Chapter 2: First Night in Chains
The wagon’s journey ended not with a bang, but with the grating screech of an iron gate. The canvas cover was thrown back, letting in a surge of gray, institutional light and a blast of cold, damp air that smelled of stone, mildew, and something faintly antiseptic. Gerulian guards, their faces bored, unlocked the barred door.
“Out. Single file. Move.”
They were prodded from the wagon onto a slick courtyard of fitted stone. Oscar’s bare feet, numb from the cold, slapped against the wet rock. Around them rose high walls of dark granite, blotting out the sky. This was no village square; this was the throat of the empire, a processing station.
He was shoved into a line with the others. No one spoke. The leather strap felt heavier now, a ridiculous and terrifying advertisement chafing against his skin. They were marched through a narrow archway and into a long, echoing corridor lined with iron-barred cells on both sides. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, stale straw, and a cloying, soapy scent that did nothing to clean.
A guard gestured with a short baton. “You. In here.”
Oscar was propelled forward into an open cell. The iron door clanged shut behind him, the sound final, vibrating in his bones. The cell was narrow, maybe six paces deep and three wide. The floor was stone, strewn with a thin layer of musty straw. A wooden bucket sat in one corner. There was no bench, no blanket. He slid down the cold wall until he was sitting, drew his knees up, and wrapped his arms around them. The position offered no warmth, only the illusion of containment.
For a time, there was only the distant echo of boots on stone and the low, shuddering breaths of men in other cells. Then, new footsteps arrived—lighter, more confident, accompanied by the soft clink of fine jewelry and the rustle of expensive wool.
Oscar watched through the bars.
A Gerulian nobleman, round-faced and clean-shaven, stopped at a cell down the line. Inside was a Haustian man Oscar recognized as a blacksmith from the capital, a bear of a man with thick arms now folded over his chest in a futile show of defiance.
“Oh, this one has some size to him,” the nobleman said, his voice a pleased purr. “Look at those shoulders. A laborer, yes?”
A guard beside him nodded. “Blacksmith, milord.”
“Excellent. Stamina.” The nobleman unlocked the cell door himself and stepped inside. The blacksmith flinched back. “Now, now. Let’s have a proper look. Turn around.”
The blacksmith stood rigid, trembling. The nobleman sighed, as if dealing with a disobedient dog, and made a subtle gesture. The guard stepped in and struck the blacksmith behind the knee with his baton. The big man cried out and fell forward, catching himself on the wall. The nobleman stepped close, running his hands over the man’s back, his hips, squeezing the muscle of his buttocks with clinical appraisal.
“Acceptable,” the nobleman pronounced. “A bit worn, but the foundation is good. I’ll take him for the evening. Have him sent to my quarters after the fitting.”
He left the cell, leaving the blacksmith slumped against the wall, his body shaking with silent, ugly sobs.
The procession continued. Another noble, younger, with a laugh that echoed too loud in the hall, stopped at a cell. “This one’s pretty! Look at that face.” The man inside, a clerk or a scribe by the look of him, began to weep openly, pleading in broken Gerulian. The nobleman just chuckled. “All that noise. You’ll learn quiet is better. Come here. Let’s see if you’re as tight as you look.”
Oscar squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn’t shut his ears. He heard the creak of the cell door, a sharp slap, a gasp, then the rustle of clothing and the low, rhythmic grunt of the nobleman. The scribe’s cries became muffled, choked, punctuated by sharp, pained inhalations. The sound was wet, invasive, obscene. It was the sound of ownership being physically stamped onto a human being. It went on for minutes that felt like hours.
When it was over, there was a moment of heavy silence, then the nobleman’s voice, slightly breathless. “Adequate. Have him cleaned. I’ll consider a permanent contract.”
Oscar opened his eyes. His own breathing was shallow. A cold sweat had broken out over his skin despite the chill. He tasted bile at the back of his throat. This was the theory made brutally, acoustically real. This was the job.
His gaze, darting and helpless, locked onto the cell directly across from his. Inside, he saw Finn. The boy was curled in a ball in the far corner, as if trying to melt into the stone.
Heavy boots approached. A man, not a noble in silks but a soldier in a finely-tooled officer’s uniform, stopped before Finn’s cell. He was enormous, with a broad chest and thick neck, his hair shorn to dark bristle. His face was impassive as he looked in.
“The young one,” he stated. His voice was a low rumble.
A guard hurried to unlock the door. The big man ducked inside. Finn whimpered, pressing himself further into the corner, a rodent facing a wolf.
“Don’t,” Finn whispered. “Please.”
The officer said nothing. He reached down, his hand engulfing Finn’s upper arm, and hauled him upright as if he weighed nothing. He spun the boy around to face the bars, pushing him against them. Finn’s wide, terror-stricken eyes met Oscar’s for a split second—a silent scream—before the man’s body blocked the view.
