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Eventually the champagne ran dry, and the waiters carrying trays of tiny food seemed to fade into the background and disappear as the guests filtered out, some carrying bits and pieces of Saskia with them in frames.
Quill, being a good host, joined his guests outside to see them off. Marcus remained behind. He unchained Saskia from the installation and caught her as the water propelled her forward without the chains to hold her in place.
She clung to him, her soul eviscerated. She felt that only shattered ribbons of her being remained behind, barely enough to reconstruct a full person even if she wanted to.
Quill had forged her in the fire of chains and whips and sex and slavery and prostitution and violation. And what had risen from that contorted dark wreckage had been a real artist who’d been made to feel so much it had to go somewhere. That somewhere was a canvas for the consumption of the masses.
And Quill was pleased.
And she was barely holding onto the last slip of her identity.
She hadn’t known what it would cost her to create like Quill. The things it had cost him were different. It had cost his humanity and any soul which once might have existed within him. It cost her an identity and freedom. And whatever dignity she might have once possessed in some distantly faded past.
Everyone paid a price to speak something worth saying.
Saskia struggled to stand on her own and ran clumsily for the door, not caring about her state of undress. But Marcus stopped her and held her against him.
“Shhhh. Everything will be okay,” he said, petting her hair.
She struggled in his arms. He released her but moved to block her exit, leaving no doubt as to whose side he fell on.
Women only came first on lifeboats and elevators.
“How can you defend him? Don’t you at least care about me? I thought...”Oh God, don’t say it, Saskia. Don’t be even more stupid and pathetic than you already are. Have an ounce of dignity.
“We both care in our way,” he said.
Saskia dropped to her knees, the tears coming full force now. “Please, sir, take me out of here. I’ll be yours. Just yours. We can go anywhere you want. Why can’t you just report him? Why can’t you just leave him? Pick me.”
As she said it she cringed at even the idea of leaving Quill. She only found the courage to say the words because she knew Marcus would never leave him either. It just felt right to say them, to make some halfhearted attempt at ending this insanity.
Marcus pressed a finger to her lips. “My place is with him. And so is yours. You need to accept that. We can be comfortable here.”
Comfortable. What bullshit. Marcus could be comfortable. She would be destroyed.
The echo of the outer door made her jump. Moments later, Quill was in the gallery, watching her clinging to her guard. Her master’s face was inscrutable.
“Marcus. I want to be alone with her.”
“Yes, sir.”
Quill watched her for several moments after Marcus had gone. Finally, he spoke. “What was that I just walked in on? An escape attempt?”
Was her face that emotionally transparent?
“Master, please just let me go. I can’t... it’s all...” The words came out among half-strangled cries. If she didn’t get them out now, she might never gain the courage again.
Despite the ongoing foolishness of her desire to be his... it was... too much. He was too intense, too frightening, too large for any world to contain. Surely he’d developed some attachment to Saskia in all this time, some echo of love. Surely he would show her mercy and release her from her debt. Hadn’t she yet paid for the terrible crime of taking money he’d never needed?
Quill’s expression turned dark. “I knew you were just like her. Just waiting to abandon me.”
“What do you care? You keep me at arm’s length. You won’t let yourself get close. You’re scared, aren’t you? If you’re too scared to really have me, why can’t you just let me go?”
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “I willneverlet you go.”
“I won’t tell anyone anything. You know that. I’ll keep all your secrets. Please, I’ll die like this.”
His face was a stone wall; his lip curled in a sneer. “Don’t be so dramatic, Saskia. You won’t die.”
