At the Edge of Desire

Issar drags me out the next day. My wrists are tied. I avoid the stares of all his soldiers as he shoves me back into the carriage.

I am not fighting, I am not resisting, but he seems to get off on showing his dominance over me, or making it clear for everyone to see.

I’m wearing a new dress, but the effect is the same as the last. I am exposed, exhibited, and displayed for everyone to see, and Issar cannot stop staring at me.

I keep my eyes down, desperate to ignore it, to not throw up the mounting bile in the pit of my stomach.

I sit on the floor beside his feet with barely any space to move. I grit my teeth as I prepare for another long, mind-numbingly boring day.

The collar around my neck is irritating my skin and I am dying to scratch it, to soothe where it has rubbed raw, but when I move to do it, Issar glares at me and I drop my hands quickly, not wanting to anger him.

When we finally stop, I am too tired to care where we are. It’s dusk. My body feels stiff from being crammed into the same position for so long. I’m aching to move, to stretch, to just stand up.

He yanks me painfully up from my position and it feels like my body doesn’t know how to work, how to respond.

We are at a different castle, an older castle by the looks of it, and he drags me inside, taking me to a room with no windows and nothing else except the four bare walls and the one lantern illuminating the space.

I frown at him because I don’t understand what this is, what he is about to do, why we are even here.

He walks around me and I can feel him, his presence, the threat of him at my back. He places his hands on my shoulders and I flinch despite myself, though that action seems to please him.

He slips the dress off and I am naked now, shivering, and so afraid. It feels like whatever he is going to do is worse, much worse than what he has done so far.

The air feels charged around us. His energy radiates off it and it hits me in waves. Awful, unrelenting waves of something so horrific there aren’t words to describe it.

He walks round to face me, grabbing my bound wrists, and then he yanks a hook from the ceiling and ties them to it.

As he starts winding it up, my arms begin to raise, and then my whole body does. I can’t touch the ground. I hang like a piece of meat and my body swings slowly back and forth as he watches me.

I am gasping now, trying to control my fear and my panic. My arms hurt so much already; it feels like my weight is pulling them out of their sockets.

I fight back the tears, but it is futile because they fall anyway. They stream down my face, and then slowly they drip down onto my body too.

He is watching me still. I don’t even know why he is doing this, why he is hurting me, but when I stupidly meet his eyes, I can see it then, the excitement, the desire. All of this is turning him on. My pain, my fear, this is what he wants, what he gets off to.

“Tell me what you are,” he says quietly. Though his voice still echoes.

I shake my head. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.

He snarls, walking up to me, and begins caressing my body, fondling it as I bite back the cry. I don’t want him to hear. I don’t want him to know. His mouth is on me, licking my breasts, licking where my tears have fallen.

He holds up a whip; it is small, nasty-looking, and I gasp as he runs the leather of it across my breasts and nipples. I’m shaking my head, pleading without speaking, but he doesn’t care.

“Tell me and this will end.”

It’s a lie. I know it is. Even if I do confess my true nature, it won’t stop him. It won’t spare me any pain. It will only condemn me more.

He walks behind me, and within seconds, he has brought it down across my back. I scream and he does it again. The leather sears my skin. When he does it a third time with force, I start bleeding.

That seems to satisfy him enough to stop.

He grabs my legs, pulling them open, and I shut my eyes. I don’t want whatever he is about to do, but I know there is nothing I can do to stop it. I have to endure this. I have no choice.

He pushes something into me and I cry out then. A loud, rattling scream because it hurts so much. I don’t know what it is. I only know it feels like I have been stabbed and my legs jerk, which, if anything, makes the pain worse.

He starts flicking my clit, teasing me as if I could in any way feel pleasure right now. His mouth is back on my breast. I scream again. Whatever he is doing, whatever this is, it hurts so much.

And then he stops. He pulls whatever it is out of me and I whimper when I see actual blood on his fingers. He has cut me.

He holds them up for me to see and I shudder. And then he does something even worse. He licks them; he licks my blood.

I look away then. I shut my eyes and pray to the gods that he is content, that he won’t hurt me anymore tonight or any other night.

He blows out the lantern, throwing the room into complete darkness, steps back, and opens the door before leaving me there, hanging, bleeding, and weeping all night.

***

When he cuts me down the next day, I am half delirious with pain. My arms feel like they’ve dislocated and my body seems to go through waves of numbness and then pins and needles over and over and over again.

I collapse in a heap on the floor. I am pitiful now. Broken almost. Pathetic.

He rolls me onto my back and I don’t object. I don’t fight. I just lie there like I’m not even alive. And then he fucks me.

It hurts worse than ever with the cuts he has made inside me, but I don’t even whimper. I just lie there, mute, unmoving, like I’m dead already.

When he is done, he leaves me again, in the darkness, still naked, and shivering from both the cold and pain.

But the next day, when he opens the door, I can see something has changed.

He is angry, but it’s not with me. His face is contorted with fury and I shake even more when I feel his energy in the room. He picks me up and hauls me out.

