“Kayal?”
His smile broadened into a grin, draining the pent-up fear inside me.
I leaped up and wrapped my arms around him, almost knocking him off his feet.
He embraced me back, holding on tight.
I opened my mouth to speak but the words came out in broken fragments.
“I… You… I thought… But then…”
I gave up the pursuit of comprehension and threw my arms around him again.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
He breathed me in and relished the scent, even though I couldn’t have smelled very fresh after being in this cell the past few hours.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” he said.
He ran a thumb over my cheek and gently rubbed my ear lobes between his fingers, an affectation he’d developed during our few days together.
“I came because I couldn’t marry the M’rora,” I said. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I know where my heart belongs. It’s right here. With you.”
I placed my hand on his and we interlocked our fingers.
He leaned his head forward, joining my forehead.
We shut our eyes, reveling in our shared intimacy in this, the darkest of places.
“I’m thrilled to see you,” he said.
But something snagged on his words, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the concern etched on his face.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said.
“Of course I came. We’re meant to be together.”
He shut his eyes and his shoulders sagged.
“What I told you about our culture is all true. There’s a mating ceremony, and the Elders have decided you’ll take part. And you know what that entails.”
One Shadow warrior after another taking their turns with me…
I shivered.
“But you’ll bust me out of here, right? You’ll get me out of here and we’ll hijack a ship and find somewhere safe—”
“Nowhere is safe. They’ll find us no matter where we go. You’ll suffer the same fate as you would have today.”
I blinked at that and my eyes shifted between his.
I frowned at his lips, disbelieving the words coming out of them.
“I don’t understand.”
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
“You said that already,” I snapped.
I pulled my hand from his and stood up.
He did the same and towered over me.
“I thought you would try to rescue me. I thought you would change your mind.”
“I’m not the one who changed their mind. You are. You chose this path and there’s no going back. There is no escape.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
I took the risk to come here, sacrificed my freedom, and he was giving up on me?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He was sorry.
I’d forfeited my life for him and all he could say was he was sorry?
I wrapped my arms around my chest.
It felt like my heart had been torn out.
“Ava…”
I turned away from him.
“Go. I don’t want to see you again.”
“You have to see me again. I have to claim you again in front of the empire.”
The tears stung my eyes.
“Fine. But don’t look at me when you do it. I don’t want to even think of you.”
A knock came on the door.
“Time’s up,” the guard grunted.
Kayal didn’t move.
He just stood there, staring at me.
Then he turned and knocked on the door.
It squeaked open and he stepped out.
His shadow cloaked me in shadow once more, only now the darkness swept over all of me—including my heart.
He’d sentenced me to a life of servitude.
And it wasn’t only to him.
It was another hour before the prison guards came to collect me.
I was lost in my own world among the myriad of dark thoughts that filled my head like storm clouds.
They must have expected the same reaction from me as the other prisoners.
But that wasn’t what they got.
I stood up, dusted off my dress, and stepped through the doorway.
The guards exchanged curious looks, suspecting a trick, and maintained tight control of me as they led me down the hallway.
Some of the other prisoners peered through the bars in their doors at me as I passed by.
My silence must have been deafening to their ears.
The only thing deafening to mine was Kayal’s condemnation.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
I was numb, barely even aware of the alien corridors that slipped past me like the scales of a giant snake.
Maybe if I maintained this numb mindset, the entire event would pass by without me even registering it.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
His words echoed through my mind over and over again.
He was right.
It was naive to think he would risk losing what he gained from me turning up at the Citadel gates.
His coveted improved social status.
I was a fool for thinking he loved me.
My memories on Qyah’an’ka would become poison in my veins.
None of it was true, none of it real.
And that was more painful than anything they could do to my physical body.
We came to a set of stairs and rose one flight at a time.
Far above, I heard the muffled and echoing roars of a large crowd.
The baying audience that would watch the mating ceremony as one male after another took his turn with me.
Even in my near-comatose state, tears ran down my cheeks.
Nothing could be worse than this.
I couldn’t shield myself from it completely.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
And worst of all, the first lover to claim me would be the one I had lost my heart to.
It could only go downhill from there.
The roaring became louder until it reverberated through the floor and up my legs.
Maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Listen to the audience, I told myself, and let it overwhelm my senses.
“Duh!”
The guard who’d uttered the shocked expletive fell onto his face.
At first, I thought he’d tripped and fallen.
His unconscious form slid down the stairs, taking one step after another until he reached the bottom.
Beneath that screaming, baying crowd, came a louder bellow from a single throat I hadn’t heard the first time.
A solid block of wood whoomped through the air and smacked against a second prison guard’s skull.
He fell to his knees, but before he hit the ground, the wedge of wood cracked him across the back of the head a
