Frost to Dust by Myra Danvers

17

Frost.

It tingled across the surface of my skin. Crystalized in each and every pore and left me cold, right through to my middle. Numb. Utterly so.

A blank void absent any meager scrap of energy—priestess or elite—I was untethered, left to watch as the world tilted and spun around me. Run off its axis by the weight of the Head Priestess’ shackles. That gleaming wall of pure, unusable energy caging me inside myself.

Staggering, I crashed into the wall before I could find a door knob. Before I managed to slip from Sasha’s office without daring to fully open the door. Keeping the carnage I’d wrought hidden away in the dark, where the Head Priestess scrambled to fix it despite my very best efforts.

“Ready to go, Wildcat?” Marco asked, and set one steadying hand on my shoulder. Sent, no doubt, by none other than Captain Asher Rawlings, for despite the way we’d parted, he was not the sort of man to give up possession of his favorite toy without a fight.

Reese and Aiden flanked the office without bothering to glance my way. No doubt waiting for the general to return and issue his orders.

I nodded at the captain’s man, and my chin hit my chest before I managed to recover. “Let’s go,” I rasped, sweating and cold. Yet despite fleeing the scene of my crime, I did as I was told, and prayed…

… for the general to die, no matter how hard Sasha tried to save him.

We collected Gabe outside of the manse, but for me, the walk to the captain’s residence passed in a blur of numb. A fog I couldn’t squint hard enough to see through. I heard nothing of their banter, my head lost in the swirling mists of delirium—caught somewhere between blood lust and exhaustion. Victory and defeat, for I’d held the general’s life in my hand, felt him squirm and thrash and flounder.

And I’d been ready to extinguish all that he was.

The payment had been my only ally.

Sasha revealed as another traitor with an agenda I couldn’t see and wasn’t invited to understand.

Teeth clenched, I shook my head to dispel the ache of regret.

It was, after all, a lesson I’d learned long ago. That friends were nothing but a weakness, an opportunity for future betrayal.

I was an island no man could touch.

Alone.

Always.

Except for Asher.

“Not sure if the captain is back yet,” Marco said, jerking me from my thoughts, “but it’s probably best if you wait for him upstairs.”

I blinked, a haze of blackness dotting the edges of my vision as I was escorted to the stairs. Compliant and docile, for no other reason than I hadn’t the strength for war. Not with this new cage wrapped tight around what pitiful little remained of my power.

The empath in chains of blinding priestess magic.

Instead, I allowed the soldier to guide me. One hand on my back, his mundane energy not nearly significant enough to tempt the beast to so much as rattle the bars of her cage.

But when we reached the captain’s door, I mustered a smile. My best approximation of a meek and well-behaved slave. “Thank you, Marco,” I said, pleased when he took a startled step back, “for the escort.”

Eyes darting to the captain’s bedroom door, Marco blinked, but said nothing at all as I retreated. Making every effort to be silent, I placed my hand on the heavy oak and turned the knob.

The soft click of the lock sliding home was masked by Marco’s incredulous, “I think that’s the first time she’s spoken directly to me. Gabe!”

I slipped inside the captain’s room on silent feet as Marco thundered down the stairs. Pressing my back to the solid door to gather my wits, I tried to clear my sight of the sparkle of dark stars narrowing my vision to a tight tunnel.

When I took my next breath, it was to find the captain sitting behind his desk in the dark. Head resting on steepled fingers. A decanter of rich amber liquid pinched between his elbows, his gaze was unfocused, but fixed to the contents. Watching it shimmer and swirl. On his brow, lines etched deep into the surface, tracing the crease at his eyes, hiding behind the raspy stubble shadowing his cheeks and jaw.

He looked tired.

Vulnerable.

My mouth watered, and I took a step.

“Mila,” he said without looking up, unsurprised that I was standing in his space. A lurking, vengeful shade in desperate need. “You’re back sooner than I thought.”

I said nothing. Pushing off the door, I staggered toward the well of vibrant, hypnotic flames I knew were waiting to soothe this pain. This bottomless ache of hunger denied time and again.

One he had caused.

One only he could free me from.

At my silence, he turned to look. Inky gaze falling to where his shirt sagged across my breastbone. My cleavage all but spilling free, the towel long since having fallen away.

His lips parted, pupils dilating with a slow pulse as his jaw grew tight at the corners—but the words died on his tongue. The concern turning to smoldering jealousy that peppered the air between us with tension.

With the bitter scent of anger.

Tongue darting out, I wet my lips and prepared to bend like the desperate, coy whore they’d wanted me to become. Padding across the floor until I was close enough to reach, until my fingertips brushed the hard pectorals I knew were secreted away beneath a fresh, crisp shirt.

