Page 74 of A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment

If I have never existed for myself, it’s better that I don’t exist at all.

Chapter Thirty

A sense of calm comes over me as I walk into the faery baths. Arcus is wrong. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere, for I do not exist. I am a means to an end, a tool to be used. An advantage.

I have never been a person, with a fate of my own, and the only destiny I could claim has been taken.

I stand on the ledge that overlooks the pools, and eye the carved steps that lead to the ones in towers above. I don’t wish to jump. But I don’t know which to choose.

I’m mulling it over when footsteps echo in the cave entrance, and someone says, “Cenere.”

Of course, it would be Kathras. If anyone were to find me, it would be Arcus’s equally repugnant son. I turn to him and give a faint smile. “Which, do you think, would be deepest?”

His brows draw together. “Deepest?”

“I wouldn’t want to sit in something up to my waist and try to drown,” I explain with a hysterical laugh. “I need something deep. So, I can be dragged down.”

Kathras takes a step toward me. “You’ve been drinking.”

“I have.” That didn’t cross my mind when I was running. Or when I made this choice. It was the only way I could endure the party.

“Come back to the palace,” he urges me. “We can talk there.”

I laugh again. “No, we can’t! Do you know what he subjected me to when you left?”

His eyes darken. “I do.”

My breath leaves me.

“He did it once to someone I loved very much.” He holds out his hand. “Please. Come with me to the palace.”

I shake my head. “I can’t go back. I can’t. He…”

“I know.” Kathras’s eyes plead with me. “I believe you. I’ll listen to you.”

I crumple to my knees, covering my eyes. I thought I calmed after my race through the forest. I thought I cried all my tears out there. But now, the painful sobs return, shaking my entire body.

Luthian kneels beside me, leans over my back as if shielding me from some battering force. But the pain is in my chest, bursting through my ribs, ripping me apart from inside, and even the screams that echo through the cavern don’t release enough of my sorrow to heal me.

Kathras pulls me into his lap and cradles my head against his chest. “Tell me.”

Lying in his arms, I tell him about my mother. About Cadwyn Thrace’s treachery. About the revenge I wanted to take against him. I tell him how Luthian trained me, brought me to the palace in the hopes that I could climb my way through the court and exact my revenge. I don’t reveal Luthian’s plan to kill him and his father. While the penalty for treason doesn’t matter to me now, I would die before I endangered Luthian.

The whole time I talk, Kathras holds me and listens. He doesn’t ask questions or pass judgment. He listens, sympathetically stroking my hair or brushing away my tears.

“It was terrible,” I tell him, my limbs shaking at the memory of those tentacles restraining me, entering me. “I didn’t want to like it. I think he enjoys that, the most. The humiliation. I understand that pleasure and torment can entwine, and I did find pleasure in what the cephalopire subjected me to. But then… he crushed my hands. That wasn’t about dark pleasures. It was about hurting me, for no reason other than to exert his control. And now, I’m going to be mated to him.”

For the first time as I told my story, Kathras speaks. He tucks his fingers beneath my chin and lifts my gaze to his. “Cenere, I vow that you will never face that punishment again.”

“You can’t promise that,” I whisper. “No one can.”

“I can. He will never punish you with that creature again.”

I want to believe him, to feel relief at his promise. But I don’t have the strength to believe promises, anymore, and Arcus will almost certainly find worse torments. I take a breath, look away, and continue. “But the worst of it was tonight. The worst by far. He told me he had a present. It was Thrace’s head.”

Kathras stiffens. “He stole your revenge.”

His words are a lightning bolt striking my heart. He understands. Without a single word of explanation or justification, he knows exactly why this hurts me, far more than being fed to a monster.

---