I felt myself start to gasp for breath and tiny fragments of light cut across my vision as his thumb dug into my windpipe. My legs shook and kicked violently, my hands and arms flailed, clawed at his massive arms, but he held me tighter. Each of my reflexes met only with further pressure from his immense body. “You’re no man,” he seethed. “I’m going to make you the bitch you always should have been!” Spit dribbled from his mouth, and landed on his shaft as he worked his cock faster.
His words penetrated my fear, and as it lessened, I stopped struggling. Where I had been afraid, I now knew something worse. I felt hot shame growing within my heart. The hot burn of tears filmed my eyes and erased the flickering, burning lights. I watched as his legs buckled, I heard his breath grow ragged. He shouted horrible things into the air but I couldn’t hear them. I’d gone deaf with shock. There was nothing in that moment but a frenzied chaos. The nightmare feeling of falling took over. All I had to do was fall with it, but where would I land?
Was this what I deserved? Is this where my passions led me? Had I been careening to this moment since I first saw that man bathing at my home?
Before my abused mind could cobble together any sensible replies, my eyes caught sight of the window. An owl had landed and peered into the room from the ledge. Its eyes sparkled like disks of gold in the dimness of the growing night shadow. There was silence, a fragment of time I would never forget. The bird blinked once and lifted soundlessly from its perch and as it did, I felt the burn of Cale’s seed fall across my face. His grip relaxed then tightened as another splash landed on my lips and streamed from my forehead, where it first met its mark.
There is something beyond shame, a depth of degradation I never hoped or dreamed to know, but as his seed abused my face, I found something else in the horrible silence. It was the clear, furious dirge of revenge, and from beneath me I heard the velvet beckoning in a voice more horrible than Cale’s. Its voice consumed me and cradled me in its arms like a mother cradles a child lost but eventually found. As Cale’s thumb released my throat, so was I captured by something far more powerful and terrible: Hatred and the realization I had never been one of them.
“You ever speak of this,” Cale muttered as he struggled into his breeches. “And I swear I will do you and your blind brother harm, although death would be a blessing to you both.”
I stumbled forward and coughed raggedly until vomit rushed from my stomach and spilled across the stone floor. My head hung not with guilt or shame, but with the determined abhorrence I felt for the man before me. He would not see my face covered in his seed. He would not see my eyes burning with seething rage, or hear my voice choke over with the pain he inflicted upon me.
“Get up, dog,” he leered. “You deserve to be hanged from the tallest tree or torn apart on the rack and fed your own manhood.”
I was keenly aware that his eyes were upon me.
“And to think, your hands sew the garment Duir will wear on the morrow. How sad that is.”
I heard the door open and the sound of his boots as they moved away and faded. I even heard him laugh and shout at someone who passed.
Alone, I felt Seton’s absence keenly. I wanted him near me, wanted his reassuring touch, to hear his voice chase Cale’s venom from between my ears. How could I let what felt so correct be tarnished by one such as Cale? I raised my head only to find I’d dragged myself up not by anyone else’s words or assistance. I felt the press of the walls, walls I once loved and enjoyed working within now had the presence of a cage. The smell of Cale wreaked havoc on my senses. Would I ever not know his horrible stench? I couldn’t think of a bath hot enough to wash this horror from my skin, ears, eyes and worse, my spirit.
I stood shakily. My legs buckled, but I steadied myself and looked to where the velvet vest lay. It would take the entire night to undo the damage my sitting on the delicate material had caused. I would not sleep. I would not eat or drink until this stinking garment was complete and when it was, I would make something else, sumptuary laws be damned to hell. If Seton wished to know what it felt like to wear the finery of kings, why shouldn’t he? For what were Duir and his men but demons wrapped in privilege? The questions burned brilliant in my mind and pushed the fog of humiliation from my thoughts. If my spirit died in the moments of Cale’s abuse, it would be reborn and honor my new mother: Revenge. I wiped my sleeve across my face.
“Be damned, all of you,” I growled. This voice so unlike my own sent the hairs on my neck on end. Everything was changed. My heart beat hard within my chest. I gathered my work and left the room, determined never to return.
Chapter 12
If the room felt different, the streets and the people elated by Duir’s earlier procession seemed like they belonged to another world. A mirror world, something I saw from a distance. I knew it and
