The flashes made him scream, and the screams echoed off the polished stone.
Whenever she came, his queen, his goddess, his world, he would drop to the bulbous knobs of his knees. Tears of fear and joy and crazed love filled his slitted eyes when she stroked his head. He would call out to her in a guttural grunt when she left him again.
Then he would go back to the wheel.
On the day she came to him, took him by the hand, led him out of the chamber, he trembled. His small, spiked tail twitched.
She guided him through a maze of stone hazed with smoke from sputtering torches. Bats and birds perched among the flames, eyes glinting, watching. He saw a creature with wings and three heads shackled, saw the bones and blood scattered around it.
Then they entered a large chamber, alight with candle-glow, glinting with gold and silver and jewels. Like his, the walls were mirrored and reflected the throne on a gilded floor that rose on three silver steps.
She released him, ascended, sat. Then gestured with long fingers ringed with rubies. “Pour us wine, my pet.” When he neither moved nor spoke, she inclined her head. “Don’t you remember how?”
Words grunted out of him. “Remembering hurts.”
“I wish for you to pour the wine. Do you not want to give me whatever I wish?”
“Yes! All you wish. All!”
“Then give me what I wish.”
His hands shook. The man with golden hair flashed again, and the pain spiked in his head. But he picked up the glass bottle, poured the red liquid into a goblet studded with the bloodred rubies she favored.
The claws of his feet clacked against the silver steps as he carried it to her.
“And for you.”
“For me?”
“We’ll have wine together, my pet. Pour the wine, and sit.” She gestured to the steps at her feet.
Quaking—such joy, such fear!—he did as she bid. He wanted to lap at the wine in the goblet, but remembered, painfully, drank with his long sharp teeth clicking against the silver.
“And now, Andre—”
Hearing the name had the pain erupting inside him. He cried out, spilled wine, red on silver.
“You needed to forget,” Nerezza continued, “so you could become. Now you are become, and must remember. Remembering will be useful.”
“It hurts!”
“Do you love me?”
“I love. You are my worship.”
“Then you will bear the pain for me. There is a man’s mind inside you still, and I will have need of it. I will have need of you . . . Andre. You failed me once, but I show mercy. You sit at my hand and drink wine. You live, and with speed and strength no human can match. How will you repay my mercy?”
“As you command me.”
“Yes. As I command you.” She smiled, sipped wine. “Do you remember the guardians? The six?”
His breath burned his throat; his clawed hand dented the silver goblet. “Enemies.”
“Which of them would you choose to kill first?”
“Sawyer King! Sawyer King! Sawyer King!”
“Ah, yes, he who outwitted you. I will allow you to take that life. But not first. I need the death of the seer. As she dies, I can drain her. She’s powerful, and that power is . . . young. It will feed me, and she will no longer guide the others.”