reasonable.
The intelligent bastard. He no longer worries about the dowry I will inherit – the forty percent of white diamond mines I receive upon marriage. Now he worries about something much larger than increasing his wealth and power. The tension in the crowd is more pressing, more dangerous by the minute. It threatens him. I have created a threat against him.
Slowly, I step forward, staring at the hand he extends. I will kneel. I will kiss it. I will swear loyalty and fealty to him. I will return home and avoid impending death.
I will become a slave.
I pause before him, mere inches of space between us. I lower my eyes. I sense him smile. I raise my head and that smile turns into a twisted frown.
“Yer od nar gavran mi.”
You do not govern me.
I spit on his extended hand.
The crowd gasps. Most of them have no idea what I quoted or understand its significance. But Celectate Wood knows. He – who has hundreds of collections devoted to the tales of old – knows.
You do not govern me. Calaisar had said those words to Gasan. Right before he killed him.
Celectate Wood slides his defiled hand down the side of his robes with a frown of disgust. “Guards!” he yells.
Four Celect Knights ascend the stage, their helmets shielding their faces from view. They come close to me – I can smell the acidic metal of their armor.
“Tie her to the pole!”
Two of the Celect Knights hesitate, their hands stiffening at their sides as they stare at me. The other two jerk me towards the pole and force my hands into the shackles on top, stretching me onto my tiptoes. The hard metal cuts into the soft flesh of my wrist and opens the thin scab on the “marriage” scar. A line of blood slithers down my arm.
“For acts of high treason and national endangerment of the well-being of Kelban society, I pronounce Kyla Bone guilty. Her punishment shall be carried out immediately – ten lashes for defamation of her ruler and the ostracized scar for defamation of her country.” Celectate Wood doesn’t even blink as he speaks but his hands are behind his back in a vise-like grip as he scans the crowd, eyes piercing the faces that have grown terse. “It is my duty to protect the citizens of this nation from those who would seek to destroy us. To belittle us. To undermine everything we’ve done to stay alive. Years ago, this nation suffered the loss of half its population and geography. We were weak. We were lost. We were reckless and wild and fools. We did what we wanted to do and only what we thought we should – such ideas destroy a nation. Destroy our strength. Our capability. This is what Kyla Bone would do to us – because she is selfish, reckless, and foolish. Though I shudder at the notion of destroying such a bold youth, Kelba cannot afford to cater to her wishful fantasies. You cannot afford it. Enticing she may be – enticing her character is, indeed – but she will drag us under just as that poison dragged our sister nation to its knees. We must not become weak again – we must not crumble because of one youth’s ambition.”
“You chose me to rule you for a reason. I have protected Kelba. I will continue to protect it. Traitors such as this . . .” He points at me. “They are a fire roaring for kindling. Help me eradicate them . . . no matter how young . . .” He looks at me.
“Or old.” He spots Lord Singh.
“Or loyal. Unite with me and we are strong. Go against me . . . we crumble!”
The crowd rumbles its approval, the tension slowly fading from the room. I only watch in horror as Celectate Wood’s nervous hands unclench from behind his back and he bows his head sorrowfully before him as if he regrets the destruction he must wreak upon me.
I remember the giant man in the crowd at the Square. He had said the citizens were fools who took their own slavery willingly. I stare at the fools around me now and a gnawing sense of pity growls inside. They do not know what demon has made them such idiots – what devilry has been played upon them. The monster who removed a man’s tongue because he had the ability to maneuver the crowd – has maneuvered this crowd.
Celectate Wood greets the black-masked man who ascends the podium with a long, curling whip in hand. He pries the handle from the gloved fingers and strides across the glass floor. I can see the reflection of his robes behind me in the large window of the Solar. I watch as he cups the whip lovingly in his bare fist and slides the entire ten-foot length through it. He doesn’t even break skin. I shudder. He’s skilled with it.
“Since I am the one she defiled, should I not administer the punishment?” He looks to the crowd for confirmation, shrugging his shoulders innocently.
The crowd gives its agreement.
I turn my eyes from the window and stare at the metal pole in front of me. I focus on its height – its cold exterior – its rugged edges. I hear the whip raise behind me. I loosen my shoulders for the impact – the more I fight it the more it will hurt. My back aches to prepare for the blow and the bones in my spine tingle. I force a breath between my lips – then another. Landor was whipped once – he’d described the feeling. He’d said it felt like a herd of flesh-eating ants moving up your backside. The whip hisses through the air behind me. I close my eyes.
It slams into the middle of my back and sticks between the folds of broken flesh. As cruelly, as hard, as hatefully as he can, Celectate Wood slides the whip sideways, pulling every inch of the ten-foot long lash over the deep wound until the little tip falls away. The pain ripples up my backside, through my upraised arms, into my hands, which open in spastic jerks. My legs give way beneath me as the force of the blow rocks my body sideways. The shackles cut into my wrists and blood runs down my arms.
Hot blood slides down my back. The lash strikes the back of my shoulder and slashes a line from shoulder to waist in one long sideways line. I seize up, tightening my hands on the metal chains above my head.
Snap!
I want to whimper.
Crack! Bone in my back echoes with pain.
I rest my cheek against the cool metal of the pillar and it slides against my skin – my tears wet its surface. I close my eyes.
Crack!
“That’s five,” I whisper to myself.
I open my eyes and search the crowd for a familiar face – any face. I
recognize many pillars of nobility – some lower than others. They are the ones who wait for me to scream – to beg for mercy – to cower.
Crack! I blink back the tears but they come anyway, dripping off my cheeks onto the podium. They join the blood pooling around my feet.
Someone in the crowd moves closer and the hood falls away from her face – Helena. She hasn’t lost the delicate fragility she showed in the temple or the pale pink cheeks. Her eyes rest on my countenance gently and she sees me watching her. She smiles. A smile full of pity and sorrow. Inwardly, I tremble with outrage. I am not to be pitied! I chose this. It is nothing to pity.
Behind her, another girl joins her, a gleaming black braid intertwined with a black sash stretching down her back. The black sash is richly embroidered with tiny black birds and a curved dagger. The signs of mourning and death. The girl turns.
Daria.
Crack! I hardly recognize the sting of the lash.
When Daria meets my eyes, there’s no pity in them. No spark of hate. No anger. There’s also no emotional pain. No signs of tears or mourning about her. She looks just as fierce and strong as she did back in the temple, a beautiful, jeweled dagger hanging at her side. She smiles at me, a barely perceptible lift of her lips. It chills my blood. That smile – there’s nothing human about it. It is gone as quickly as it came. Her mouth forms words in my direction. I struggle to make them out.
Crack!
The lash hardly stings. Daria’s words click into place.
We’re the same.
She smooths a hand down the side of her skirt and her thumb fondles the pommel of her dagger lovingly.
Oh, gods of hellfire!
Her brooding anger in the temple that night – her bitchy attitude towards my illustrious background – her disrespect for the the priests and their blessing – she hadn’t wanted her bonding either. Perhaps, had detested it more than I. Her fingers edge along the dagger’s length and I picture her standing over the body of a lust-crazed fiend, the blade dripping red. She killed him.
Ostracized (The Ostracized Saga Book 1) Page 12
