Calliope's Wings Read online

  I’d definitely had worse nights. Much worse.

  I only knew Ruune was back by the subtle, protective hiss Big Mama issued. I blinked a little groggily and turned my head away from her dark chest to look. Ruune held a corked bladder sac in her hands and fidgeted nervously a few feet away.

  “For You, Innintani. Drink and Your stomach will feel better.” Then, in a low murmur I expected Ruune hoped I didn’t hear, “though I hope You will think better before You eat so fully next time.”

  I couldn’t help my smirk or the snigger that I let out. Ruune, bless her heart, darkened with mortification. I could understand in a distant way how she’d ended up punished so much. If she was as free with her tongue as she was just now, none of her previous Masters would’ve been amused with her.

  “I will not hurt you, Ruune, or let anyone else do it. You are mine now, yes?”

  Shakily, she nodded and handed over the sac. I drank from it, grimacing and gagging at the thick, foul concoction inside. I probably should’ve asked what it was beforehand, but what difference would it make? If it was poison, I’d just die and come back. If it was and not a lethal dose, what was a little more suffering?

  I drank all I could of the rancid liquid. Drank until dinner’s flavor was lost on my tongue. If nothing else was to be learned from this experience, it was that if I wanted to savor my meals I needed to avoid chugging Intau’s version of Pepto.

  Ruune took the sac from my slackening fingers when lethargy snuck its way through my veins. Consternation verging on rage kindled in me, knowing I was being knocked out again. I decided, right then and there, that these orc-ish bastards must’ve been delusional to think they deserved the ‘Innintani’ they thought me as if all they kept doing was drugging me. I wouldn’t do that to an angel!

  Shut up, Io, and go to sleep. Jesus.

  I might’ve argued with myself more, could’ve pitched a holy fit in the privacy of my own mind, if Big Mama didn’t roll me back into facing her chest. She petted and rocked me, crooning her velociraptor song into my ears.

  I fell asleep like that, comfortable and calm despite the oddness of everything around me.

  …and my stomach was already feeling better, dammit.

  Chapter Seven

  Two weeks.

  Two weeks was all I could stand of lying penned up in my fucking basket.

  Get out. Get out. Get out.

  I was a right cranky-bitch that morning and had had enough of the babying bullshit. Instead of docilely agreeing to lie down in my basket – what they called an omma – I shuffle-ran into Sekhmet’s arms. Big Mama, who I’d dubbed Sekhmet after the Egyptian goddess of the sun, plagues, healing , and war, rarely left my side. Even when I was in the omma, she stayed anchored beside the males that carried it.

  Sekhmet fell to her stomach and nuzzled me in a motherly way. She kept her arms wrapped around me, her claws sifting through my braided hair and belled chains. She chittered comfortingly at me.

  “Innintani, I beg of You,” Tan began, only to be silenced by a snap of Sekhmet’s mouthplates. The slave pulled up her nerves and pressed on. She stood beside the omma, not quite touching it, but fitful. She was stressed. “Lie down in Your omma. Your skin is so pure, uum Innintani. The soli will hurt You. You must lie down.”

  “No.” I didn’t shout the refusal, but I wanted to. I made myself stay calm and firm.

  “Innintani,” it was Ruune this time.

  Fuck. If there was anyone that had any chance of getting me to cave, it was Ruune. The male – and Ruune was a male, I came to find – was a soft-spot of mine. He looked to me like the sun rose and set on my shoulders. He tended to me even more diligently than even Tan. He had taken to feeding me by hand, when Sekhmet wasn’t popping bites of fruit into me, and hovered whenever I used the chamberpot. He fixed my blankets endlessly. He bathed me and clothed me. If anything, he was the first of my slaves, though I preferred to think of them as my attendants or minders instead of as slaves.

  And, by God, Ruune was the sweetest, gentlest of souls. As terrified as he was of being beaten, I felt protective of him. Possessive. He was one of my favorite people on the whole of Intau. I fawned over him, making sure he ate enough after I discovered the lesser rations he received compared to my other minders. I even played with him, drawing him into my sponge baths with me. Nothing naughty, mind you, but my bid to get him to be vulnerable and open to me.