I reached for it.

Took what I wanted…

… because for this, I needed no permission.

He sucked a breath between his teeth. Turning to face me, his lap was made available.

Without shame or hesitation, I climbed into his chair. Knees spread beneath the tails of a borrowed shirt, I hooked my calves through the arms of the chair and claimed my perch.

“Asher, please,” I whispered, and spread my palms across the ridges of his collarbones. “It hurts…”

The captain swallowed, watching me through twin pricks of obsidian that glittered in the half light.

But the clink of metal on metal intruded on this moment. Ensnared his attention and tore it away from my efforts to beg for what I needed. To play the whore and seduce.

He captured my wrist and found a spare manacle jangling where the general had left it. The attempt to claim me obvious, for the chains had no other purpose. “Harper,” he spat, and pulled the golden bracelet over my knuckles and tossed it onto his desk. “Did he—”

“Please,” I said again. “It hurts.” I took his hand and place that rough, calloused palm on my breastbone.

Where I’d been left bare.

Touched by another man.

Exposed.

Encouraging his fingers to spread so he might feel what the Head Priestess had done to me, I bade him look deep inside, where only he might see the hurt and undo it as he had before.

“I’ll give it to you,” I breathed, and shivered when his free hand found purchase on my hip. Grip hesitant, but firm. “The empath. You can have it if you make the pain stop…”

A breath puffed over his lips. Pupils blown wide enough that they swallowed any subtle hint of color there might have been in his dark gaze.

“Help me.” Hips tilting, I ground against him, knowing just what this game required of me. That the naked, melting flesh between my legs was a lure he could not resist when it traced the growing bulge at his inseam. “Please,” I gasped. “Look what she did to me.”

Sending a barb of pure, electric heat singing through my chest, he looked and saw the wall the Head Priestess had built.

“I can’t feel anything,” I whispered. “She took it all. Asher”—I swallowed, breath hitching when his fingers tightened at the sound of his name on my lips—“I’m so hungry… so cold…”

Shuddering beneath me, the captain relented. Worked to unravel all that Sasha had done, he sent fire to cleanse me of her influence. Chipping away at the shackles that held me in thrall, he thawed me of the frosted ice.

A tiny, fractured moan bubbled up and I sagged against him. Forehead dipping as the sparkling haze began to fade. As he warmed me, bit by bit.

“Do it, then,” he whispered, hips flexing against the spot where I was wet and aching and warm. “Take what you need, little empath. My warrior priestess.”

I couldn’t help myself—I groaned. Set loose, free to indulge, I slipped beneath his skin and drank.

Just as I had with the general.

Just as Asher had taught me.

I gave the empath all she might ever want and settled back to watch the carnage unfold.

With scarcely more than an errant thought, the heart thudding between us grew erratic. His touch between my breasts growing sweaty before the blunt scrape of nails scored my skin.

“What…” He gasped. Seized my wrist, and brought my manacles to life. Freezing me where I straddled him, the pulse of molten gold surged through my veins.

But it was too late.

I was already inside.

Already drinking from a cup named vengeance, I was messy and wild. Free to indulge the joy of claiming this power over an elite.

Theelite.

The one who’d paid a mere fifty dollars for my freedom.

Who’d bound me for eternity with joy singing in his shriveled black heart.

The very man who’d taken my innocence from the back with rough hands and rougher words that had left marks too deep to wash away. Marks that couldn’t be cleansed with mere fire, and couldn’t be withered by a deep frost.

He’d promised to make me like it. To use pleasure to punish. To make me beg and swallow down every… single… drop…

And I had promised not to stop until every one of his kind lay dead at my feet.

No matter the cost.

That I might die trying.

I crooned as I felt his heart stutter and spit. Grinned when he bared blunt teeth and hissed without managing to utter a single word. And when his hand fell away, his influence flickering to a dull hum, I moved to take the rest of it.

To take everything he had left.

Because I didn’t need permission.

Not for this.

Agony lanced through my chest, shot down my left arm, and floundered behind my ribs—but still, I pressed on. Gulping him down despite the sweat beading on my brow. Ignoring the way the room spun and a peculiar, familiar tingle prickled at my lips.

And so I didn’t noticed when my vision tunneled down to a narrow point once more.

Not until I slumped against him.

Boneless.

All but unable to force a breath through the ring of frost gripping my lungs in a frigid grip, my cheek pressed to his shoulder.

“Sssstop,” he hissed, but that was all.

Nothing else could penetrate the ravenous dark when it yawned around us…

… and swallowed us whole…