The King's Marked

by Terina Adams

  “I like to hear a woman scream. If you do, I may be lenient. But if you hold your tongue, I will pound the flesh from your back until you give me what I want.”

  Without time to brace myself, the whip cracked down and my body jerked forward onto the ground. The cold, wet stone cooled my breasts, but my back burned raw. I panted through the searing pain, unwilling to give him what he wanted.

  “Get up,” he growled. His boot met my side and threw me sideways. I curled up into a ball, coughing through the pain. “I said get up, or you will feel my boot again.”

  I rolled to my knees, my side screaming for me to lie still, and rose to my hands and knees. No sooner was I there than he brought the whip down again. I could feel my skin split, feel the blood trickle in long streams down the sides of my body. With every noise of the whip hitting my skin, the crowd moaned in unison.

  The agony became an endless stream as he continued relentlessly to do as he’d promised and strip the flesh from my body. I groaned and made small whimpers but I’d yet to give him my screams. I would not give him any pleasure, nothing.

  And I outlasted the prince. I thought I would die here on the cobbles, a half-naked bloody mess. But at least, I thought, I would die without the prince getting what he wanted. But I didn’t die. The prince finally had enough of my silence.

  “Throw her in the back of the cart,” he yelled. I could hear his unleashed fury. “Send her back to the dead forest. Let’s see if she can hold her tongue when the wraiths’ pets find her. That’s if she makes it there first.”

  31

  Every bump and groove sent spasms of torment across my back and through each split in my skin. One of the soldiers had had the decency to give me a new shirt, so at least I was clothed. The scraps of the old I’d discarded at the bottom of the cart and every so often I looked at the bloody mess of material to reinforce my commitment to surviving. Hunrus could not do this to me and get away with it. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I would make him pay.

  I lay in the back of the cart as the day turned to night and someone threw a rough and smelly blanket over me when the prince had moved himself away from the soldiers and the cart to sit by his own sage campfire. In the dark, I drank the water and ate the food a soldier had given me while whispering in a harsh voice that I was to finish before the prince saw, for his instructions had been to give me nothing.

  I stayed on my side as we set out the next day for the last leg of the journey and saw the darkness approach from my view of the sky. When they pulled the cart to a stop, I gingerly pushed to sitting, then shuffled to the back of the cart and lowered myself to the ground rather than have the prince have someone drag me down.

  I think he insisted on coming along because he wanted to make sure no one aided me. He wanted to make this journey as arduous for me as possible to draw out my punishment. He’d instructed the soldiers that I was not to be given any supplies on the way there nor when I crossed into the dead forest, and I was grateful for that one soldier’s pity. His small mercy kept me from falling into a dark place in my mind.

  Once I was off the cart, the prince slid from his horse and signaled me over with a curl of his finger. He seized my jaw in his manacle grip, tight so his nails dug into my skin. I opened my mouth under the pressure of his thumb and forefinger nailing into my jaw. He opened his hand so that the soldier standing next to him might place the brown ball into his palm.

  “Now, be a good bitch and take your medicine,” he said, shoving his two fingers as far down my throat as they would go.

  I buckled forward under the heaving of my stomach, but Hunrus slammed my mouth shut by smacking me under my chin so that my teeth clanked together and the jar went straight up into my skull.

  “Don’t even think of it.”

  It had been a natural reaction, that was all, and not me fighting against him, but that was not why he hurt me. He did the things he did because there was no soul within him, nothing human. He was a carving of a handsome man encasing an evil heart.

  He stayed within feet of me, pulling me apart with his glare, using his height, masculinity, power and rank to force me into submission. He wanted to see me cower, to see me frightened and subjugated. Only his father kept him safe from Cerac’s blade. He knew he was no match for Cerac’s skill, so what better way for him to attack his brother and strip him raw than to hurt the one he loved? There was no greater act of cowardice.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” he said.