  That’s how I’d found out he was male. Or, rather, a hermaphrodite as I’d entertained the thought before. He had a barely-there vagina that was scarcely even a hole tucked behind his sizable penis. Well, sizable as far as I was concerned. Not the monstrous cocks of Tauren males. His was larger than I had ever had with any of my lovers back on Earth, bigger than my Mac, but he wasn’t horrifying. Instead, seeing him blush when I saw how his dick swelled at my nearness to him, I was warmed from the inside-out. Touched, even.

  “I am Xerbai, Innintani,” he told me that first night I saw his erect penis. His fingers skimmed where skol – the bejeweled tattoos of the Zikta – trimmed his upper thighs and pelvis. I hadn’t even known he had them until then. “Like the Tohtahk, but not. I was destined to be Yours. The shield for Your body. A tool for whatever uses You would see of me.”

  “Oh, Ruune. Come here, please.”

  I curled up on his lap as he bathed me, holding onto his shoulders and trying to get him to look me in the eye. He told me what it meant to be a Xerbai. He had gone through the same warrior training as any fit and promising Lubrei male, but his very-rare kind were never allowed to choose their paths in life. They were honed as weapons and shields for their inevitable Masters or Mistresses and then beaten down into being utterly subservient. Xerbai were taught to fight, then to yield.

  It sickened me.

  Kor had, according to Ruune, pulled him from the pits of a shady sort of place. A place I knew about too well, where bodies were vessels to be used in the worst ways imaginable. I shuddered in remembered pain and emphatic sorrow.

  Kor knew what Ruune was. Had heard of the rare Xerbai penned up like an animal in one of the southern cities. He formed a raiding party with the specific purpose of obtaining him for his own use. Ruune was profuse in his praise of Kor, stating that he’d never had a better Master. Kor even sparred with Ruune on occasion, sharpening the smaller male’s skills in the event Kor found his Pasha.

  I didn’t know if I believed that Ruune was thankful for Kor’s possession of him and that Kor was ‘better’. Not with the way Ruune tended towards trembling before the bigger, darker male. Unless Ruune was just that good of an actor that he could fake his fear.

  Maybe.

  There was a caveat, though, to his owned status to the Tohtahk. Ruune needed to keep himself hidden. Whatever that meant for him, he would need to discover it on his own. Kor was not able to shelter the Xerbai from those that would do him harm beyond prohibiting life-threatening punishment by his warriors unless the infractions called for such. And Ruune saw how misbehaving male slaves were often thrown into the rings to be used as living targets for the warriors versus mere whippings for the females. So he suppressed his more masculine side in favor of hiding in skirts and keeping, as best he could, out of the eye of the warriors.

  No one was stupid. Ten winters was more than enough time for the Udon to deduce that Ruune wasn’t all female, but no one would step out against the Tohtahk. They just agreed to use Ruune as the fall guy for every minor infraction within the slave ranks.

  It made me want to throw up...and throat-punch some people. A lot of people.

  I asked Ruune who he wanted to be. I asked him to tell me how he wanted to be treated and promised him that I would take care of him no matter what. I didn’t know how I’d do it, but I’d make anything happen for my Ruune.

  Male. Ruune wanted to be called ‘he’ again.

  Looking at him now, I smiled faintly.

  Ruune bound his breasts with rough cloth and a leather overwrap that was more harness than anything
. He was wearing trou now, though he had on thick sandals instead of boots. Kor hadn’t been happy with the change and had growled and snarled at me like a rabid animal for going ahead and dressing Ruune according to who he wanted to be, but he didn’t stop me.

  Instead…

  “The Xerbai is your responsibility, Innintani,” he bore his teeth down at me that very night, his stance rigidly held over me in my omma. It was the first time he’d ever referenced me and made it sound like a curse instead of exaltation. I’d been sure he’d strike me. Hurt me. He hadn’t. His hands cracked the rim of the omma, though. “If he is injured, it is on your heart that it happens.”

  I made sure Sekhmet, my dutiful protector, kept at least two of her Mahzri with Ruune at all times. Insofar, no one so much as lifted a hand against him.

  “Do not, Ruune,” I warned him flatly, coming back out of my musings to the present.

  His face screwed down with his desire to backtalk to me. I could see it. I gave him more slack than anyone and he knew it. He’d push me if I let him. “I am not lying down in the omma. Today, I ride.”

