I can name all twelve of King Arthur’s battles, I can recite Chaucer by heart, I can speak Old English as fluently as any Mercian warrior. I can spy on politicians, I know how to leverage a bill into a law, I know how to word statements so they can mean everything or mean nothing at all. I can wield power over a classroom of thirty students, I can wield power over the press or in rooms with large conference tables and stone-faced lawmakers—all of that I have been trained to do since birth. But here? Against someone who would do me bodily harm, who has guards with guns and batons at the ready?

I don’t know what kind of power I can possibly wield here.

We reach the door to my room, and I see Melwas’s men ready behind us, and I make a calculated gamble.

“Please,” I say quietly. “I want it just to be the two of us.” I put enough of my real desperation into my words to make them tremble the slightest bit. Let him mistake it for excitement.

He does. He licks his lips, staring at my face and then dropping his gaze down to my chest, where the red silk dips low over my breasts.

“Stay out here,” Melwas orders his men, and then pushes me into my room. He locks the door behind himself and takes off his jacket, tossing it on the floor and starting in on his cufflinks.

I watch for a minute, disoriented. How many times have I watched Ash do this exact same thing? Unfasten his cuff links, slide off his tie bar, forearms flexing as he rolls up his sleeves? How can two men have so many of the same ingredients and yet come out so differently?

I walk over to the floor-to-ceiling window and stare out into the darkening evening, pressing my forehead against the glass. I’m exhausted, the tendrils of a fierce headache working their way into my brain. I can still taste those apples.

But this is my chance. Locked alone in a room with Melwas, without his guards. I don’t know what my plan is after I subdue him—or if I can even subdue him at all—but it will be the best chance I have.

He might want to tie you up, I think. You have to do it before then.

Sleeves rolled up, Melwas stalks toward me, pressing my body into the cold window glass with his own. Every inch of me, every corner and curve of my skin, is alive with disgust, is alive with no, as if no were an emotion, as if no were a physiological response. But I hide it, resisting the urge to shudder or shove him away because I know from the one self-defense class I took in college that timing is everything. Strike to the eyes, knee to the groin, knee to the head. I can do that. Eyes, groin, head.

Eyes, groin, head.

One, two, three, easy as that.

Melwas’s hand comes up around my throat and his other hand slides across the silk to my stomach, going down to cup my pubic bone. His grip is hard, painful, and I can’t help the hot flush of shame and fear that stabs through me, the tears that spring to my eyes. I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this.

Eyes, groin, head, the Queen in my mind reminds me. Wait for it.

But waiting is the worst thing I can imagine, standing still as Melwas murmurs things into my ear that I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind, these disgusting lies that are no less insidious for how disgusting they are. That I want this, that he’s doing me a favor by giving it to me, that women like me—women who like surrendering control—welcome being taken by force.

I hate it, I hate it all so much, I hate the lies, I hate the hard, hurting hand that kneads my unwilling flesh as he says it. I hate the way his lies connect to my darkest fears, like confirmation that there is something wrong with me and the way I want sex.

But I know they’re lies. The very way my body reacts right now—with terror and revulsion—is evidence of that. And that certainty gives me the patience to wait just a moment longer, until his grip has loosened and the hand at my genitals drops back to fumble with his belt.

Now.

I prepare to spin, pressing my fingertips together so they all meet in one concentrated point, and I’m ready to drive those points right into his flat acorn eyes when there’s a knock at the door.

Melwas groans and snaps out something in Ukrainian.

Not-Daryl responds through the door, sounding both apologetic and urgent.

Fuck.

“Fuck,” Melwas echoes, his hand moving away from my throat. He walks back toward the door and I turn to follow him with my eyes, my body still tensed and my hands still formed into beak-shaped weapons.

Melwas conferences with Not-Daryl for a few minutes, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes, and then seems to come to a decision. “I am very sorry,” he says, “but I must cut our evening short. Some business awaits me and I must tend to it personally.” He reaches out to stroke my hair and I pull back on instinct. I hear Not-Daryl make a noise in the doorway.

Melwas frowns. “Perhaps it would be good for you to consider the things we’ve talked about tonight.” He nods at Not-Daryl and two other men in the doorway, and before I can stop it, I’m being gagged and bound and tossed carelessly on the bed.

“I won’t blindfold you,” Melwas says kindly, in one of his lightning-mood shifts. “I’ll turn off the lights so you can see the stars through the window. They are quite lovely in the mountains.” And he runs a hand up my stomach to palm my breast. “I hope to be back tonight. But if not, we shall continue tomorrow.”

And then he and the men leave me alone, locked in from the outside, and I finally let myself cry.

11

Embry

after

I watch Melwas fist a large hand in Greer’s hair and yank her head back, exposing the pale column of her throat, and I leap to my feet, a growl building in my chest.