The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

59. Possession

*trigger warning: slightly nasty stuff to happen. Not very graphic but there.*

Adorable.

I am silent. He is too, but keeps smiling. It looks so serene but also preserves a hidden edge like everything that he does.

Footstep sound in the hallway and the blood drains from both our faces.

I point to the window. He understands and moves swiftly, while the air is stuck in my lungs and I am unable to breathe.

A man in my room at night. It's outrageous. It means certain death. And it's becoming a damn habit. Am I tired of living? But... Adorable.

The last traces of Thessarion's hands on the window sill disappear just before the door opens.

"Mahrani," he states, eying me up and down.

Yeah, that title you gave me, that other people, who aren't his subjects, find to be a mockery.

I haven't really looked at him in a long time. Usually, all my effort is concentrated on looking away.

He is wearing a golden robe painted with red and white swirls. It's beautiful and could probably feed Camila's family for weeks. But then again so are the things at court, including my own.

Tonight his face looks somehow more shrewed than unusually. Other times when his eyes squint lightly, as they do now, he is preparing for casting judgement, which is mostly a death sentence.

Has the time come for me?

"Your Highness," I gasp. Yes, this is the worst possible scenario. "I was not expecting your Highness tonight. It's not that time of the moon."

In other words, something is happening. Something bad. As always.

"It doesn't need to be anything for a husband to request his marital rights."

"Of course not," I answer meekly. But why the sudden interest, the change? It can't be good; it's never anything good when it involves him. And after his interest in me diminished to an almost tolerable amount he is here, now tonight to remind me that I am his possession.

I kneel on the bed. That's what he usually prefers me to do.

"No. Undress," he says. The saliva dried out from my mouth. I turn to suppress a sigh and start unbuttoning my dress.

"Now turn," he says, when the dress hits the ground.

His eyes burn holes in my skin and chip away at my soul with every moment.

Marital duties are a horrible, horrible thing. Is that the gods made that so horrible because we need to earn the children we will have?

Going by this logic, our gods seem to not like me very much. They made me empty and also let me have a husband who would desire children so badly that he would torture me with this again and again, when it looks like I cannot have any.

"Unspectacular," he states, towering over me and moving his right hand from my chin, down my neck to my collarbone. "And empty."

After all this time, it still stings. And there is a fleeting though in the back of my mind: would others mind? Can one be adorable while being empty? Probably not.

"You know that you have to do anything for me and for your country?"

"Of course, your Highness."

What is this all about?

He pushes me on the mattress and climbs over me.

"What did the Darcleé boy tell you?"

I am not sure what to answer.