by Kitty Thomas
But the more he behaved like his father, the more Abigail cringed inwardly. If he made the complete metamorphosis, he’d look at her one day, see her dark skin and gypsy features and do something about it. Maybe that day had already arrived.
Abigail took a deep breath as she descended the stairs. Two guards nodded and opened the door for her. She glided in, feeling weirdly self-conscious in front of everyone at court, though none of her clothing had come off yet and she was weeks past embarrassment over her own nudity. She moved to her cushion by the king’s feet to await his orders, but he shook his head.
“No. Stand right there. You’re here on official business today.”
Business? His gray eyes had gone a harsh slate, like tar-blackened snow in the winter.
“Master?”
“Tell me, Abigail … why are you here with me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why are you here? It’s a simple enough question. All I require is a simple answer.”
“I’m here at your pleasure because you chose to spare me from the guard that wanted to harm me.”
“Are you?” His gaze held suspicion and a touch of cold malice. A chill went down her spine at that shrewd look being directed at her. She’d seen it leveled at criminals and the stray noble who’d shown hints of disloyalty, but never at her. Though he’d grown more detached, he hadn’t seemed angry before now.
The king continued, “So you have no designs on power or wealth or being mother to the future king? This wasn’t some plot all along to get into my bed?”
“I … Master, I don’t know where this is coming from. I’m here because of your choice to keep me. Though I’m deeply grateful, I didn’t ask for anything you’ve given me, nor have I held any expectations for the future.”
“Really? We’ll see. Come here.”
She took the few steps to close the gap between them with a slowness that surprised even her. It had been foolish to forget what she was. How would it ever work between a king of Himeros and a gypsy? It couldn’t. Perhaps pressure had been put on him from outside forces. Or maybe he’d come to his senses on his own. Or this had been his plan all along. Why not? She’d attempted to steal from him. The only way he could return the favor is if she had something worth taking.
“Please, Master. I don’t know what I did. Have I not pleased you? Have I ever asked for a single thing or shown any ingratitude toward you?”
In response he gripped her wrist and pulled her onto his lap. He grabbed her breast and squeezed, roughly. “Do you mean to tell me you’d be happy as nothing but my common whore? Without the finery? Would you be happy if I shared you with everyone without discrimination to use you in any degrading way they saw fit?”
No, she wouldn’t be happy that way, and he knew it. “I’d be anything you wanted me to be,” she said, barely above a whisper, still not believing any of this was happening and becoming increasingly frightened for her life. At the rate the king was going, a noose around her neck didn’t sound outside the realm of the possible.
He released her breast, his hand going around her neck as if he’d read her mind.
“John,” he barked.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” the guard said from the back of the room.
“How would you like to fuck my gypsy?”
Murmurs rose around her, a stifling and oppressive din of noise. She heard John’s heavy boots as he came up behind her. He was the king’s most favored guard and the best.
He’d looked at her before with clear desire. She wouldn’t have minded being sent to his bed if the king had commanded it. He was level-headed and honorable and good-looking and strong. But like this? The king wasn’t rewarding John; he was trying to shame her.
“Why are you doing this?” Abigail said, barely above a choked whisper. She was too afraid to speak louder, afraid she’d enrage him by talking back loud enough for their audience to hear.
“I’m going to make you an offer,” the king said. “You have two choices. You can leave the castle and go live with your family in the house I’ve provided them, or you can submit to my head guard, right here, right now.”
She glanced over at John, who watched her intensely. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Whenever she looked at the guard the only words she could think to describe him were: blank slate. Even when he seemed intense, she couldn’t begin to fathom what specific thoughts lay behind his intensity.
Today was no different. She couldn’t tell right now if he wanted to fuck her, if he was disgusted by all this, if he pitied her. She hoped he didn’t pity her. Spreading her legs for John, even under these circumstances, wasn’t something she’d class as a punishment. As long as he didn’t hurt her. But she didn’t think he would, not unless the king commanded him to.
“All right,” she said. “If that’s what you want.”
She moved in a daze to the chaise lounge that she normally reclined on next to the king, John following behind her. She heard the clinking of his belt as he unbuckled it, and she sucked in a breath, aroused in spite of everything.
“Wait,” Niall said.
Abigail looked over at him, wondering if he’d been bluffing the whole time, and if so, what possible reason he could have for it. She still didn’t understand why he was giving her these strange choices: go live with her family or have sex with his guard.
Even with the king’s distance of late, she didn’t want to sleep in a bed without him. Whatever test this was—if it was a test and not just delayed gypsy hatred—she would pass it. She’d do whatever it took to prove she wasn’t using him. All she’d ever done was serve and obey him. It’s all she ever wanted to do.
“Whip her first. Otherwise she might like it too much.”
Cold terror shot through her at the command. The king had never whipped her nor had her whipped. The most she’d experienced at his hand was the occasional spanking, but even that was rare. She’d been so grateful to him for the life he’d given her that she’d been utterly devoted. Punishments were small and for trifling missteps. Nothing more.
