Ashtium: City of Sun

GRETA

I’m not sure what time it is. I don’t know where Enoch went off to but his bedchamber door opens slowly as if he is afraid to enter. Unless it is not him and his mother here to kill me. I bolt upright, wincing against the discomfort.

“Hello?” I wish I had my sight back because I can no longer make out faces. The dim blur of their silvery form comes to the bedside. I want to move away, but my body is so drained from the events of yesterday. “What do you want?” I whisper.

“My little pearl,” a tender voice coos. The tone hides a monstrous rage that keeps me from screaming, and instead, silent, immobile in fear. I can sense it as he moves quickly to remove me from the bed, tearing Enoch’s covers off me with a round of throaty growls and grunts that chill me to the bone. A heavy cloth drops down over my lap as his cold hand slides beneath my back. My whimpering gets muffled in the folds of his tunic as he closes them in around me. “Go b-back to sleep now. You’ll wake up in a much better place.”

I wrinkle my nose, smelling blood and wine on him. “I do not want to leave. W-why are you here and...drunk at this hour? Please leave me alone.”

Adler picks me up anyway. I pop my head out from the blanket he threw over my head smelling blood on it.

“Hush,” he grumbles while throwing Enoch’s door open.

He walks down the hallway, taking a few turns until we eventually leave the palace grounds. I cry on his beast the whole way across the city because my knee keeps hitting its hard body every time it takes off.

Eventually, we come to a stop. Adler ties the animal up by the stables below his temple. I don’t know how, but he surmises the strength to carry me all the way up to the top of the dreadful stairs.

He trips several times on our way inside the columned marble building.

“I’m so sorry,” Adler whispers as if just now realizing what he’s done. He stumbles to the stone sliding door. “Let’s g-get you cleaned...up.”

We walk down the chamber until we reach the bathing pool’s edge.

“Adler, I just want to sleep. My knee hurts very badly now.”

My heart pounds heavily when he sets me down on the bathing pool’s ledge. He starts to unwind the bandages from my knee. Tiredly, I watch the water’s surface, more concerned about the mysterious creature in it than my distorted god.

I’m not afraid. I don’t think he would act this way though if he didn’t drink so much.

He enters the water and I have a feeling he plans on making me come in too seeing him wade over to me.

“No,” I murmur. I try to stand up, but he’s already lifting me into the frigid water with him. My teeth chatter as the freezing water meets my legs. “Please, let me go.”

My distorted god keeps my body pressed tightly against his own with one arm. His other arm is trying to lather my wound. I cry in pain, kicking and beating against him to let me go. It stings and hurts awful each time he tries to clean it by wiping it roughly with a cloth.

“It needs cleaning out, Greta. I’m almost done. I do not trust they cleaned it well. Oh no, I see a little shard of rock in it still,” he tells me right before ripping it out.

I shudder against him as we step out of the water, whimpering like the wounded animal he’s turned me into. Adler pats me down with a warm cloth and already I can feel a great change in my knee. I can flex it now.

After we change into dry clothes, he takes me to his bedchamber. I sit on the heavenly cloud while he wraps a new bandage around my knee. To make use of time, I look into one of his other optical lenses he gave me to use.

By the time he finishes wrapping my knee, my vision has healed enough that I can see his facial features. He watches me with a soft gaze, it warms my heart more than I think it should. Quickly, I look away.

The heavenly fluff behind me dips as he finds his own place on it for the night. Curious, I turn over and find him sound asleep already. The scars on his arms and chest make my stomach churn. Even when asleep and unmoving, his muscles still look big. To think he is from the desert like me. Will I ever meet anyone else of my race? I wonder how he found his way here. He’s been alive so much longer.

“I pray you find happiness soon,” I whisper while laying down beside him. “I do not like seeing all these empty goblets on your bed. One day, someone is going to love you and want to sleep in here. You should not be drinking so heavily and stealing people from their beds.”

A sharp breath escapes me, watching him wake up when I stop feeling his face.

With a downcast gaze, he pulls me against his chest. His voice steadier now, “How is your knee feeling?” he asks.

“Sore, but better,” I tell him. “I’m worried about you.”

“About me? Femke almost killed you, you pity me over yourself?”

“You stole me away from my bed. That is not like you.”

“Enoch’s bed is yours now?”

My face heats. “No.”

Adler reaches over the edge of the cloud. I smile in relief when he places a good-sized cushion beneath my knee.

“It feels better. Thank you.”

“In the morrow, do you want to go somewhere special for dinner after lessons with Brommy?”

“I can train with my injury?”

“You are going to be training in the temple from now on as my little shining guard. I do not want you anywhere near Enoch or the palace right now.”

“What?” I whisper.

Adler strokes the side of my face. “I’m sorry, little pearl. Femke has...gone missing. Until she shows, we need to be careful,” he explains. His arm cradles my back keeping me somehow half on the cloud and half on him. “Did Brommy give you my gift?”

Hesitant, I lift my chin, looking away from him as I stick out my tongue so he can see for himself.

“What does Enoch think of it?” he asks.

“He doesn’t know yet,” I whisper seeing the anger in his eyes leave as he watches my mouth.

My chest heaves, feeling his hand slip beneath my tunic to caress my back. The action makes me stop shivering as I fall into the growing warmth, him. His soft breathing threatens to close over mine.

