by Sara King
“Ugh!” Victory growled. She hunched over her plate of cheese and crackers, trying to pretend the disgusting creature behind her didn’t exist.
When they were both finished with their meals, Victory stuffed the leftover cheese and crackers into a bag and then stuffed it between her breasts. The Emp, for his part, looked ill. He had cleaned his plate, but she had watched him force the last bites down with all the stubborn determination of a feral boar.
“Did you enjoy eating all that food?” Victory asked pleasantly. When he gave her a dark look, his face pale and sweating, she gave him a polite smile. “Let’s get going, then.” She gestured at his clean plate. “Now that you’ve had such a filling meal, perhaps you would enjoy a tour of the palace?”
His blue eyes flashed with challenge. “I feel great.”
She smiled at him. “Why, slave, I never said you didn’t.” She cocked her head at him. “Though now that you mention it, you do look a little pale. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine,” Dragomir bit out. “Enjoyed every bite.”
She gave him a knowing grin. “I’m sure you did.” She turned and started out the door, the Praetorian falling in beside her. “Which part of the palace would you like to see first? I was thinking a trip to the Vanishing Spire, so that we get the spectacular view of the two-thousand-foot drop off the Gorgarian Cliffs.
“Sounds fine to me,” he said, much too forcefully.
Delighted, Victory led him to the base of the Vanishing Spire and, because she was feeling malicious, decided to make them walk up the long, spiraling staircase instead of taking the elevator hidden in the wall.
“Don’t know what kind of view you’re going to get at this time of night, anyway,” Dragomir muttered, about halfway up.
“The moons should be out,” Victory said. “At their peak, they highlight the entire valley.” She continued up the stairs cheerfully, as Dragomir shuffled along behind.
She was actually beginning to feel sorry for him, shackled the way he was, by the time they reached the door to the viewing deck. She opened it and stepped outside to an immediate gust of wind.
At the exit, Dragomir balked. “Those railings don’t look big enough.”
Oh my gods, Victory thought, delighted, I think he’s afraid of heights…
“Well,” she said with a disappointed sigh, “I suppose if it unnerves you, we may find our entertainment elsewhere.”
He straightened like someone had rammed a pole down his spine. “Didn’t say it unnerved me,” he said tightly, stepping out onto the deck with her.
Oh this is too perfect, Victory thought, absolutely thrilled with this interesting new discovery. She clapped her hands, and the lights on the viewing deck dimmed at her command. The stars were out, and the twin moons lit up the cliffs around them in dazzling shades of blue. Wind whipped past the great cliffs into which the Imperial Palace had been built, and each gust sucked her breath away.
Dragomir, who had followed her reluctantly to the edge, stumbled backwards, grabbing the wall behind him like he was afraid the deck was about to rip off and fall into the ravine.
Victory clapped the lights back on, unable to hide her grin. “Enjoyable, no?”
She’d never seen a man look so green. “I think I need to go lay down.”
Chuckling to herself, she led them to the elevator.
As soon as he saw the doors slide open and realized what it was, Dragomir shot her a dark look.
“I was in the mood for a stroll,” Victory said, grinning.
“A stroll up sixteen flights of stairs?” he growled.
She waved a dismissive hand. “It was only twelve.”
Dragomir muttered something under his breath and followed her back through the winding corridors to her chambers. Victory giggled to herself and led him in a few extra circles around the castle.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Dragomir asked, giving the walls and corridors a dubious look.
“I grew up here, didn’t I?” Victory said sweetly.
“Yeah,” Dragomir said, “But this whole place looks the same. And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that elk statue three times already.”
He had seen that elk statue three times already, but Victory quietly left that part out. Once she felt she had thoroughly made him regret eating her dinner, Victory finally took a small service corridor to start them back on their way to her wing.
They turned a corner on a hallway and Victory almost stumbled into four young men having a hushed conversation in a huddle around a game of dice. They stood up suddenly, giving her and her entourage a wary look.
And, to Victory’s horror, one of them looked just like the man who had taken her off of her father’s ship. The man who had taken her virginity and left her to bleed in the dark, the man with the crystal blue eyes and scarred lip…
Something about his face triggered something deep within Victory, and she felt her terror surging again, violently shoving its way to the surface.
“Easy, Princess,” the Emp said behind her.
“I think it’s wearing off,” she whimpered.
“I know it is,” he said. He grabbed the nearest Praetorian and shoved her at the boys. “Get them out of here!” he snapped.
Lion tore her arm out of Dragomir’s grip and turned in a snarl, reaching for her dagger. Dragomir merely gestured at Victoria, then at the boys. Lion followed his gesture warily. She caught the look on Victory’s face and seemed to take in the four men in the hall for the first time. An instant later, she was unsheathing her sword. “By order of the Royal Princess of the Imperium, clear the path!” She and Victory’s other captain, a no-nonsense, willowy woman who had chosen the name of Whip, started toward the men, and they scattered.
