Hold Me Never (Holding Never) (14 page)

The Empress steps away and surveys her handiwork.
Satisfied, she stands over Bain and covers his body with her rustling
skirts. She closes her eyes and lowers her body. Her voluminous
skirts cover the lower half of Bain's body entirely. The Generals
all look down or avert their eyes. Some pretend to be concentrating
on their food, forcing large chunks of meat into their mouths and
chewing vigorously for a long time. How they retain their appetites,
or keep their food down, is a mystery. Through sheer discipline. Or
abject terror.

One pair of eyes from the banquet table remains staring
at the Empress. The Emperor puts down his fork slowly and leans
forward, his beady eyes shining with a strange light.

The Empress begins to move her body, rotating her hips
and breathing hard. Her bosom heaves as she jerks forward and
backwards. Bain is no longer moving, but still the Empress grinds
down on him. She grabs his head, digging her nails into his eye
sockets. His body is being abused and mutilated in front of all the
guests, but still the Empress is not satisfied. She rides him more
vigorously, slamming his head down on the floor until there is a
sickening crack. She rears up and slaps him repeatedly, her nails
scouring his cheeks. Bain is now nothing but a mangled mess beneath
the Empress's skirts.

Abruptly, she stands up with a bellow. “Useless!
This Slave is utterly, completely useless! There is no satisfaction
to be had from him.”

Her bosom heaving, she steps back and looks down at
Bain's bloodied body. His loin cloth has been pushed up his waist,
revealing his shrunken, blackened penis.

She straightens up and curls her lip at General Link.
“Is this how you choose your Slaves, General Link? I wonder
how you choose your soldiers.”

General Link opens his mouth to retort, but is saved
from the Empress's wrath by the female General beside him. As she
makes a great show of filling his wine glass, she leans in to murmur
a warning in his ear.

The Empress shifts her attention from General Link to
Owen. Cupping his chin in her palm, she tilts his face this way and
that, as if inspecting his profile. With a snarl, she reaches under
his loin cloth and grabs him. A breath escapes her, and her anger
and frustration twists into a dark, simmering desire. Her lips curl
up as she hisses against his throat, “You will satisfy me. It
is your reward. And mine.”

He turns his face to the side, away from her.

There is a dangerous glint in the Empress's eye as she
moves one hand up his chest, creeping up the column of his throat to
his cheek. Her talons dig into Owen's face, drawing blood. “Look
at me,” she whispers.

He doesn't.

Her shriek is like a knife, slashing through the frozen
silence in the Great Hall. “Look at me, Slave!”

He turns his face stiffly to her, but his eyes refuse to
look down. Instead, he flicks his eyes over his shoulder—to
me.

The Empress follows his gaze swiftly. I struggle not to
waver under the crushing weight of her dark, piercing gaze.
Curiously, a smile spreads across her face, spreading like the eerie
light of an unnatural dawn.

“
Oh? I see. Now I know why you won't look at me.
You have your eye on someone. A Siren, no less.” She arches
an eyebrow and smiles. There is a strange sound at the back of her
throat, like a growl and a laugh. “Fine. I am a generous
Empress. And you have won a fearsome victory after all.” She
releases him from her iron grip. “You may choose. Choose a
Siren to come with you.”

She is asking him to choose, but it is not about choice.
It is about control. Controlling him by permitting him, at her
pleasure, to choose. But she already knows his choice. She is
simply testing him, challenging him.

You may choose the woman you want, so that she can
suffer with you. Or you can choose someone else.

At her words, I know that I should keep my head down.
Curiosity kills. It does.
So don't look up.
Keep your
eyes down, keep your eyes down...

I can feel Owen's stare burning into me.

This time I manage to keep my eyes down.
Self-preservation demands it.

“
Choose. Now!” the Empress orders
imperiously.

“
I choose...her.” Owen's low voice travels
across the ring to me, sounding strained and distant. “Zoey.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. No. No!

I am forced to snap my head up when a cold metal collar
locks around my neck.

“
Take them to my chambers,” the Empress says
with a sweep of her hand. As guards move in to flank me, the Empress
sniffs over her shoulder to the Emperor. “You may pick two
virgin Sirens for your chambers this night, my dear. Enjoy. And to
all our good Generals, I bid you good night. I await your good
news.”

The Generals rise in a hurry as her eyes sweep round the
Great Hall one last time. Smiling, she exits the room with a pointed
glance at the Emperor and a rustle of her stiff, jewel-encrusted
skirts.

As soon as she is gone, the Emperor slams his hands down
on the table to push himself up. Staggering to his feet, he waves
impatiently to the Generals who are all standing at attention, “Well,
you heard her. So good night, good night, good news to all. Go.
All of you, go! Leave!” he roars.

As the Generals bow and swiftly take their leave, the
Emperor weaves his way round the banquet table, wagging his finger in
our direction. “Ah, my Sirens, my lovely, sweet Sirens. Let's
see. You're all so beautiful, so alluring and attractive, but
tonight, tonight I am to have virgins. Virgins!” He lets out
an ugly laugh. “All right. I will pick now. Red, red, red.
So. You then. And you.” He points towards the end of the
line. “Take those two to my chambers!”

“
Yes, Your Majesty!”

I turn around to look at the hapless girls who have been
chosen. Who else will be collared like me? I gasp as guards step
forwards to collar Hani and the blond girl beside her. The girl who
had been the first to smile at me and whose name I had never asked.
They are both dressed in sheer, red fabric. I stare at the line of
girls dressed in red and blue transparent fabric, their faces
betraying shock, horror, sorrow, feigned indifference and barely
concealed relief. Three among them have been chosen and collared
tonight. The rest may go. Kept alive—for a while longer.
Maybe a day, a week, a month longer. That's all.