“Can I see it again?” he asks gently. Reluctantly, I stick out my tongue once more. His tone makes me blush and hide it back in my mouth, “What a lewd little thing you have turned it into.”

I grip onto his shoulders in shock when he bites down on my lower lip.

“Adler!” I gasp in panic, but he uses the moment to ravish my mouth. My head spins when he tugs my tongue inside his mouth. He begins to suck hard on the pearl. Lost in bliss, I press my legs tightly together as a pleasant pulse resonates somewhere between them. “O-oh...Adler.”

His hand moves underneath my injured knee to protect it right before he decides to crawl over me with his weight pressing me into the fluff as he sucks more rapidly. Adler palms my chest, breaking away from my mouth with a ragged breath.

“Be gentle,” I whisper in a small voice.

He makes a pleased rumbling sound in his throat before lowering his head, tearing through the wrap bound around my chest with his teeth. Then his mouth kisses each useless fatty lump as if it were one of his own prized possessions. It makes me feel like a woman instead of the child I look like. I huff as his hands leave a slow burning trail from my stomach to my ribcage to my chest making me feel completely naked under his firm touch. He begins to rub out the stiffness. I’m left a moaning mess when he pulls away in time to watch my body enter a fit of fidgets and shakes against him.

He dips his head back down, covering my sounds with his mouth and sucking the pearl with greater fervor as though he intends to swallow it.

A strange pleasant feeling grows between us when my body stills and our kiss ends as we catch our breath. I let go of his shoulders, sinking into his embrace. Liquid trails down the corner of my eyes as he gently wraps my tunic back around my chest with unsteady hands.

“I f-feel funny, Adler,” I admit through a hiccup, shying away from the stars in his eyes. “You made me feel like a...person.”

“You are a person and you deserve to be loved and cared for. I don’t see a child, sweet pearl. I see a precious woman in my arms...small as you are. You are so sweet, gentle, and very smart,” he coos down to me. My entire body still feels very warm.

The sensation makes me consider that where things might lead may not be so bad of a thing after all.

What about tomorrow though? Will I think the same when I wake after having done such a thing? I don’t think either of us would be made happy by it. He should be doing things like this with his wife...which he still has yet to find. Me being here is not helping him or myself.

Adler sits up with me, rubbing his neck.

“Was it not to your liking?”

“Th-this is not right,” I whisper. Flustered, I avert my gaze feeling my tongue hurt a little from him tugging the pearl around. “You should not be doing this with me.”

“Oh, not to worry. W-we were just comforting one another,” he says uneasily.

Something wet brushes against my leg. A spicy scent drifts between us. I think it’s coming from him. I dare to look down. The folds of his tunic are splattered with a heavy coating of his own strong dark ink.

I’m left speechless.

He rubs my back, but he does not sound ashamed. “I couldn’t help it. What with your little nails digging into my shoulders and those precious soft sounds you made during our little shared kiss. Once I saw those smashed flat peaks of your chest and how much help they needed, it just about sent me right over the edge when I freed them. You should have had your sisters take the wrap off sooner. I thought I was helping. I had a shameful accident being a healthy male of our species...” he trails off.

“N-no,” I stammer watching his sad smile. Mortified, I cry out, “You planned to put it to use!”

“I would not do that to my little pearl.”

“But you did it to many women before me. I am not going to be your whore!” I scream while rushing out of the bed, nauseous, smelling the strong odor of the same ink he put in his wife to make Enoch. “Why can’t you see me as a friend? This is horrible...” I whisper watching him stand up and turn away from me.

Dread creeps up on me, snaring my mind in a whir of panicked doubts. How many women have come in here thinking he’s treated them special? How many women has he let his wife kill? Does he intend on making me another nameless number?

“Horrible,” I repeat seeing him turn to face me with an ugly, crooked smirk. “Horrible,” I whisper as he storms over to his trove.

One, two, three...treasures go slamming into the mirrors of the wall. I scream watching the glass shatter down like rain. He picks up yet another item and hurls it against another frame. I clamber across the messy floor and hide behind the small locked bookcase.

My body shivers, my sobs beyond my control as a coldness seeps into my bones.

“Horrible,” I mumble feeling bloody hands grab my arms. “Horrible...horrible,” I repeat, shaking as I’m set down on the cloud of fluff.

“...ible...h-horrible.”

“I’m so sorry, Greta. I am horrible. That is why I need you. I want to become better. Don’t give up on me. I wasn’t seeing you, I was seeing myself in your fragile eyes. I will understand if you don’t believe me. Just nod if you can hear me, please. I won’t ask you to speak after witnessing that.”

With a whimper, I nod, receding back into the warm enclosure of his heavy robes at my back.

“Yes, you can hide in there for now. Come morning, things will be better,” he coos while petting my back. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you? I know you may think otherwise, but the safest place for you in this empire is tucked snug in my tunic as you are now. Tomorrow, I’ll take you and Enoch somewhere special. It will be my treat. We can just pretend this never happened. It was a one-time thing, Greta. I won’t let it happen ever again. I hope I haven’t traumatized you...I suppose it better me than Enoch to scare you over such a thing, don’t you think?” Adler asks nervously.