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For a second time, Archon had taken her, and this time there was no keeping it secret. Everybody knew what had happened. Several had made sketches as it was happening. She knew that because she had paid them to make the drawings.
The story of Iris’ defilement would travel at the speed of gossip. She was sure everybody in the greater area already knew. Where she had once travelled in triumph, now shame dogged her every step.
“Bloody fucking Archon,” she growled under her breath as she marched along a small country road. “I should have stabbed him again.”
“Iris of the Burning Village?”
A soldier at the side of the road barked her name. There was no point denying it. At one time, nobody would have known her from a blade of grass. Now everybody knew who she was.
“Yeah?”
“You’re under arrest.”
“For what? For why? For what though?”
“Come with me, please,” he said, pulling out a pair of manacles and heading for her. Iris considered running, but the soldier had one of those powerful killing tools which worked at a distance and she was fairly certain he would use it.
“What am I getting charged with?”
“Incitement to rebellion.”
“Oh. Well. Okay. Fair enough.”
Why not finish a day of supreme humiliation with another round of captivity. Iris knew she had been testing fate all this time, and that in the end she would be destroyed the same way her family was. Some small, dark part of her wished the king would have just ended her when he was done fucking her. What was left for a woman with no family and no future?
Irons were clapped around her wrists, cold and harsh. She was marched back toward the village she had just come from. Archon was no longer there, but several soldiers were. She was put into the back of a barred wagon and driven along many long and dusty roads, day and night until the palace came into view, a beautifully spired building set atop a hillock surrounded by farmland. Once upon a time, she might have found the sight inspiring. Now it seemed to her to be another symptom of the king’s corruption.
There were stories about what happened to women who went to the palace. None of them were pleasant. Most palaces sat above townships, or in cities, because they were places where people were protected by royalty. Not here, though. No villages were permitted for hundreds of miles around to preserve the view.
The wagon rattled up the hill toward the palace, and finally in under a portcullis and down a ramp into the bowels of the earth. It was then that she realized the hill which looked so pretty from the outside actually contained a good bit of dungeon and human suffering.
She steeled herself to meet Archon once again. Of course in the end he had given up and simply had her arrested by guards. He’d gotten tired of having to actually track her down. No doubt these stoic looking mugs would soon be witness to another carnal display with her as the focal point. Iris tried to tell herself she didn’t like the idea of that.
He’d fucked her life up, and he’d fucked her right in the head. She was still dripping from their last tryst, a public humiliation which she might have gone out of her way to earn, might even have made certain was publicized, may even have told some people to keep an eye out for a nine foot tall cape stooping around pretending to be shorter and told them to tell him where she was.
She might have, in fact, gone from loathing him with all she was, to finding the vicious passion of their lovemaking the most stimulating and invigorating experience of her life. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to give him hell for having her arrested like a common criminal. They both knew there was nothing common about her.
The wagon stopped inside the dungeon entrance, and the metal portcullis rattled as it was cranked back down into place, landing with a heavy clang. The guards climbed down from the wagon and moved around to let her out with lumbering, disinterested gaits.
“Git down,” one of them said, reaching for her with his big brutal hand. She slapped it away and jumped down out of the prison cart by herself.
“So, where is he?”
“Where’s who?" The guard had poor diction, and an even worse personal smell.
“I assume the young lady is referring to me,” a voice she did not recognize purred.
A tall figure came to meet her. He walked with smug swagger and tossed an ermine cape over his shoulder. But he was not blue eyed, and he did not have a single scale that she could see.
“You’re not Archon.”
“No. I am General Naxus. I rule this planet.”
“I thought King Archon ruled it.”
