At the Edge of Desire

I am thrown into a room. There are guards all around me, and I stand motionless, waiting.

My dress is clinging to me. The silk material is stuck to every curve of my body and I know without looking that my nipples are poking through, visible as the water has made the fabric see through.

I want to hide myself, to wrap something around me, but I have nothing. I can feel the guards glancing at me, looking when they think Issar won’t see.

My body is too tempting in this moment for them not to.

Issar says something but not to me, and one of the guards leaves before coming back with a wooden bat. I look at it in his hands and I know it is meant for me.

I’m trembling, the fear and the panic and everything in between is searing through my body and I can’t think. I can’t speak. I can barely stand.

Issar takes the bat, his eyes on me, and I shake my head slightly, pleading, begging him not to, though no words pass my lips.

Someone rushes in, and Issar turns, snarling at the intrusion. The man speaks in a low voice that I can’t hear.

Issar snarls again and spits back a retort, but the man replies, and I sense there is something else going on, something beyond me, and him, and whatever this is.

“I don’t care what he says,” he bellows.

The man replies again and Issar loses it, throwing the bat against the wall, and then he picks up a chair and throws it too.

I flinch, my feet still rooted to the ground, but I desperately want to run, curl up, and hide from this raging monster, but I know I can’t.

“I don’t care who he is. She is mine and he won’t take her from me,” he shouts and the man nods before disappearing, and then Issar turns to look at me again.

He grabs me and throws me onto the table. I gasp as his fingers tighten around my throat and I can barely breathe. He forces my body back against the cold, hard wood, and he is on top of me in an instant.

He doesn’t care that there are guards in the room, six of them, spread out, surrounding us. I cry out, and he laughs as he rips the dress from me. I am exposed for all of them to see.

“Please,” I beg, but he doesn’t care. If anything, it spurs him on. His lips are on me, his teeth are gnawing at my skin, and I can’t breathe, I can’t get him off; he is suffocating me.

His fingers jab inside me and I cry out again.

“Time to play, little nymph,” he says and I shake my head, wanting him off me, wanting his hands off me.

The creature inside awakes, but even she does not want this either. She is angry, furious that we could not reach the water and now she won’t play even if I want her to.

She is protesting, fighting within me while Issar fights on top of me.

He bites me. Hard. On my breast and I scream.

He goes to undo his jeans and I take my chance, kneeing him in the groin, and he growls, doubling over with his hands tightening around my hair.

“You fucking bitch,” he snarls, hitting me across the face and I feel my lip split as the taste of my blood seeps in over my lips.

He gets off me. Clearly, he no longer wants to fuck me. He is all rage now, all anger.

I spring off the table, but he grabs me before I get anywhere and then I realize the club is in his hands.

“You want it rough, then I’ll play rough too,” he growls.

I scream as it comes down, throwing my hands up in some pitiful attempt to protect myself, but it does no good. He knocks me to ground and continues hitting me while his guards stand there, mute, watching.

When he is done, he hauls me back up and I cry out as a searing pain rips through me. I’m so bruised, so broken, I cannot fight him now even if I tried.

He doesn’t dare leave me here, naked, because as loyal as his guards are and as damaged as I am right now, I am still too irresistible for them to ignore.

He drags me to a bedroom and throws me in the closet. He locks the door and I huddle up, trying so hard not to cry as my adrenaline drops and the pain steadily increases.

***

The door opens. It’s morning, though I’ve barely slept. The maid coaxes me out and does her best to clean me up. I sit on a stool, staring at my reflection.

My face is bruised. My cheekbone bares the evidence of his fist from the other day and my lip is swollen and cut from last night. But that’s not what concerns me.

I stare at my hair. The brown is there, but it’s fading. Soon, the dye will be gone and everyone will see my real color.

And then they will know.

There’ll be no hiding it then. Every man that looks at me will know in an instant what I am. I don’t know what to do because I can’t stop this. I cannot get my hands on any dye no matter how much I beg.

It feels like there is a ticking clock above my head and when the timer goes, I am so utterly and completely done for.

The maid puts a dress on me and I am grateful to finally be covered, even if it is just a little. Though once again, she gives me no underwear and I wonder if that is deliberate.

He walks in moments later and glares at me. I don’t look at him. I can’t. Something tells me he will beat me again if I do, but my heart is racing and my breath is coming so fast.

He barks for me to follow and I do. Obediently. Docile. We walk back through the castle and I see the carriage there, waiting for me, just like always.

But I can smell it again. The sea.

I gulp, trying to ignore it, trying to ignore the illicit feelings already starting to pulse within me.

Issar watches me as if he knows, as if he suddenly understands, and my fear doubles. When I finally meet his gaze, he is smirking, amused, and he pushes me back into the carriage and slowly we pull away.

We stop at a fort. It is dark. We’ve been traveling all day again. I am so hungry, but I don’t say a word, make a noise, do anything that even suggests I exist.

My side hurts, my right ribs throb, and I suspect some might be broken, but I still keep quiet, enduring every bump, every agonizing movement of the journey in silence.

A man greets us as we pass under the first gate. His eyes scan over me before Issar’s temper flares and he looks away, but he still gets a beating for it.

The place around us feels ready for an attack and I can feel the tense atmosphere of all the men around me.

“Everything is as requested, my lord,” the man says.

Issar looks around at all the soldiers, all the men along the battlements. “Good,” he says. “He would be a fool to challenge me, but if he does come here, you will hold this fort. Even if it takes every last man.”

“Yes, my lord,” the man replies, bowing.

Issar grabs my wrists and pulls me on inside, and as I stumble beside him, I realize he is taking me to the dungeons.

He strips me, ripping the dress from my body, as I flinch away, and then he shackles me and locks me in the furthest cell.

I am naked, freezing, and in almost complete darkness, and he stands watching through the bars as if he can still see me clearly before pocketing the key.

But as he walks away, I cry out, and he stops, turning to face me again.

“What is it, girl?” he asks.

I back away, into the wall. Too scared to speak now.

“You brought this on yourself,” he states. “You tried to run, but you cannot run from me. You cannot escape me.”

I shake my head, wanting to say something, anything. To scream at this man, this monster who has me captured.

“You will remain here till I return and perhaps by then you will have learned some obedience,” he says.

“Please,” I beg. I don’t want to be left here. It’s so cold already and I can feel it in my bones. If I stay here, I will die. This place, this awful emptiness will kill me.

He laughs. “By the time I’m done, you will know how to beg properly.”

He turns and slams the door shut. I am left alone and something about it tells me he won’t be back soon.

I want to curl up, to make myself small, but my body is too broken to do it, so I lie with my back against the freezing stone and my legs as tight as I can bear.

And I drift off into some sort of restless sleep as the wind howls around me and the sound of soldiers moving echoes down through the drainage.

I wonder if whatever Issar is running from is something I should want or something I should fear too.