Deceived

Decieved

He glared at me, his mouth twisting with disgust. "Do you really think I would let you leave after what you did?"

He strode toward me, menace shrowding his lazy gait, his eyes dark with undisguised hatred.

"Please, I-I will never do it again." I pleaded trying to appeal to his humanity, if even a shard remained.

But he only looked away, his voice coming out hoarse with a harsh, ringing laugh that had me shrinking into myself with resounding fear and shame. The laugh was a deep husk devoid of humor, constructed to make me feel demeaned, worthless. It was a laugh that did nothing to conceal the cruelty that dwelled in his blackened heart.

He scuffed, "Do you take me for a fool? I know you will run to save that pathetic excuse of a man the moment I let you out of here."

He turned to me again, snarling, baring his elongated canines— his unnaturally blue eyes gleaming in resentment. Resentment directed at me... his wife.

"But listen, my little flower, I will have both you and your father's necks for stealing from me. This I promise."

He ran a cold finger down my cheek and I flinched away from him as much as from the sting the endearment instigated. He used to call me my little flower with so much tenderness a long time ago...

It wasn't hard to believe that I did this. All of this. I'd turned a lonely king into a heartless monster; all in the name of family. I'd married this man, let him touch me in ways no other had and in return I'd manipulated his heart, forged his deepest desires and fed them to him bit by bit until he craved everything I chose to offer.

What was the saying, ignorance is bliss? It certainly was, for until I had found out my husband had no intention of freeing my father from his prison, I had been content to live a lie.

He wasn't as dimwitted as I had first thought. Infact, he had been smater than the both of us, which I had learned too late.

He had had no intention of letting my father go uncharged. He'd planned on letting him rot there while night after night he had confessed his unfailing love for me. A joke it was, all of it. I was the fool, I thought I was using him but it was the other way around.

I'd like to think that what I did wasn't cruel– just desperate. I'd married an unforgiving king, perceiving it as the only solution worthy enough to save my father from being locked away in my husband's dungeon to rot for the crime he committed.

My father was one of king Damian's trusted advisors but I still remained bemused at what drove him to steal money from Damian. A king who despised theft, let alone the theft of something invaluable.

It was the dawn of spring when we lost mother, and along with her, everything. Consumption they had called it. Comsumption it truly was for we lost every penny to the wretched disease. We didn't have much, and with mother gone, much less. But had never reached that point in poverty that demanded we steal to survive.

Or maybe I was just nieve, for that was exactly what father did, the same man who told me it was wrong to steal. And when he was caught, all that kept going through my mind was, I'd lost my mother so I had to do what I had to do to save my father.

"Now get up!" He barked, grabbing my arm in a vice-like grip. I stumbled to my feet, the rough iron chair I was sitting on tipped over startling me. 

I fell into a familiar hard chest. In one split second everything slowed, we weren't in a makeshift prison cell, him manhandling me and I trembling in terror. We were back in our drawing room, him holding me close as we danced slowly to the classical ballad he loved so much. I could never remember the name of the composer, some French man... But that didn't matter for the music was good and life was not perfect but it wasn't too bad either. I smiled. He smelled wonderful, of cedar and fresh grass. Of home.

But his hold tightened and I fell back into the present with the stench of fear, the scent of my blood and the throbbing pain of a broken limb.

"Pl-please!" My husky cry echoing off grey slabs of concrete. I tried to prying Damian's hand away from my arm but failing miserably. My broken, unattended leg protested under my weight and I cried out again, pleading for mercy.

Unexpectedly he freed my arm with a shove and I fell face first onto the cold floor. The slap of skin against concrete and the crack of a skull against a hard surface was the last thing I heard befor everything went black.

***

I woke to a whirl of grey and red, the world refusing to focus enough to see clearly. Everthing hurt and throbbed, coated in heavy wool.

I had awoken to this scene more that once, marked only by the same excruciating pain radiating from my skull. There were times I prayed to the goddess of death to take me into the solitude of darkness that hovered just out of reach, but I was denied reprieve.

I could not tell how long I had been in confinement for; it could have been minutes, hours, days even. But the state of my leg, the hallucinations I had been having and the hot and cold shivers rocking my body, suggested I had been in for quite some time. Such symptoms belayed the beginning of an infection-induced fever.

Vaguely I remembered Damian coming to check on me, time seeming to lessen the hate that had shone prominent in his eyes every time he looked at me in the past months.

I witnessed blue eyes staring down at me with regret and pity. He came closer and whispered sweet nothings to me while he brushed away sweat slicked strands from my face. In the recess of my foggy mind it slowly registered that this was another hallucination. But grasp it nonetheless. It eventually took me some time to fight my way out of it.

Damian would never look at me that way again for I'd betrayed him, used him. I'd committed an unforgivable act, exhorting with a thief. An act of treason.

The love that the king once held for me–if he'd held any– was now but a mere memory: it'd vanished the moment he was made aware of the reason I married him.
I'd hoped Damien would have been lenient on my father because he was now 'family'. How wrong I was. Not only had he sentence my father to be hanged a week from the day he was told of my deception by my sister, but he had me locked away and forced to become his personal punching bag whenever he needed an outlet for his anger. My broken leg and bruised body was a testimony to that.

I stared at the ceiling, white, remote, at the wooden floor,cold and splintery under me - the window barred and unreachable - the last closed door. I just hope the small wooden door is the way out.

The tiny room was old and rundown but there were four well-kept wooden doors at each corner, three of which were now opened. The room was empty. I knew the closed door was my only means of escape. I knew that the open doors were dead ends and my only hope is the last closed door.

My body throbbed with pain and my eyes blurred from the loss of blood. 'I must escape. I must escape' I repeated in my head as I mustered the strength to stand. A sharp pain pierced through my broken leg. I hissed and bit my tongue in an attempt not to scream. I hopped towards the door, each jerk of my body sending bolts of agonising pain through my broken limb. 'Just a few more steps' I whispered to myself as I pushed myself to continue. It seemed like hours before I reached the door and that's when I heard it; Damien ordering his servants to find me. Dread settled heavily in my stomach because I knew what will happen if he finds me. I'd be hanged.