Lavish Destruction: Tritan Evolution, Book III

Stripped bare and exposed, I am helpless but to suffer his every debased whim.
And though he might be the last of the rare and dangerous things, he too is indentured to a higher power.

While death and vengeance don't wear the faces I'd dreamed of, my fall has taught me how to see. That it's aways been this.

Freedom, or death...

Head pounding, eyes puffy and swollen, I pried my lids apart, disorientated. A bed. I was tucked beneath heavy blankets in a dark room. Trembling, I pushed the comforter back, trying to distinguish between bedsheets and a mud-caked, crusty slave dress plastered to my skin.
“Ughh.” Forcing my hand through layers of filth matting the hair to my scalp, I tried to stop the ceiling from spinning. “Water,” I croaked. “Please…” But my inhuman rasp went unanswered, witnessed only by a still, dark room.
And I would have continued to lie there, trying to piece myself back together, if it weren’t for the flashes of green lighting up the backside of my eyelids.
Memories, screaming to be heard.
I blinked, trying in vain to banish the phantoms.
The turret loaded with impossible power. Muddy fingers wrapped about a silver chain. A hundred yards separating me from Belle and her good men.
My finger on a trigger that wouldn’t pull. The empty pulse of failure.
And behind it all?
Inky black eyes blazing with fury.
Captain Rawlings.
I gasped.
Goddess, this was his room.
His bed.
I rolled with a grunt, legs dangling, knuckles white on the edge of the mattress as I searched for familiar landmarks.
Two. There were two of everything.
Cursing, I squeezed my eyes shut in spite of the Elite ki dancing in the dark, forcing a breath into stiff lungs. I’d lost consciousness—that much was certain—but how long had I been out? And what had become of the good men trying to move a mountain? Had Alicia’s shields held? Had they been able to escape the fallout of this most recent of my failures? Or were they…
Throat tight, I swallowed the raptor trying to claw its way free of my chest, and stood. Swaying.
No. They’d had technology they were proud of. They’d had a plan—a good one. This was a setback, nothing more. Their shields would have protected them from…
My chains tingled, a shadow of the pain I’d felt on the field. A hint of the magnificent power the captain had wielded with nauseating ease.
Goddess, Alicia had made her shields with Triloth ki at best. And even if Ancaster had ever managed to perfect his technology to allow the mundane to use ki as if they were of the Blood…
Could they withstand the combined might of two Trila-Glís?
Could… anything?
Vision blurred with the hot, watery ache of failure, I stilled. Trying to draw breath, to quiet the empty scream of the Void echoing inside my head.
How many good men now filled that Void because of… me?
Because someone had finally managed to weaponize the darkness of an Empath starving for ki?
From the floor below, the deep rumble of a man’s voice penetrated my very skin, and though I couldn’t make out his words, I knew.
There was only one man whose ki I still felt through this prison of Glaith. Only one for whom the bond in my chest surged and danced, tugging at the fragile, tattered remains of the High Priestess’ cocoon.
Asher.
Teeth bared, I hauled myself toward the bathroom, swiping at the tears. Listing to the left, then right. I should have known he wouldn’t be far away, should have known he wouldn’t leave me to my own devices for long, the foul, Elite sonofawhore!
Clinging to the wall, I made the trek to the facilities, bladder full to bursting, head filled with poison.
The captain had taken too much.
In sheer selfish arrogance, I had allowed this game between us to consume everything I had been.
Finished with my business, I staggered to my feet, pausing a moment to let the black, twinkling stars recede from my vision. Sweat prickled along my hairline as I washed, glancing at the sealed bathroom window, stymied at every turn.
But he couldn’t have thought of everything. There was always a way out. There had to be.
Letting a ragged breath escape my lips, I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Think.
He’d crippled me with the chains, turned my ki against my only allies, potentially corrupted the High Priestess for Goddess only knew what end, and pulled me back from the very cusp of death with a level of proficiency in the art of wielding ki to which I had never even thought to aspire.
Any way I turned, any path I chose, he’d been there before me. Already laid traps to tie me down and keep me pinned under thumb.
Seething, I picked at the gold on my left wrist, thumbing the little scabs.
I’d failed on the field because I’d been unable to admit I was no longer what I’d been. Headstrong and filled with impotent, arrogant rage, I’d relied on ki that wasn’t mine. Tried to tap a well of strength I no longer owned.
And it had cost good men their lives.