Page 37 of Marked By the Dark Lord
No. Not now.I fought down the desire to look up at him with eyes wide and pleading. I wouldnotsubmit to him.
Korr’ok sniffed at the air but said nothing. Could he smell that I was turned on by the demonstration of his power? My cellmate had identified it easily enough.
“You must never refer to me by that name out loud,” he growled in my ear instead. “You must address me as Lord Rokk. Do you understand?”
Reluctantly, I nodded, eager to get his hand off my mouth. I grabbed at it, pulling it away. I almost pushed it elsewhere. Lower. Where the heat between my legs craved for it.
“Why does it matter what I call you?” I asked.
“Later,”Lord Rokkgrunted. “First, you must tell me what happened. What did you do to those people?”
“Nothing,” I said, thinking back to that night reluctantly. “I didn’t do anything. It was … a thing. I spoke from the book. Words I didn’t even know. How did I do that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he grunted, eyes flicking away for a moment. Did he even believe what he was saying? “Tell me more about what you did?”
“The ball of red,” I said. “It was … alive? It spoke.”
“What did it say?” Korr’ok demanded hurriedly.
I closed my eyes, calling up the words. “First, it told me that I ‘asked for this.’ That I wanted it. Then it told me, ‘You wanted this. You dreamed of it. Now you get it. Amateur. When I am done, I will come for you. Then I will be free!’”
The tremble that hit my spine as I remembered the words was too hard for me to hide. Korr’ok saw and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” he asked in a calm, soothing voice.
My head jerked up to stare into his face. Never before had he spoken to me like that. With compassion. Truthfully, I didn’tknow it existed within him. Narrowing my eyes, I looked deep into those red orbs that were so unique to him.
Just how much morewasthere to Korr’ok/Lord Rokk? What had I yet to discover? And what more was he still hiding?
“I saw a face,” I whispered. “In the power. I don’t know who it was. But now I can’t forget it.”
Korr’ok nodded. He didn’t question it, didn’t call me crazy. He just accepted what I had to say, and that was that. Nobody had believed in me like that before. Nobody hadtrustedme like that.
“Get dressed,” he said, pointing to a set of clothes sitting on a chair in the corner. “Quickly. We must go.”
“What? Where are we going now?” I asked, not moving.
Korr’ok stared down at me from where he stood, with his face scrunched up like he couldn’t believe I was dumb enough to ask. “Where do you think? We have to stop what you have unleashed. Before it kills you. We’re going back to Earth.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mila
Ilooked over my shoulder as we ascended the ramp, the cliffs waiting for us, ominous in their darkness. Behind me, The Place Behind, or The Crack, as I’d started to think of it, bustled with life. It was weird to think that, despite the horrors I’d seen, life went on in the town like it did so many on Earth.
The Black Tower was a foreboding centerpiece to the town, its giant walls extending high above the buildings around it, but most seemed to ignore it. Even as we’d walked away from it, few paid us much attention. Those who knew “Lord Rokk” would show deference to him as his stature demanded, but most went about their days without a care.
More than once, I’d seen children—none of them human, but children nonetheless—running in packs, laughing and giggling as kids were wont to do. It was a snippet of life I didn’t expect to see.
“Am I free now?” I asked, conspicuously aware of the lack of restraints or bull-faced minotaurs. It was just the two of us on the climb.
Korr’ok—I would call him Lord Rokk around others, as he wished, but that was a fake persona, I knew that much—blew air from his nose as he glanced down at me.
“You are my responsibility now,” he said. “I am to see to your punishment. Letting you simply ‘go’ would be a huge failure on my part. And I do not fail.”
“Are you sure you’re not my punishment?” I muttered. “Putting up with you certainly falls under the ‘cruel and unusual’ statute.”
“Has it all been that bad?” Korr’ok muttered under his breath.
