Demons and Kings

Chapter 15

How was I supposed to feel?

I looked back down, just for a second - a harrowing, terrible gut-wrenching second. At the man kneeling there, at the look on his face. A soldier from Babylon. Begging me and pleading for this to end. The sun was beating down on us. Hot scorching waves that burned the sand beneath our feet and hovered over the ground like fog. If I squinted, I could almost pretend that what I was looking at wasn't real.

A bloodied hand reached out, inches from the hem of my dress. Still, he said nothing, but then I didn't need words to know what he was trying to say.

I was being watched, I knew. Watched and judged and tested, every expression weighed against me. I just didn't know what for. So, I held back the tremble I knew was threatening my lower lip. I struggled to breathe as my throat closed up, my lungs paralyzed. I kept the mask of indifference I'd had on since this morning steady and hoped it wouldn't crack.

He noticed anyway.

"What you wanted."

He was wrong, this wasn't at all what I had meant, and if only he had just asked... But he hadn't, and now I was stuck looking at this with him looking at me like I should be impressed, or proud. Grateful even.

At the moment I wasn't anything but nauseous. The sight of blood still made me shudder, and I had seen so much of it in the time I had been here. I didn't think I would ever get used to it. Memphis moved to stand beside me, his arm slipping around my waist, hand over my hip and breath ruffling my hair. "So stubborn." He sighed. He wasn't talking about me. "Forgive me, but it seems that your second gift will be much harder to obtain than the first."

He looked at the man with the cane still in his hands. "Again," he ordered. Pressed as close as he was to me, Memphis could feel the way I flinched as that same man raised his arm over and over again until the screams stopped. His hand crept up, trailing over my arm to my face, where he turned my cheek to rest against the bare plane of his chest in a parody of comfort. I closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, misreading my disgust. "I should have realized this would bring up the trauma you have only so recently suffered." With a wave of his hand, the solider was pulled to his feet and carried away, when it became clear he couldn't stand on his own.

"Tell me, how are you feeling?" Memphis continued, a finger slipping under the collar of my dress rest between my shoulder blades. The scars were still raw and red. "Is there anything you need? Are you hungry? Thirsty? You do look pale, perhaps it would be better if you spent less time in the sun. Let me walk you back to your rooms."

He was insistent and surprisingly caring. I knew in part it was because Carol hadn't been found. Not her, not her corpse – as I heard many of his men say that was what they were now looking for. And the other driving force behind his sudden attentiveness was because he felt guilty over what had happened after. With Isis and her scheming. With my scars. With me.

Unasu had shared with him what transpired during my market visit, and now jealousy warred with Memphis' already overwhelming protective streak. He had taken to having me accompany him everywhere. Including on his less than savory errands. But could I blame him? He asked me. It had been so short a time that he had me back here at the palace, where I belonged. Could I blame him for his reaction to the unwanted attention that was so suddenly heaped upon me? Yes. I could blame him a little.

He had raged after hearing that report and taking the small roll of fabric that was my gift from Ismir, had thrown it into a fire and watched it burn to ash. Tore it from my hands with that look in his eyes that I was always so relieved to never see aimed at me. Never at me, and I watched with baited breath as Unasu took the brunt of his anger over a chance encounter. The sheer depth of his anger, over so small an issue... it scared me.