Ziafiata cut a bite of sausage with her fork. She hadn’t been given a knife. Chevolere was probably afraid that she’d secret it away and use it on him the next time he came for her. “No, but he will. You have doubtless heard of his appetites.”
“Well, nothing specific,” said Marta. “I have to admit, I’m curious. Well, horrified. Did he tell you what he was going to do to you?”
“You have to help me get away from him,” Ziafiata said. This was a split-second decision. She didn’t know if it would work. “Please?”
Marta took two steps back. “Me? I can’t do anything.”
“You will leave me to that monster? That beast? He will bruise me and make me bleed. He will use me in ways that no woman should be used. You have heard the stories, just as I have, and you have witnessed his ruthlessness. Please.”
“I…” Marta wrung out her hands. “I can’t.”
“Leave the door unlocked,” said Ziafiata. “That is all I ask of you.”
Marta licked her lips.
“You did it yesterday,” said Ziafiata.
“Did I?” whispered Marta, horrified.
“You can claim it was a mistake—”
“He will kill me,” said Marta.
“No,” said Ziafiata. “You said he was a good employer.”
“He is not rational when it comes to you, or to your father,” said Marta. “That card game with Federo Abrusse. You have no idea what went into making sure it happened. You have no idea how he schemed and planned and maneuvered. He will kill me if I ruin this. He wants it too badly.”
“Wants to ravage me or to hurt my father?”
Marta shook her head. “I don’t know, I’m afraid, I only know how important it is to him. I truly am sorry.”
Ziafiata felt like crying again. She shouldn’t have said anything to the girl. She went back to her breakfast.
Marta scurried out of the room, locking the door firmly behind her.
Later, she came back for the tray, and she said in a quiet voice, “He wants you to give him some sort of information, doesn’t he? Perhaps you should simply do that.”
Ziafiata resolved not to speak to Marta anymore at all.
* * *
All day, Ziafiata tried to think of some way to escape, and nothing occurred to her. All day, she waited for some opportunity.
Would she be invited to dinner again with Chevolere? If so, she would not sit quietly and eat with him. She would take her fork and plunge it into his neck. If she was not given a fork, she would use her spoon to scoop out his eyeballs. She would fight so hard that he would be forced to give up on her entirely.
But he did not send for her. All her meals were brought by Marta, on the same tray, and she didn’t see Chevolere at all.
The sheer boredom of being trapped here was going to drive her mad, she thought. Forget whatever torture Chevolere had in mind for her. She would likely crack because she wanted out of the room. Not that Chevolere had ever offered her any kind of freedom. If she did tell him about the key, would he simply keep her locked in the room forever?
She pondered her future grimly, and all she felt was despair and fear.
Chevolere came for her quite late, after the tavern was closed.
He opened the door and stood there, a dark masked specter, and she hated the sight of him. Despite her resolution to fight him, she did not throw herself at him and begin to claw at him. Instead, she cowered on the other side of the room.
Wordlessly, he strode across the room and took her by the arm. He pulled her up and looked her over. “Not dressed for bed?”
“Wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,” she said in a hard voice.
“Indeed,” he said, as if he would have expected nothing less from her. “You’re rather determined to make this difficult, and I can’t say I don’t admire that about you. We’re going downstairs.” He pulled on her arm.
She was so surprised by this that she didn’t fight him.
They were halfway across the room before the thought of fighting occurred to her. And then she decided not to fight, because certainly it was better to be out of her locked room. Certainly, being downstairs was one step closer to freedom.
Most of the lights were off in the tavern, but lanterns above the stage were burning brightly, illuminating the expanse of wood there. The harpsichord had been pushed aside and there was a chain dangling from the ceiling.
She saw it, and her knees buckled.
He hauled her up, whispering in her ear. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Tell me about the key. This will all be over.”
She would not give him the satisfaction of standing. She forced him to bear her weight. “Over? And you’ll lock me in that awful room forever?”
“You can go where you like,” he said, “as long as you don’t go back to your father, which I don’t think you would do, would you?”
“I have nowhere to go,” she said. “If I betray Diago, he would never shelter me.”
“Ah, it is to him you wish to return,” said Chevolere. “Tell me, where has Diago Caputio been these two years since he deflowered you?”
“That’s not what…” Why was she insisting it hadn’t happened?
Chevolere dragged her towards the stage. “If he wished it, he would be with you. He could have freed you from your father and defied his family. He could have demanded that you were recognized as his wife. He used you and shamed you, and you don’t even blame him for it. Why is that?”
“He didn’t do that,” she said.
“You don’t know the man well if you think he would ever be so loyal to you as you are to him,” said Chevolere.
“You don’t know him.” She put her feet down on the ground now and drew herself up. “I know him far better than you ever could. What? Have you played cards with him once? Sold him cainlach? How could you know him?”
“I have heard him speak of you,” said Chevolere.
She searched his pale eyes for some emotion, but there was nothing there, and his voice was flat. She swallowed. “And?”