  I turned and took one step when he kicked my feet from under me. My hands hit the ground first, sliding through the sodden black soil, followed by my knees. Small stones embedded into the skin and the lashes across my back sang in agony.

  Laughter ran through the crisp dawn air, but I did not turn around. I did not want to see Hunrus’s sneer or the smirks on the soldiers’ faces.

  “Clumsy whore,” Hunrus said as his feet appeared beside me, the tip of his boot treading on my little finger. “How did you make it out the first time?”

  He held out his hand in front of me, an offering. I ignored it, pulled my finger out from under his boot and stood.

  “A few more minutes on your knees, and I would’ve undone my buckle. A woman on her knees only wants one thing.” This brought another round of laughter from his men. He stepped close and his breath touched my skin, curling my stomach into a small ball.

  “I bet you’ve been on your knees plenty of times for my brother.”

  He grabbed my wrist and yanked me around and into him, pressing my back firm against the front of him, abrading my clothes against my torn skin. I bit my lip to keep quiet.

  “Does he take you from behind while you’re on all fours, poking into you like a dog?” He jabbed his groin into my rump, but I felt nothing, no hardness to suggest he found this sexually exciting.

  He threw me away, and I staggered forward, trying to keep my feet.

  “Get out of my sight,” he spat.

  I steadied myself, straightening my back with a grimace as the wounds stretched and shifted, held my head up and walked forward toward the border where the field grass suddenly died. Each step was a reminder of the whipping I’d suffered. The last time I’d entered, I’d been full of despair and unable to look back, unable to see the devastation on Cerac’s face. This time I couldn’t wait to leave this land behind. My steps were sure and strong, and with the first crunch under my feet, my body let go. The tension carried in every muscle ebbed away.

  I did not look back until I had walked far enough in, and when I did, I was rewarded with gray and gloom and not the prince’s face leering in through the dead trees after me.

  I circled slowly. “You wanted me back, well, here I am,” I yelled at the silence, but received nothing in return.

  “Raclin?”

  There wasn’t even a wind to creak the boughs of the trees.

  “If this is my welcome, then maybe I should leave.”

  But which way had I come? And Raclin would know I was lost because I couldn’t see, not the way I was supposed to, not the way he allowed me to see when he touched me. I hated to admit to myself that I was eager to see him. The dead forest was too desolate a place to be by yourself.

  I trudged forward as there was nothing else I could do. I tried to keep in a straight line, noting the difference of each tree I passed, in order to retrace my steps, but no sooner had I walked a few paces forward and looked behind than the trees had seemed to change shape. The certain way a branch had twisted to the left was gone when I looked again, only for the same tree to now look straight and tall.

  “Is this a game? Are you sitting somewhere and enjoying the view?”

  I slammed my fists into my sides, then regretted the move when my lacerated back cried. Head bowed, I thought of Cerac and the anguish he would be facing not knowing what had happened to me. He’d promised I would be safe and that no one would find me. I did not blame him, but he would be blaming himself.

  I was about to trudge forw
ard again when I saw the bones. Stark white, they lay the way the man had first fallen, a perfect outline of a human without any meat, flesh or clothes. How long had he been lying here, wasting away?

  I went over not because I held a morbid fascination to see the remains but because of the things scattered around his body that would not disintegrate so easily. The pack had been thrown feet away, so maybe he had fallen. Up close I could see holes in his hip bone, likely teeth marks. Was it a ragool? If so, did that mean he was a slave to the wraiths now? Whatever that meant.

  I inched down, grimacing with pain, to scoop the pack off the ground and rummaged inside. The food was gone, and the blanket too, leaving nothing of value I could use. I tossed it aside and it hit the trunk of a tree the moment a high-pitched, screeching howl split the silence.

  I spun toward the beast’s cry, feeling sick with fear and sicker with the agony from my torn flesh. My hand itched for a weapon. There was nothing on the ground, no fallen branches, not even sticks. This time I did not have the benefit of Ryhan’s kindness nor Cerac’s love, both of which had provided me with weapons. Did I dare call for Raclin again?

