The enchanted flutes within the milky-white marble columns of the Laughing Pillars had barely faded from earshot when Prince Beron Theodore led his new acquisition across the grand, high-altitude plazas toward the eastern quadrant of the vertical city.
Walking half a step behind the flamboyant prince, Hellino—trapped inside the fragile, porcelain disguise of the human herbalist Shasha—kept his gaze fixed stubbornly on the polished stone walkway. His raw, friction-sore palms were hidden deep within the wide sleeves of his civilian tunic, still burning from the grueling, humiliating ordeal he had just endured beneath Beron's massive hands. Every step he took felt like a march through shards of glass, his mind a roaring, chaotic furnace of pure, unvarnished hatred. He had been degraded, his masculine pride stripped away and mocked, forced to play the submissive, small-membered plaything just to keep his undercover mission alive.
