Turning away as fast as the sludgy limpness of her muscles would allow, Aida dropped her focus to the table once again. Finding Otaso’s hand reaching for hers where it trembled atop the dark wood to take delicate fingers in his. Squeezing her hand, the small bones ground together, groaning as he jerked her arm closer.
“It must be tonight, Imperial Majesty,” the dusty robed male said into the tense silence resonating with the red limned buzz of Otaso’s power. “They grow closer by the day.”
“I am aware, Molaro.”
“The time is near, Imperial Majesty. We cannot delay this,” Molaro continued, rising with measured care from his seat to approach a large chest set upon a narrow side table that held the bountiful trays of food not so long ago.
“I know,” Otaso snapped, dragging Aida from her chair by his hold on her hand.
Crashing into his side, Aida stifled a shriek as she fell to her knees beside him. Gripped under her arms, Otaso yanked her into his lap, leaving the room to swirl and dance. What little food she’d consumed threatened to revolt as the stark colors of the room smudged and feathered, drifting through the room on eddies of heat and cold that rushed through her face in turns.
“Sir, what’s happening?” Tongue thick and sticky with the remnants of sweet wine, the words smeared past her lips to stumble over Otaso’s collar when he cradled her against the broad expanse of his chest. Something he hadn’t done since she was small, when she’d fall asleep in the broad chair kept by the fireplace for his use, hoping to see a face other than Immari’s.
Given no response, Aida’s head lolled. Falling back on the limp arch of her neck to watch the far away ceiling soar past. Jostled with every purposeful stride, Aida’s hand pressed against the ache of her stomach, the corset digging into delicate insides that resented such treatment. She wanted it gone.
“Soon, my little fawn. Do not distract me so,” Otaso rasped against her cheek, tearing Aida’s hands away from their fumbling at the front of her gown.
Aida whined as liquid flames surged through her on a roar of thunder. A jagged pain crackling through her spine, making her writhe and arch. It crawled beneath her skin, a prickling sting that came in waves. Every move to ease the growing agony denied, she found herself locked tight in Otaso’s arms. Kicking feet sending her skirts flailing into the air, a banner of denial that snapped with the next rush of crimson blotting out her vision.
Hearing the scream from a long way off, echoing its devastation to pound through her eardrums and into her bones, Aida’s clutching hands slid limp from her guardian’s robes as he settled her undulating body upon the wide dais. Digging palms slid in squealing stutters across the glossy black surface, her shriek adding to the tempest warring within as the taut line of her heel connected with the rough edge.
“Be still!”
Otaso’s command failed to calm, the grating bellow of it twisting down her spine. Wrenching it upwards until Aida feared she’d snap in two. Bloody smears clouded the edges of her vision, tunneling to the dimmed sight of a great dome. Sweeping arches sparked and exploded in bursts of red. Crimson, scarlet, amaranthine, cardinal, all of them swirling together to dance wild across the ashen brick before crashing together. A storm without to match the one within.
Otaso’s wide shoulders blocked out the sight, shadow icy cold as it seeped over her skin. Hands caught, he snarled something, but whether to her or someone else, Aida would never know. Lost in the wracking sensations ripping her apart bit by bit, she hoped only the raw ruin of her throat continued to scream as another layer of pain added itself to the fray.
Thrashing contained, her arms became locked to the stone. Pressed into the unforgiving darkness at wrist and elbow though she continued to writhe. Shoulders threatening to tear free until more pressure came. Bands of iron locking her joints to the icy stone, Aida’s eyes flew wide as a gust of chill air made itself known in the torrents of heat melting her bones.
A single moment of clarity, a breath dragged into aching lungs that burned with a different type of fire. This one from the frigid depths, the coldest winter wind searing delicate tissue. Somehow she saw him there at her feet, pushing at her thighs. Otaso’s face twisted with something hideous, robes in tattered shreds around arms that glowed brilliant, red as an apple and as bright as the sun. Shearing from his flesh into hers where he gripped the quivering muscle. Molaro and Vasari crowded around the dais, mouths moving though she did not hear their words.
A voice strained to be heard, a murmuring cadence somehow not drowned in all the frenzy continuing around her. Soft and sweet, it grew louder, yet still indiscernible in the violent turmoil.
Another breath froze her lungs, those iron bands loose and yielding. The stone she lay upon felt soft and thick, malleable as warm dough. Melting into the implacable sturdiness, she drew another breath to fill her lungs to bursting. Otaso spread