  Another howling cry pierced my ears. This was followed by the hulking momentum through the trees of a ragool. It wove this way and that but kept its orbed eyes trained on me. Maybe Raclin wanted the beast to bite me so that I would be his slave. But if that happened, would I be stuck within the dead forest as he was? Which would mean I could not gather his memories.

  There was no point in running. All the same, my skin prickled and my muscles twitched to take flight. I backed up pace by pace as the creature neared, baring its teeth with a nasally snarl. For every step it made, I took a step back. How long would this go on until it was incited enough to strike?

  Another step forward for it and another step back for me until I ran into something solid.

  “Don’t move,” he whispered over my shoulder with that same deep, demanding voice, which for now made my stomach whoop in joy. When it came to the wraith, my joy was in departing his loathsome land, but in a sick twist of fate, his presence made me want to cry with relief.

  I watched the ragool prowl toward me, sandwiched in front of Raclin. My fear drove my awareness to a fine point, so that I felt every part of Raclin’s body inches from my own, while I stared at the ragool looming ever closer.

  “Are you trying to make a slave of me?”

  “You do not need the ragool’s bite to be a slave of mine.”

  “Then this is to remind me of how terrified I should feel of this place. And that I am nothing but a weak human.”

  He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Do you have something for me?”

  “Only if you have something for me.”

  He paced around me to stand in front, blocking out the ragool. “Tell me why I should not let my pet eat your flesh.”

  I knew he was magnificent, but having not seen him for these few days, it seemed I needed to be reminded. How could my memory have lessened him in any way? Because I didn’t want to remember, that’s why. “For the same reason you have stopped it so far.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You want to walk amongst the humans and you need me to do that for you.”

  He hovered a finger in front of my face, tracing it through the air along the line of my jaw. Then with shocking speed, he snatched my wrist, holding it tight enough to snap my bone. His mouth pressed firm and twitched with the pain, perhaps, although he did not seem to suffer as greatly as he had before.

  He stared down at me with a lazy smile sliding across his lips, then his gaze shifted to his hand still latched onto my wrist.

  “It seems you did not do as I asked, for I can touch you now.”

  “I lived whatever life I could in these short days.”

  “But that’s not enough. It’s not what I really wanted from you.”

  Before I could answer, he yanked me around, then dropped my wrist and, with both hands, ripped my shirt open at the back. I hunched forward, grabbing the front of the material and closing my elbows close to my sides as the rest of the material slid away. The wounds cried from his rough treatment. Trickles of moisture, blood, no doubt, unless the wounds were starting to ooze, ran down my back and into my pants.

  “Your master let him do this to you?”

  “No, he would never let his brother do this. He had no choice.”

  “Then he is a weak master if he allows another to touch his slave.”

  “I am not Cerac’s slave.”

  I jerked when I felt the softest touch of his finger on my back.

  “No, you are so much more.”

  He trailed a path along the good skin around the wounds. I wanted to say a revulsion reared inside of me and that I wanted to crawl away from his touch, but it was sensual and soothing. Where his finger had been, it felt like my skin sighed with relief.

  “And whipping a slave is not an honorable act?” he said.

  “No, but I believe you already knew that.” I closed my eyes but held back my sigh as he continued to do strange but lovely things to my wounds. “Why can you bear to touch me now?”

  “Your master’s protection fades. It has been days since he touched you the way you want to be touched. And I can feel your body ache.”

  My neck flushed hot, then it moved up into my face. “What else are you capable of feeling when you touch me?”

  “All of you. I know what you are feeling right now with my fingers on you skin.”

  I snapped out of my reverie and jumped away from him. “You soothe the pain, nothing more.”

  “I’ve done more than take your pain. I’ve taken your wounds as well.”

