Given the chance I will kill you, he swore to himself. Any misgivings I may have had because you were once my sister are now gone. I will kill you as surely as night follows day.
The three of them stepped back as the walls rejoined and the floor covering the pit began to scratch its way back into place, the only remnants of the tragic scene the blood that continued to slither down the white marble walls. Tristan stood there in abject hopelessness, his frozen arms hanging at his sides, wondering what would happen next. Wondering what the second mistress had been referring to when she spoke of “other duties to attend to.” He didn’t have to wait very long.
Succiu raised her right arm and immediately an azure bolt appeared, striking the prince squarely in the chest and lifting him high into the air. Immediately he was thrown back with stunning force against the marble wall directly across from the altar and impaled there, ten feet in the air. The back of his skull impacted with the wall with a terrible cracking sound, and for several moments he could not see or hear, his eyes blurry and his ears ringing violently. The dreggan and dirks dug maddeningly through the leather vest and into the skin of his back, and the fragile wound in his side had torn open, beginning to bleed again. Testing both his arms and legs, he found he could move neither.
Pinned to the wall and in excruciating pain, his arms and legs drooping helplessly toward the floor, all he could do was to look down upon his tormentor—the impossibly beautiful woman in black leather with the long, silken hair and the exquisitely slanted, mahogany-colored eyes. The second mistress. The one who liked to taste blood. The woman Faegan had said could not rival the evil of Failee. But the woman who, to the prince’s mind, was in so many ways so much worse.
Succiu stepped in front of where Tristan was pinned to the wall, the snapping sounds of her black, high-heeled boots following her as she went. She motioned for Shailiha to join her there, and draped an affectionate arm around her as the two of them looked up at him, gloating.
“It is now time to tell you that there has been a slight change of plans,” Succiu said, casting her eyes up and down Tristan’s helpless body. “This is the ninth day of Failee’s deliberations, and she is ready to perform the Blood Communion. Think of it, Chosen One. It is to be this very night.” She paused, relishing the words, as if simply speaking them to him could make the ritual happen sooner. “And the other event, the one that the First Mistress so carefully explained to you before, is to take place now.”
Tristan froze, his mind reeling.
She was going to rape him, and take from him his firstborn child.
The second mistress raised one of her long, arched eyebrows. “I can see by the look on your face you understand,” she said, stepping closer to him. “Good. The First Mistress has determined that one of us should carry your child now, before the Communion commences. Her ruminations of the Vagaries have led her to believe that if one of us has already conceived your child when the Communion occurs, the ritual will strengthen the unborn. I must say that I agree with her.” Her eyes narrowed seductively beneath the long, dark lashes.
“It is I who have been chosen to do so,” she continued. “A task which I must say I have been anxious to carry out ever since the first time I saw you on the dais, back in Tammerland. Time did not permit such intimacies then, but we shall make up for that now, won’t we?” Succiu turned her gaze momentarily to Shailiha, who was standing there dutifully.
“Oh, and there is just one other thing,” she added nastily, lowering her voice. Then she smiled. “You should know that Mistress Shailiha has asked to watch,” she whispered.
For a moment Tristan couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t hear. His mind was simply awash with the horror of what was about to happen, literally floating away upon the impact of her words. There was no one to help him, and no way to stop it. But as soon as the realization that Succiu’s words had become clear in his mind, he noticed that something was happening to him. His body was beginning to move away from the wall.
Succiu dropped her arm and the azure bolt disappeared, but the prince remained in the air, a few feet away from the wall. The second mistress then began to manipulate her hands in front of herself as if she were disrobing some imaginary person who might have been standing before her. And his clothes began to come off.
She began with his weapons. Baldric and quiver were removed and lifted up; they fell noisily to the floor, the sword sliding from its sheath and the knives spilling out and skittering across the smooth expanse of marble. His boots were removed, and then his socks. He watched in horror as his arms rose involuntarily above his head and the laces of his vest began to untie themselves. The vest glided up and over him, falling to the floor. Finally, with the mere pointing of Succiu’s finger, his breeches unlaced, and they too fell, in a rumpling heap on top of his other clothes. He slumped forward slightly in defeat, the gold medallion twinkling in the soft light of the room as it swung away from his neck, beads of sweat from his chest randomly falling upon it. The blood from the wound in his side dripped slowly onto the floor.
Succiu looked at Shailiha wickedly. “I told you he would not disappoint,” she said. “Time to put him in his place.”
With a slight movement of her hand, the prince’s body gently lowered toward the altar. She turned her palm up, and he turned in the air with it, following her movements exactly until he was lying on his back on the cold, smooth altar. He lay spread-eagled, totally unable to move his arms or his legs. This is where she means to do it, he thought in disbelief. On the altar of the Blood Communion.
Noticing the medallion resting on his chest, Shailiha walked over to the altar and looked down, first at his naked body, and then at the medallion itself. A strange look of puzzlement came over her face as she stood there, watching the engraved piece of gold rise and fall with Tristan’s frantic breathing. He watched as she lifted one hand and touched the bodice of her dress lightly, at about the place where the two ends of the gold chain around her neck would have come together had they been suspending a piece of jewelry. The gesture meant nothing to him.
“You may stand exactly where you are now, Mistress Shailiha,” Succiu’s voice purred from the other side of the altar. She had suddenly become naked, and a crystal goblet of red wine had appeared in her right hand. “Since you have asked to watch, this will provide an excellent chance for you to learn how it is done.” She leaned across the altar, across the body of the Chosen One, and gave Shailiha a soft kiss on the lips. “So that you will be proficient at it when it is your turn. And your turn it shall be. Watch and learn.”
Tristan watched as the second mistress, naked, the goblet of wine still in her hand, levitated herself to a position above him and then gently lowered herself back down to the altar so that she was standing upon it, directly over him, one foot at each side of his body. Her magnificent form shone in the soft light of the wall sconces. She raised the wineglass slightly, in the form of an offering.
“Would you like some wine first?” she asked nastily. “I have made it a custom to first offer my partner a refreshment.”
“No,” he said. His mind was racing, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might come out of his chest.
“You really should be courteous enough to take what is offered to you,” she said. “After all, I am a sorceress, and there are always other ways to make you drink.”
“No.” He spat out the single word as if it were made of poison. “I want nothing from you, including your body. Save it for your Stable slaves.”
Succiu pursed her lips. “So you want neither my wine nor my body, eh?” She paused, thinking. “Too bad. Let’s see if there is a way to give you a taste of each at the same time, because I think it impolite of you not to drink with me.”