He grunted and moaned, and his jerky movements only elicited a tighter clenching of her eyes. His hands fumbled across her breasts. He tried to be gentle, but she didn’t care. The pieces twirling in her mind waited and waited, but they felt nothing.

“Ashhur’s salvation,” Aresh said before kissing her.

Those words ignited something inside her, something opposite what he intended.

“Salvation,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at him with a cold stare that shriveled his stomach. “This is your salvation? This is what Ashhur can offer me?”

He rolled off her, short of breath and seeming small and weak without his armor and white tunic. She giggled, and the sound froze him where he stood.

“I should have known,” she said. “I didn’t want to know, I tried not to know, but you lied to me. You shoved lies down my throat and kissed me to keep them down.”

Aresh pulled up his pants, feeling a chill race up and down his spine. Tessanna slid off the bench and approached. All childishness had left her, vanishing as if it had never been. It seemed an entirely new creature stalked him, cruel and angry. He towered over her by a full foot, but still he felt terrified.

“I have made you whole,” he said, his voice quivering.

“You filled a hole,” she said. “And you did a poor job at that.”

She grabbed his wrist. He couldn’t tear away. She weighed next to nothing, she was so rail thin and bony. Why could he not pull away? The muscles in his arm tensed, then relaxed. He felt a strange presence, like a worm crawling in his brain. When she spoke, there was no trace of a smile, no hint of shyness.

“How many girls have you taken here?” she asked. Her hair lifted as if a strong wind blew through the room, but Aresh felt nothing, only the icy grip of her hand and the digging, squirming sensation behind his eyes.

“I’ve never…you don’t…let go of me child. I have done Ashhur’s work.”