“And he says vulgar things about your lack of demonstrativeness in bed,” said Chevolere.
“You lie!” She did launch herself at Chevolere now, bringing up her hands to go for his face.
He was ready for her and caught her hands in his own. He forced her arms down against her sides. “None of that, now. I suppose you will need to be restrained, after all.”
Lack of demonstrativeness? What did that even mean? Was there something she had been meant to do that she hadn’t done? It had been her first time, how was she to know—
No, this was all a lie. Diago would never have said something like that about her. If he had, it was only because he was forced to by his father, by his position in his family. She knew that what had passed between her and Diago had been real. She was sure of it.
She was so distracted by these thoughts that she didn’t realize she was being led onto the stage until it was too late.
But then the single chain in the midst of the wooden expanse loomed, and she began to struggle in earnest. She couldn’t get free of Chevolere’s grasp, but she could go completely limp, refusing to move anywhere, forcing him to drag her.
Which he did, readily enough. There were shackles attached to the chain and he attached them to her wrists, her hands suspended high above her head.
She kicked at Chevolere.
He reached up and tugged at another chain, and it descended in front of her. Chevolere tugged it around behind her instead, and then secured her feet in shackles too.
She thrashed about ineffectively for several minutes before deciding it was pointless and going still.
Chevolere stood, surveying her, catching his breath. “This is all requiring much more effort than I had thought it would.”
“You thought I would welcome your filthy hands on me, then?”
“No,” he said. “I suppose I don’t have a lot of experience with it all.”
“Your whores did
n’t fight,” she said. “They just refused to let you near them again.”
His jaw twitched. “Yes, something like that.” He squared his shoulders. “So, that is where you would go. If you could go anywhere you wished, you would go to Diago Caputio.”
She only glared at him. She didn’t have to answer his questions.
“And that is why you don’t want to tell me about the key.” Chevolere took off his cape and walked across the stage to the place where the harpsichord had been pushed against the wall. He draped the cape over the harpsichord bench and then came back to stand in front of her.
She lifted her chin in defiance. “I will fight against you until I have no more strength.”
“Mmm,” he said, expressionless. “Diago Caputio, you think he would want my leftovers?”
Her nostrils flared.
He reached out and seized her chin, leaning close. “You go to him smelling of me and you think he’ll embrace you?”
“He loves me,” she said. “It’s something you would never understand.”
“Yes, well,” said Chevolere. “I’m not sure it’s something you understand either.” He let go of her chin. He drew out a dagger from a sheath at his waist.
She couldn’t help but let out a tiny cry.
Chevolere ignored her noise.
She shied away from the blade.
“Hold still, or I’ll accidentally cut you,” he said, reaching up to steady the chain that was attached to her wrists.
So, he didn’t want to cut her?
He grasped a handful of the sleeve of her dress and sliced into it with the knife.
Oh, now she understood. He hadn’t been able to remove her clothes before, so this was how he was going to do it. She wanted to thrash, but she didn’t, because she was afraid of getting nicked by the blade. Instead, she stood still, seething, staring straight ahead.
He could do his worst, but she wasn’t going to react. She gazed out at the darkened tavern, at the tables with the chairs turned upside down on them, their legs in the air. She supposed that was done so that the floor could be mopped, but she didn’t think they did that after the tavern closed, because everyone had left rather quickly after the music stopped.
No, they must do it in the morning when they came in to prepare the place.
Chevolere had cut through both of her sleeves. They hung down in ribbons, and her bodice sagged with nothing to hold it up since she’d bound her stays so tightly, flattening her breasts. Chevolere simply gave it a tug and the dress pooled around her feet. He couldn’t remove the dress entirely, though, not with her feet chained, so he cut through the skirt and pulled it free, tossing it aside.
He stood up, surveying her.
She was wearing only her shift and her stays now. Her shift came down just below her knees. Too much of her skin was bare.
Chevolere sighed. “You don’t look pleased with the change in circumstances, Ziafiata. Must I cut away every stitch of your clothing? Won’t you simply tell me what I wish to know?”
“No,” she said, and she was pleased with how firm and steady her voice was.
“All right then,” he murmured. He moved closer. He put his knife to the leather straps that laced up her stays. He slid his blade into the very bottom and sliced through. “This seems uncomfortably tight, Ziafiata. Why did you do this?”
She didn’t say anything.
Cutting the laces had loosened them. He parted the stays from the bottom, plucking the leather free from the grommets.
“Didn’t you like it when I looked at you?” His voice was mild. “Or did it make you wish not to even look at yourself? Did it make you wish that part of yourself didn’t even exist?”
She looked at him in horror.
He continued to part her stays. “How much more unpleasant do you think it will be when I’ve looked at every square inch of you?”
Her stays fell, hitting the stage with a weak plopping sound.
He kicked them away.
She was only wearing her shift now. It was sheer, and it parted in the front so as not to show under a low cut dress. It gapped now, almost to her navel.