I am too weak to even walk. My feet drag along the ground and my heels smash against every stair as he takes me upstairs.

He throws me onto the floor of a room and I see the skirts of a maid as she stands clearly petrified, waiting for his orders.

“Clean her up and get her dressed,” Issar barks. “And make it quick.”

The maid curtseys before rushing to do as she’s told and I just lie there watching as the monster who has hurt me leaves and I can finally breathe.

The maid is not strong enough to pick me up. I get to my feet shakily. The fear of what Issar will do if I am not ready when he comes back is what drives me in this moment.

She pours some water into the sink and sponge-baths me. As she works her way down my body from my face, the water turns from clear to red.

I gulp, not looking at it, not wanting to see it, but I can smell it. My blood in the water, my essence floating, mingling with it.

The maid dries me quickly and then puts on a dress that is completely backless besides two strips of fabric that run up either side of my shoulder blades.

It cuts the whole way down to my waist. Two narrow strips cover my breasts, but they are exposed almost up to where my nipples are.

This dress is the worst so far. It’s pale too and almost matches my skin tone, so it looks like I am practically topless, exposed.

Issar returns almost immediately after I put my dress on and he stops in the doorway, staring at me.

He runs his eyes over me like he hasn’t seen me naked today, like he hasn’t abused me enough already, and then he walks up and grabs me before turning me away so he can examine my back.

I wince as his fingers trace along the sores where the whip was, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t lighten the pressure either.

And when he turns me back around, he is smiling, and my panic increases tenfold.

I can feel my breasts heaving, my chest rising and falling fast, and he stares down, watching them, appreciating them. I want to hit him, to lash out at him so badly, but I don’t, I don’t dare.

I just stand there, waiting, letting him gaze at me as if he is in some sort of trance.

He lets out a long, low breath and then he takes my hand and leads me from the room, back through the castle, and to the same goddamn carriage.

I frown when I see it. Where the hell is he taking me now? Why are we constantly traveling? This man is a warlord, probably the most powerful of all the warlords, so why have we not just gone to his castle?

Why are we messing around like this?

But then a thought hits me that the sooner we do get to his castle, his actual castle, the worse it will be for me. I have no doubt he has some sort of chamber set up, with God knows what items to torture, to hurt, to maim me.

He has already spilled my blood once, and I know from the look on his face when he did it that he intends to do it again, over and over.

And that’s the thought that keeps echoing in my head as we travel all day. Again.

Issar at least lets me sit on the seat this time and I am grateful for its softness, but a part of me fears bleeding into the fabric and my back hurts every time it comes into contact with it.

So I force myself to sit upright, and as a result, I am even more on edge and feel even more exhausted by the time we arrive at our latest destination.

The sun is setting and I can see the light of it through the window, but as the door opens, my senses come to life.

Because I can smell it. The sea.

Wherever we are, the water is so close that I can taste it on my tongue, I can feel it in my bones.

The creature inside me stirs louder than ever, and for once she doesn’t want pleasure, she doesn’t want sex, she needs what I need. We both need it. Our escape. Our release.

I don’t know if Issar can tell, if he can sense what is happening, and I glance at him, but he is distracted.

He’s out of the carriage standing far ahead of me. One of his soldiers is handing him some papers and he frowns reading through them. I sense my chance.

I step out, staying as small as I can, and glance around, but no one notices me. No one cares. Their only focus is Issar.

I can see the water now. It’s barely five hundred meters from me. A castle is perched over it in the distance, but the water shimmers so irresistibly in front of me.

My heart yearns, my body aches for it, and I don’t care what the risk is. I have to take it.

I run, I run so fast. My heart is pounding, thumping in my chest, and with every step I take, the water draws me in and my senses are seduced by it. I don’t look to see if anyone is chasing me.

I don’t care. My whole focus is on the blue waves crashing before me. If I can make it, if I can get to the water, then I will be free.

My wrists are still bound, but it doesn’t matter. I know once I am under the waves, I can get the ropes off.

The salty breeze is calling me on, screaming at me as I run, and I am so close now. So deliriously close.

I reach the sand, and it changes from dry to wet beneath my bare feet, molding around my toes as the waves crash so loudly ahead.

I am there. I am going to make it, but even as the joy rises within me, something pulls me down. Crashes into me and I scream.

My face is buried in the sand as someone heavy weighs me down.

“No,” I cry, trying to get free, but it’s no good. Whoever is on top of me holds me firm. I kick out as the water creeps in around us. It’s taunting me now instead of seducing me.

I can taste the sand in my mouth; it mingles with the salt and my soul screams for more.

“Get her up,” Issar orders.

I tremble, hearing his voice as I’m pulled to my feet, covered in sand and grit and soaking wet. They force me to face him.

His face is all fury as he looks at me and I can’t meet his eyes. I don’t dare. He wrenches me from the soldier’s grasp and holds my arm so tightly it hurts, but I don’t make a sound now. I’m too scared to do anything.

He is going to punish me. I know it. I look back over my shoulder, seeing the water, seeing my freedom ebb away as he drags me toward the castle as my heart sinks.