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1
Try as she may, Hilda cannot mask the worry in her dark, beady eyes.
She holds my cheeks in her meaty hands, my face puffy from all the sobs I released into her bosom.
I got myself caught in the prince’s trap and, the more he has his way with me, the more I regret making that bargain with him. It’s all spiralled out of control.
All that’s in it for me now is protection.
At least, that’s what Hilda assures me of right now.
“Protection,” she emphasises, her thumbs dragging away my tears. “The guards cannot touch you,” she tells me. “No one can. Only him.”
Those last words twist my face as fresh memories flash in my mind.
That part of me that once wanted his caresses, his sweet mouth on my heat, has faded away. Now, I grimace at the thought of his roughness, his lack of care about my pleasure. Makes me think it was all a ruse to lure me into his trap. It worked.
Prey caught by the predator. All with promises of sweetness and tenderness. Lies.
Unable to stand the pity in Hilda’s eyes a moment longer, I turn my cheek to her. As she fusses about with my hair, my eyes land on the butler who stands with Gary and Archer. They read over the parchment scroll delivered earlier by the prince. It details the changes in my position. I haven’t even read it yet.
“I need help preparing the room for Miss April.” Sira’s voice slips into my mind.
After a blink, I turn to look at her. She’s come up at Hilda’s side to murmur in her ear. It didn't escape me that she called me Miss. Neither does it go unnoticed that she won’t meet my gaze.
Hilda clicks her chubby fingers at the girl on the windowsill, who looks out at the twilight gardens. “Terry,” she commands. “Assist Sira in preparing the room in the lover’s quarters.”
“In a minute,” Terry mumbles, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her chin on them.
Hilda pays her no more mind and Sira sets off to tackle the lover’s quarters alone.
Lover’s quarters.
Sounds dirty to me, and I suddenly feel the need to scrub myself clean.
Just a fancy way of saying ‘whore’ around here.
I’ll never be a true lover of Daein’s. I’m still a slave, still ruled by the bargains between us and the rules of his castle. I have no freedoms. The differences between me as a lover and one of his own kind are enormous.
I’ll bet that if I was a dokkalf, he would have never put me through what he has done already. He would have been open with me from the start, put my pleasure first, truly cared about me, and I wouldn’t be hidden in some shadowy and moss-overgrown part of the castle.
The butler abandons his two favourite house slaves by the wall and approaches us. His eyes don’t search for mine, but instead he looks to Hilda as he passes over the unfurled parchment scroll.
Hilda leaves my hair to fall in loose curls down my face, taking the list from him.
As she reads it over, the butler tells me, without looking at me, “A seamstress will arrive shortly to measure you.”
“Measure me?” I echo, a frown pinching my face. “For what?”
“Dresses, I imagine,” he replies coolly, his eyes on the curve of my shoulder.
My face wrinkles with a frown that I turn on Hilda. Her lips move slowly as she tries to make out the words on the scroll.
Leaning into her, I whisper, “Why won’t he look at me? And Sira too.”
Hilda lifts her blank eyes from the parchment scroll. For a moment, she just stares at me, as though the question isn’t quite sinking in.
“You are higher in position,” she says after a long pause. She goes back to the scroll.