Despite the fact that they were suddenly alone in the corridor, the young man’s wary face continued to haunt her, clamping down on her throat in terror. It’s him, Victory thought, remembering the scar upon the man’s bottom lip. That’s the man who took me. She felt a strangled sound coming out of her mouth, the images of her first, horrible night flashing back into her awareness. She saw him tie her legs apart, spread between two bunks. She saw him settle himself on top of her, his ice-blue eyes only inches from her face as he told her how much he was going to enjoy his first royal lay…
Dragomir put his hand on her shoulder.
Instantly, warmth began rushing through her body from his touch, driving out the fear in a wave of clean, hot light. It surged through her with an almost angry violence, seeking out the images boiling up within her and burning them away, leaving gentle, fuzzy warmth in its wake. The sunny energy didn’t vanquish all of the darkness, leaving some small corners of herself for her nightmares to hide in, but it managed to stop the images that were bubbling up from the Void.
“Thank you,” Victory whispered, looking up at him.
Dragomir’s face was ashen, his hand trembling as it fell from her shoulder. When he met her gaze, there was panic in his features. “I need to lay down. I used up too much—” At that, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped to the floor at her feet.
The First Bath
Dragomir didn’t wake for two days. During those, Victory endured a quick, half-hour food excursion once a day in which a half dozen Praetorian carried his unconscious body in a sling through the halls behind her.
It was Kiara who finally posed the question of what had happened to the slave to cause him to be so thoroughly incapacitated for so long.
“Ask my father,” Victory growled at the woman. “The doctors had to medicate him for his injuries.”
Kiara’s eyes narrowed slightly, but it was just for a moment before the woman bowed and turned to go. Before she reached the door, Victory stopped her.
“Yes, milady?” Kiara asked politely, though there was something in her eyes that Victory didn’t like.
Could the Emp be right about her? Victory wondered, studying her butler’s face. Finally, she said, “What
of those taxation records I requested?”
It could have been Victory’s imagination, but she thought she saw a dark look flash over the woman’s features before it was hidden behind her stiff mask once more. “The taxation records you requested will take several weeks to gather, milady. It is an entire planet, after all.”
Victory didn’t like the woman’s immediate response—it almost sounded as if had been pre-planned, awaiting for Victory to spring the question—but thanked her and dismissed her anyway.
“She’s lying,” a weak voice rasped from the bed.
Victory spun, feeling a surge of excitement within her. It was the first time that Dragomir had moved in days.
“I don’t know what she was telling you,” Dragomir said, his eyes closed, facing the ceiling, “But she was lying. I could see it, plain as the pounding in my head and the horrible need to take a piss.”
Victory flushed. “Will you require help?”
“To take a piss?” Dragomir slowly heaved himself out of bed, groaning. “I’m afraid I’ve got a few more years on me before I need someone to hold my hand when I pee and wipe my ass when I fart.”
“You’re a cad,” she muttered, embarrassed at his colloquialisms. “I’d request that you curb your crass aboriginal language in my presence.”
Dragomir dropped his hand from where it was pressed to his forehead and gave her a flat look. “And I’d request a pair of pants, socks, and some undershorts, but we know just how far that’s going to get me, don’t we?” Muttering, he started trudging to the lavatory, the chains strung between his ankles clinking on the stone with every step, once again giving Victory the choice of following or being dragged.
To Victory’s horror, he broke wind as he stopped over the toilet. She quickly turned her back as he lifted the lid, door still wide open to the outer chamber. “Hold on!” she cried, pulling him forward to yank the door shut, blushing again.
He grunted. “Lady, the only two people in here are you and me. Now could you please try not to jerk me around right when I’m about to pee like a fire-hose?” He started dragging her back to the toilet.
“You are uncouth,” she muttered, listening to the tinkle of his stream hitting the composter.
Dragomir did not reply, instead triggering the composter and moving—deeper?—into the room. Victory turned to look.
“How do you get this thing to work?” he asked, peering at the many knobs and nozzles of the enormous bathtub.
Victory felt a sudden spasm of panic. “You can’t.”
He lifted an arm and stuck his nose in a massive armpit. “Yep,” he said, wrinkling his brown face. “It’s time.” Without waiting for explanation, he turned on the water and set the plug. He started swishing his fingers through the water and fine-tuning the temperature with the individual nozzles.
“You…you…” Victory gulped. “You are a barbarian!”
“Why?” he asked. “How many days have you spent in that set of clothes?”
Victory grimaced. Too long. Then she caught his inference and her eyes widened. “You can’t be trying to imply—”
“I can smell you from here, Princess,” Dragomir grunted, fiddling with the nozzles as the tub began to fill up. “Fear stinks, you know.”
She felt her jaw drop open even as her heartbeat began to speed up. “I am not taking a bath with you.”
He raised a brow as the tub filled. “Why not? I’ve been naked not eight feet away for, what, three days now?”
“Four,” Victory squeaked. Then she hurriedly added, “But that doesn’t matter. You are a slave. It is your lot in life to be naked at your master’s whim.”
He paused, then, and slowly looked at her over his shoulder. In the dark silence that followed, Victory realized that they were in an enclosed space, with two closed doors, a wall, and fifty feet of space between them and her Praetorian. Her eyes widened and she spun to run, even as he grabbed the chain at his throat.
