Chapter Text
It hurt. She could not say precisely what it was about it, all she knew was that it did not feel right. The sensation of it, on her skin, creeping under it and seeping into her bones. The overbearing heat, the scents, consuming her, suffocating her. She could not breathe from the heavy weight on her chest, and the puffs of warm air, the dampness between, the strands tickling her, the occasional humming. It stung. It made her feel sick.
She’d lie there in the quiet for what felt like hours. Staring up at the canopy wishing it all away, eyes full of heavy tears, cheeks stiff with dried ones. She would bite down hard on her tongue to keep it at bay. To stop herself from shaking with it: the pain, the tears, the grief, and the guilt.
She couldn’t always prevent it, and he must have noticed. He had to know; it was impossible for him not to. It was he who put her here after all. She would not think him so blind to the truth of things. He was very aware, but he would only hold on tighter when she did weep.
When her body did tremble, and she helplessly could only succumb to that burning need. To let it spill, to welcome the waves as the dam she had attempted to build inevitably broke, and it all came for her, drowning her.
She had not a clue as to why or how this had started. It was certainly an odd thing and most unexpected. There was nothing right about any of it, and she had not chosen for it to be this way. She was not entirely sure he had either, but it was. It had come to be this way, somehow, and she couldn’t wish it away no matter how hard she tried. He came back to her. He came back each time to hurt her once more. To have his satisfaction at the price of her discomfort and anguish. He did not care for her, he never had. He never would. It was easier for her that way, she could not care for him either. Not after what he’d done and what he would do.
She let her fingers glide through his hair, slowly, gently. She knew, he liked that, and she thought she might like it a little too. She despised all of it, but this little act was what she despised the least. It had become something of a habit for her to do when they were together. His silver strands were long and soft and pretty, and it reminded her of people she loved. Those at home, her parents, her youngest brothers.
People she would never see again, she thought, as she lay there with this unbearable weight on her chest. His head was right beneath her breasts, his eye closed. He’d never looked so peaceful before, it was something she had noticed somewhere along the way. He looked content? sometimes, lying in these very chambers, on this very bed. With a girl he had hated for most of his life. A girl he still hated. The very same girl he’d almost killed.
She wished he had.
She had lost track of the days she had spent here. Her former home turned prison. The days bled into each other; they were all a loop. Repeating themselves again and again and again. The starkest change in them was this. These meetings, his visits.
They are much the same. She had lost count of how many times it had happened. She suspected the true number to be rather small, even though it felt to her as though it had happened so very many times.
It was a new routine. Some twisted, nightmarish reality that had somehow begun to become her new norm. A nightmare she never could have imagined nor anything remotely like it.
But she remembered the first time as though it was just the previous day, it had happened. The memory was clear in her mind yet hazy too. It felt like it wasn’t even her. Like she was a mere spectator, watching the scene unfold without being a real part of it.
Sadly, that was not the case. She was a part of it. She was a traitor. To herself and to her family. To everything she knew of honour and duty. It was a wrongful thing that happened, and she wished more than anything to take it back. It was a mistake. A regretful, horrible mistake that she had not even realised at the time she was making. It happened so fast, too fast.
She had been especially upset that day. Maids had attempted calm her before guards too had to step in once she’d started throwing cutlery and furniture around. They had attempted to force feed her, and it made her furious. It made her furious along with the demands she had gotten spat in her face earlier, for her to bend the knee to the usurper, renounce her mother, the rightful queen. It made her furious too that she was alive and their hostage.
She wanted to die, and they selfishly would not let her. Those people did not know anything, they knew naught of what it was like losing one’s dragon, one’s soul. She couldn’t take it anymore; it was all too much. She had lost sight herself, control. She did not even notice his arrival nor the departure of everyone else.
He held her. He held her, and she fought him until she could no more. She had not even been aware that she was clutching onto him, arms around him, holding on tightly as she wept. She had not noticed him shift, had not paid much attention to him at all despite being in his grip. It had not been about him. He lifted her, and she burrowed into him, exhausted and still trembling. Before she knew it, she’d been placed on the bed, and he was pulling away, to leave her all alone in the dark.
She hated him then too, but the thought of being left alone made her shiver. She wanted comfort, she wanted home and warmth, and he was none of those things but for a moment he’d felt like something akin to it. A poor substitute indeed, but a substitute, nonetheless. It hadn’t mattered to her in that moment. She had not been herself; she was not truly there.
So, she had held onto him when he tried to pull away, let her fingers slide further up his arms to get a better grip, and then he’d tensed beneath her gentle touch. Her eyes were closed, and her brows furrowed in pain. There had been a long moment of stillness, of hesitation on his part. The chambers were dark and abandoned save for the two of them. The guards and servants dismissed by the prince (they hadn’t been able to put an end to her outburst, so he had to).
None would see or know.
(none would laugh and mock and taunt)
And so, he stayed. He needed warmth too.
She wished that he did not. Unbeknownst to her at the time it would be the start of something unwanted. Something horrid.
Because she did not, want him.