This seemed like more.
Abigail heard the hesitation in the change of the guard’s breathing. She knew he didn’t want to hurt her. As loyal as John was, at least he could see she meant no one any harm. If he wouldn’t do it, what then? She silently prayed John would obey the request because she feared Niall would only call upon another guard, one that was less kind if he didn’t.
“Your Majesty, I … ”
“Yes, John?” the king said mildly, daring him to challenge a command at court. Niall turned to Abigail. “Abby, I’ll give you another chance. You don’t have to go through any of this. I will pardon you for your manipulation and will allow you to live in luxury with your family. All you have to do is accept my pardon.”
Abigail stubbornly shook her head, the tears gathering behind her eyes, both because of Niall’s betrayal as well as fear of the pain that was coming. She wanted to speak with him privately, away from all these people. He’d turned this into a show, and now too much was at stake for him to back down. He wouldn’t retreat on her say-so. However he’d gotten it into his head that she was manipulating him, it was there now, firmly stuck. It was why he’d been pulling away: he didn’t trust her.
She was playing a fool’s game. If the king didn’t trust you, the wisest thing to do was take the out he gave you. By this point, the longer she insisted on staying near him the greater the odds her life would be forfeit by the end.
“Very well,” the king said, “but I’m not a monster. You can stop this at any time if you wish to go stay with your family. It’s not an heir to the throne or a position in court, but it’s still money and food and shelter. I can’t fault you for wanting any of that. Anyone would. To stop this, all you have to do is beg for mercy, and I’ll give it to you.”
The room had gone completely silent save for the ominous sound of the sturdy oak table being rolled out. John and another guard tied her down on her stomach so she couldn�
�t pull away, then the other guard released the latch on her top and let it fall open, exposing her back.
“You’ll break,” the king said. “This pain will be pointless in the end. Beg mercy now and spare yourself the pain and indignity.”
Abigail shook her head. She felt numb, some part of her convinced none of this was really happening. People were talking in the background, but it all sounded like it was coming from very far away. She looked up at the king in time to see him nod at John.
The whip came down, causing a stinging lick of fire to trail down her back. She jerked hard against her bonds. The pain was so quick and brutal that it felt as if she’d been pulled momentarily out of her body, then shoved back in again. She tried to brace herself for the next blow, but having felt the pain of the first strike, it was useless. The second lash was just as hard and frightening as the first and just as unexpected in its intensity.
Each time the whip struck her flesh, Abigail cried out, but she didn’t beg or plead. She didn’t form any words that might indicate she’d take the king’s insane offer. Although his behavior toward her was abysmal, it still couldn’t kill the gratitude she felt for all he’d given her.
“Ready for mercy yet?” the king taunted.
“No, Master.” The words sounded weaker than they did in her head. Somehow the defiant tone hadn’t translated when she’d said it aloud.
The whip came down again and again and she wondered when it would stop, if it would ever stop. She wondered if the king would let John whip her to death if she didn’t cave. She felt like a witch in an inquisition. Confess! Confess! Confess, and I’ll pardon you. But she hadn’t done anything to confess, and she wouldn’t dishonor her name with a lie to soothe the troubled king.
As the whip struck her again, she glanced up in time to see Niall flinch.
Abigail met his gaze as she let out another cry. If he was going to do this to her, she’d make him truly see what he was doing. The king’s eyes were haunted, but he quickly forced the expression off his face. She must be bleeding by now. The pain had numbed out a little, and that scared her even more, almost enough to beg.
“Stop,” he said. “She’s had enough.”
The tears fell harder, more relief than anything. She rested her cheek against the table as she listened to the whip being rolled back into a coil and returned to the guard’s belt. Then the footsteps started to recede.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, John?” the king said.
Niall had composed himself and was now set on giving the court a show: a show of what happened to a woman who thought to manipulate him to get her way. The would-be harem was in attendance, one or two of them looking smug, but most of them terrified. Abigail bet none of them envied her any longer.
“Will you beg mercy now, Abby?” the king asked. No one else could detect it, but she knew him well enough to hear the edge of emotion in his voice, the tiny bit of pleading that she would ask for his mercy so it could all stop.
“No, Master. I don’t wish to go live with my family. I want to stay with you, and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove that.”
Niall shook his head. “This won’t end like you imagine. I’ve made up my mind.”
As much as she should hate the king and want to rip out his organs right now, she didn’t. She pitied him. He’d inherited a kingdom with subjects who only respected kings they could fear, because they didn’t know any better way. So the cycle of abuse continued. And now she was caught in the middle of it, more a victim of circumstance than of Niall.
Abigail closed her eyes while John fucked her, her body limp and loose and unresisting as he entered her over and over. She’d become the king’s receptive vessel, gratefully accepting any and all penetration, and this was no different.
Niall may have wanted to break her, to be proven right, that no one could make a fool of him, but he was the broken one. She’d seen it on his face. Strangely, the more he did to her, the stronger she became, the less she allowed it to touch her, and the more she knew it hurt him.