  “Innintani.”

  Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.

  I ducked around Sekhmet, hiding like a weenie. She snickered at me, her head bopping in humor at my antics. She knew how unnerved I was around Kor. The Tohtahk was, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, the biggest motherfucker around. He stood above everyone. He was a veritable mountain and he scared me stupid most of the time.

  He wasn’t around me much. I thought some of that was because I was always sequestered in the omma. The Udon travelled endlessly. We’d not stopped once in or around a city. Instead, we went further and further into the desert and away from the sea. At least, I thought we were. I didn’t have a clue about the geography of Luintak.

  Not like there was a roll-down map in a classroom to reference whenever I needed or wanted it.

  The Tohtahk was the equivalent of a warlord, I knew now, and he presided over the Lubrei. He was their highest commander. Their undefeatable leader. He kept busy with leading the Udon through the desert and commanding his Zikta. And raiding, supposedly, though I’d yet to see it since that first day in Blackburhn.

  Figured I’d find myself saddled with the scariest, most powerful male this side of the sea.

  “Come here.”

  Yah-huh. Nope. Not a chance.

  My sandaled feet – I’d had to beg Tok to make me a pair – shuffled further back behind Sekhmet. She let me go, her torso and head tall enough and wide enough even while she was lying down to hide my small frame. I wasn’t getting anywhere near Kor.

  The male didn’t so much as growl at me. In favor of that, he leapt off the back of his Mahzri – a deeply bronzed male only a fraction smaller than my girl – and marched over to me. Sekhmet chittered at him, but didn’t make any move to stop his approach.

  Traitor.

  Kor swept me up into his arms, barking at my slaves harshly. They fled, Ruune slower to go than the others, and left me alone with their overlord.

  I wriggled and fought, beating my fists into the only parts of him I could reach, which were his torso and shoulders. There wasn’t any hurting him. He was all brawn and might. He didn’t even humor me into thinking I was doing anything beyond winding myself. The snake; I could even see his lips twitch in a half a smile.

  It helped nothing that my every movement sang prettily from my bells.

  He carried me over to the thrice-damned omma, setting me down into its plush bedding. I kicked out at him, scoring a heel to his jaw. His sharp teeth and tusks clacked from the hit, but his head didn’t so much as twitch. He just calmly shackled my ankles in his massive hands and held my legs open, up, and out. The position stuck me on my back like a turtle, unable to wrestle my way back up.

  “Uum kisa-uu.” His two-toned voice was but a purr. He stroked his hands further up my calves, ignoring when I began to shiver with dread.

  Oh Jesus. Oh God, no. I fought not to start crying. He’s…he’s going to rape me now, isn’t he? After all this time, he’s finally going to do it.

  His thumbs tickled the soft underside of my knees. My feet fluttered, helpless at the taunt to my nerves.

  “You are feeling well again. You begin to glow.” He bowed over the omma and nose-kissed the insides of my thighs where yet more belled bands were fastened to me. They were never taken off and I couldn’t remove them. It was like they were fused to my skin. “This is good.”

  “D-do not touch me! Let go! Get off, off, off!”

  I clapped his elongated ears between my knees when his grip loosened on my legs just enough to break free. That got me a flinch from him, though the gemstones in his ears jabbed hard into my softer skin and felt like a brutal bite. My attack did more harm to me than him. It wasn’t fair how pathetic I was.

  He took me by surprise when he chuckled, a deep and nice sound, before hooking my hips over the gauzy turquoise dress I was wearing. His thumbs stroked from just above my mound to under my heaving beasts. The touch was light and I felt his rough pads skipping over my ribs. He grunted, the sound not as pleased, before he tapped his other fingers against my back.

  “You are in pain no longer.” It wasn’t a question, but a part of me wanted to argue. If I told him I still hurt, would it keep him from raping me? He’d touched me plenty the times I did see him and he had as much of a hard-on as Ruune did around me – bigger bigger bigger – but he never tried anything. Never attempted to fuck me or even play with my tits or ass. He’d been solicitous, all things considered.

  Yet, if I told him I was still hurt, I knew I wouldn’t be able to be free of the omma.

