“Everyone needs sleep.”
And there it is.
“She can sleep when she is dead.”
He sighs roughly, and I feel it’s significance even as he stands behind my throne. "You care for that girl. I never thought I'd see the day."
Deliberately obtuse, I ask, “The Watcher?”
He chuckles. “Aster.”
“It's unbearable,” I grit out, still willing the House Girls, dancing and playful before me, to wake up my cock. They don’t. “And I want her, all the time, right now. I want to be around her. She keeps fucking curling into me, and I want to throw her from the bed, but I pull her closer instead. I want to freeze time and hold her. It's like a fucking curse. She is just a Silk Girl, and I am a fucking fool.”
“She curls into you? Seeks safety in you. What I would give for...” He clears his throat, and I save him from my warnings about dreaming of my fragile sister. She is no man’s. That is her vow. And he knows better.
I consider the moment I fought my father, the night I killed him, when I tore his head from his shoulders.
Did he let me?
It was that or kill me.
I will never know.
He was huge, far bigger than me at the time, but I did it fuelled with rage. Perhaps that was my strength. The emotion he lacked powered me. "Did my father ever have this kind of affection for anyone, for a girl?"
"No. No, he didn't.”
“Of course he didn’t.” He was no one’s fool, not soft, nor kind, nor gentle. “He was a king.”
“It's not that he couldn't or even wouldn't. Simply, the right someone never crossed his path, boy. Pity, really. Everyone should feel it once.”
"She's going to have our heirs. That is all,” I confirm, forcing apathy along the length of that statement. That is all. That is all she desires, all she is. To adore, pleasure, provide, fuck right off. Fine.
"In the dark. In secret,” he baits me, trying to decipher how far I am willing to go for her.
To the end…
But she doesn’t want that.
He wants to know how many rules I will break. All of them… He wants me to. And yet, like him, the woman of my affections belongs to The Trade.
“Will you let her go?” he asks.
"When the time comes,” I grit my teeth together, “I will watch her leave.”
The energy thickens as he states, “You might want to figure out how to freeze time then, boy, and not waste it here with me and these House Girls.”
I laugh without mirth. “She softens me,” I admit with a growl, both hating it and… No. Just hating it. “I forget what I want and do what's best for her. It needs to stop. This is exactly why the old-world concept of marriage failed society. It was self-serving. Pathetic.” I am king. She is silly Common Silk Girl. “What I do, what she does, should be for the good of The Cradle and that is all.”
“You hate The Trade,” Kong reminds me.
“I do not hate The Cradle.” My words are hollow as I state, “I am its king. A piece. Remember? You taught me that.”
“I taught you to watch the player,” he corrects. “Not to give in to him. Understand him, that is all. But… when someone comes into your life.” His tone, though the deep timbre of a Xin De male, takes on a thoughtful, meaningful edge. “And you start to feel like an individual, like your motivations are not a collective thought but for your very soul, it's as though you just woke up. You might not have known this person for long, but you'd be a fool to go back to sleep. You know that. All of sudden, you take a backseat in your own life. Out of fucking nowhere, they become the main character in your story.”
I recite my vows, angry. Cold. Wanting the nothingness and boredom I have lived with to return, replace her. “To be a king is to suffer alone under the burden of decisions and the weight of necessary evils and truths.”
“This is love, Rome.”
“Love is for the Common.”
“Love is human!” he spits out. “Do you have any humanity left to see this?”
I will not love her only to have her leave!
With that unwelcome admission, I stand, finished. Need perspective away from her torturous sweetness. “We leave when I wake. We take the CR Guard to the Black Matter Tower in the first-light.”
“It’s a five-day journey.”
“I am aware.”
Kong stares at me. “You have never been to the Black Matter Tower. Why now? The mines are not safe for you, Sire. The water… it’s toxic.”
I stride away, calling over my shoulder, “Good thing I have very little human left then, isn’t it?” I sneer. “I will survive.” I halt and turn to face him. “And bring the House Girls for them to fuck. They all work hard on their Purpose mining and recycling matter for our batteries, Kong. I want to show them my gratitude. Nothing expresses thanks like warm, wet pussy.”
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Nineteen
Aster
“Hello, Aster. You slept in.”
The night was warm, but something inside me felt cold and empty after he left. He seemed to enter my room as a storm, only to exit as a phantom, and leave me wondering which parts of our shadowed intimacy were real.
Paisley brightens the ornamental fire, bathing the room in orange light. “All the lords have left The Estate except for Lord and Warden Turin Two, but he won’t be available.” As she busies herself in my room, collecting the old flowers and ensuring my bathroom is stocked, she says, “He'll be rather occupied. Trade Master Cairo and Sire are both on campaigns, so we have this wing to ourselves. It’s always nice, I mean, I like it when we can relax, and each day we will have a different activity for you. Puzzles. Reading. Dancing. But today is a special day! You have been invited to the aviary.”
Still half-asleep, I sit up in bed and rub my dry eyes. “There's an aviary here?”
“Yes, in the queen's wing.” Her tone is happier than I have heard in days. I smile at that. “You can visit one at a time. Blossom is there now. We have hatchlings, and the mammas can get protective, so it is best to have a very small audience.”
“Wait.” My mind levels. “Did you say the king is away? I mean, Sire. I saw him las— day. I mean, I saw him last—yesterday.” I fumble on my lie. “In the courtyard.”
She stops at the foot of my bed, holding a bundle of used towels and a throw. “Yes, Aster. He has The Cradle to manage, after all. He is not often here. Only for your rite, when the Silk Girls ovulate, which has finished for the month, so you may not see him for a few weeks.”
Her matter-of-fact answer chips at my heart. “Oh.” I draw my knees up and hold them to my chest in case the tiny fragment falls through my flesh.
Tuscany’s words float back to me, along with a sadness I now share. ‘He is always going away. He leaves me here, and I miss him so.’
Nothing lasts forever.
She eyes me, uncaring or clueless, though I prefer the latter. “Are you ready to get up?”
“Is Ana awake?” I ask, accepting she might be the only person to understand my misguided and naïve emotions.
As I suspect, she says, “No. She's still unwell.” The lie barely makes it to my ears. I don’t believe it. “You like birds.” Paisley wiggles her brows. “I know you do.”
Sighing hard, I concede, “Very much. They are the closest thing to a dinosaur.”
“Dinosaur?”
“Yes.” I slide from the bed and drop to the floor. “Great animals. Some like giants. Some like crocodiles.”
Paisley watches me amble across the room toward my closet, her gaze assessing my naked skin; I know she sees evidence of him painted over my thighs.
“But they were real?” she asks, genuine interest pitching her voice.