I stare at Hani, at her small body shivering under that
red, gossamer dress. I stare down at my own blue dress, and the
realization pounds into my brain like a sledgehammer.

You may pick two virgins for your chambers this
night.

Hani is dressed in red. So is the girl beside her.
Red, red, red, said the Emperor.

The girls in red are virgins.

I would have been among them, dressed and marked for the
Emperor's perverse pleasure, had it not been for Jaxon. He had lied
for me. He had tried to protect me from what must be the greatest
horror of all in the Palace. I catch the look on Hani's face. She
is as white as a ghost, all the blood and life drained from her face.

As she is dragged out of the Great Hall, she turns and
holds my gaze like a final embrace. Her lips quiver, but she manages
to mouth something to me.

Don't cry.

My feet seem to be stuck to the blood-soaked floor, so
that even when I am gruffly instructed to move, I don't. I can't.

Even my voice doesn't work. I try to call out after
Hani, but my throat clenches and squeezes her name down my chest,
into my heart.
Hani!
Hani
, come back! Don't go!
Don't...don't.
Don't. Cry.

Guards finally drag me out of the Great Hall, up never
ending carpeted stairs and through mirrored doors which reflect my
wretched image back to me before they swing shut. My legs and brain
are no longer functioning. They feel heavy, attached to me but not a
part of me. My arms dangle uselessly at my sides once they are
released. But not for long.

Before I can raise a hand to push my hair out of my
eyes, my arms are pulled high up over my head and my wrists locked in
thick, leather cuffs. My toes lift off the ground and I rotate like
a corpse, suspended by my arms.

Someone grips my chin and forces my head up.

I blink at the blurry image of the Empress in front of
me. Her face contorts in amusement and revulsion. “The wench
can't seem to keep her head up and her eyes open. Do something about
it.”

“
Yes, Your Majesty.”

My head is yanked back by my hair. The pain wakes me up
and I blink around the black room in confusion and apprehension. I
seem to glimpse strange, flickering figures around the room, figures
with bizarre combinations of human and animal body parts. In the
middle of these gruesome, twisting figures is an enormous bed.

Am I in a bedroom?

Something is descending from the ceiling directly above
me. Metal arms stretch down towards my face from two black holes in
the ceiling. I start to thrash and twist, but cold, metal fingers
grip my head firmly in place. More metal fingers clamp around my
eyes, forcing my eyes wide open. I fight to blink, but to no avail.
It is impossible to close my eyes. I am forced to stare straight
ahead, at that large bed. My eyes feel as though they are going to
pop right out of their sockets.

Panic surges in me, my limbs jerking as adrenalin
courses through my body. I become painfully aware of my surroundings
and the sensations pounding through my body.

Who else is in the room with me? What is going to
happen to me?

The guards retreat swiftly and silently once they have
checked that I am properly secured by the metal clamps around my eyes
and the cuffs around my wrists. I am aware of a door closing behind
me. I try to turn around, but all I can do is swivel my eyes.

I can hear my own short, wheezing breaths as I see my
surroundings clearly for the first time. The room is dim, with black
candles throwing lengthy shadows across the walls. There is a huge
four-poster bed in the middle of the room. The red satin sheets
ripple across the bed like waves. The black candles are held by
strange statues standing all over the room, like sentries surrounding
the bed. There are statues with animal heads and grotesquely huge
human genitalia. There are statutes twisted together with both male
and female parts, devouring each other. There are shapes and figures
of things or creatures I cannot even identify. All of them are
holding the flickering candles on their arms, tentacles, tongues,
breasts, penises, claws and other body parts.

The flickering flames on the candles burn with an eerie
intensity and color. The flames turn from green to blue, orange to
red. They glow like hundreds of watchful eyes, peering from the
shadows, staring into your soul.

My fear escalates sharply, becoming something more than
fear. It feels almost like an out-of-body experience, like I have
stepped out of my body to witness my own agonizing horror to this
whole scene. Watching it, recognizing my own stark terror is worse
than just feeling frightened. The awareness and consciousness of an
impending, inevitable horror that is about to happen is a kind of
deliberate, visceral torture.

A shadow moves in front of me. I cannot squeeze my
eyes shut, but I can still avert my eyes. I stare at a yellow-green
flame rising in a hypnotic dance until my vision starts to blur.

The Empress steps into my line of sight and trails one
sharp nail down the side of my face.

“
I can gouge out your eyes just like that,”
she hisses in my ear. “Very slowly, with my hands. Or, I can
hold a flame to your eye until all the water runs out and it sizzles
and pops.” She laughs. “But first, I want you to see.
I want your eyes. On. Me. Like all their eyes.” She
gestures at all the staring, fornicating statutes. “All.
Watching. Me.”

I try to swallow but end up making a choking sound.
“Good.” She pats my cheek. “Very good.”

She steps away from me. “Come. Owen.” She
turns her head slowly. “Come to bed. I know what you can do.
I have seen your strength, and your stamina. I want you to fuck me
well, Owen. Satisfy me. Or—I will feed you her eyes.”

I twist a little in my restraints, and see a tall shape
separate itself from the shadows. He has been standing so still
behind one of the statues, watching me all this while.

Uncontrollably, I start to shake. Something bad is
going to happen. Not just to him. But to me as well. I just know
it. I can feel it.

Owen is stepping up to the huge bed in the middle of the
room. The Empress sidles up to him from behind and rests her face
against his scarred back. She begins to run her tongue down his
winding scars, her hands clawing into his skin as she licks with
increased frenzy.

“
Mmmm...this is what I want...” she murmurs,
kissing and licking his back. Owen remains as still as the
surrounding statutes, his green eyes boring into mine. His jaw and
fists are clenched tight, his face showing no emotion even as the
Empress bites hard into his shoulder.