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How could I have allowed myself to think he had my best interests at heart? He had such control over me that I had trusted him utterly, completely. I had asked no questions; I had not stood up for myself or thought things through. I had merely obeyed. Complied. Been conned by his own animal, bestial, uncaring needs. He took what he wanted and he left. And now here I was.
Wiping my tears away, I stared at my bedroom door, willing it to open. I’d cried into my pillow for long enough. Maria sat beside me the whole time except when she went to the door, ordering the guard to have a maid bring tea and fruit. When she arrived, she set the tray on the disrupted table and with Maria’s instruction took to cleaning the mess of water and debris from the tabletop and the floor.
“Maria…” The maid started. “There’s…”
“Shhh,” Maria snapped back. “Clean it up. Can you not see the princess is beside herself? Just do as I asked and take your leave.”
“Yes ma’am,” she answered as I pinched my eyes closed and tried to make the pain disappear.
A short while later, the sound of the door opening and closing only reminded me of what I wanted so badly.
I longed to hear strong footsteps fill the hallway outside. I willed Maksim into my arms again. If only he were there, he could explain. He could protect me. But there was nothing. And no one. I was adrift at sea all by myself. I eased myself down onto the bed, shivering until Maria wrapped me in my robe.
“Was there any sign of Maksim before you came to me?” I asked.
Maria shook her head slowly as she fussed with my hair trying to soothe me. “No. And I noticed this morning that his horse is gone, too.”
* * *
One day drifted sickeningly into the next. Three days, four, five days passed. I was a prisoner in my own chambers for all that time. Maria was allowed to come and go to bring me food and whatever else I needed, but I was not free. I was caged and isolated, unable to defend myself. Shock went into sadness, then sadness into anger, until I had spent so many hours fuming as I walked back and forth across my quarters that I burned up all my anger, only to be left with sadness again.
Late on the fifth day, the guards allowed me to leave my room although they followed me everywhere.
I didn’t ask why. I didn’t care.
All that mattered as I stepped out into the hallway was taking the proof of my sin back into my chambers. I folded it up and it joined the other sheet, in a laundry hamper that Maria knew better than to take just yet.
Once I emerged from my prison, I heard snickers and laughter wherever I went, but was met with downcast eyes when I attempted to confront anyone. It was the most awful sort of penance; there were no arguments, there was no anger for me to meet with my own. Just silence and glances and shame. It was so uncomfortable that I couldn’t bear it, and isolated myself in my own chambers rather than facing it.
Even my freedom was tainted now. There would be no freedom from that decision. No relief from this embarrassment and shame.
Early on the sixth day, a message came from my mother and stepfather. The scroll was brought by a royal messenger. My mother had written it, in her too-practiced calligraphy that only made the pain of the words feel worse. Poison dressed up beautifully was poison all the same.
The words swam before me as I tried to make sense of them. She called me a whore for allowing my virtue to be taken, and she called me a liar for claiming it was Maksim. She said Prince Galen’s people were disgusted but not surprised. They’d been warned I was willful and indeed I was. But they regretted that I had been so free with my body, giving myself away like some common tramp.
And there at the bottom of the message, the last flame of hope died inside me. All of this pain and embarrassment would have been worth it if it freed me from marrying Prince Galen.
But my mother said the marriage was still on.
And that I would be subjected to a purity test, a public examination of my womanhood to prove I had been deflowered. After that, my dowry would be reduced. It was all agreed upon already, and there was nothing I could do to alter a thing.
“Damaged goods sell for cheap, and don’t you dare cheapen yourself any further,” my mother wrote, before signing her name.
In my hands, I had proof of what I had always known but tried to ignore. I was chattel; I was a commodity. Nothing more. The messenger waited for my reply, but I said there was none and off he went, leaving me with the vellum scroll crumpled in my furiously clenched fists.
