Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
I waited.
I didn’t know for how long. Long enough that an ache settled into my shoulders so deeply that I ceased to notice it. Long enough that the oil on my skin cooled to room temperature and I became aware of the cell’s air against every bare surface. Long enough that I had exhausted several unproductive lines of thought—about the Order of Ostia, about the Guard, about the Norse inscription in a Sicilian mosaic, about the bride saddle and the tree and the young woman’s eyes—and arrived at something that wasn’t quite calm but was at least a quieter version of fear.
Then the lock turned again.
The door opened behind me. I heard it but did not turn, because I could not turn, because my wrists were clipped to iron posts. I felt the change in the air, the slight shift in temperature, and I heard him step inside.
Not Giovanna. The footfall sounded too heavy, too slow, too certain of itself. A man’s tread, moving with unhurried confidence.
He didn’t speak for a long while. I heard the door close behind him. I heard him stop, and I understood somehow from the quality of the silence that he was looking at me.
The back of my neck felt very warm.
“There.” His voice was deep and low and carried an accent I couldn’t place immediately, especially from a monosyllable. I could tell my new master wasn’t Italian, but my mistress had told me that the Pretorian Guard had global reach, so I supposed he might have come from anywhere. “There you are, columba.”
The way he said columba… it made me wonder, suddenly, if this man wasn’t as conversant with the apparently ancient ways of the Order of Ostia and the Pretorian Guard as Giovanna and her nymphobus were. And that made me wonder in turn whether the accent I heard in his words might have something Northern about it.
His hand touched my shoulder blade. It felt deliberate, as though he meant to test the temperature of an object he intended to handle.
“Good,” he said softly. “Very good.”
CHAPTER 14
Henrik
My cock had gotten as hard, I thought, as it had ever been. I took half a step back and shrugged the crimson robe from my shoulders.
On loan to me from Bruno, the robe—he had told me—of a leo, it brought a certain very special, very welcome kind of Roman ceremony to the proceedings. Perhaps it didn’t differ much from the traditional long shirts worn by the Sons of Odin when breaking in their bed thralls, but I couldn’t help but appreciate the magisterial hue of its heavy fabric, and the way it slid gracefully to the floor.
Standing naked in this initiation cell, with this lovely girl, produced in me a surge of animal dominance that I hadn’t anticipated. I felt my cock twitch in the sheer aggression of my urgent lust for the young woman who had found our hidden cavern and, it seemed, felt irresistibly drawn to the rowing bench and then the bride saddle.
Who, it seemed, had had a vǫlva’s prophetic vision without a Son of Odin present to discipline and to enjoy and to guide her to the tree. I had messaged Sven the moment I heard Ilsa claim to have had a vision on the bride saddle. He had confirmed that centuries ago the researchers of the brotherhood had debated whether a girl could have a true vision without a warrior present—as opposed to merely sighting the tree: one of them had claimed that a bed thrall of his had done so. The idea, however, Sven had told me, had never received much attention.
I studied Ilsa Matthews’ lovely back, pert bottom cheeks, and slim thighs, so piquantly marked by the pink and red tracery left by the mastix. The cuffs, collar, and belt set off the whole of her nubile beauty in a way I found strongly, exotically arousing. The Sons of Odin bound girls with leather, certainly, when we wished to keep them from interfering with our pleasure—but not in this elegant, enduring way, whereby it seemed very clear a girl like Ilsa must find herself reminded from moment to moment of her body’s primary purpose as a vehicle of her master’s pleasure.
Such a brilliant, creative young woman, too, this one. If any new bed thrall could muster the unconscious mental acuity that produced the vǫlur’s prophecies, it would be a girl like Ilsa Matthews. She might even have the capacity truly to understand what had befallen her.
It had undoubtedly felt supernatural to Ilsa, at least at first. As an academic archaeologist, though, she might also be able to grasp how a vǫlva’s vision in truth represented only a quasi-magical psychological process.
The Sons of Odin had determined centuries ago that such prophetic scenes came from the submissive mind’s quasi-magical capacity to notice the subtlest details of the phenomena of the world around her. Ilsa, having found a mosaic that depicted Yggdrasil, must have processed her memories into what she had seen in her mind’s eye.