Chained To Him [Editing]

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Have I become your errand boy now?" Chev trailed his fingers down her naked back as they lay on the clothes they'd spread across the floor.

"As much as I've become your whore."

He smiled at that and rolled onto his side, propping himself up with his elbow as he looked at her. "I'm not sure what I think of that."

"Did you find them?"

Jayde tried not to push him too hard, but she was desperate to know what had become of Derik and Kariyah. If they were even still alive. There was no telling what had happened to them since Aragon had sent her to the palace. But if they lived, then it would give her hope, and it would also give her allies on the outside.

"I did. The man is alive and seems in good enough health."

Jayde's heart lurched. "And Kariyah?"

"Alive as well." His look softened and his hand stopped its travels across her skin. "She's pregnant though. There's a soldier who fancies her and he somehow convinced the field guards to let him keep her until she has the baby."

She said nothing, and no words would have made it past the lump in her throat anyway. Kariyah was pregnant. And how it had come to be...if Jayde had let Maigi take her instead of encouraging her to resist, would she have had a better life here? At least they would be together.

"What are they to you, anyway?"

"Old friends."

"Soldiers, more like it."

Jayde didn't reply, and Chev leaned down to kiss her shoulder blade and the back of her neck. She didn't want to send him to find Derik and Kariyah, but it had come up so naturally in their previous conversations when he mentioned that he played cards with some of the field guards. Blane would be conspicuous in a place like that, but Chev would blend in among his friends. And so she'd asked him then on a whim, only encountering a slight amount of suspicion from him. If he didn't rat her out, then he could prove useful in contacting her soldiers on the outside when the time came for them to rise up.

"Did you fight together?" His eyes were on her, and she turned to him then and smiled, kissing him fully on the mouth.

"What does it matter now? I just want to know that they're alive."

He kissed her again, pushing her onto her back so he could trail his lips down her chest and stomach. Their trysts had begun to stretch longer and longer, in part because Chev was no longer just content to have her and be done with her, but also because he had discovered Jayde was a good listener. She was lacking in conversation and so she humored him, searching for grains of useful information in what he said to her.

"You're not so bruised anymore," he said finally, laying on his back beside her. "Sometimes when I bring you to Aragon I think he might return you dead." Sometimes, she had thought the same thing. But it had been two weeks since he'd had her back, and she knew now how to keep from angering him.

"It would be a pity for you, wouldn't it?"

"Ay." He laughed softly next to her. "They talk of you, you know."

"They?"

"The officers, and the other soldiers."

"I'm sure they are good things."

Chev laughed again. It was so strange to hear his laugh – it was always easy and genuine. "They say you bewitched Lord Aragon, and now Greywood has come under your spell as well."

It was Jayde's turn to laugh, but there was no humor in it. "If I could bewitch the lords of the castle, I would not be their slave." She let the silence rise between them, aware that Chev's smile had slipped from his face. "Tell me about them, Aragon and Greywood. What do people say of them?"

"They're two of the most powerful men in the Empire, inside the same palace," Chev sighed. "It's no secret that they have their share of conflicts."

"They don't like each other."

"They respect each other. Do you think there are friends among any of the Emperor's lords?"

"Perhaps not."

"It's odd," he said quietly. "When Aragon is here, I think sometimes that people look to him for leadership rather than Greywood."

"Because he has more power?"

"Because he's been around longer. Aésadel belonged to him long before the Empire had ever heard of Greywood."

But she knew that already. And she had sensed the conflict between the two men in the few moments when she had been around them both. Still, it was useful to know that their dynamic hadn't escaped others' attention as well.

"Why would you want to think of them more than you already have to?" When she met his eye, there was genuine curiosity there. "You spend half of your days with either of them."

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's hard not to think of them anyway."

"Hmm," he breathed, and fell quiet once again.

"Take my mind off of them?"

"And how would you like me to do that?"

"Tell me about you."

Chev didn't say anything until Jayde rolled onto her side to stretch her limbs over him, resting her head against his shoulder. "I don't have a lot to say."

"How did you end up here?" She traced the edges of his collarbone down his chest to the trail of hair below his stomach.

"I was recruited as a boy."

"Did you want to go?"

"Of course not," he scoffed. "I was almost old enough to be a free man, but my father was deeply in debt, so he gave me up." It was hard to imagine him as a boy, especially one who had never dreamed of hurting people. "But he was a drunk with a swing and my mother was dead, so there wasn't much to stay for anyway."

"I'm sorry," she murmured into his skin, and his arm came to wrap around her shoulders.

"Sorry?"

"No one deserves to suffer like that."

"Not even me?" His tone was teasing, but she could hear the truth in his question.

"And why...how did you become a trainer?" Did he have a proclivity for torturing women that the Empire had seen in him? Or perhaps he was a little like Luc, deeply lost and finding only the cruelty of the Imperial army as a guide.

"It was a role that was assigned to me. I didn't choose it, if that's what you're wondering." His muscles were stiff beneath her, and his hand fell away from her.

"You don't mind it though."

"Now? No. And I'm good at it." Jayde wondered if he could feel her shiver. Luc had Luther and Jayde to love him growing up, but Chev had been shaped by nothing from cruelty. Why should he be anything but cruel? He was pitiable, despite who he was to her. He was a man crushed under the world around him and made to fit into it.

Raising herself to look at him, Jayde rested her hand against his chest. His gaze used to make her shudder, but she wasn't scared of it anymore. It had lost some of its monstrosity. "Would you ever leave, if you could? To go find peace somewhere else?"

Chev stared back at her quietly, his eyes searching her face as he considered her question. For a moment she worried that he was onto her, that he understood what she had planned for Aésadel and the role she ultimately hoped he would play for it. And then he smiled softly, his gaze distant. "No, I don't think I would." His voice was quiet, assured. "There's nowhere else that I belong."