AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In a way, she wished he would just hurry up and get it over with. The waiting was making her crazy. She wanted to scream, but she refused to allow herself to. She couldn't help dreading how much he would hurt her, how long it might last—how it would undoubtedly be repeated not just this night but in the nights to come. Had not his bull-weight been pressing her down into the bed she would have been trembling in terrible anticipation.
"No," he said to himself. "No, this is not what I want."
Kahlan was bewildered. She wasn't sure she had heard what she thought she'd heard.
He let go of her legs, letting them slip down onto the bed as he pushed himself up on his hands. She wished he weren't lying between her legs so that she could draw them together.
"No," he repeated. "Not like this. You don't want this, but it would only be onerous. You would not like it, but nothing more.
"I want you to know who you are when I do this. I want you to know what I mean to you when I do this. I want you to hate this more than you have ever hated anything in your entire life. I want to be the one to do this to you both. I want to plant the memory of what it means to you in your mind when I plant my seed in you. I want that memory to haunt you for however long you might live, to haunt him forever, every time he looks at you. I want him to learn to hate you for it, to hate what you have come to represent to him. To hate your child, the child that I will give you.
"To do that, you have to know who you are, first. If I do this to you now, it will only dull you to it, spoil the exquisite suffering it would cause you if you knew who you were when it happens to you."
"So then tell me," she said, almost willing to endure rape to know.
A slow, sly smile came to him. "Telling you is no good. Words would be hollow, without meaning, without emotion. You have to know. You have to remember who you are, you have to know everything, if this is to truly be rape… and I intend it to be the worst rape you can suffer, a rape that will give you a child that he will see as a reminder, as a monster."
Staring down at her, he slowly shook his head with the self-satisfaction of the dimension of his intent. "To be that, you have to be fully aware of who you are, and everything this will mean to you, everything it will touch, everything it will harm, everything it will taint for all time."
He abruptly rolled off her to the side. Kahlan drew in a breath that was almost a gasp.
He gritted his teeth, and his big hand seized her right breast. "Don't think you've escaped anything, darlin. You'll not be going anywhere. I'm only seeing to it that it's a lot worse for you than this would have been, tonight." He chuckled as he squeezed her breast. "Worse for him as well."
Kahlan could not imagine how anything could make it worse than it would have been. She could only imagine that to him, rape cast guilt on the victim. That was the way he thought, the way the Order thought, that the victim was to blame.
He abruptly shoved her out of the bed. She landed painfully on the floor, but at least her fall was broken by somewhat soft carpets.
He looked down at her. "You will sleep on the floor, right there, beside the bed. Later, I will have you in my bed." He grinned. "When your memory returns, when this will destroy you. Then I will give you what you deserve, what only I can give you, what only I can do to ruin your life… and his."
Kahlan lay on the floor, fearing to move, fearing that he might change his mind. She felt heady relief that this night she would not have to endure it.
He leaned over the edge of the bed, closer to her, peering down at her with his disturbing black eyes. He shoved his big hand between her legs so unexpectedly that she cried out.
He grinned at her. "And if you get the idea of trying to think of a way to sneak away, or worse, to do me in while I sleep, you had better forget it right now. It won't work. All it will get you is time in the tents, later on, after I've ruined everything for you. I'll see to it that all those men will have you, right there where my fingers are. Do you understand?"
Kahlan nodded, feeling a tear run down her cheek.
"If you move off those carpets beside the bed tonight, then the power of that collar will stop you. Do you wish to test it?"
Kahlan shook her head, fearing her voice might fail her.
He withdrew his hand. "Good."
She heard him turn over on his side, facing away from her. Kahlan lay perfectly still. She could hardly breathe. She wasn't sure what had happened this night, or what it could all mean. She only knew that she felt more lonely than she had ever felt in her life—at least, the part of her life that she could remember.
In a strange way she almost wished he had raped her. If he had, she would not now be trembling in fear of what he'd said, wondering what he'd meant. Now she would have to wake each morning not knowing if that was the day she recovered her memory. When she did, it was somehow going to make that rape all the worse, make everything worse, far worse.
Kahlan believed him. As eager as he had been to have her, and she knew very well how eager he had been, he would not have stopped at that point unless everything he'd said was true.
Kahlan realized that she no longer wanted to know who she was. Her past had just become too dangerous to her for her to want to ever know who she was. If she knew, he would do the worst to her. Better that she remain in oblivion, and safe from that.
When she heard his even breathing, and then his low, rumbling snore, she reached out and with trembling fingers pulled on her underthings and then the rest of her clothes.
Despite it being summer, she was shaking with icy dread. She pulled a nearby carpet over her as she lay beside the bed, knowing better than to test his word about the consequences of any attempt to escape. There was no escape. This was her life.
She now only hoped to keep the rest of it buried and forgotten.
If she ever remembered who she was, then her life would get infinitely worse. She wouldn't let that happen. She would stay behind the dark shroud. This night she was a new person, separated from who she had been. That person had to remain forever dead.
She wondered who the man could be that Jagang had talked about. She feared to imagine what Jagang was going to do to him, through her, that would so destroy him.
She forced those thoughts away. That was the old her. That person was gone forever, and would remain so.
In the depths of loneliness and despair, Kahlan curled up in a ball and wept silently in racking sobs.
* * *
CHAPTER 48
Richard walked in a daze, watching the ground before him lit by moonlight. Through that dark, hazy state, only one spark of anything seemed able to burn through.
Kahlan.
He missed her so much. He was so tired of the struggle. He was so tired of trying. He was so tired of failing.
He ached to have her back. To have his life with her back. To hold her… just to hold her.
He remembered the time, years before, in the spirit house, when he had not known that she was the Mother Confessor and she had been feeling desperately lonely and overwhelmed by the crushing secrets she had to keep. She had asked him to hold her, just to hold her. He remembered the pain in her voice, the pain of needing to be held, comforted.
He would give anything to do that now.
"Stop," a voice hissed at him. "Wait."
Richard halted. He had trouble trying to care what was going on, even though he knew he should. He could read the tension in her posture; she was like a bird of prey cocking its head, lifting its wings the slightest bit.
He couldn't seem to escape the thick lethargy that weighed him down so that he could think it through. Her deportment appeared to be the coiled potential for aggression, but underlying that he saw a hint of fear.
He finally managed to summon the concern to try to understand. Then, in the moonlight, he saw what Six was watching: what looked like a vast encampment spread across a valley. Because it was the middle of the night, things were relatively quiet down below. Even through the numb miasma of her pres
ence, Richard felt his level of concern rising.
He saw something else, too. Past the valley encampment, he saw, up on the high ground beyond, a castle that he thought he recognized.
"Come on," Six hissed as she glided past him.
Richard trudged after her, once more sinking back into the indifferent haze where all he could think about was Kahlan.
