All too soon it ended. His hands callous as ever as he dragged Aida about by the iron grip on her arm. Buffing her dry with hard strokes, tightening the laces of her gown himself. Too tight by far, but she didn’t dare complain. Not when he rounded her side, and she glimpsed the crimson swirling in the golden depths of his gaze. Instead she attempted to dress him, to hide away that pulsing thing in the hope he would not change his mind too soon. A brave act, despite her numbed fingers fumbling at every turn. His tunic slipped over his head, tugging on his tight trousers. The strange vest that hung to his knees with elaborate embroidery paired with a wide sash he directed her to wrap around his waist.
With a snort, Er’it took a chair and looked at the mismatched confusion of the buttons at his wrists. “Get my boots.”
“Y-Yes, sir.” Aida rushed to find the boots. Her mad dash leading to her dropping to hands and knees to crawl beneath the bed to get at the mate to the one she found draped over a chest. Returning to him, she knelt with care, keeping some distance between them lest he grab hold of her head again. Not that he couldn’t force her forward, but she could hope.
Aida grunted with the effort of tugging the tall boots into place. She didn’t understand why he made her do this. Sure that there were hordes of attendants that would do a far better job than she ever could, she assumed he liked to humiliate her. To watch her cheeks warm when she didn’t do it well or even right.
“Come,” he said, voice a whip crack in the calm. Destroying every trace of it as he stood and stalked towards the outer door.
Left to jog in his wake to keep up, Aida looked back at her room only the once. The only life she’d ever known was being snatched away and what lay beyond was nothing but new and terrifying horrors. All of it wrapped up in the man who made her cry out in bliss through the long night, the very one taking her away from whatever measure of safety these dark walls had ever afforded her.
She’d always prayed for more than what Otaso doled out to her in pathetic sips. It would seem someone had answered those bitter hopes, and with such utter contempt for her person as to cast her out into the middle of a world she didn’t know, with nothing more than a man who seemed to find her distasteful and desirable with a turn of his hand.
Chin tucked against her chest, the stairs she had traversed more often in the past few days than she had in her entire life sped away under her soft shoes. She was this man’s slave now, and there was less she could do about that than she could have helped Otaso being her guardian.
This was her life now. She must survive it somehow.
Chapter 8 Aida
Coming out into the brilliant sunshine, Aida wanted nothing but to run to the dim confines of her suite.
People milled about, shouting and yelling. A chaos of color and sound that bombarded her. Cuffing her about the head as Er’it led her through the fray of moaning, shaggy beasts tied to large carts. Overloaded with bounties shimmering in silver and ruby, things she knew would have come from Otaso’s fortress.
The snug embrace of her bodice constricted her panting breaths, leaving her to gasp as she ran after her new master. More terrified of her surroundings than the man who ignored her for the moment. Past those that would stare with open curiosity, more than one hailing Er’it in greeting. Calling him majesty with a smile on their face. A beloved king then, one who stole away lands and young women, leaving them broken and disused.
Dashing the back of her hand over a gritty cheek, Aida forced herself not to look back as clouds of dingy ochre surrounded her. The dry dirt of the courtyard worked into a suffocating frenzy as young men scurried here and there, the great beasts stomping their feet. Horses, things she’d only seen in books and from afar, made high-pitched shrieks and snorting grunts as she passed. Terrifying her as their muscled bulk shifted closer. Ringing metal and hollow wood swarmed through the yellowing cloud that surrounded her on all sides.
At the end of her reserves, ready to collapse, to scream and cry, Er’it drew up short. His head turned as if he would look at her, but he changed his mind in the last moment. Vaulting up onto a giant gray monster with feathery tufts of sooty hair around its feet and twisting horns of glossy alabaster. Before Aida could make sense of the thing she was seeing, he nudged the strange creature with his knees, edging it closer to Aida so that Er’it could snap his fingers in front of her nose. Scaring her half to the Abyss before holding his hand down to her.
“Come.”
There was no question in his tone, not a breath of mercy in the dust clogging her nose and coating her mouth with oily grit. Still Aida shook her head fast and hard, feet scuttling away from the immense thing. All of her attention on the heavy hooves that could crush her with ease and not the man astride it. When it snorted a great breath, long tail snapping as a pennant in brisk wind, Aida slapped a hand to her mouth to silence her scream.
As it pawed at the earth, making the many metal rings and trinkets in the fall of hair over its arching neck ring and clamor, so much like its rider she