  Was it worth it? Was the trade-off worth the torture I was going to face? An ounce of freedom if I fucked this beast…

  “I-I-I am n-not,” I stuttered. I regretted the denial almost as soon as I spoke it.

  He surprised me again, though. No, not just surprised. I was floored. Shocked speechless.

  Kor crawled further over me, pushing himself fully between my legs with his whole weight pinning me down. His arms snaked under my back and behind me, allowing him to cup my head in the bowl of his hands. His thumbs grazed my face tenderly. They fingered my lips, nose, and eyelashes. He explored my brows. His torn upper lip opened even wider as he smiled, sweetly, and cocked his head to the side as he looked me over. If he wasn’t such an ugly fucker, the expression he wore would’ve been endearing.

  “Uum Innintani es uumat,” he rumbled softly. “Biis es uum Taytani. Uum goran Zikta.”

  Well…fuck!

  He’d called me his. Said I was his Taytani…his queen. His fierce warrior. I melted inwardly at those words and the heartfelt way he delivered them in his volcanic voice. He was being unfairly saccharine. Why couldn’t he be a bastard? Why couldn’t he give me a reason to hate him more for what he was going to do to me? The ones that played nice – not that there were ever many – were always the worst. It was always better when they didn’t pretend like they were good people.

  As I halfway got lost in my thoughts, he dropped his face to mine. His hands shifted from cupping to pinning. Then, in the span of a single, stuttering breath, his nose ran from my forehead, down the bridge of my nose, before arching off its tip. He didn’t stop until his forehead was pressed intimately to mine. He stayed there for a time, his chest breathing soft and easy against mine.

  “Dashka,” he whispered passionately.

  Thank you.

  Intimacy. I’d never had anyone treat me so…tenderly since my Mac. Any man I’d been with after he was gone was strictly for fucking and leaving. We scratched itches and didn’t get messy with feeling.

  In that moment, that singular, terrifying moment, I realized Kor might be capable of sweetness that could break a fool-woman’s heart if she succumbed to him.

  He moved off me silently, an impressive feat for a male so large, and stood over the omma and me. His face transformed back to harsh, his momentary lapse into tenderness disappearing right before my e
yes. It made me shiver.

  He snarled in that language I didn’t know, not once looking away from me.

  In seconds, my slaves were gathered, Sekhmet beyond Kor’s back. They reached in for me, urging me to climb out of the omma. I did, but shakily. I felt off-kilter. Completely unstable in the face of his shift in temperament.

  Kor turned away without a word, all but running back to his Mahzri to leap onto his back. He was off without a backwards glance in my direction, leaving into the camp with a thunderous roar. The efficient collection of the few items taken out for the night of rest was tripled in pace, the Udon hurrying to obey their leader and be on their way.

  Tan petted my cheek once I was standing and gestured to a red glass jar in her opposite hand. It had something in it that smelled very much like aloe. She didn’t look pleased to be offering it.

  “We will prepare You to ride now, Innintani.”

  Ruune and another slave I didn’t know were fixing a strange, padded saddle onto Sekhmet’s back.

  Well, I thought bemusedly as my ladies began to rub ointment into my skin beneath my dress, I guess I got what I wanted.

  Riding on Sekhmet’s back was like sitting in a classic, well-kept Cadillac. I’d never ridden a horse in my life, not even the woolly-bear lookin’ beasts since waking on Intau, but I’d seen videos on Facebook and YouTube or in-person. The riders always looked a little jostled, even when they were bouncing right along to their steed’s steps via the stirrups.

  Not so with my Big Mama.

  Sekhmet’s four legs had a quick, but smooth stride. Her wide foot base gave a lot of cushion to each step on the blackened earth. Her massive body, too, was like a yacht on a calm sea. If it weren’t for her gentle rocking as she trotted along, you almost wouldn’t even know she was moving.

  Now I knew why the ride in the omma was always so smooth.

  The saddle they put on her wasn’t like a horse’s saddle. There wasn’t a pommel and there weren’t stirrups. The one on Sekhmet was heavily cushioned, had a low, C-shaped back pillow that cut from my left hip to my right, and was set off in silvers and blues. Her back was wide enough that I could comfortably sit cross-legged on it and was borderline uncomfortable if I bracketed my legs over her spine. Mostly, I just kept my legs tucked up together on one side or the other.