Page 11 of Sett and his King
She held a cloak up for him and he stepped into it as if he was born to be served.
I didn’t miss the thing swinging wildly between his legs but I didn’t dare look at it directly. I didn’t know if I’d be able to control my thoughts let alone my actions if I did.
“Let’s get you something warm to drink,” she said and turned to me with a smile.
We followed her out of the morgue and down the tunnel into another room that was more of an alcove, with several cushions on the floor around a coffee table, the entire space lit up by candles and a spark of magic that warmed me as soon as I stepped through.
Sett sprawled all over the cushions on one side, his robe parting where he spread his legs and I swallowed a frog that immediately formed in my throat.
I could feel the heat of his gaze on me like pin pricks and it put me right on the edge. I hadn’t felt like that in so long. Desire that was pure and untamed. Desire that wasn’t forced or stolen from me.
Even when I’d flirted with Tomasz or Sandro it hadn’t felt like that. I didn’t know why but ever since becoming Horus’s prisoner it was as if my choices, the full spectrum of my emotions, my body’s needs were not my own, they were locked up and only accessible by him. My master.
“Tell me…Drew, how did you end up my brother’s prisoner?”
His words were like a cold shower bringing me back to reality. Mother Red Cap left the room, leaving me alone with him and I had half a mind to follow her. The other half wanted to hide to save myself from him.
But he didn’t touch me. He didn’t even move toward me. He just watched me like a bird of prey watches its next meal.
“I…uhm…” I stuttered before I remembered myself, cleared my throat and looked him right in the eyes. “It all started when my parents lost everything.”
It was such a wild story, so unbelievable, so…simple and yet it was the beginning of our end.
“They entrusted their money in the wrong hands and when the economy collapsed they struggled to get back on their feet so that by the time they died, we were…penniless.”
It had been such a tough blow to my dad, ruining his family name, going from one of the most influential witch families to getting kicked out of the coven. He’d never recovered from the shame and there was nothing my mom, my Yaya or us could do to bring him back.
“It turns out, my dad, he borrowed money from the wrong people and both my parents paid the price with their lives. Their debt passed down to me and in order to repay it and keep both my brother and me above water, I went to work for them, the people who had murdered my parents.”
I thought those would be the darkest years of my life. Oh boy how wrong I’d been .
“They put me straight into work, doing their dirty bidding, using my powers to scam, cheat and lie their way out of anything and everything. And no matter how many jobs I took on, my debt never diminished. I was, for all intents and purposes, their slave.”
“And Horus? What does he have to do with it?” Sett asked as Mother Red Cap re-entered the room with a tray. She set a cup of coffee in front of me and a cup of soup and water in front of Sett before taking her place next to me.
“I was…just about to get to that,” I said. “I’d been working for the loan sharks for four years when they sent me on a job that went sideways. It had happened before but we’d always managed to escape, only this one was different. None of us could use our power to escape. We couldn’t use our own bodies to move.”
“Horus!” Sett growled over his steaming cup of soup.
I nodded.
“It was my first encounter with him although I didn’t believe him when he said who he was. Gods had been just fiction up until that point. I later found out you were all cast out thousands of years ago and only recently did the path between our two worlds reopen. He was one of the first to awaken.”
Sett gritted his teeth and his fist on the table tightened.
“I thought he was dead. I thought I killed him.”
“Evidently, you didn’t.”
He wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. He was staring at his cup, seemingly lost in his own rage.
I had no idea about their story beyond what the tales said and none of us knew how accurate those were. And I had no idea if and how Horus had escaped death. It didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that he was here now and I was his.
“Anyway. He…he killed everyone else but saved me. I didn’t know why at the time but I think it’s because of my power. He wanted it. He wanted to use me too. But back then he promised me freedom. He promised to get rid of my masters?—”
“In exchange for fealty to him,” Sett offered and I bit my tongue.
That had been the promise. But it was far from reality.
