Battles of Salt and Sighs by Val Saintcrowe

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ONIVIA CLENCHED HERhand into a fist.

“No, not a fist,” said Larent. They were in his bedchamber, not the sitting room, because he said that if they needed to tumble, the bed would be handy for avoiding injury. He was making good on his promise to teach her to defend herself.

“Not a fist?” she said.

“You’ll likely hurt yourself worse that way,” he said. He lifted his hand and his fingers were pressed together, his wrist stiff. “Make your hand like a blade.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding, mimicking what he’d done.

“Good,” he said. “Use that to go for the throat.” He brought his hand gently to her throat, pressing the edge of the hand-blade against her there. “Like this. You try.”

She brought her hand up, just as gently as he had.

“No, with more force, domina. It’s all right. I can handle it. Come at me.”

She took a deep breath and then launched herself at him, slicing her hand through the air and chopping at his neck.

At the last second, he evaded her, stepping backwards.

She let out her breath.

“That was good,” he said. “No hesitation. You feel how it should work?”

She was vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t let her hurt him.

“All right, so let’s assume that you’re on the ground, and a man is trying to get at you. Lie down on the floor?”

She hesitated, mostly because she was imagining this happening, and it upset her.

“Domina?” His voice was soft.

She shook herself. “Fine.” She got down on the floor, lying on her back.

“Lie on your side, as if you’re sleeping,” he said, getting down in a crouch. He crawled up over her. “I might take your shoulder here, to turn you toward me—”

She brought up her hand immediately, making that same chopping motion at his neck. And this time, she connected, because she’d acted before he could tell her to.

He recoiled, hand to his throat, coughing.

She was a little stunned to see how badly she’d hurt him. It felt both good and guilt-inducing. She pulled her knees to her chest, watching him as he recovered.

“So,” he wheezed, “you’d use this time to get up and run.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She actually was, although she also wanted to escape him, wanted to hurt him. He was her captor, after all.

He waved this away, massaging his neck. “You’re a quick study, domina.” He settled down, seated on the ground, resting an elbow on his bent knee. “But as you can see, such a thing doesn’t cause much permanent damage. You can hurt a man worse by going for other sensitive areas, like the groin or the eyes. Anything you can do to incapacitate him.”

She nodded.

“I don’t think we’ll practice your hitting me in the groin. You might enjoy that too much.”

She found herself blushing.

He noticed, and then he blushed too.

It was quiet.

He coughed again, but she wasn’t sure it was because of the injury she’d done to his neck. “Uh, if you’re standing, both of you, you can try to get at his knees or trip him.” He pushed off and stood up. “Let’s try that?”

She stood up too.

He advanced on her, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her flush against him. “If it’s like this?”

She nodded. “All right.”

“Kick at my knees, or tangle your legs up with mine.” He demonstrated with his own feet, but gently. When he hooked a foot around her leg, though, she did immediately feel off balance. “You try?”

“All right.” She did her best to imitate his movement.

“Good,” he said. “If you can get him to go down, to let go of you, then you can run.”

“It’s always about running.”

“If it’s going to be a struggle of brute strength, you’re going to lose,” he said.

She thought of him wrestling her into the cot in his tent and tying her down. She grimaced. “But what if there isn’t anywhere to run?”

He looked away.

She felt dull and angry.

“All right, if you bend at the waist, make your back curve, and get your hands around his ankles, you can throw him over you,” he said.

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“What isn’t?” He was confused.

“Why are men so much stronger than women?”

“I think it’s because we’re meant to use that strength for protection and care,” he said. “Not… against weak things. But—”

“I’m not a weak thing.”

“Apologies, domina. I don’t mean it as an insult. But, the fact is, you are.”

“I don’t want to be,” she said, her tone acidic. “There must be something you can teach me, something that is more than simply a momentary bit of advantage so that I can run away.”

He licked his lips. “Well, if you have a weapon, you can use that. Go for the throat, go for the eyes.”

She shook her head. “And if I don’t have a weapon?”

He let out a long, low sigh, surveying her.

“There’s nothing?”

“I don’t know if I trust you with this knowledge, domina,” he said finally. “You do have access to me when I sleep.”