“I,” he growled, tugging her an arm’s length-closer, “Am getting,” another tug, dragging her backwards, “tired,” another, “of hearing” another tug, “that word.”
Suddenly, they were face-to-face, and she was held tight against his massive body by his grip on the chain. Softly, into her face, he said, “I’m here of my own will. If you’d open your damned eyes, you would see that.”
“Unhand me, slave!” Victory snapped, pushing at him, squirming. “Before I have my Praetorian flog you bloody.”
His face darkened, and saw a decision flash through his features. He reached for her waist, and suddenly, he was tugging her shirt over her head, yanking her pants from her hips, pulling her undergarments from her thighs.
With the startling, sudden roughness of his treatment, Victory screamed and thrashed as memories came flooding back, driving her into an animal panic as he picked her up and…
…lowered her into the bath, opposite him.
“Soap?” he asked, offering her a bar.
Victory yanked her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins, shivering. “What are you going to do with me?” she whimpered, hating herself for the fear crawling up within her. Naked. She was naked with a man…
“Wash your back, if you’re not careful,” Dragomir growled. “I told you I’m not going to hurt you, Victory. Now.” He soaped a sponge and held it out to her, water swishing around his elbows as he moved. “Are you going to do the honors, or should I?”
“I could have you killed for this,” she said, trembling. She felt so humiliated, so debased. It was her capture all over again.
He heaved an enormous sigh and dropped the sponge on the edge of the tub beside her. Then, soaping another, he began lathering his body.
Thinking his attention elsewhere, Victory slowly began to climb out of the water.
Dragomir caught her by the chain. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She felt a spasm of old terror snake up within her and she whimpered against the images that started to push up from within. Disrobed, this close to a man, unable to escape, her deepest fears were once more laid bare. She felt her body tremble in a whimper.
She heard the water swish as he moved toward her. Suddenly, every part of her was aware of how exposed she was, how utterly vulnerable. She let out a tiny sound of terror and flinched down into the water, trying to use it to hide.
He seemed to hesitate, then a big hand grabbed the soapy sponge and slapped it into the water in front of her. “Wash,” he growled.
Victory recoiled from him, curling into the far corner of the tub, unable to hold in the terrified whimpers were building within. Her mind was going numb, once more detaching itself from the feelings of her body.
He had gone back to his own washing. “I’m not gonna ask again,” he insisted. “I’m tired of your crap, Princess. You don’t start cleaning yourself up, I’m gonna do it for you.”
She only heard him in some distant part of her brain. The rest of her was falling apart, taken over by the terrible fact that she was naked, chained, and utterly helpless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to her. Though she hated herself for her weakness, the terror was too strong—she squeezed her eyes shut and started babbling, begging that he wouldn’t hurt her.
A big hand touched her knee. “Shhh. We’ll get you fixed, Princess.”
“Please let me go,” Victory whimpered. She could not meet his eyes, her whole body trembling with her fear. “Please.”
His face melted in a wave of anguish. “Oh, Victory.” He hauled her into his arms, rocking her against his chest.
She shuddered and felt him grab her in some distant corner of her brain. Too close, she thought. He’s too close. It was then that her mind simply began to shut down, seeing nothing but the soapy water swirling against the far wall of the tub.
As she had done countless times in the past, Victory prepared herself for the horror that she knew would come.
Too late, Dragomir realized that his own anger had clouded his sensin
g of the princess’s oncoming panic. Holding her tightly in his arms, Dragomir tried to push the raging hurricane back out of sight, but the princess’s gi meridians were completely stagnant, locked down by a mind-rama that had switched her body on autopilot.
Oh gods, he thought, pulling her back, looking into her vacant eyes. Oh gods, you fool… What have you done? He wished he could take the last few minutes back, wished he could somehow repair the damage that he could already see in her empty stare.
“Victory?” he asked, gently setting her on a ledge in the tub. “You’ve gotta come back, love.”
She stared at a point across the wall, rocking slowly.
Oh gods, he thought. He glanced at the soaped-up sponge, then at the water. Knowing he had already come this far, he decided to save her the horror of another bath.
“Okay, Victory, love, I’m going to wash you up so we don’t have to go through this again for awhile, all right?”
Her gaze never shifted, fixed on some random point on the far wall. He could see the silver core of her energy, detached and disassociated, hovering at arm’s-length from her physical form, just within the outer shell of her au.
Anguished, not knowing what else to do, Dragomir grabbed the sponge and, as quickly as he could, washed her limp body. Then, once she was rinsed and clean, he dumped a fistful of shampoo in her hair and started massaging it through her scalp, all the while talking to her, trying to bring her out of her trance.
She never moved, never spoke, never reacted in any way.
Gently, Dragomir held a clean rag over her face as he poured water over her hair to rinse it. She never blinked.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” he said, lifting her to sit on the rim of the tub. She didn’t fight him in any way—her arms hung at her sides, her eyes unfocused and staring.
Grabbing towels, he wrapped her in them, then lifted her from the tub and carried her out of the bathroom and back to the bed. There, he slid her under the blankets and tucked her in.
“Victory?” he asked softly.
She stared at the canopy, unresponsive.
