Page 41 of Storm

“Is that Commander Melek’s offspring?” He points to my midsection. I hug my stomach tighter.

“Why does it matter?”

“I simply need to ascertain where your loyalties lie, because if you are on the opposite side of this fight, you will need to die.”

His words are a contradiction to his energy. The exquisitely smooth, green-skinned man’s demeanour screams imposing. It doesn’t warn of a threat. However, he’s trying to ward me off. Skin clamming up, I slump down onto the toilet, leaning back, closing my eyes, and dumping the shortened version of my life story on him for context. If he thinks I’m one of them, he is wrong. “I’m a serond from the lightning factory. My mother and brother hid me from the hollow for nineteen years. The keepers found out I was half Halo and put me in the breeding pool. My brother tried to help me escape, but we were caught… He… he was left for dead when they took me. Against my will, they brought me here to be married off to Commander Melek.”

When I open my eyes, the door is slamming shut, and the ethereal fae figure is gone, like a dream. “What the fuck?” I rub at my eyes in confusion, exhaustion washing over my body. I stumble out of the bathroom, slamming into the warmth of my husband’s chest. So many questions flit through my mind, but I don’t think I’m ready for the answers.

“Wife, I’ve been looking for you.”

“I needed a quiet place to sit.” Looking up at him, I feel a strange pang of guilt. Should I tell him about the fairy? No, I can’t. For as long as I’ve been under his roof and rule, I’ve been fighting against my husband and Halo. Then, our relationship started to change. That doesn’t mean I can trust him. Not with this. What if the fairy is my one chance at finally getting out of here?

With my husband’s arms holding my weight, he asks, “Do you need me to carry you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“Woman, you’re infuriating,” he grumbles as he lifts me into his arms. I’m sure the dramatic exit will be the talk of the town for weeks to come since he has to walk through the kitchen, living room, and foyer to get me upstairs. No doubt they are still indulging themselves in fairy solence, so as Melek manoeuvres us through the crowd, I hide my face in his neck.

Once we make it to our room, he helps me undress and slip under the covers. “Stay, wife.”

Before he can back away, I grab his hand. “Sunny?”

“I put him to bed before coming to find you.” His lips come down to kiss the inside of my palm, where the faint, criss-crossed scars of my past linger.

“Thank you,” I say. Pools of light streak over Melek’s face from the lamp beside our bed. Sitting down beside me, his fingers reach for the hair dangling over my forehead. Pushing it aside, he tenderly kisses my skin again.

“You never have to thank me for taking care of our family. It’s my job.” My body relaxes as he brushes gentle strokes over my head, lulling me into slumber. “Sleep, wife.”

A grunt wakes me. After Melek tucked me in, I had a frightful sleep without him, cracked wings and sparkling liquid drinks at the forefront of my mind. And a horrid, beautifully melodic sound ringing throughout it all.

The last thing to cross my vision before the throaty noise awoke me was the unmistakable shine of a silver locket. My heart-shaped silver locket.

Fingers immediately go to my neck, finding nothing. Of course it’s not on me. Dread climbs at my esophagus, reminding me of where I left it. Fuck. I’ll need to find⁠—

“Wife.” A clearly masculine groan comes from the open bathroom door, and I know who it is without question. The sound reminds me distinctly of the first year of our marriage, when Melek would tease me with his naked body…

Wringing my hands together, I sit at the edge of our extravagant bed in a white cotton nightgown. He said he wouldn’t touch me. He hasn’t. He’s kept his promise. But that was before we got married. Holding my hand up to the light, a snake’s eye winks back, reminding me I now belong to Halo. Melek has a matching gold ring, as do all the married couples of Halo.

A morbid symbolism showing we are not just married to each other. We are bound to the saviour.

We exchanged a slight brushing of lips at the Astral, the figure of the winged Halo statue looking down upon us. It gave me the creeps. The whole of the Astral, a large and foreboding structure that makes me simultaneously suffocated and weightless, does.

My body is not my own. That is now more apparent than ever.

A thud comes from the bathroom, a door closing, and Commander Melek, my sworn enemy and now my husband, stands, taking up the whole of the doorway without a piece of cloth on him. His hair is wet, and droplets fall effortlessly from his thick brown hair to the hard plains of his chest. Continuing to travel the length of him, I stop just as the V of his hips cut more prominently into his groin, his hair thicker down there.

I go back to facing the grey walls.

Blushing fiercely. As much as I hate this man, I am still a virgin who has never seen a man who looks like Melek—a naked man, at that.

“If you wish to look, I won’t hold it against you, wife.” There is a hint of amusement to his voice, and it sends me into a fit.

Before I even know what I am doing, I am off the bed, standing before him, looking up into hard grey eyes. “I will never look upon you with fondness. You are the reason my family is dead. You’re everything I despise about this world. You mean nothing to me.”

I’ve spent the day bottling down grief and putting on an air of platitude. Becoming invisible in this place is my greatest asset. The less the hollows think they need to concern themselves with me—a trivial serond—the less they will look out for me. That is what I have hoped upon planning my escape attempts. My next is going to be through the forest at the back of our property. I’ve hidden a small bag with rations within the branches of a tree, and I am counting down the days. Drones survey the area every half-hour. If I am fast enough, I might beat them. It is a long shot. All of my escape attempts are.

The shift in his jaw tells me everything I need to know. He doesn’t like what I am saying, but he’ll tolerate it. No matter what I call him. He takes it without complaint. It usually amuses him more than anything. However, I’ve found when I say something about him being nothing to me, it elects the smallest of changes. A jaw clenched. An eye twitch. Knuckles cracking.