Nadine hated this place for all the same reasons that she hated her husband: she might have loved it, if it weren’t so awful. An arcology, of all things, a pyramid impossibly large made of alien metal and something that couldn’t have been glass. Greenery everywhere, vines and trees and flowers, and she couldn’t help wondering what her father would have thought. She thought that he’d have loved it, though she had no way of knowing. She’d never really known her father. It didn’t really bother her, any more than all the other people she would never know. Genetic similarly did not a relationship make.
A theocracy, for fuck’s sake. How could a culture that lived in a city so magnificent still believe in gods? In a divine right to rule? How could anyone believe in a divine right to rule, when her husband was the man that he was?
The view from the top of the pyramid was grand, and from here she could see the Wild Wood, see how deceptively small it was. Of course it was magic, to have been so impossibly large. Nadine hated getting involved in magic. It made her feel like she was tainted by it. Like attracts like. Like attacks like. She didn’t want to be on the this world, where she was magical and strange.
“Enjoying your new kingdom, little heathen?”
She tensed despite herself at the sound of his voice, high and pretty, but she didn’t turn to look at Sado’s approach. He seemed to delight in calling her that, in treating her like an oddity, a pet. In waving her in the face of his family, his subjects. I have returned, and I shall do as I please, and nothing has changed. “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, because this was her game, now, pretending that he wasn’t making her life a hell. He came up behind her, pulled the pins roughly from her hair so that her curls fell almost to her shoulders.
“So scandalously short,” he clucked disapprovingly, and she gritted her teeth with the expectation that he would touch it, that he would run his fingers through it, pull it. But he didn’t, and maybe that was worse. His hands hovered over her hips, so close, never touching. Why did that make it worse, that he didn’t just touch her? “Tell me you love me,” he ordered easily.
It should have been an easy lie. It caught in her throat, and she said nothing as she stared out at a sky the wrong shade of blue.
He made a noise, a sort of mmm, the sound he made when he was amused. “You can’t do it, can you? Little liar, little savage, little heretic, but still you won’t say it. What was it you said?” Her organs rebelled, low in her belly, tightened and writhed like snakes. This was the worst thing, when he threw her own words back at her, words he was never meant to hear. Words no one was meant to hear. “‘I don’t love like other people,’” he parroted, “‘something in my brain chemistry. Love is real, and I can love, but I don’t love the same.’ It was some silly thing like that, wasn’t it? Trying so hard to pretend you aren’t broken. Even among your own people, aren’t you? A broken, nasty little thing.” He leaned down, because he needed to lean down to get so close to her ear. “Do you think that I want your love?” he hissed, accusatory, and she thought her heart spasmed.
“I don’t presume to know what you want,” she replied, but there was an edge to her voice, because she had assumed. It was the only power she had, the power of being something he wanted. It didn’t make sense if he didn’t. He didn’t make sense. She didn’t like people who didn’t make sense.
“Do you hate me, Princess?” He knew that she knew that he knew – she didn’t like to hate. Didn’t like hate as a concept. Too much energy and thought to spend on something she didn’t like. A stupid thing for stupid people to do. But she did: she hated him. Hated him in the strangest and most satisfying, frustrating way. She didn’t want to think that she was capable of hatred this strong, because what did that say about her? If she couldn’t even love Billy the way other people might have, if she couldn’t even love her enough to hate her killer – surely she shouldn’t be capable of proper hate at all. It was irrational. It was awful. She hated him.
“Whyever would I?” she asked in return, even though she knew he would find a way to answer.
“Because I didn’t let you enjoy yourself. Because you would have loved it, you filthy wriggling little savage, if I’d let you.” Another verbal punch to the gut, and she felt her face turn hot as she remembered his hands on her, as she remembered the pain that kept pleasure at bay.
“Aren’t a lotta men that’d brag about not bein’ able to satisfy a woman,” she mocked, and perhaps it struck home, because he wrapped his hands around her neck feather-light.
“It is not a matter of able,” he assured her, and she ignored that he was right, “it is a matter of control. Why would you deserve to enjoy yourself?”
What a fucking asshole. What a colossal fucking asshole.
“And you? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Whyever would I?” he parroted. “Small and skinny and squirming and shapeless. They call you the Fearless Princess, you know. They don’t know, the way I do. But I know. I know that you are weak and frightened, too weak to admit to your own weakness and too frightened to admit you’re afraid.”
“You’re frightened of me.” A stab in the dark, wild and vicious and flat. It struck true, because his fingers tightened against her skin, made breathing difficult. She’d drawn blood, and it was sweet.
“So arrogant, to think you’re anything to fear. To think you’re anything to me.”
“I’m your wife,” she pointed out, quiet and breathless. “And I’m afraid of you.” Not your blood or your gods or your magic.
“You’re frightened, and you want me. Maybe you want me because you’re frightened. Is that how it works, on your godless world?” His grip grew tighter, until she could no longer breathe, until her vision began to fade and she scratched at his hands despite herself. It was only when her limbs grew weak that he released her, twisted her around as she gasped for air and captured her open mouth with his. She didn’t mean to struggle, but it happened, the heels of her palms slamming into his chest. He lifted her off the ground like she was nothing, not because he was strong but because she was small, and she kicked both her legs into his stomach. He hadn’t expected that – wasn’t used to the idea that anyone would hit him, that anyone might dare. He dropped her as the breath was knocked out of him, and she scrambled to her feet with wheezing gasps.
