Chapter 10: Rage

Roran Greymane

Roran Greymane walked out of the sorceress’s house and headed forward without looking back, but the image still pulsed in his head—the translucent peach robe, open over her bare chest, the hips swaying as she walked, and that smell. That damned smell that still left his mouth dry and his groin aching with a dull, sharp, insistent throb.

Stopping in the middle of the empty street, he suddenly realized he was shaking. Not a fine tremor—a deep, visceral shudder, from the diaphragm to the fingertips. The way a cornered beast shakes when it can no longer run but is not yet ready to turn and sink its teeth into the pursuer’s throat. His jaw muscles worked like pistons, his teeth grinding, and his fists clenched and unclenched on their own—until the knuckles went white and back again, over and over, in some feverish, uncontrollable rhythm.

Bitch, he thought, and the thought was not cold, not analytical—it was white-hot, like a brand pressed to the skin. Bitch. She knows what she’s doing. She knew from the start. Opened the door in that little robe of hers, looked at me with those green eyes, smiled, breathed so I could see her chest rise, and she knew. Knew I wouldn’t be able to. Knew I’d stand there like a boy with his first hard-on and wouldn’t even be able to ask a question properly, let alone conduct a search.

He inhaled deeply, convulsively, trying to calm his heart, which was hammering somewhere in his throat, but the air only threw more fuel on the fire—because it still smelled of her. Her perfume, her skin, her arousal, which she had not even tried to hide. She wanted him to feel it. Wanted him to suffer. Wanted him to walk out of there like this—enraged, humiliated, with shaking hands and a hard-on like stone that hadn’t gone down in half an hour.

You’re playing, bitch, he hissed through his teeth, feeling the muscles in his neck seize with fury. Playing cat and mouse. Only you forgot that mice sometimes bite.

And then he allowed himself to imagine. Couldn’t hold back. Didn’t try to suppress it. Just closed his eyes—for a second, for two—and allowed it.

In his imagination, he burst into her apartment not as an inquisitor, but as a master. Tore that ridiculous robe off her—with one movement, along with shreds of silk—and she cried out, tried to recoil, to cover herself with her hands, but he was already grabbing her wrists, twisting them behind her back so hard she screamed in pain, and dragging her. Through the corridor. Down the stairs. Across the courtyard. To the north tower, where the interrogation rooms were. Where the walls were so thick that no scream could escape. Where there were no windows, no witnesses, no hope.

She was still in the robe—dirty, torn, barely clinging to her shoulders. They dragged her across the stone floor, and she grabbed at everything within reach—at ledges, at staples, at someone’s boots—but she was still hauled onward, to that very chair. The witch’s chair. With a high back, with iron rings for the wrists, with a wooden seat studded with blunt spikes—not sharp, so as not to kill, but blunt, so that sitting was unbearable. She was seated. Her wrists were chained to the armrests. Her ankles—to the legs. And they left her.

In his imagination, she tried to smile. That same smile—lazy, half-predatory, the one with which she had opened the door to him. Tried to joke. Tried to be that same predator who had looked down at him. But the spikes dug into her body, and the smile came out crooked. Trembling. Pathetic.

He sat down opposite. Unhurriedly. Placed the chair so he could see her face. Folded his hands on his knees. Watched. For a long time. Without blinking. And waited.

— Well? — he said at last. — Talk.

She talked. At first—smoothly, confidently, like a memorized lesson. About the books. About how she hadn’t taken them. About how she didn’t know what he was talking about. But he listened in silence, and with each minute her voice grew quieter. More faltering. She began to repeat herself. Began to get confused about dates. Began to make excuses—hurriedly, fussily—and at some point fell silent.