  Holding the scrapped material of my shirt with one hand, I stretched behind with my other hand to feel whole skin where I could reach. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I can and because in doing so, I learn what you feel when you experience my touch.”

  My face heated, knowing that he had felt my pleasure at feeling his fingers trail around on my skin. But there was no deep yearning from this pleasure, except to feel the cessation of my pain.

  “How deeply do you feel everything I feel?” My night with Cerac before I entered the forest the first time was my reason for the question.

  “I know the pain of a whip across your back, the feeling of your flesh peeling apart and the blood running down your skin.”

  “That much?” I said with a voice just above a squeak.

  “But there is something missing to the experience I feel through you.”

  “I can’t imagine what that would be, since you seem to feel everything so thoroughly.”

  “I haven’t felt this,” he said and lashed out and pulled me to him. My hand across my front keeping my ripped shirt in place barred my body from becoming flush against his. But I was closer than I ever wanted to be.

  He plunged toward me, lips sealing against mine, and for a moment I was too stunned to react. And for an even longer moment, my body reacted to the firm pressure of his lips and the warm pressure of his hand at my back holding me to him. For one intense moment, I felt a sudden gush of heat and a wild vibration scoring through my mouth and down into my chest. It didn’t last long, and I wrenched my senses back, about the time he worked my mouth open with his tongue, and I bit him on the lip. He reared back with his head, but not with his body, which he kept close with the hold of his arm, locking me in an embrace.

  Blood trickled from his cut lip down his chin and he wiped it away with his free hand. “You’ve been in my arms this long and I barely feel any heat. Have you forsaken your lover in favor of me?”

  I struggled, using my free arm to attempt to lever myself away. He relaxed his hold and I stumbled away, trying to keep my modesty with my tattered shirt.

  “For a while there, you enjoyed yourself.”

  “Never.”

  “Rya, you cannot lie to me. Not after your dream.”

  I could cry with embarrassment from his invasion
of something so personal. “You did that to humiliate me,” I spat at him. “Is that what you’re trying to prove?”

  He wiped the blood from his chin, then sucked it from his finger. “I was curious to know your sensations when the kiss came from me. A dream, after all, gives you no real sensation to detect.”

  “And you’ve got a bloody lip to show you. Now can I have my clothes back? I’m assuming if you can make my wounds disappear, you can do almost anything.”

  “I can, but it comes at a price.”

  What didn’t? “And the price is?”

  “Don’t worry, you’ve already paid it.”

  “The kiss?”

  He walked toward me. “Turn around, Rya, and let me dress you,” he said in a low, masculine voice.

  “What is the price I paid?”

  Hands on shoulders, he turned me, then gathered either side of my shirt and ran his finger up my spine, taking the time to smooth his hands across my back.

  “I have what I wanted, now you will return.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “You will learn soon enough. I believe you will need this.”

  He lifted his hand, and in it he held a blue flower, its petals shimmering an unnatural brilliance.

  “I don’t want it. I refuse to give the prince anything he asks.”

  “Even if he punishes you?”

  “What more can he do? He and the king have already taken everything.”

  “Take it.” He cupped my hand in his so I couldn’t move it away and placed the flower in my palm, then closed my fingers over it. “Do not sacrifice yourself for nothing.”

  “I told you I don’t want it.” I raised my hand to throw it away, but he caught my wrist, his eyes the dark threat of a wraith.

  I met his glare as I shoved the flower in my mouth, chomping messily on the leaves and stem. While its perfume was divine, the taste was bitter and coated my mouth with a furry feeling. I had to force the half-chewed lump down. The moment it hit my stomach, a rolling wave of nausea rushed up my throat. I palmed my mouth to keep everything in, then lurched forward, one hand on my stomach, one on my knee, and cried as a scorching fire incinerated my insides. I was sure if I opened my mouth I would billow smoke. The immeasurable agony seared through my torso, causing every muscle to cramp and spasm. But as suddenly as the pain had erupted, it dissipated like it had never been.