“You’re an awful kisser,” she lied with a grin, and they were looking at each other with hate in their eyes. Just let me go, she wanted to say, if you hate me so fucking much then why wouldn’t you let me go? She didn’t say it, because heaven forbid he knew that she wanted something. His hate was stupid and irrational, like hers, but his hate manifested itself differently. She could see that, now. His hate was an awful, wanting thing. It’s about control, he’d said, and now it was so obvious she wondered why she’d needed to be told.
“I will give you such pain,” he hissed, and the tone of his voice made fear and anger roil in her. “I will make you want and I will leave you wanting and you will beg.”
“But I’ll never be yours,” she countered, and a laugh bubbled up inside her because it seemed so wonderfully clear. “I’ll play the good girl but my thoughts’ll still be mine and I’ll make faces when your back is turned because I’m not a fucking horse to be broken.” It was wonderful because it was true and it was wonderful because he knew it.
“It is heresy,” he said, voice stronger, “to strike the flesh of a god.” He stood, and he might have looked like a god if she hadn’t known better, wreathed in gold and woven cloth.
“And I am a heretic,” she admitted freely, voice hoarse. “Is it heresy to strike your wife, or is that shit fair game on this theocratic patriarchal bullshit planet?”
“You speak filth and nonsense words,” he smiled, his composure recovered. His hand reached out, and she didn’t flinch, but he didn’t touch her. “Such vulgarity would be unworthy of me. You do not deserve that intimacy.” He withdrew his hand, pulled the scepter-looking pakala from his belt – the larger version of the one she’d seen the night before, and she pretended that the sight of it didn’t make her cold and clammy, didn’t make her heart race.
“Hittin’s too intimate, but fuckin’s just fine?” she asked instead, but to her chagrin she winced when he used the end of his pakala to lift her chin. She was bracing, despite herself, bracing for the pain that she was sure would come and that bracing wouldn’t help. How does it activate, she couldn’t help wondering, how does he even turn the fucking thing on?
“Would you like me to fuck you, you disgusting wretch?”
“Yes.” It was a horrible truth, but letting it free stole the power from it, stole the shame. Secrets were a liability, an admission of guilt, and he knew her too well for all the wrong reasons. No secrets, no guilt, just the shameless baring of the worst of her. Then the tip of his pakala glowed blue, and the pain filled every inch of her at once.
The little one had been bad enough, but that had been precise. This one was not precise, and it was stronger, somehow. It was an ache, an awful ache, like her bones were collapsing in on themselves and her blood had turned to hot lead. Her brain felt like it would burst from her skull, pushing her eyes out of her sockets, her fingernails felt like they were being ripped out. Were her organs turning inside out, were they bursting? Had every muscle in her body been torn? She couldn’t help her eyes watering, but this wasn’t like being struck – wasn’t like being stabbed, being bitten, being lashed. This was an ache, dull and constant and everywhere, and that made it easier somehow to grit her teeth. She might have cried out, if he’d hit her, but this… this was different. She could endure this better than she could a beating, and that made it worse. She didn’t want to endure it, but she couldn’t help but endure it.
It felt like forever before he turned it off, pulled it away. He looked so pleased as she felt her muscles go slack where before they had been tense, almost collapsing with relief. “Doesn’t that feel just wonderful?” he purred, and it did, a magnificent absence of pain.
“I feel like the prettiest fuckin’ princess,” she declared, weaker and more wobbly than she would have liked. With his satisfied smile he snatched the glasses from her face, the ones he’d had made for her so that she could see – but only when he wanted her to see. He seemed to like that, being able to snatch her sight away at a whim. So unbelievably fucking petty.
“You are out of sorts, wife, and it shames me to see you so in the open. I insist, littlest one, that we return to our suite.” He did not hold out his hand to her, made no guiding gestures, and she realized he wanted to watch her walk blind. Wanted to watch her flounder. Watch me, motherfucker.
“But I’m so weak,” she protested with a flutter of her eyelashes, and she realized her eyes were still damp. “I don’t know if I have the strength.” And then she fell to her knees, which wasn’t difficult when she’d wanted to do it anyway, and she felt the grass crush into the fine fabric of her skirt to ruin it. It was so tempting, to just fall limp in the grass. Well then why the fuck don’t I? She sprawled out, closed her eyes and took deep breaths. If she was going to be humiliated, then by god she’d do it her damn self. No one made her look bad like she did.
“Shameless little savage,” he accused finally, and his hands on her body were a pyrrhic victory. He lifted her up, and she snuggled against his chest spitefully, heard him make the high nnn of displeasure that was so close to his sound of amusement. “Your tears will be as sweet as your defiance is bitter.”
“I think later I’ll fuck the gardener,” she sighed, as he carried her back to their bed, to her prison.
Nadine Pascal-Said 