Page 9 of Taken to Lemora
“You didn’t tell me I was injured, Iwasinjured and right now you’re in my way,” I snap. I’ve never snapped at anybody before and my momentary thrill at how good it feels is quickly doused by shame.
I open my mouth to apologize until he grunts, “Your way?”
“Yeffa,” I huff, annoyed all over again. “You’re Lemoran. You’re supposed to be one of the clever ones, but right now you sound about as dense as an Egama.”Wait. Essmira, did you just insult the male?
“I…you…an Egama!” He shouts and suddenly he’s right up against me. I know I should be panicked, but my need to escape is too large and unwieldy to fear being alone in a room with a male who has no intention of purchasing me and, evidently, too great to stop me from insulting him.
“I’m clearly trying to escape, now would you hand me that fuzzy chair over there so I can reach the window?” I reach for the shattered frame again, not caring about the jagged edges, but he snatches my wrist from the air.
“You cut your hands the first time and now you’re trying again and you have the gall to callmean Egama?”
I try to yank my arm away from him, but the point is futile. He could have broken every bone in my body with likely very little effort on his part, but I couldn’t really care less at the moment. I shove his chest with my other hand, smearing my own bright red blood across his no longer pristine tunic.How many zaps of electricity would this have won me from Tyto’s eager claws? Many. Hundreds, spaced out over solars.
I nearly scream, “Don’t you see I’m trying to escape?”
His lips mouth the wordescapeas his eyes dart from my hands to the window back to my hands back to the window before finally dropping to my face. He gasps —gasps— and suddenly staggers away from me, dropping my arm like it’s a rotten log teeming with flesh-burrowing insects.
“Ohr!” He hisses. He grabs onto his left horn again, only this time, when my gaze follows, his hand twitches and his face does this horrible twisting thing, like he’s in a world of pain.
I jolt, startled by such a sight and the training beaten into me from birth kicks in. “Are you alright?” I reach for him, intending to soothe, only to be arrested by the soft clearing of a throat on the other side of the room.
I glance up and all the blood drains out of my body. My soul abandons my bones and floats up and out through that jagged patch of window.Bye bye.The dark hole where I’m going, I won’t need it anyway. Standing in the open doorway is Igmora.
She steps forward and I know her black eyes well enough by now to sense that she’s neither surprised nor horrified though she appears to be both. On the contrary, the false breathiness to her voice is well rehearsed and the outrage she levels towards me is something completely contrived. No one else can see it though. And my concern isn’t for Igmora anyway, but for Tyto, an Egama giant, and the Oosa delegation crowding the space behind her.
Tyto’s tail slashes behind him furiously, but I can see the bright excitement in his yellow gaze when our eyes lock. He licks his lips and my stomach clenches. I know what’s in store for me now. Pleasure houses would be a gift at this stage.
Tyto’s slitted yellow gaze drops to my hands and he sees the blood and he looks up and over my head and he sees the window and he knows. And in his eyes I conjure my own afterlife because I’m sure it will be preferable to his punishment.And he knows it.He smiles to show all of his fanged teeth. He brushes his clawed hand back through his black, waist-length hair.He knows he’ll get to exact punishment. And he knows how I fear him and revels in it.
Immediately, I move to the center of the room and drop to my knees, palms upturned on the tops of my thighs. I bow my head and steady my breath and wait…
The Oosa are the first to start trilling wildly, but closely on their tails, the Egama bellows out a battle cry. Tyto says nothing while Igmora whistles her outrage in a voice that’s as fake as it is falsetto. She charges into the room and points at the male who’d ruined all my plans and chased all my dreams out of that window into the starlight.
“Raingar, you have no right to be in here. And look what you’ve done. You’ve damaged her hands. I assure you,” she says to the Egama and the Oosa behind her, “that this is a superficial wound easily healed. It will not in any way affect her purchase price. We will continue the bidding at nine tuns of kintarr for the female…
“Centare, centare, of course she was not taken by the Lemoran chieftan here. He told me expressly he had no desire to peddle in flesh.” Peddle in flesh. Is that what we’re doing? Is that what I am? Not a being? Just flesh? A soulless thing?
“He is not a part of the bidding. The bidding remains to you, Ooran. Will you outbid the Egama’s nine tuns or will you yield to him?”
“Whatever he bids, I will outbid!” The sturdy voice of the Egama rattles into the room filling it like a gas. One with a low temperature of combustion. Energy sizzles through the space, crackling and popping dangerously. My bloody hands are wetting the fabric of my dark purple dress. Igmora says that indigo brings out unearthly hues in my brown skin and makes my curly raven hair shine like water.
The Oosa trill as they counter, but the Egama is paying them no attention. Instead, he points somewhere to my right, towards the gaping window and the Lemoran who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“But first…” The Egama ducks low in order to enter the room and I pity the Lemoran male, fear for him even, as the Egama takes a step towards him and threatens menacingly , “I cannot let this slight go unpunished.”
Every cell in my body tenses. Every nerve dies. I feel like running out of the room screaming my head off as if I were on fire.
And then two fingers tap down on my shoulder stiffly. I jolt and look up, but the Lemoran — what did she call him? Rain…something — isn’t looking at me. His jaw is clenched and when he brushes his hand over his horn once again, a little bit of black flakes off onto me. I wonder what color is underneath…
Distracted, I’m boneless when he lifts me underneath the arms so high that my feet clear the floor up until he sets me back down again on the far side of the room between the wall colored in crude murals of princes and princesses fornicating and the frightening green chair that may or may not be a sentient being.
He positions himself directly in front of me, blocking my view of the Egama and Igmora but not of Tyto whose reptilian face remains stoic and stony and terrifying as he watches me. And I’m so distracted by the slight and unexpected twitch of Tyto’s upper lip that I don’t fully register the war brewing mere paces away until the Egama releases a battlecry that I’m certain can be heard from three stars away.
The giant drops his shoulders and charges across the floor straight towards me.
I don’t scream.A female does not scream. A female hardly ever makes a sound. I just cover my head and brace for impact…but the impact is not with me. The impact is with the Lemoran male charging across the furry carpet to meet the Egama. The scowling, irritable and franklygoofymale that just told me he was looking for the exit charges for the Egama, looking every inch, deadly.
The two beings collide in the center of the room and the impact literally makes the entire room shake. The painted walls reach up to a high ceiling where chandeliers made of crystal crack and break. Falling stone hits the carpet in beautiful explosions of pink and yellow powders. A huge statue of a princess standing upright against the wall behind Igmora topples over. Igmora screams wildly and pretends to faint.