“Yes, and I could have smothered you with a pillow anytime, but what would that get me except executed? I couldn’t get far. There are guards on the door, and they’d catch me and kill me.”

“True,” he said. He considered. Then, decided, he knelt down. “Get behind me. Wrap your arm around my neck.”

She obeyed.

He looked up at her as he reached up to touch spots on his neck. “Here. Do you feel that beneath? It’s an internal pipe, and you need to block it off. And here too. Block both of them. Tighten your elbow, put as much pressure as you can. You don’t need much to accomplish it.”

“What’s going to happen?” she breathed.

“I’ll lose consciousness,” he said. “Only for a few seconds as long as you let go. Can I trust you to let go, domina?”

She sucked in a breath, looking down at him, and the sudden intimacy and power of this seemed to overwhelm her for a moment. “Yes, you can trust me,” she said, even as she tightened her elbow over his neck.

He didn’t offer any resistance, and she was stunned at how quick it was.

When he went slack against her, she let out a little cry. She let go immediately.

He slumped to the floor.

A moment later, he was blinking and squirming, disoriented. He sat up, rubbing his neck again. “If you hold it longer, a man will stay out longer once you let go. The time of unconsciousness is roughly equivalent to the amount of time you block the pipes.”

Her fingers twitched. “And if I held on for a very long time, could I…?”

“Yes, you can kill a man that way.”

A dark thrill of power went through her, and she was overwhelmed by it. She went and sat down on Larent’s bed.

“Obviously, you’re not going to have a man who’s attempting to assault you sit down in front of you on his knees and allow you to put your arm around his neck,” said Larent. “Furthermore, he would fight you, try to pull you off. It wouldn’t be easy.”

“Yes, of course,” she murmured.

He got to his feet, looking down on her where she sat on his bed.

“Thank you for this,” she said.

“We can practice again,” he said. “You may need more time to try it out before you feel comfortable enough to execute this in a frightening situation.”

“I appreciate that,” she said. “And… and if I haven’t thanked you for Cassus, then I should say thank you for that as well.”

“No thanks necessary,” he said. “You paid for this already.” He scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor.

“Yes,” she said.

They were quiet.

“What’s going to happen with Akiel?” She wasn’t sure why she asked. It didn’t matter. “What will he do to you about Cassus?”

“What can he do?” he said.

“You said freeing Cassus would be difficult for you.”

“It didn’t turn out to be difficult at all.” He shrugged.

“But the risk. Akiel’s anger…”

“Oh, fuck Akiel.” Larent’s upper lip curled.

Something leaped inside her. Push him, said a voice within her. Push him to rise up, to fight. Chaos in this camp can only be good for you.

But no words like that came from her mouth. Instead, she only got up from the bed. “Well, if there’s nothing else to show me…?”

“No, nothing for today.”

She bowed her head and moved past him, heading back towards the sitting room.

DURANTH SENT FORMagdalia to join him at dinner every day after the incident where they’d killed a man and made him walk afterward, but Magdalia refused each and every time.

Now, she had the strength, because he disgusted her.

He was still Duranth, she supposed. Some ties could not be entirely broken, but she didn’t only love him, she hated him as well. She was frightened of him. He was evil.

She shouldn’t have been surprised when he finally simply appeared in her bedchamber. It was late, and she was already in bed, but she wasn’t asleep, because sleep didn’t come easily to her lately.

She thought it must be because she didn’t do anything. She spent all her time locked up in her chambers, and she took no exercise. At least she was no longer being fed a diet of rich dishes. If she had been, she likely would have been growing plump, and she was too vain to wish to be ugly, even if there was a chance that her fatness would have displeased Duranth and made him leave her be.

Anyway, she lay awake late into the night, thinking of the life she’d left behind and thinking of Onivia, thinking of how she should swallow her pride and ask for favors of Duranth. But she never did. She couldn’t bear to lower herself in such a way.

That night, she sat up straight in bed when she heard the lock disengage and the door knob turn. She clutched the covers at her chin, worried.

When she saw it was Duranth, she was relieved, and she scolded herself for it.

He should not make her feel relieved. He was the most dangerous person to her.

