Two years ago
Breathe in, breathe out, Rhea told herself.
Stare up, don’t blink too often. Keep still. Keep silent.
She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. The clink of silverware as the soldiers ate. The murmur of conversation that she strained to follow, to file away in case she needed it. Footsteps, music. Laughter. She smelled the food, tantalizingly sweet.
Rhea was hungry, but she hadn’t been allowed her dinner. Damocles had been too angry, had thrown the food onto the floor. Rhea should know better. Push him too far, question a little bit too hard, and he resorted to stunts like this.
A finger brushed the bare skin of her stomach. A Tholosian soldier picked up a sweet molded into the shape of a warship no bigger than a child’s ear. She heard the wet, sucking noises as he chewed and swallowed. The noise was all around her. There was no escape. She wished she could close her eyes, but she had to keep them open, had to stare up at the brilliant reflections of the chandelier above that left dancing spots in her vision.
The soldiers were in a fine mood. The Tholosians had emerged the victors of the Battle of the Garnet. Many of their own had died, but gloriously, in battle. A tribute to all the Gods. More of the Evoli had fallen. Rhea had listened to Damocles tell her the details, relishing how they made her uncomfortable.
They’re our enemy, Rhea dear, he’d said. There’s no use in caring for those who aren’t ours.
She let her mind drift away from the heightened emotions of those around her, away from the image of her naked body offered as a literal platter. She dreamed of escape, of retribution, of revenge.
“Nyx?” one of the soldiers asked. “You’re not eating.” Male. His words barely reached Rhea. She was imagining racing through corridors, jumping onto a ship, shooting out into the stars, and never looking back.
“This doesn’t bother you?” came a low, almost gravelly voice. Rhea set the daydream aside, coming back to the polite, lavish nightmare.
She glanced to her right. A young soldier, probably no older than her, in full military regalia. Smooth brown skin covered with dark twining tattoos. So many thorns. So many deaths. Medals clustered the cloth over her left breast.
Nyx Arktos-33.
The Arktos cohort had yielded some of Tholos’s deadliest soldiers. She was so good, they’d given her a first name. She’d earned a special commendation for her battle. Damocles himself had set that ribbon around her neck. She should be a bottle deep into the wine, arms thrown around her fellow soldiers. Yet instead, her back was straight, her plate empty, her wine glass still full.
Nyx looked at Rhea’s exposed body not with pity, not with desire . . . it was an emotion Rhea couldn’t place—and if there was one thing Rhea excelled at, it was reading others’ moods.
Their eyes locked. Rhea had Nyx’s attention, it seemed. And Nyx had Rhea’s in turn.
“Why should anything bother me?” the male soldier asked. He was as merry as Nyx was somber. “Come on, Nyx. We’re celebrating.”
He reached over Rhea’s body, the side of his hand grazing her nipple. Rhea blinked, slowly, desperately picturing that ship taking her into the stars. Far away from there.
The soldier took another delicacy from her flesh.
“For you,” the soldier said to Nyx, with an elaborate bow. “For saving my ass out there on the battlefield.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m good.”
“Come on. Look, it’s still warm from her skin.”
Rhea counted the crystals above her.
“I said no.” Nyx’s voice was sharp, dimming the laughter around her. Silence grew longer.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and popped the food into his mouth.
Nyx didn’t stay long, but for the rest of her time there, she made sure Rhea could meet her eye, if she so chose. And she didn’t eat one morsel of food.
Once Nyx left, Rhea went back to dreaming of escape.
But she started to realize that maybe, with the right kind of help, it might not be so impossible.