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“I don’t think he’ll be visiting.”
“Then why worry?”
“Because just because he won’t visit, doesn’t mean he won’t send a fleet of warships. It’s like, you know when you don’t want something, but you don’t want anyone else to have it either?”
Zion looks at me blankly. “No.”
“Well, of course not, because you’re perfect.”
He chews his meat and nudges more toward me. I’m not hungry. Thinking about the consequences of all of this is making me feel ill. They keep compounding in my head. I have gone from thinking that I would be recalled and put into stasis to wondering if the punishment could be somehow worse. I have almost certainly lost all favor with him—and the truth is, I was never in his favor. The Patron, of all people, was supposed to eschew reproduction. My birth was a shameful accident. One he vowed not to repeat. I live in the distant depths of the stars because I am a reminder of his failings. My failures only compound them. If I am ever going to make things right, I have to get back to the ship.
“Please,” I say. “Take me back to my craft. Please.”
He gives me a long, searching look and nods.
I can’t believe he has agreed to this so easily. Maybe I am going to get off this planet. Maybe I am going to make it up to the Patron. Maybe… I don’t even know.
I get up and I pull my suit on. He doesn’t stop me. I get my boots on and I follow him out of the cave. Is this it? The last time we see each other? I feel strange about that. There is a pang in my stomach at the idea of never getting to be near him again, but I push it aside. My feelings don’t matter. Obeying the Patron matters. Not being turned into a frozen meat treat matters.
He leads me down the mountain. It is a much longer walk now that I have to undertake it on my own two legs. Zion’s silence makes me nervous. He seemed so eager to keep me, but perhaps now that he has gotten his sexual pleasure from me he is ready to see me go.
That thought upsets me.
“Are you taking me to my ship to get rid of me?”
He stops and looks at me, his blue eyes quizzical, his dark brows drawing down over them in a way that indicates he understands, and does not like the question.
“You’re mine.”
Those two words are reassuring. Even as I plan to leave him forever. What the hell is wrong with me? I am behaving in a totally erratic manner, thinking and feeling things that are utterly at odds with each other. I want to go. I want to stay. I want to be his. I want to be free.
We come to a halt in the middle of a field.
“Here.”
“Huh?” I look around. This spot does look familiar, but there is no sign of my shuttle. It is just… gone. There is some bare earth here and there where I think it scraped along the ground. Did they drag it away? It didn’t get up and fly away on its own, that’s for sure.
“Where’s my ship?”
“Dead,” he says. “We buried it.”
“What do you mean, dead?”
“Was wounded. Finished it off. Buried it.”
It takes me far too long to work out what has happened. He doesn’t know what a machine is. If something moves, it must be alive. Oh… no. My stomach churns as my anger rises and flares.
“Oh… you… blazing idiot!” I curse. “It wasn’t dead! Machines can’t die! I can’t believe you. I can’t believe what a stupid rock-headed caveman you are, how dumb can you be? You came from people just like me, people with technology. How do you not know the difference between machine and animal? That was my one chance to survive and escape this place! Now I’m going to be stuck here with you cretins until… ow!”
He wasn’t listening to me. He was walking away toward a tree. He was taking a branch from the lower boughs and he was stripping the leaves from it. And now I know why. It was for me.
For a second time, he peels the suit from my body, all the way to the boots. He renders me utterly naked before the punishment begins. My cursing and wriggling does nothing to help the situation, and then it begins, a brutal punishment that only serves to enrage me further. Insult to injury, the whipping is fierce and fast. The lash of the branch catches my skin time and time again, welting my flesh.
I scream, but he persists, lashing my bottom with that infernal switch that bites my skin over and over, sending harsh heat coursing through my veins.
* * *
Zion
She will learn her place. She will scream and cry and she will beg for mercy, but I will not stop until I see she understands what it means to be a woman. Her displays of temper are shameful. Her words of rage are thoughtless. She has no sense of respect.
