Even the Wingless by M.C.A. Hogarth

Author:M.C.A. Hogarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, love, violence, redemption, dragons, trials, slavery, torture, shapechangers
Publisher: M.C.A. Hogarth
Published: 2016-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

On the fourth night, the Emperor tangled himself in the comforter lying across the couch. The seconds he lost yanking free gave Lisinthir enough time to press that long neck into the pillows and give back three nights' worth of anger and humiliation. The Emperor's wings flailed wildly around his head but he ducked their vicious thumb-claws with an agility born of desperation. He even bore the punishment he received for his insolence with less anger than usual, though he fought it so hard he wrenched all the muscles along his side and won himself a new set of tears along the other. That night he walked down to the Surgeon and presented himself for healing without even wiping the bloody streaks from his face.

In his chambers, washing before bed, Lisinthir remembered that at home what he'd just done would have seen him put in stocks; in the Alliance, he would have been tried and possibly imprisoned, depending on which set of laws claimed him. It seemed a strange and distant realization. What was criminal for the Alliance was a triumph to the Chatcaava—to best the Emperor in violence, to make him choke on his own sheets. What it said about him that he'd been capable of it, Lisinthir didn't know. Only that when the opportunity had come no part of him had been unwilling. It had given him little emotional satisfaction, though his body was replete.

But that he'd worried his hosts, he had no doubt; his mailbox still contained no responses to his requests for meetings. The trek to Third's offices had revealed that Third had been sent away on some business... but Second most assuredly was in the capital, for Lisinthir had seen him at supper each night. Despite that, Second never seemed to be in his office when Lisinthir made the journey, nor did that male stop by.

Let him stall. He'd soon learn respect when he found Lisinthir hopping the pillows. And in the mean, it gave Lisinthir needed time to keep himself all of one piece. To go every night to brutality, to let it enter his mind through bruised grip and swift blow, and then to let it flow out of him in time to eat a cordial after-breakfast meal and teach the Slave Queen of freedom, love and personhood... that required more of him than he'd ever needed to give. Not even the pettiness of Ontine had prepared him for this. Dueling had made his body flexible. The Alliance had stretched his mind. Together they proved a poor education for an impossible enterprise.

Surely soon, he would accomplish what he'd entered into this relationship to gain: the Emperor's confidences. Until then, he would do all he could to remain himself, apart from what he did. Unmoved. Somehow.

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