Frost to Dust by Myra Danvers

19

“Asher—”

He clapped one large hand over my lips, hushing me. And then, lips pressed to my ear, he murmured, “It’s not him.”

I shivered, gooseflesh pimpling my skin at the sound of his voice. So low and husky. So close. But I glanced at the door and pressed my words into his palm. “You’re sure?”

With a nod, the captain pushed me off his lap and said, simply, “He wouldn’t knock.”

It was hard to argue with that.

Hard to do anything, really, but sit in a heap where he’d left me. Curled on the floor in a tangle of bare limbs and twisted fabric. Watching as he stood, clung to the desk, then moved on unsteady feet to the window and peered down at the street below.

“Surrounded,” he murmured, and pulled back from the window. Pinching the bridge of his nose with eyes squeezed shut, he pulled in a deep, controlled breath.

Exhaled in a steady stream.

And then, “Even with Colonel Viridian’s support…” He scowled at the carpet. “It’s not enough.”

Just standing there was a drain. I could feel it pulling at me, even without touching his skin. The way he yearned to sit, to close his eyes and succumb to sleep where we both might recover some of the energy I’d squandered.

Another, more forceful knock sounded at the door. Impatient now. Edging toward frantic.

The muscle at the corner of his jaw jumped, and pausing only to collect his weapon from a desk drawer, the captain moved to answer the summons.

Side arm out of sight, hidden behind his thigh.

His finger on the trigger—my veins tingling with the distant memory of pain, but not the promise.

Because there was nothing left. Not a flicker of dark magic flickering between us.

It was a bluff.

A threat that wasn’t.

Dark eyes slid over his shoulder, and the captain’s chin dipped. Just once, before he turned the knob…

… and revealed Alicia.

Her face all but bloodless. Fingers twisting around and around a crumpled envelope, the pleasure slave had her bottom lip caught between the edges of gleaming teeth. Sparkling green eyes rimmed in white gave her the appearance of a much younger woman.

“My lord,” she breathed, and rushed into the room. Taking liberties. “The general’s men are here. They say you’re to be escorted to the harem and won’t say why—”

The captain snatched the letter from her fingers and broke the seal. Inky eyes flicking over the missive as the crease between his brows grew deeper with each passing second. “Fuck,” he hissed, and crushed the offensive note in a white-knuckled fist. “Fuck!”

“The house it—it’s surrounded by armed soldiers,” Alicia whispered, wringing her hands as she took in the state of the disheveled man standing before her. “My lord—what’s going on?”

He exhaled a shuddering breath. “We’ve been summoned.” Pushing past the anxious pleasure slave, he staggered across the room and set his weapon down with a clatter of metal on wood, then stooped. Helping me to stand despite the way I swayed and clung to him for aid.

“For what?” I asked, too overwrought to pay Alicia any mind.

Instead of answering, he pushed the ball of heavy cream paper into my palm, rounded the desk, and began to riffle through his drawers. A manic energy bleeding from his entire frame.

I smoothed the crinkled paper out before me.

Captain Asher Rawlings, of the North District’s Special Forces,

His Royal Majesty, Octavius Cicero Tiberius, formally requests your presence to perform a live demonstration for the entertainment of the royal sibling, before the ceremonial inauguration of several young elites.

You’ve been selected for this honor due, in large part, to your exemplary dedication to the empire, both on and off the battlefield.

However, rumors of your extraordinary golden priestess have been heard even in the capitol, and his Majesty is eager to see what you and the girl can do.

Your attendance to this event is a requirement.

General Harper Tilcot,

North District

Iswallowed the lump in my throat. Read the letter again and again, trying to make sense of the formal speech. The foreign names of men I didn’t know, and most of all, the sinister tone lurking just behind the flowery words.

“The Emperor’s brother,” Alicia whispered, awed. Revenant, she stood over my shoulder with fingers pressed to her lips. The subtle scent of her perfumed skin enough to make me sweat. “He’s here? But my lord,” she said. “I thought you couldn’t…” Sparkling green eyes flicked to my face. “Couldn’t use the priestess without killing her?”

But I didn’t sneer or look away.

Obsidian eyes darted up to meet my gaze—an unspoken secret passing between us. The knowledge that it was considerably more complicated than that. The consequences more dire than either of us had ever imagined.

A secret neither of us could reveal without risking our own health—if one fell, the other would follow.

“What do we do?” Alicia hissed. “The house is completely surrounded! The general’s men are in the kitchen!”

Alicia squeaked at the slap of heavy hands striking the desktop. Tension rolling off him in black waves, the captain stood with feet braced wide, head hanging low. A shock of dark hair covered a dewy forehead, shoulder blades jutting up to tent the back of his shirt. And for the space of several ragged breaths, I thought he wouldn’t answer.