Duranth shut the door behind him and began shedding his clothes. He was wearing a variation on the uniform of the fae rebel army, but fancy dress, with epaulettes at his shoulders. He shrugged out of the jacket and beneath, he was not wearing anything, so there was his chest again, and there was his scarred back.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “What makes you think you can come in here and undress?”

He kicked off his shoes and crawled up on the bed. “You missed me, and let’s not pretend otherwise.”

“I did not.”

“Well, I missed you.” He came for her, crawling toward her.

She let go of the covers she clutched to put out both hands and ward him off. But this only had the effect of her bare palms colliding with his bare chest, and now her hands were resting against his solid warmth.

She should pull them away, but she didn’t. She left her hands there.

He sighed, looking down at her. “The legions are starting to return. But they have gone straight for the csaer’s villa further south and will be dispatched from there. They aren’t coming this way yet. I need you to be ready, and you’re not.”

“Of course I’m not,” she said. “I’m not going to help you make armies of dead men to fight against my own people. Why would I do that?”

“Because your own people aren’t really your own people, for one thing. Your magic comes from Seelie fae blood, which you must have in enough abundance for your magic to be strong.”

“I have heard this, and it’s the most ridiculous theory that I’ve ever—”

“There’s a prophecy, Magda. It’s the reason the Seelie were conquered in the first place.”

“Conquered? The Seelie have retreated to a place of magic, where they are safe from the meddling of your evil.”

“Listen to me, Magda, the history you have been taught isn’t true.” He flopped down on the bed beside her, on his side, and her hands slid over his taut, warm chest. “Generations ago, the imperial legions got wind of the prophecy. It said that there would be a powerful fae of each court, one Seelie and one Unseelie, and that when their magic combined, they would destroy all the enemies of the fae and rule the world. And there was already a necromancer running around, leading the forces of the death fae, one half of the prophecy, so the humans decided that the best thing to do was to kill all the Seelie fae, since they weren’t much of a threat. So, they broke the treaty they’d made with the Seelie and wiped them out. The only survivors were women that they took as concubines. I suppose some were even wives. Look at you, after all, as proof.”

“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” she said.

“Before humans enslaved my kind and forced us into servitude, we did know how to read and write, and we kept records, and I found them. That’s how.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I could show them to you,” he said. “But you don’t know how to read the ancient fae language, so you’d have to take my word for it. I didn’t know how to read it either, but I managed to teach myself.”

“You were always too smart for your own good,” she muttered. “For all our good, in fact, look what your evil cunning has brought about.”

He groaned. “If I’m evil, Magda, it’s because you humans made me that way. There’s only so much a person can take before… things break.” His face contorted. “I’m doing my best here. I haven’t forced you—”

“You have,” she said. “You tricked me at that dinner, which amounts to force in the end.”

He considered. “Maybe. I’m sorry about that, but I’m impatient.”

“You’re vile. You’re corrupt. You’re ignoble and wicked—”

“Enough of that.” He wasn’t angry, however, just seemingly disinterested in hearing it. “You don’t really think it anyway. You love me. I love you. I need you.”

“I don’t…” She gaped at him. “You don’t love me.”

“Sure I do.”

“You…” She shook her head at him, words failing her.

He kissed her.

She pushed him away.

He groaned again.

“Get out of my bed.”

“We are the prophecy, Magda,” he said. “You and me. And we’ve always known it, both of us, deep down. There’s no other reason for it. We wouldn’t even like each other otherwise, but we belong together, and the fact you keep resisting it is ridiculous.”

She glared at him.

“I’m going to kiss you again.”

“No,” she said.

“And you’re going to kiss me back.”

“You are deaf and awful and you are doing this against my will. I want you to hear that. Am I quite clear?”

“Against your will. Yes.” He kissed her.

She kissed him back. She put her hands back on his chest, and this time she caressed him, caressed his pectoral muscles, which were rounded and rippling, and she traced her fingertips lower too, dancing over his rib cage.

He groaned against her lips. “You’re doing a good job of convincing me you don’t want this.”

She let out a bitter sound. “Of course I want it, but that doesn’t make you any less stupid or horrible.”

He rolled on top of her.

She gasped.

