I sat, hiccupping, wrapped in a huge blanket. Demian was massaging my feet, who knew why.I had calmed down a little bit.“If you want to hit me, just do it,” I said. My voice sounded croaky and all the words came out broken. “You told your father you will punish me.”“You don’t talk like that to him,” Demian said. “Do you know how dangerous it is?”“I don’t care what he does to me. If he wants to torture me and then kill me, he is welcome to do so. I cannot just stay quiet when my brother is in that state.”“Sully,” he said, bringing his face closer, “you don’t want to find out what he can do.”I turned away from him. “How will you punish me?” I asked.“Strip and wait for me on the bed,” he said.He got up. “When I come back, you should be naked. Completely naked.”***I waited for him, closing my eyes, tears silently rolling down my cheeks. He was just like his father and mother. He would whip me or hit me to punish me because of my behavior. Why did this kind of fate await me? Was
As a child, I was trouble. But the kind of trouble no one knew about until it was too late.Jace was three years younger than me and Kyle was two years younger than me. When Jace was little, he was a sweet boy who never cried. He was always smiling. He would follow me around everywhere and ask me about everything.When he grew up a bit, he and I were separated for many reasons. He had to focus on combat and other lessons, while I left for the academy. Still, whenever I came back, we used to spend time together.On my wedding day, Jace and I sat the garden. I remembered the day as if it was just yesterday.“You look beautiful, Sully,” Jace told me. “Thank you,” I said.“You are not happy, are you?” Jace was always very observant. “I am,” I lied.“Sully, I won’t tell Father about our conversation. I never do,” he said.“I have to do it, even if I don’t like it,” I told him.“I know. But… if you truly don’t want to, I can find a way to help you.”“Help me do what,
Thinking about Jace was hard. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw him in that dungeon, his wrists in manacles above his head and a chain around his neck.Demian lay beside me, holding me tightly, as if he feared I would fly away like a bird. His presence was a comfort, yet an obstruction as well.I wanted to hate him, but he was way too nice to me. He did not hurt me. In fact, it seemed he protected me from his father and his family. He stopped his father from punishing me. He painted my body instead of beating me. Why was he doing this? Was he truly different from his father?Could I trust him? Just a little bit?Demian’s breath was warm on my neck. His breath was even. I counted them for a while. At first, it was 18 times per minute. Then, it decreased and became 12 times per minute.I wondered how different my life would be if I listened to Jace that day. If I said yes, would I even be here, fearing for my life every moment? Father might have found me, or, perhaps there was a chance I
Ruben looked just like Rose. Just a male version of her.I did not want to meet him, but as usual, I forced myself to do it. I did not want to annoy any of the Silverclaws. Ruben wanted to seem me, so here I was, in his bed chamber.For some reason, I imagined Ruben had a missing limb. It was a childish thought, but that was the first thing that came to my mind when I heard Ruben could not leave his room.Ruben stared at me for a while, then gave me a smile. He had a warm smile. He looked like an angel.“I heard a lot about you from Rose. My mother was a Star too, so I was curious to see if you two looked alike,” Ruben said. Even his voice was soothing to the ear.“I look like my mother,” I said. “My sister Selina looks like my father and your mother.”“You are still very pretty. You have beautiful eyes,” he said. “I have never seen red eyes before.”“It is very rare, after all. All my siblings have blue eyes except for me. My mother and I have the same eyes,” I said.“Your mother als
My life was boring. Until a Star came along in our house.Sully was an amusing woman. She was pretty and was always scared. Her lips would tremble when she was afraid, yet crimson eyes would remain firm and unafraid. Sometimes, I wondered if she was just pretending to be scared.I never thought Damien would end up marrying that woman. It was a sudden decision on his part and he never did something of that kind usually. Damien was a calculated person. Marrying someone suddenly, who was also someone he had never seen before, was truly strange for him to do.Damien surely did not regret his decision. Sully was beautiful and she was truly an interesting character. Damien would not be bored with her.I heard Sully went to see Ruben today. Ruben expressed his desire to see her and I told her about it. Sully knew what she had to do to not get killed. She did what she was told even if she did not want to.“She is nice. I am worried though,” Ruben told me. “Will she even survive?”“She had a b
