Page 32 of The Poet Empress
He didn’t even hurt me during dinner. Just sat across from me silently as he watched me pick at my bowl of pork-and-cabbage dumplings.
I had little appetite. And for the first time, it was not because of looming torture, but the childmaking activity itself. I might have prepared for it for a whole month, with all those lessons and demonstrations, but now that I was on the precipice of actually doing it, I was terrified.
What if it hurt?
What if it didn’t hurt, but Terren found a way to make it hurt anyway?
Terren was not eating either. He went only for his wine. He finished a whole jar, then went for another, and when that was done, he went for the next. Soon, the entire room reeked of fermented rice.
“Your Highness,” I ventured to say. “Perhaps you might consider—”
A knife flew by my ear, slamming into the wall behind me. I went ice-still.
He opened another jar of wine.
Perhaps I really was that undesirable, I thought. He could not even be himself when he took me.
At last, as the sun went down to a sliver, he wiped his drool with a sleeve and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He summoned a sword from the wall and tried to use it to walk, but it wasn’t working. The first step he tried to take, he fell to the ground with athump. I rushed to help him, but a hovering sword point stopped me from touching him.
“Go to my bed,” Terren slurred from where he was sprawled on the ground. “I will join you shortly.”
There was nothing to do but obey. I went to his bed, peeled apart its gray canopy of curtains, and sank into the cold sheets. Around it, servants had already lit candles scented with cardamom and cacao.An intoxicating night,the apothecary’s voice droned in my head.One conducive to slow and sensual love, the kind that ripens magic like a flame-oven ripens a bun.
I untied the sash of my gown and let it fall loose in a pool around mybare knees. Then I glanced at my hips. For a moment, I worried he would find those jutting bones unattractive and decide not to bed me after all. Then I laughed. I was possibly going to die tomorrow, and I was worrying about whether he would like my hips.
When Terren finally joined me, he was somehow even more drunk than before. He threw himself heavily on the far side of his bed and lay there, not moving.
“My prince,” I whispered. “Your robes.”
He made a noise that didn’t sound like words.
Maybe he was incapable of undressing himself. I crept closer to him on my knees, the bed creaking beneath me. That wine smell made me even sicker than earlier, but I ignored it as I reached for his gown. “Here, let me help.” The ward coiling above him glowed white, but did not stop me as my hand went trembling to the top knot. He lay still as a corpse as I undid the first button, then the second, the third. The silk fell loose, exposing a bare chest full of bizarre, three-pronged scars. I could not fathom where they could have come from, unless a bird made of fire had trampled all over him.
But as I fumbled for the fourth and last clasp, his body jerked suddenly, making me flinch. “Don’t touch me.I’ll kill you.”
His eyes had flown open. His ward had lashed around my hands like a chain. I could not move them at all.
Belatedly, I realized there was a blade pressed against my throat.
“My prince—” I began, but cut off when I felt the sting of its edge in my flesh. I did not want to know how close it came to splitting open my life’s vein. For a moment, we stared at each other. I didn’t dare breathe.
It seemed like forever before he let the blade go.
It left my neck and dropped limply to the bed, flicking dark droplets onto the sheets. At the same time, the ward swirled loose. Abruptly Terren got up, stumbled towards the door, andleft.
For a while I just sat there, stunned. I wiped at my throat with the back of my hand. It came back glistening wet.
What under Heaven had I done wrong?
If even giving myself to my torturer wasn’t enough to save me, what was I supposed to do?
“What am I supposed to do?”I screamed. I grabbed the knife from thebed and threw it as hard as I could. It bounced off the wisteria-covered wall and clattered uselessly to the ground.
I grabbed for my gown, threw it on, and went looking for Terren.
I found him deep in the Palisade Garden. He was crouched in the alley between two pavilions, amidst bushes of thistle. His head was buried in his arms.
“Your Highness.” It hurt to speak through the wound in my throat, but I forced the words out anyway. “I know you do not wish me to die, or you would have killed me by now. I also know that you wish to keep your position as heir, because if you did not, you would not try so hard to keep up appearances. So please. I don’t want to do this either. I am terrified of you, and I am bleeding from your knife, but we don’t have any choice. I’m begging you. Just give me one night.Please.”