Thought he’d reached his limit and finally cracked right down the middle.

And then, “You will do nothing,” he said, enunciating each word with clear precision. “Follow orders as they’ve been given and draw no unnecessary attention to yourself or the others.”

Cheeks heating, Alicia looked as if she meant to argue.

“Tell them we’ll be down in a moment, please,” he continued, and his hands curled into fists, nails scraping at the glossy desk top. “Go now. Please?” he added when it seemed the pleasure slave wouldn’t obey.

Alicia, loyal to the bitter end.

Nostrils flared white, tears brimming along her lash line, Alicia nodded and turned to go. Closing the door behind her with a careful snap.

I slid the royal summons across the desktop. “What about us?”

He took a deep, steadying breath. Set that bottomless gaze to mine, his jaw flexing around several started and aborted answers.

“We need energy,” I said, choosing my words with careful intention. “Energy that won’t come from rest or nutrition. It’s got to come from a more… reliable source. Something we can use now. When we need it.”

“Go on then, empath,” he spat. “Say it. Out loud.”

Brows raised, I merely blinked at the man whose hands were stained with the blood of a thousand slaves.

“Which one did you have your eye on, hmm?” He flung a hand out, toward the door. “Alicia for betraying your priestess blood? What about Beau?” he asked, eyes gone dark as pitch. “She’s old anyway. No one will notice her missing, right?”

I shrugged. “Neither of them have the sort of power we need.” Shameless in my assessment, because he knew damn-well I was right.

“Ah. You want an elite, is that it? Get a little vengeance before some magnificent last stand?”

A smirk creased the edge of my lips, and I flashed him the point of modified canines. “Can you blame me?”

“I say we take a priestess or two,” he retorted, not moved by my morbid sense of humor. “Give them freedom before death.”

“What’s your solution, Captain Rawlings?” I asked, too tired to rise to the bait. Too stubborn to simply walk into the maw of death without any real effort to avoid it.

To this, he had nothing to say. Nothing but a deepening scowl and a jaw that worked around a mouth full of nothing.

I jerked my chin at the royal summons. “What is a live demonstration?”

“It’s an execution. The public slaying of an enemy to the empire.” He lifted one shoulder and didn’t blink. “A captured rebel soldier.”

“That’s sick,” I whispered.

“No more macabre than draining a fellow energy wielder to save ourselves.”

Swallowing the retort, I said, “And this is what you people call entertainment? Amusing enough to bring some fancy royal man here to watch a defenseless soldier die?”

“Not usually,” he said, and smirked. “No.”

I collapsed into the chair and pulled the summons toward me once more. Seeing without reading. My eyes flicked over the scrawling loops and elegant curls of ink on crumpled paper. “Then what’s different now?”

“You.” And with all the subtly of a coiled predator, he added, “The sort of power I can wield with a priestess who isn’t. A so-called empath. The empire is very interested to know what sort of tactical capabilities might come of my bond. If it can be replicated without slaughtering our stock of priestesses.”

What little blood remained in my cheeks drained away, leaving me dizzy with the weight of such implications. That I really was unequal to this game played by men born and bred for war.

“I did warn you, Mila. Not to draw attention to yourself. Not to piss off Harper or give him reason to retaliate.” Rounding the desk in three rolling strides, the captain loomed above me. Fingers twisting into the locks of silver-blonde hair that had been my downfall. “This is his revenge. He knows I can’t use your power without killing you.”

I licked lips gone dry. “Using it will kill us both. Asher, there’s nothing left.”

“Harper also knows,” he continued, and pulled me close, “that a refusal before the emperor’s brother will get him exactly what he’s wanted all along.” He laughed, then, and it was a bitter, hateful thing. “I’ll be stripped of my rank. My pension. You.”

For the first time, I blinked and saw something more than the monster. Something deeper than the elite soldier aroused by the pain he might inflict.

I couldn’t name it.

Wasn’t nearly ready to do more than acknowledge it existed.

So instead, I said, “Then our options are few. Embrace what I am. Unleash the empath and take an elite”—I cleared my throat—“a… priestess, or a dozen powerless citizens and survive. Or die trapped. Victims of Tilcot’s game.”

That same tentative knock rapped on the heavy oaken door. Alicia’s return signaling the end of our debate.

Questions left unanswered.

Become what this horrible place demanded of its slaves—desperate and coy, whores for the slightest scrap of power—or fall.

Together.

As enemies, fucked raw by the empire.

Bound together by secrets and blood magic.

Deeply and forever.

“What do we do?” I whispered, hardly daring to give the question life.

His eyes flicked over my face. Brushed over my lips for an instant, before he met my gaze with one that threatened to swallow me whole.

And then, simply, “We pray.”