Demian told me I should join the dinner since I did not join breakfast and lunch. When I went to meet Ruben, I pretended to be in pain without even thinking. Acting a part came naturally to me. At some point, I did forget that I was supposed to act beaten up and in pain. But Ruben probably did not notice. Now, I had to be extra cautious since Alexander would see me too. He would surely keep a close eye on me.“I don’t like this choker,” I whispered to Demian as the maids were getting out. For some reason, Demian had watched the whole time I got ready.“And I told you before, you need to wear it,” he said.“Can I ask you something?”“You already did.”“What’s wrong with the maids?” I asked. It was something that I had been wondering about since the moment I saw them. “They whispered along themselves a bit at the beginning. But then, they went quiet entirely. They are like puppets.”“They had their tongues cut,” Demian said.“What?”“They had their tongues cut,” he repeated.“I heard yo
Sully walked with a pause every once in a while, as if she needed time to breathe because she could not walk properly. She pretended to limp a little bit while straightening up every once to make it look like she was trying not to limp.She was a good actress. I almost smiled to myself as I watched her. She was doing well. Even better than I thought initially.As soon as we entered the dining hall, Father’s eyes fell on her, tracing the bruises on her body. Sully was wearing a long-sleeved dress, in an attempt to hide her bruises.Father’s face indicated that he did not suspect anything. He thought I truly beat up my wife. That was to be expected. I was good at painting. It was something that I could do very well since childhood. Of course, my skills improved over time.Sully bowed her head before Father. “I humbly apologize for my behavior. I… I was being stupid and I regret my choice of words intensely,” she said. Her voice trembled. Someone might think she was truly apologetic. How
“Tell me about your life at the academy,” Demian said.I thought for a while. No one, except for Jace and Selina, ever asked me about it. Father and Mother acted like I never went to the academy. As if those nine years never happened.Selina would like to hear about my life there. I would tell her stories about something my friends and I did.“It was fun,” I said. “One of the few moment I felt alive and free.”“Did you have friends there?” Damien asked. He sat on the couch, his feet in my lap. I gently massaged them. They were cold. For some reason, men’s feet were almost always cold.“You already know, Damien. You know everything about me,” I said with a sigh. “Why ask me?”“You had two friends. Leo and Maxi,” he said. “Anyone else?”“Not really. We three were close,” I said.“Where are they now? When have you last seen them?”“I hate when you act like you don’t know that already,” I said.“Do tell me. I like to hear things about you when you say them yourself,” he said.“Maxi is dea
The ship reached our kingdom once again. Demian and I got down the ship with our belongings, which were not too many things.First of all, we went to an inn to eat something. I was hungry. Even though the ship was luxurious, the food had not been that good. Besides, I could barely eat anything with the constant movement of the ship.We took our horses and gave them to the son of the innkeeper who would feed the horses and brush them.We were served a beef stew with quite a lot of beef in it and bread to soak it up with. The bread was not stale, fortunately. Demian and I ate slowly, enjoying each bite.After we were done eating, Demian paid the innkeeper while I waited outside.Someone touched my shoulder and I almost screamed.“Selina!” Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around my sister, hugging her tightly. It had been so long since I had last seen her.She was wearing the usual priestess’s attire like she always did since the moment she began devoting her life to God. When we pull
All day long, Mother sat on her balcony and watched ships come and go. I sometimes urged her to take a walk with me in the garden, or down the streets, but she never took me up on my offers. She would smile and say that she was fine where she was.I brought a doctor to take a look at her. The doctor said that Mother should not remain idle all the time. It was making her body weak. She needed to walk at least for an hour each day.Mother did not listen to the doctor, or to me, or to anyone.Jace and I arrived two days ago. These two days, all she did was sit by the window and watch the ships like a little child who was fascinated by it.“My daughter will return in one of those ships,” Mother would say to everyone who went near her.“Sully is not here, Mother. She will not come back,” Jace said many times. We believed that Sully had settled her life somewhere far away and in a quiet place and was never going to come back. It was better that way as long as she was happy wherever she was.