He was behind her, leaning close, his voice at her ear. “Once my hands have crawled all over your skin, once I’ve squeezed and pinched you wherever I wish, once I’ve…” He pressed his body into hers, his pelvis into the curve of her backside, and she felt his erection. It was hard and hot and long and thick. “Penetrated you. What will you do with yourself, then? Hmm? I’ll have violated the most secret parts of you. There will be nothing of you left.”
That wasn’t true. There wouldn’t be nothing left. And he was a worse monster than she’d ever imagined. She hadn’t realized that he enjoyed causing discomfort, that he delighted in the violation of not only her body but her mind. He was wretched. She couldn’t help but tremble.
He brushed her hair away from her neck, his fingers impossibly gentle. “None of that has to happen.”
“I won’t tell you,” she breathed.
“Then here is what I am going to do to you,” he said, his voice dark and soft at her ear. He ran the tip of the dagger up over the collar of her shift. “I’m going to cut this away, and then you’ll be totally bared to me, and I will be able to see whatever I want. I want to see you, Ziafiata. I want that very badly.” He thrust his erection into her again.
She let out a huff of air. She was trembling worse.
“Then I will begin hurting you,” he said. “I’ll enjoy it. I like to cause pain. I will hurt you in the most intimate of places, and I won’t stop when you scream. The screaming will only make me more aroused, do you understand that?” His hardness seemed to pulse against her.
“No,” she said, and she hadn’t meant to say it.
“No?” he said. “That’s not what you wish? Because we haven’t even gotten to the part where I look at what’s between your thighs. Or maybe that isn’t the orifice I’ll use. Maybe I can think of more painful places to take you.” He shifted behind her, pressing into her backside in a different position.
Her eyes widened, because she had never… That wasn’t even possible, was it? No one did that. “You know I don’t wish any of this!” she cried out. “That’s why you’re doing it.”
“You must wish it,” he growled at her ear. “You must, because you could stop me, and you don’t.”
“If you are so truly aroused by it all, I don’t imagine I could stop you,” she said in an acidic tone. “I might tell you all about the key, and you might do it anyway.”
He backed away from her. “No.” His voice was flat. “I have a reputation for keeping my word. A man must have some scruples.”
“Scruples?” She let out a wild laugh, sagging against her chains.
He strode around to the front of her and gathered up a handful of her shift. He sliced the dagger through it, cutting her shift all the way down the middle.
She gasped. The sheer fabric now hung on either side of her, and her nakedness was on display.
Chevolere dragged his gaze over her, and his eyes were full of fiery desire, awful desire, and she cringed and twisted herself and tried in vain to cover herself.
She waited for him to cut the rest of the shift away.
She waited for the pain he’d promised, the pinching and squeezing.
But it never came.
He licked his lips and sheathed his dagger and squared his shoulders. Then he turned his back on her. He crossed to the harpsichord bench and picked up his cape. He tugged it on as he jumped down off the stage and disappeared up the steps, leaving her there, chained up and exposed. Alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Chevolere shut the door of his quarters firmly. He wanted to slam it, but she might hear that echoing through the entire tavern, and he had already done a spectacularly terrible job at this thus far. He didn’t need for her to understand how badly this was affecting him.
He turned around and pressed his forehead into the firm wood of the door.
He
couldn’t breathe.
He ripped the blazing mask off and crumpled it in one hand.
“Yes, Vox, it’s a brilliant, brilliant plan to threaten to rape her. Brilliant, when you can’t have normal, consensual relations with a woman. As if you could possibly go through with it. You couldn’t even touch her.”
He turned around, sagging against the door. He slid all the way down to the floor, brought his knees up to his chest, and bowed his head.
It wasn’t supposed to go this far. He had a reputation, after all. She was supposed to find the prospect so frightening she crumpled at the threat of it. He wasn’t supposed to have to do anything to her.
He had crafted the reputation himself, though there was no truth to it. He had thought it would be commented on if people realized he was essentially one of the brothers—well, that he was as a brother should be, anyway. It was a rare holy man of the Order of the Flamme who took his vows of chastity seriously. The musqueteers were also supposed to be celibate, and none of them were. Most men didn’t seem to be even capable of it.
And yet he was. He was easily celibate.
He had thought that if others knew of his strange lack of partaking in carnal delights, it would make him a source of ridicule, and he couldn’t bear that. His reputation was important, and so he had struck the deal with Madame Vadima. He visited her twice a month, and they sat in her bedchamber and played cards.
She spread stories about his perversions, and everyone believed them.
He far preferred everyone to think that he was ruthless than to think he was a eunuch.
Which… well, he was obviously functioning down there. He was surprised by the violence of that.
Truly, he’d never been so close to naked female flesh in his life, and he was stunned at his reaction to it. He was aroused. He was still aroused. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t expected to want…
Well, the wanting made it worse, actually, because of what he was doing to her. It made his skin writhe with revulsion. What he had done thus far to her was quite bad enough even if he’d never touched her.
He thought of how tight her stays had been.
The Beast of the Barrens Page 4