His hand went under the covers, down the collar of her nightdress. He cupped one of her breasts.

She whimpered, because it was the first time anyone had ever touched her there, and because it was good.

He sighed, breaking their kiss to rest his forehead against hers. “You’re soft.”

She arched her back, pushing her head back and exposing her neck to him.

He put his mouth to her throat and ran his fingers over her nipple until it stiffened. It felt very good, and their magic churned. She could feel hers moving, and she could somehow feel his too, even though it was inside his body.

Fortune deliver her, she could feel everything in his body. She could feel his arousal, how it was hot and pulsing. She felt it pressing into the soft part of her thigh and she felt it from within him, as if she was within him.

He groaned again, but this sound was deeper and aching. He had felt their connection as well. “Sacred magics, Magda,” he rasped into her skin. He kissed her collarbone.

Then there was a flurry of movement, both of them working in tandem, somehow, without words, without even a real inclination of it, but somehow working together to pull down the covers and pull up her nightdress and expose her body to him.

She wasn’t wearing anything under her nightdress, and with her nightdress bunched up at her armpits, she felt entirely naked.

He gaped at her, his good hand working at his trousers, and she could see how much he approved of her body, how much it pleased him, and she liked the way it felt when he looked at her.

He sprang free, thick and curved and stiff.

She wanted to look at him, to touch him, but he distracted her.

He ran his hands—both his good hand and the artificial one—over her, shivery over her breasts, over her waist, her hips.

Her nipples were now taut, tight peaks, and he put his mouth on them.

She bucked against him, the magic intense, the sensations intense, and his body—his cock—he was so hard, and he was throbbing, and she—

“Fuck,” he growled, driving himself into the fleshy part of her thigh.

Suddenly, there was a rush of hot wetness on her leg, amidst a wall of ecstasy that blindsided her, robbing her of breath. She felt his body spasming, his pleasure and climax as if it was her own, and their magic cascaded.

Outside, there was a crash and she knew it was thunder.

“Fuck,” he said again.

He rolled off her.

Immediately, the connection between them cut off.

But rain was pounding against the windows outside.

She was shaking.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said.

“Stop saying that!” She made a face. There was a puddle of something on her skin, something sticky and wet and gross, and it had come out of him, out of his penis, and she didn’t like it. She glared at it.

He threw an arm over his face, pounding his head against the pillow as he lay next to her on his back. “I guess that’s what comes of saving myself for you. I’m pathetic.”

“You…” She turned to him. “You made a mess.”

He laughed helplessly.

She got off the bed and stalked across the room, holding up her nightdress so that it wouldn’t get in the stickiness on her body, and used the wash basin to clean herself. She made little moaning noises of disgust as she did it.

“Don’t hold back there,” he said from the bed, sarcastic.

“I hate you,” she said.

“Look, we were connected, so it’s not as if you didn’t feel it, too,” he said. “You felt me come. You liked it.”

She stalked back to the bed. “I want you to go.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m mortified, truly.” He laughed again. “I really didn’t think that was going to… fuck.”

She climbed gingerly into the bed again. “So, you did, then?”

“Did what?”

“Waited for me.”

“I promised you, didn’t I?”

In spite of herself, this pleased her. She felt shyly happy. She eased down to lie on her side so that she could look at him.

He removed his hand from his face, giving her a sheepish look. “I really am sorry.”

“Well, that was going too fast anyway,” she said. Her gaze went up and down him now, and she looked at his cock, which was soft now, but fascinating. She simply gazed at him there.

He laughed again. “Magda, what are you thinking?”

She looked up at his face. “You waited, but you didn’t even know if you’d ever see me again.”

“I knew,” he said. “You feel this between us. This is destiny.”

Well, she couldn’t deny what she’d felt. She couldn’t deny the rain outside, or the clap of thunder overhead, or the way she’d felt his body, felt his pleasure. She knew that didn’t happen typically between two people. There was something here.

“My attempt to seduce you and convince you has gone dreadfully wrong, however.” He reached down for his trousers and wriggled back into them. He lay there on his back, buttoning his trousers. “You’re not the least bit convinced, are you?”

“No,” she said softly. “No, this doesn’t make any sense. I can’t be fae.”