Hearing about Sully’s condition and what Father did to her made me disgusted. At that moment, I hated Father more than I ever hated anyone before. And I pitied my sister. I was worried about her.I knew that Father would be angry about Sully’s lost maidenhood. But I never thought he would take it that far. I never could imagine that he could hurt his own daughter like that.‘You knew he hurt Millie. But you never did anything. You knew about it all. You saw how he slapped her, hit her with a cane and sometimes whipped her. You saw it all, but you acted like a blind man. You acted like you did not see anything. You pretended like you did not know anything just to avoid any kind of confrontation or responsibility,’ a voice inside my head said.But then again, Millie was an illegitimate daughter unlike Sully.‘There is no difference. You know it very well.’I tried to shake the voice out of my head.“Do you think she truly went to another kingdom like Father thinks she did?” Selina asked
This ship was better than the one I took with Leo and Rose before. This one looked much luxurious. The cabin we got was quite big. The bed was meant for two and the sheet and covers were clean.Demian talked to the captain while I looked around our cabin. At least, I did not have to worry about catching skin diseases here, sleeping under the covers.I was truly going back with Demian. There was no turning back now. I had chosen this.Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I did not want to go back with Demian. Would he have forced me to come with him?I did not know. I did not want to know the answer, lest it should make feel bad. Besides, I knew what kind of person Demian was. He might be better than Alexander, but in the end, they were similar in many ways. I could not expect him to change himself, not after the way he had to grow up. He had to kill his own twin brother. That kind of thing was bound to mess up someone’s conscience. It was a surprise that Demian had not tur
It was raining a bit. Demian brought us two horses which would take us to the port. We were to take a ship back to our kingdom. It would take a long time, but that was okay.The two horses were huge and black. They were not just like big horses. They were monstrous in size and look.“Where did you get them?” I asked.“They look like you brought them from hell,” Lloid said, who was a moderately religious person.“This one is mine,” Demian said, patting the one which was bigger than the other. “I brought him with me.”“On a ship?” I asked.“He did not like it, but that was the only way. I like this horse,” Demian said. Only Demian would bring a horse all the way from another kingdom.“What’s his name?” I asked.“Thunder,” Demian answered.“That’s majestic. He looks majestic,” I murmured. Indeed, Thunder looked like a horse that carried a conqueror on her back.Demian and I started our journey in the afternoon. We did not want anyone to see us, so we waited until it got dark. The port wa
I made a potion for me to prevent pregnancy. Instead of relying on others, I decided to make one for me.Leo said he would stay here a while more. Demian and I would leave in three days.Demian was painting something. He had painted a lot in the past few days. He had once painted bruises on my skin which looked oddly real. I still could not forget standing in front of the mirror with those fake bruises all over my body. But now, my father gave me some real bruises.I shook my head. I had promised not to think about that. Most of the time, I pretended like everything was fine and that I was not in mental and physical pain most of the time. However, it never was possible to forget. I kept remembering and reliving that day all over again.I hated the kind of effect my father’s action had on me. I could not stop thinking about it. Whenever I closed my eyes, I kept seeing him right in front him, hurting me, beating me, whipping me. And I cried and begged, but he did not stop. No matter how
Mother sat at the bench with her hands clasped together on her lap. Her eyes were closed and her brows knitted together, as if in pain. Someone might think that she was asleep and was having a nightmare.I touched her on the shoulder. “Mother?” I called.She opened her eyes, those red ruby eyes that she passed on to Sully and me. When I was a child, I read in a children’s book that demons had red eyes. Since then, I had been afraid to look into the mirror. I cried about it and asked my nanny if I was a demon, who said that children’s book sometimes lied to make children afraid.I did not believe her. I went to Mother and asked her about it, who said that it was better to be a demon than a god who did not listen to the prayers of the devoted ones. It seemed like she had been angry at God to say something like that.Later, Sully told me that it was because she was angry at Father because Father kept betraying his vows that he took during their wedding.“You look pale, Mother,” I said. “
“I have to tell you something.” I automatically expected the worse when Sully said this the moment I woke up and walked into the kitchen. She had cooked beef porridge and prepared orange juice. I had to admit that she had gotten very good at cooking a few dishes.I rubbed my eyes. I still was sleepy. I could not understand why I suddenly was so sleepy. I had not been like this in a long time.Lloid was still sleeping. I poked his back a few times with my finger but he did not even move. It was like he was dead, so I checked his pulse. He was alive. Just asleep.I turned my attention back to Sully, who looked like she did something she was ashamed of. It was not like Sully. She usually was never ashamed of anything she did. She rarely felt guilty about something. She always said that she never regretted a single decision she made.“Is something wrong?” I asked. My head felt numb. It was like I could not think straight. For this reason, I never took sleeping potion no matter how hard it
I opened the door of my room and tiptoed to Leo and Lloid’s room. I knocked once, but nothing. Both Lloid and Leo woke up at the slightest noise. I could wake up at the slightest noise as well, but since my body was weak, I could not do so anymore. I slept deeply. Otherwise, how did I not hear when Demian came in?“They will not wake up,” Demian whispered into my ear. I almost jumped.I was a little sore between the legs, so walking straight was difficult. It was not like Demian had been rough like he was all the time. In fact, he had been gentle and passionate. Yet, I was in a little pain. I did not tell Demian that since I had been the one who insisted on doing it.“Did you hurt them?” I asked.“Of course not. You care about them,” he said. “They are just sleeping. I injected them with sleeping potion. They will be fine in the morning.”“How?”“I could not get through the window without waking anyone since you locked all of them. So, I decided to get through the front door. I knocke