She was my soul, and I was her shadow. As she’d breathed softly in sleep, I’d smelled her hair. When she raged against captivity, I’d witnessed her tempers. As she plotted her violence against a fate she did not crave, I’d unraveled her every attempt to be free.
And when I spilled my seed—as was my duty—within the conquered women our empire gathered, it was only her face I saw. Only her body I imagined.
That body that haunted me for millennia.
Her new form, despite the decay and filth, still smelled the same. Like sunshine and the very garden she’d despised. Which had always amused me, as she’d loved flowers, but only so long as they’d been cut, vased, and set out to die.
She smelled like life itself. Uncompromising life.
Troublesome, wondrous princess she’d been.
Dangerous, passionate, wife stolen from me by death.
Pure-blooded sister of a bloodline worshiped by the entire known world.
I’d always admired the incessant and clever attempts to be free of her garden prison before I might claim her and raise her to Queen. That was to be expected, and despite her severe punishments, her every act of insubordination pleased our father greatly. Only a true-hearted Goddess would fight the shackles of luxury for freedom. My docile sisters were left to breed with foreigners and courtiers, their offspring impure. No, only the most determined deserved the role of Queen. Of Goddess.
My Queen. My Goddess.
She dared break her maidenhead on an ivory dagger handle. An attempt to diminish her worth and unravel her destiny.
The knife was delivered to me, blood still drying as a report was made. Though it was long before this world was born, I still remember that first taste of her when I licked it clean. A memory worthy of a smile.
She had dropped the weapon, one that had been stolen from our father—the king of the known world—and smuggled into the harem. Clattering right at the feet of the head eunuch. Blood was said to still be running down her thighs.
And right there, she had lain upon her back, spread her legs, and shown the damage with a grin of triumph… to a guardian forbidden to so much as look, a half-man who could not tear his eyes away.
As if it would not make me love her all the more.
As if I was not to have the eunuch blinded for seeing the precious cunt of my bride.
Naughty vixen. We would have fun with that dagger. I couldn’t even recall the amount of times I fucked her with the handle once she’d learned of the physical pleasure she would only ever know under my touch.
That is, once I turned her body into the woman she was born to be.
It was the very reason I left that dagger on her pillow the first night I dragged my new, hissing bride to our chambers.
The first time she had ever left the seclusion and safety of the gardens to learn the truth of men.
The first time I poured seed into her womb. As our father had poured his seed into our mother. And his before him, and his before him, in a line of kings and queens long forgotten by history—vaguely evoked as old gods by modern man, who lived and died long before the pyramids.
They were not gods. I was the only God.
“Please stop looking at me that way.” Blushing, her cheeks as rosy as her nipples, she meekly tried and failed to remove her wrist from my grip.
As if I might be capable of turning away from such beauty. Though perhaps the rather large erection pointing her way was a bit insensitive… considering.
I’d never hurt her, but I would transform her. Through tears, gasps, frantic kicking, and ultimate release.
But not today. Not like this.
Not when even after all these years I still remember that… it had taken her some time to love me eons ago.
In that, I was prepared to reevaluate my approach.
These days, I was nothing if not a gentleman.
In my formative years, my father had taught me the ways of our people, of our Queens, of their power and frustrations. How to cow them as a man must a woman, how to physically please in the process, so they might be safe in their furious release and bear strong sons. The strongest sons were always made in battle. Their bodies growing under the changing heart of resentful yet passion-drugged wife.
Until resentment bloomed into respect upon seeing that first bloody baby.
Until it became more than passion shared between a lusty warrior and a strong-willed woman.
Until it became love.
But such was the world long lost.
Such savageries were no longer considered romantic or rightful in this time.
I would not rape her.
This time, I would woo instead.
Chapter Three
Pearl
Three weeks. I knew it had been three weeks, not only by the rise and fall of the sun outside my windows—windows, as in more than one—but because something called a digital clock also confirmed the hours and date. Three weeks and I had not left that room, despite the fact that the door was unlocked.
A cozy room, with simple furnishings and warm cream walls.
A room with a feature, a luxury I could hardly describe—a private bathroom.
A private bathroom, where no line for the entire floor collected. Where the warm water never ran out.
Though when I locked myself in the bathing space—who enjoyed such luxuries?—upon leaving, freshly cleaned, covered from neck to toes, I found one wall had been papered. Little flowers, exactly like the paper from my apartment.
Which I now understood had been demolished and something called a mall had been put up in its place.
The exactness of that wallpaper, even the
