“You’re going to ruin me,” Er’it murmured, thumb tracing the pouty redness of her lower lip. Straightening, he inhaled long and deep to clear his mind. Snapping his fingers in front of her face, he startled the Omega into something approaching sober. His tight-lipped smirk making her blush a gorgeous shade of bronzed pink. “I told you I’d not go around tainted by your slick. Next time, I’ll do more than make you clean me with that little mouth.”
Her muffled cry prickled down his spine, wrenching the stiff column of his back with something foreign and unwanted. Not regret or pity, Er’it couldn’t quite name the emotion slithering under his skin as he pulled on his clothes and left the tent. Abandoning her to find the other chest with the least decorative of her attire, he sought Tor’en.
It wasn’t difficult to find the old mage. Bustling around the carts groaning under the weight of books, shouting at the young boys to secure ropes and bags full of his precious parchments. The feathery tufts of stark white hair poked up at every angle, as ever changing as the sands when Tor’en ran a creased palm over the thick locks once more.
“I told you half a dozen times to keep the brass near the top, you sniveling pile of rat dung,” Tor’en shouted at a wide-eyed boy of no more than ten years.
Er’it hid his smile, a true one he hadn’t shown in too long as he waited in the periphery of the chaos that was Tor’en and his pupils. He’d been the mage’s student once, all that bluster and name calling nothing compared to the scope of the man’s care for his charges. It had been the craggy old man who helped Er’it in those first days when he’d laid himself open upon the scorching sands, no matter that Tor’en found the bloody path Er’it had chosen distasteful to the extreme.
Humor dying on a thin wisp of sultry air, Er’it moved through the scrambling knot of boys towards his advisor and friend. Skinny limbs flying every which way, they hurried to get out Er’it’s path. Afraid of him, of the power they knew he wielded.
“And what do you want?” Tor’en huffed and grumbled, tossing precious cargo back over his shoulder for an older boy to catch. By the grunt, a sack full of brass bowls, the accoutrement of incantations.
“I need to speak with you about your recent reading material.”
“Pah! Bunch of lunatic ramblings. There was nothing more there than what I told you, what you read for yourself.” Tor’en turned, still agile in his advanced years, rounding on Er’it with a tight smile. “Unless you don’t read the ancients as well as you used to. Needing lessons again?”
“You’re still a thorn in my side, old man,” Er’it said, leaning back against the cart to turn his gaze up to the bright sky. Nothing like home, but the same sky still. “The only one that knew anything of her was a maid, and she knew nothing of importance.”
“Those villagers knew enough.”
“Of her, yes. Not how she came to be there, where she came from.” Dropping his voice to a low murmur so their conversation remained between them, Er’it took the satchel Tor’en fussed with to tie it up onto the cart’s side himself. “How can I return her to a place no one knows?”
“Forgive me, Majesty, but have you bothered to ask her?” The wooden case of precious ceramic bowls met the ground with a bony rattle, all movement around them ceasing as the boys and other onlookers stopped to stare.
Spine snapping to attention, Er’it rounded on his oldest friend. Eyes narrowing at the rumbling tone, and the dark gaze shimmering with more anger than seemed necessary, Er’it stamped down on his immediate reaction. Slamming his fist into Tor’en’s mouth wouldn’t get him anywhere, and it wasn’t him Er’it was angry with.
“So you know how I’ve been using her?” Movements easy, casual, he leaned against the cart once more. Dispensing the curious gathering with a single glance.
“Whole damned train knows. Everyone hears her screaming, saw the state of her.” Shaking his head, Tor’en faced Er’it with his jaw firmed. Dark skin mottled with wine rich stains, he dared to bare his teeth as he bit out, “She’s a child, Er’it. I don’t know nor care what she was doing with the Black Mage, but I know an innocent girl when I see one. She’s a whipped pup, and you’re just going to keep on kicking her, aren’t you?”
“What I do with her is no one’s business but mine, old man.” Er’it loosened his fists, flexing his fingers against his thighs.
“I can only hope the Hat’or know what they’re doing with the poor girl.” Tor’en lost some of his bite, seeming to wilt before Er’it as he let out a gusty breath tainted with anger and sorrow. “I wish many things, my boy. That I had steered you away from this path, that I had fought harder for your humanity and heart before you lost it to the bloody path you chose. Most of all, I wish I had never found those damned books.”
“Yet you did. She will have this heat they speak of, I will take her power, and I will go on in victory as I always have. As the Hat’or you so love have shown me time and again.”
“Is it victory over land or this evil growing inside of you they show you, Er’it?”
“Evil? Pah! I am a man, the same as any other, Tor’en. Make no mistake, give any of these men a chance at her slick cunt and they’d do the same as I have.”
“Perhaps they would, but would they destroy her so completely in the process?”
“Something as weak as that is meant to be broken.”
Without waiting for a response, Er’it strode away, careful to keep his steps unhurried. Not letting these glimpses of his anger raging out of control seep past the façade his