“If you like all this so much, perhaps you should give us a nice, long orgasm,” Niall said. “Maybe I’ll have you whipped again if you don’t.”
It was the final nail in the coffin meant to undo her, but he’d already twisted her mind so deeply and so far that even the perverse suggestion had a twitch starting between her legs, followed by a low throb that built stronger the longer the guard rode her.
Suddenly the idea of the court finally shocked by watching something sexual made her fight to have the orgasm the king had suggested, just for spite. She’d faced greater hardships than this just getting by day to day before Niall had entered her life. She’d die before she gave him the satisfaction of breaking her for crimes she’d never committed against him.
The guard seemed shocked when her orgasm rippled through her and she let out a low, satisfied moan. While others in the court might think she’d faked it, John must have felt the pulses as her cunt gripped him hard, as if she were the aggressor. The guard, however, hadn’t found his own completion. He pulled out of her without finishing.
“Shameless slut,” Niall said, but there was no malice in the pronouncement, only pride.
She looked up at him. “Like you trained me to be.”
A small smile played at the corner of his mouth, but then it was gone, not even leaving the ghost of amusement behind. She’d thought in that small moment that it was over, that he’d come to his senses. He’d never apologize to her. He was the king. Kings didn’t apologize; they couldn’t afford to. But she didn’t require his apology. It was only important that he knew she’d never betrayed him nor tried to hurt him. As long as things went back somehow to the way they’d been before the festival she’d forgive him anything.
But it wasn’t to be. “Strip her of her finery and take her to the dungeon,” he said. “If she won’t take the gifts and pardon I offer her, then she’ll be treated like a criminal.”
Could this really be happening? Was he really abandoning her like this? Surely his wrath and ego had been appeased. It didn’t seem possible it was ending this way.
Rather than drag her roughly off, John untied her and carried her to the dungeon. He stripped her only once she was out of sight of others. By that point she was crying harder than she had when he’d whipped her.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, once he had her in a cell. It was damp and too cold, the kind of place she could easily imagine dying in.
“Not yet,” Abigail said. “I had a big breakfast.” She knew her attempt at bravery was falling flat.
“That’s the last of that, I’m afraid. I don’t know what you did to piss him off, but I’ve never seen him like this. Even in battle he never behaved this way.”
“I didn’t do anything. He’s wrong.”
“Kings can’t be wrong,” John replied.
Maybe Niall couldn’t have even been wrong in private if it had only been the two of them. She should hate him. She knew it would be the normal reaction, but she couldn’t help feeling hurt for him. How must it feel to let no one in, ever? To not be able to? Even through her darkest times, she’d had her family to lean on and confide in, at least until she’d become the king’s slave. Now she had no one.
When her father discovered her fall from grace, she wondered if he’d think it was what she deserved for being such a whore, that this was what came of selling yourself, even though she’d done no such thing. Niall had never given her any indication her wishes would have any bearing on his choice to keep her. Given the circumstances, he’d shown her mercy. Until today.
There was a leak somewhere off in the distance, a maddening drip, drip, drip. How would she exist with that as her life’s background track? She allowed her fingers to trail over a cold, damp algae growing on the stone wall. She’d catch her death here.
Abigail curled into a ball on the dirt floor. She shivered in the draft without clothing or blankets, her own body the only thing she could try to derive warmth f
rom. Somehow, in spite of the conditions, she drifted into an exhausted sleep.
She jumped suddenly at the feel of strong hands on her back. Warm water sluiced down, causing pain as it flowed over tender flesh. Her eyes drifted open as memories slowly seeped through the fog of her awareness. She twisted her body, expecting to discover the king tending to her wounds, but it was a dungeon guard.
“Why...?”
“I’m just following orders,” the stranger said, drying her with a clean towel. He worked quickly and carefully as he applied bandages to her back.
She tried unsuccessfully not to cry. How stupid to think it was the king. Why would the king ever lower himself to entering the dungeon? The idea that he would sit in this filth and actually clean and dress her wounds was wishful thinking of the highest order. She had to let that life go, no matter how difficult it was.
When the guard finished tending to her, he gathered the supplies and started to leave. He paused at the door. “I’ve brought you food and blankets, just over there in the corner.” He pointed.
She hadn’t noticed them in the dim lighting. “Thank you.” The food was only bread and water, but at least it was fresh on both counts. She’d had worse.
A few days passed like this, and Abigail sank further into hopelessness. The only small reprieve was when a guard came—a different one each time—to change her bandages and bathe her. Each time, she closed her eyes and imagined it was the king.
Why couldn’t he have just executed her? Keeping her in a dark little cell forever was heartless. There was no life or hope to look forward to. No hope of freedom or ever seeing Niall again.
She startled when heavy footsteps moved toward her, expecting another guard. But it was the king who unlocked the door and stepped inside. Instinctively she moved toward him, kneeling at his feet, her cheek resting against his boot. She didn’t know why he’d come, but she had to be close to him.