“Ah, of course, that’s the part where it sticks for you. Even if it’s Seelie blood, when you were always taught the Seelie were the good saviors of the human race?”

She didn’t like the way he was mocking her again. He always mocked her. She didn’t understand his feelings for her.

He reached out and ran a finger over her temple. “Maybe I could touch you.”

“No,” she said softly. “I think that was quite enough touching.”

“Did you touch yourself, like we talked about? Have you been making things happen between your thighs?”

She flushed again, embarrassed.

“Good,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “We’ll figure it out, eventually, then. I think.”

“You think?”

He groaned again. “Would you…? Would you mind terribly not sharing this story with anyone? Not blabbing it to the fae who dresses you, for instance?”

“You really are embarrassed.”

“Maybe you’re too innocent to understand how badly I’ve bungled this. I shouldn’t disabuse you of that notion.”

“You’ve never hidden things from me.” She hadn’t ever gotten a better description of what went on between men and women from anyone, in the ensuing three years since Duranth had laid it all out for her. And she always appreciated his straightforwardness about it, even if he’d likely left out the most important part of it all, which she’d had to discover on her own, which was the purpose of the act.

“I haven’t.”

“And this way, I’m not with child.”

“You wouldn’t be in any case. I’ve taken care of that with my magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a death fae, and I’ve rendered myself sterile, that’s what I mean. There will be no children.”

She blinked. Well, that was relieving, she supposed. “You can be certain of that?”

“Yes, reasonably so. I am not evil, Magda, I swear it to you. But I am not… well, I do not think I would make a particularly good father, let’s leave it at that. As I say, things within me are broken.”

“Well, perhaps they are broken within me too,” she said. “But if so, you’re the one who’s done the breaking.”

“All the more reason never to get you with child.”

She didn’t respond to that.

“And now I’m doing an even worse job at seducing and convincing. This way is not going to work, I don’t think.” He sat up.

“So, you freely admit this was just an attempt to manipulate me into helping with your rebellion.”

“It wasn’t just an attempt to manipulate you,” he said. “Come now, you see how you affect me.”

She did, and that was why it was all so confusing.

“Truthfully, I didn’t come here with the intention of… making love to you. I just thought I’d… I don’t know.”

“You took off your clothes and crawled in bed with me.”

“Well, I thought…” He knitted his brows together. “I thought I’d kiss you like before, maybe touch you, touch you places I hadn’t yet touched you, nudge us forward a bit, but not all the way forward. Then when I touched your breast, everything got out of hand.”

“Yes,” she said, and she knew what he meant, that moment when they’d suddenly both been pushing her clothes out of the way, when it had all been suddenly happening, and she hadn’t actually decided she wanted to let it happen, even as she was attempting to make it happen. She knitted her brows together too. “But if you didn’t mean to do that, and I didn’t mean to do that, then… why did we do it?”

He didn’t answer.

“It’s the magic, isn’t it?” she said. “The magic is evil. It has a mind of its own, and it’s going to take us over and—”

“It’s wild is all,” he said.

“What do you even mean?”

“Fae magic is like nature itself,” he said. “It can be beautiful and sweet, just a calm breeze on a summer morning, but it can also be the churning ocean and punishing hail. It can be gale winds. Sometimes it’s… overwhelming.”

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Frightened, but… also a little bit thrilled? Like her connection to Duranth himself, she supposed. She should be more afraid than she was.

He leaned in again and kissed her. “We’ll need to be careful, I think.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “But can we be careful? Will we lose ourselves to it?”

“We should take it more slowly is all,” he said.

This was both a relief and a disappointment. “All right.”

He extricated himself from her hands.

“You’re leaving me now, aren’t you?”

“Things to do, Magda,” he said. He kissed her again, quickly. “I love you.”

Her insides twisted in not unpleasant ways. “Duranth,” she breathed.

“Say it back.”

She shook her head.

He sighed. “You will.”

She wanted to deny that, to tell him that it would never happen, but she somehow couldn’t summon the words.

Instead, she was silent as he put his shoes back on, as he shrugged into his jacket with its epaulettes.

Then he was gone, and she was alone in the bed.

Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving droplets of water against the windows.