Chapter 5: The Queen's Wrath
The only sound in the royal bedchamber was the slow drip of Leonid’s blood on the polished mahogany floor. Plink. Plink. A tiny, red star against the dark wood. The scent of copper and raw flesh cut through the sandalwood, a brutal, animal truth in the perfumed air.
Jennie stood a few feet away, the leather crop hanging limp from her fingers. Her chest heaved with ragged breaths. The fury that had contorted her features was gone, dissolved into something watery and shattered. She stared at the welts rising across Leonid’s bare back, a landscape of raised, angry crimson lines already beginning to bruise at the edges. One stripe, higher near his shoulder blade, had broken the skin. That was the source of the dripping.
He remained on his knees, head bowed, hands loose at his sides. His posture was one of absolute submission, but his eyes were open, fixed on the intricate pattern of a rug. He focused on the blues, the gold threads. The pain was a distant, thunderous roar, secondary to the silence expanding between them.
“Look at me.”
Her voice was a frayed thread. He didn’t move.
“Leonid. Look at me.”
He lifted his head slowly. The movement pulled at the torn skin on his back; he didn’t flinch. Her face was pale, tracks of tears gleaming in the dusky light filtering through the stained glass. Her royal composure was utterly erased. She looked young, and terrified of what she had done.
The crop clattered to the floor. She closed the distance between them, her movements unsteady. She sank to her knees in front of him, her fine skirts pooling around her. Her hands came up, trembling, and cradled his face. Her thumbs brushed over his cheekbones.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words rushing out. “I’m so sorry. It was the look in his eyes. Vesa’s. And Kai’s. And my own son’s. They all saw. They all knew.” Her breath hitched. “I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t hit them. So I hit you.”
Her logic was the logic of a wounded child. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his. Her cinnamon scent, no longer suppressed, washed over him, thick with distress and a desperate, clinging remorse. It tangled with the smell of his own blood. The combination was dizzying.
“Does it hurt terribly?” she murmured, her lips brushing his temple.
He could have laughed, if he had any breath for it. Instead, he remained still. “It is manageable, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t call me that. Not now.” She pulled back, her eyes searching his. “Here, with me like this, I am Jennie. Only Jennie.” She released his face and shifted around behind him. A soft, horrified gasp escaped her. “Oh, my love. What have I done?”
He felt the faint, cool whisper of her breath over the heated wounds. Then, the warm, wet touch of her mouth as she pressed a kiss to the unbroken skin beside the worst cut. A shudder he couldn’t suppress ran through him. She kissed another welt, gently, her lips tracing a path of absurd tenderness across the map of her violence.
“You are my heart,” she whispered against his spine, her voice muffled. “My true match. You know that, don’t you? This… this means nothing. It was just the rage. It wasn’t for you. It was for them.”
He closed his eyes. This was the deeper cut. The physical pain was clean. This—the love that excused the cruelty, the affection that followed the whip—this was a slow poison. It demanded his complicity. It required him to accept that her love was real even as her ownership was absolute.
“You are quiet,” she said, her hands smoothing over his shoulders, avoiding the marks.
“What would you have me say?”
She moved back around to face him, her fingers threading into his short, dark curls. “Tell me you forgive me. Tell me you understand.”
He looked at her then, really looked. He saw the woman who clung to him in the dead of night, who whispered southern lullabies she’d made him teach her. He saw the queen who had just ordered him to his knees and carved her frustration into his skin. They were the same person. That was the truth he could never escape.
“I understand my position, my queen,” he said softly. It was not what she asked for, but it was all he could give.
A flicker of something like hurt crossed her face, but it was quickly buried under a wave of soothing omega energy. She was trying to calm him, to smooth the edges of the event away with her biology. It felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket while still bleeding.
“Come,” she said, standing. She took his hands, pulling him up with her. He rose, the muscles in his back protesting. “Let me care for you.”
She led him to the attached bathing chamber, where a deep copper tub already stood filled with steam rising from scented water. She had called for it before summoning him. She had known how this would end.
“In,” she instructed, her voice regaining some of its customary command, though softer.
He stepped into the hot water, the sting instantaneous and sharp. He sucked in a breath through his teeth, sinking down until the water lapped at his collarbones. She knelt on the tiled floor beside the tub, ignoring the dampness soaking into her skirts. She took a sponge, dipped it, and began to wash his back with a gentleness that was almost worshipful. The bloody traces swirled away in pink clouds.
“He wants you,” she said abruptly, her eyes on her task. “The emissary. Vesa.”
Leonid stared at the opposite wall. “He wants a tool. A southern weapon to point.”
“He asked Kai about you. At the feast, after the hunt. He framed it as curiosity about your fighting style. Suggested a demonstration before he leaves.” She rinsed the sponge. Her touch was feather-light over the welts. “Kai laughed. Said you were a bed-slave now, that your only demonstrations were behind locked doors.”
The heat of the water couldn’t stop the cold that settled in Leonid’s stomach. He said nothing.
“I told him no demonstration would be necessary,” Jennie continued, a hard edge returning to her voice. “I said you were mine to command, not a court jester to perform tricks for visiting dignitaries.” She paused. “But Vesa is persistent. He has a way of making suggestions that fester in Kai’s mind.”
She put the sponge aside and placed her palm flat between his shoulder blades, over his heart. “You are mine, Leonid. Do you understand that? More than just this.” Her hand slid down his spine, below the water. “You are the only thing in this damned palace that is truly mine. I will not let him have you. I will not let Kai trade you like a prized hound.”
Her declaration was fierce, possessive. It should have been a comfort. It felt like another set of manacles, beautifully gilded.
Later, dried and laid on his stomach atop the ivory linens of her bed, she salved his wounds with a cool, herbal paste. The room was dark, lit by a single candle. Her scent had mellowed into something sleepy and warm.
“When I am with you,” she whispered, lying down beside him, her body curved around his without touching his injured back, “I forget I am a queen. I forget the treaties and the supplicants and the smell of that man’s river stones. I just feel… whole.”
He listened to her breathing even out. Outside, a bell tolled the midnight watch.
His mind did not go to the pain, or to her whispered love. It went to the hunt, to the feeling of the emissary’s gaze. To the man’s words: Some arrows, once loosed, change the course of the hunt entirely.
Jennie slept, her hand resting possessively on his hip. Leonid stared into the darkness, feeling the salve dry tight across his back, a new, stiff skin over the old. He thought of the clean, undamaged arrowhead he had pulled from the pine tree. A perfect weapon, misdirected. Waiting to be loosed again.