So I storm forward, circling the tub, towering at the foot of it, angry at myself for leaving her that night, furious at The Trade.
As lost as her.
I have our revenge.
You can get up now, Tuscany.
I lick the blood gushing down my jaw from a talon-deep wound that carved my lower lip to my chin. The metallic taste stokes my hatred.
So, I hold the head out for my sweet, broken sister and slowly, she lifts her blank regard to meet the lifeless eyes of her father, of her betrayer.
She blinks once. “Rome.”
“Not anymore. Now, they will call me Sire.”
“He was your father, Rome.” Unmoved, she looks down, her gaze disappearing into the bath, swimming in her watery grave.
She gives me nothing for my offering, not standing and shaking off the sorrow, not throwing her arms around me and thanking me for her revenge, not healing, not—
I drop the head into the bathtub.
A long hiss of anger presses through my teeth, hatred becoming a solid form in my very cells. “I did it for you!”
She stares blankly at the bobbing head as the dangling veins move like tentacles in the water between her knees, marbling the clear fluid with their blood-red ink.
Then she peers up at me.
The disappointment in her broken eyes shoves me backward a step. After what I’ve just done. This is for her. This is her revenge. To lift her up, to bring her back.
To bring her back to me.
Shocked, I empty my humanity.
My soul blackens against her gaze.
“Very well.” I lift the head from the bath. “I’ll give it to Cairo,” I snarl. “He can put it in a glass case, store it next to the vase that holds your womb.”
“Sire?”
Slowly, I lean back into my throne and ram the memory down. With a long, rough breath, I turn my chin to acknowledged Aster’s Watcher.
“Speak up,” I say to her.
She leans into my ear so I can hear her over the hypnotic music that matches the writhing bodies in front of me. “You asked for an update on Aster. Her basal body temperature dropped since yesterday, Sire. It's unlikely she'll be in prime condition to breed tomorrow night. I will repeat the routine again in three weeks after her body runs a natural cycle.”
Relief and anger both war to respond to her soft, nervous whispers. “Very well,” I state.
“Do you—” She hesitates and then swallows. “Do you wish to know about the other Silk Girls?”
A girl in front of me paws at another young thing’s breasts, and I feel nothing. “You know that I do not,” I answer, never removing my eyes from the spectacle, challenging the erotic scene to get me hard… like she can. “You don’t need to pretend. You know who she is. So shut the gossip down. And if anyone speaks her name in hushed tones, in corners, you come to me.”
Her exhale is heavy. “Not Master Cairo?
“He will not be back for a few months.”
“I understand, Sire.”
“Good. You can leave.”
And so can I. If she is no longer ovulating, I can accompany the CR Guard to the Black Matter Mines, show them my support for their Meaningful Purpose, and gift them some House Girls. I glare at the sleazy creatures ahead of me. Obviously, they are no use to me anymore.
“Paisley,” Kong calls from his station behind me. “You look exhausted.”
“I haven't slept well,” she says from a small distance away, and I turn my head to stare at her for the first time this night. Dark bitten-moons cup her hollow eyes.
“Perhaps she should take a break now, Sire,” Kong offers. “She's not needed around at all hours to monitor the Silk Girl. Now is the right time.”
I shut it down. “She is needed at all hours.”
With a polite bow, she walks away, and I prepare myself for Kong’s imminent insight.
“Everyone needs sleep.”
And there it is.
“She can sleep when she is dead.”
He sighs roughly, and I feel it’s significance even as he stands behind my throne. "You care for that girl. I never thought I'd see the day."
Deliberately obtuse, I ask, “The Watcher?”
He chuckles. “Aster.”
“It's unbearable,” I grit out, still willing the House Girls, dancing and playful before me, to wake up my cock. They don’t. “And I want her, all the time, right now. I want to be around her. She keeps fucking curling into me, and I want to throw her from the bed, but I pull her closer instead. I want to freeze time and hold her. It's like a fucking curse. She is just a Silk Girl, and I am a fucking fool.”
“She curls into you? Seeks safety in you. What I would give for...” He clears his throat, and I save him from my warnings about dreaming of my fragile sister. She is no man’s. That is her vow. And he knows better.
I consider the moment I fought my father, the night I killed him, when I tore his head from his shoulders.
Did he let me?
It was that or kill me.
I will never know.
He was huge, far bigger than me at the time, but I did it fuelled with rage. Perhaps that was my strength. The emotion he lacked powered me. "Did my father ever have this kind of affection for anyone, for a girl?"
"No. No, he didn't.”
“Of course he didn’t.” He was no one’s fool, not soft, nor kind, nor gentle. “He was a king.”
“It's not that he couldn't or even wouldn't. Simply, the right someone never crossed his path, boy. Pity, really. Everyone should feel it once.”
"She's going to have our heirs. That is all,” I confirm, forcing apathy along the length of that statement. That is all. That is all she desires, all she is. To adore, pleasure, provide, fuck right off. Fine.
"In the dark. In secret,” he baits me, trying to decipher how far I am willing to go for her.
To the end…
But she doesn’t want that.
He wants to know how many rules I will break. All of them… He wants me to. And yet, like him, the woman of my affections belongs to The Trade.
“Will you let her go?” he asks.
"When the time comes,” I grit my teeth together, “I will watch her leave.”
The energy thickens as he states, “You might want to figure out how to freeze time then, boy, and not waste it here with me and these House Girls.”
I laugh without mirth. “She softens me,” I admit with a growl, both hating it and… No. Just hating it. “I forget what I want and do what's best for her. It needs to stop. This is exactly why the old-world concept of marriage failed society. It was self-serving. Pathetic.” I am king. She is silly Common Silk Girl. “What I do, what she does, should be for the good of The Cradle and that is all.”
“You hate The Trade,” Kong reminds me.
“I do not hate The Cradle.” My words are hollow as I state, “I am its king. A piece. Remember? You taught me that.”