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So would I,I thought sorrowfully.I need to ask him how he does this nearly every day without collapsing from exhaustion.
“I’m sure you would,” Councillor Morales said from my shoulder. “But he is not here, and King Consort Aratorre is, so if you wish to be heard at all, you should speak now.”
The man swallowed and then seemed to regain his courage, dropping his fearful expression into something resembling a glower.
“I offered shelter toyourpeople,” he said accusingly to me. “A group of Mazekhstanis fleeing south passed by our home, and we gave them food and a roof over their heads for the night.”
While the north had amended their own discriminatory laws to permit those of the same gender to lie together without legal repercussion, local sentiment towards what they still considered a crime in the eyes of their god remained strong. It wasn’t surprising that many of them sought the sanctuary granted by Quareh, even if it meant leaving their homes behind.
“I thank you for your generosity,” I said cautiously, trying not to flinch when the man sneered up at where I was seated on the throne.
“Oh? My generosity? Did that extend to all the money we had stored up for the winter? Or the silver watchmi madregave me the night she died?” He spat the words out with venom. “They stole from us, despite us giving them every scrap of food we had in the house, because we thought what we were doing wasright.”
His daughter sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
I wanted to defend the actions of the Mazekhstani – they’d likely been terrified and desperate, unsure if these strangers’ kindness was a trick when they’d been raised amid lies that the south was full of heathens and deviants – but I could not. I did not know their intentions in robbing this family blind.
And I had to put Quareh first, despite where I’d been born or grew up. I had a responsibility to the people I was named king consort of, or else I could not hold the position I did.
“You must support him in this,” Morales muttered in my ear, but I didn’t need the confirmation.
“Then I not only thank you again for your generosity of spirit, señor, but also your bravery and conviction in reporting this to me,” I said, and then turned to our herald. “Work with this man and his daughter to obtain names and descriptions, Clementina, and have a warrant issued for the northerners’ arrest. If they arefound to have engaged in the theft, they will be subject to the same laws and penalties as any of us.”
I waited several tense seconds for an objection or an insult. For scowls and stony glares, or whichever way the court wished to express its displeasure with me.
And when nothing came but solemn nods and a consoling slap on the back of the man who had brought his story before us, I let myself breathe again.
*
Chapter Eight
Two hours into the citizen appearances, my jaw was aching from holding a smile instead of a scowl. I didn’t think myself any more capable of ruling than I had been when the golden consort crown was first placed reverently on my head, but I dared to hope that maybe I hadn’t fucked up my response toeveryplea that had come before me today.
Some of them, for sure. I’d heard Morales’ disappointed sigh more than once, despite my best efforts to seek her counsel each time before making a decision. But there had been times where I’d genuinely disagreed with her opinion despite her laying out the potential ramifications of mine, and for that alone, I was glad that my stubbornness had made me take the appearances myself instead of delegating them to her. If Ren was going to be pissed about something that had been decided while he was busy doing Dios knew what, at least it would be because I’d believed it was the right thing to do.
I remained seated on the huge throne as dozens of people presented their cases, trying and failing not to think of everything my husband had done to me on it. On it, across it, against it...fuck, that man’s wicked imagination knew no limits, and I wondered how many of the people before me would be staring at the throne with quite the same wonder and awe if they knew how much mess we’d made of its golden surface over the past year.
Yet I sat motionless and straight in its uncomfortable embrace as Ren had taught me. And fucking hell,that had been one painful lesson, with his cane coming down on any part of my body that so much as twitched under his watchful gaze. My hands and bare feet had suffered the most, at least initially, unable to obey his command to hold still and look the part of King Consort Nathanael Aratorre rather than – as he’d so fondly put it –a handful of slithering eels, Mathias, who have just been told they’re about to be consumed alive.
“Or a needy little whore desperate to feel this across his ass,” he’d added pointedly, running his long fingers down the length of the cane in clear threat. That had been enough to cease my futile attempts to get comfortable and allow me to adopt the stillest, most regal pose I’d ever had the misfortune of holding, which seemed to please and disappoint my lover in equal measures.
Yet my comment afterwards about his hypocrisy in expecting me to sit on the throne properly when I’d only ever seen him lounge across it, undid all that hard work, and I’d earned myself the threatened punishment after all.
Ren had gleefully ignored my pleas and attempted bribes for him to use something else on me instead.Anything else, I’d begged as he’d forced me over one of the ostentatious arms of the throne with an eagerness that told me he’d been waiting for it all afternoon.
And knowing that the brutal impact of the cane pushed me right to the edge of my endurance, and that it would get him off all the more for it, he’d just laughed and let loose his full sadist tendencies on my flesh.
Lying in his arms afterwards, thoroughly bruised and even more thoroughly fucked, and flying high on the ecstasy deliveredby the pain and delightful dominance, Ren had kissed me everywhere he could reach while murmuring how prettily I screamed for him.
Although he’d been the one screaming – in outrage – the following day when he’d realised I’d stolen that Blessed cane and was hiding it away until he learned to play nice.
That had delivered me a few enjoyable hours of contrition from my king. Sweetness and apologies and a graciousness that had bordered on polite civility…until he’d remembered that he could just purchase a new one, and had reverted back to smug promises about what would happen to me when he did.
Gifting him the splintery shards of his beloved instrument of torture had brought a satisfaction I’d known would be only temporary, but was nonethelessimmenselygratifying.
Yet it seemed Ren had indeed since found himself a replacement, because his threats to me earlier this morning would not have been empty. And perhaps I should have been more alert to them, for now I was reflecting on it, it could not be a coincidence that I’d earned myself a beating tonight through the same alleged ‘misbehaviour’ as that day in the throne room.
Any inch of you that moves before I’m done with you will be subjected to my cane,and I’m really not inclined to be gentle if you disobey.