Oscar saw the officer’s large hand land on Finn’s shoulder, not in a blow, but in a firm, possessive grip, pinning him in place. His other hand went to the back of the crude leather strap. There was a tug, a shift. Finn jerked, a muffled cry escaping him.
The officer’s hand moved. Oscar couldn’t see exactly what it was doing, but Finn’s body tensed, his back arching in a painful curve. A low, gut-deep moan of shame and hurt filtered through the bars. It was the sound of violation, precise and deliberate.
Then the officer shifted. His right hand, the one that had been busy at Finn’s back, came up and pressed against the boy’s mouth. Finn’s cry was silenced. For a horrifying moment, Oscar thought he was smothering him. But then he saw the boy’s jaw work. Saw his throat convulse. The man’s thick fingers were in Finn’s mouth, and the boy, conditioned by a primal instinct to survive, to obey, was sucking on them clean.
The officer stood like that for a long minute, one hand working Finn from behind, the other lodged in his mouth, a complete and devastating demonstration of control. Finally, he withdrew both hands. Finn slumped against the bars, slick with sweat and trembling violently. The officer looked at his wet fingers, wiped them casually on Finn’s hair, and turned to leave.
“Tender,” the officer grunted to the guard. “But he’ll soften up. Mark him for my unit.”
He walked away, his footsteps fading. Oscar stared at Finn, who had sunk to the floor, hugging himself, his body wracked with silent, shuddering tremors. The image burned itself into Oscar’s mind: the grip on the shoulder, the arched back, the invaded mouth.
His own body began to shake. It was no longer just fear of pain, or even of humiliation. It was the fear of that specific, dehumanizing ritual. The casual inspection. The clinical penetration. The afterthought of being cleaned on his own hair. His mind, treacherous and vivid, supplied the details his eyes had missed. He felt a phantom pressure at his own shoulders, pushing him against cold iron. He imagined the rough, impersonal touch, the brutal stretch, the grunt of a stranger’s pleasure in his ear. He saw his own mouth being forced open.
He gagged, dry heaving into the straw, but nothing came up. He was empty. He was a shell waiting to be filled with someone else’s will.
The sounds in the corridor became a symphony of horror. Every moan, every slap, every crude laugh and grunt of completion was a preview. He heard a man two cells down begging for death between choked sobs and being told, cheerfully, “Death’s not on the menu, pretty boy. Just relax and take it.”
Oscar pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until colors burst in the darkness. He couldn’t block it out. This was his future, playing out in real time all around him. He was not Sir Oscar. He was a cell, a body, a set of functions to be tested and used.
The footsteps that approached his own cell were different.Softer. Slower. They didn’t have the military cadence of the guards or the arrogant stride of the nobles. They were measured. Quiet.
Oscar lowered his hands.
A man stood outside his bars. He was slender, sharp-faced, with dark hair swept back from a high forehead. His clothes were understated but impeccably cut—dark gray wool, a high collar, no obvious jewelry. He held a thin ledger in one hand. His eyes, a pale, cool blue, studied Oscar with an expression of detached interest, like a mathematician considering a complex equation.
There was no leer, no crude smile. This made it worse.
The man glanced at his ledger, then back at Oscar. “Cell Fourteen. The knight.” His voice was calm, tenor, almost pleasant. “Oscar of Haust.”
Oscar said nothing. He just stared back, his weariness a wall.
“I am Darcy,” the man said, as if introducing himself at a garden party. “Cousin to Varek. He suggested you might be… a project of interest.” He tilted his head slightly. “You look terrified. That’s understandable. It’s all very new.”
Darcy’s gaze traveled down Oscar’s body, not with lust, but with assessment. It lingered on the leather strap, on the muscles of his thighs, on the dirt still smeared on his skin from the square. It was the least sexual and most invasive look Oscar had yet endured.
“The preliminary inspections here are so vulgar,” Darcy continued, a faint note of distaste in his voice. “All that noise. It lacks finesse.” He tapped his ledger against his palm. “You will come with me to the fitting room. We’ll see what you’re really made of.”
He nodded to a guard, who stepped forward with a key. The lock turned with a smooth, well-oiled click.
Oscar didn’t move. He couldn’t. The word ‘fitting room’ hung in the air, meaningless and thick with menace. All the grunts and cries from the corridor seemed to amplify, rushing in his ears, a chorus predicting his fate.
Darcy waited, holding the cell door open. His expression was patient, but his pale eyes were unyielding.
“Now,” he said, the single word quiet and absolute.
“Now,” he said, the single word quiet and absolute.
The sound of Finn’s muffled cries seemed to echo in Oscar’s skull, syncing with his hammering heart. The guard took a step into the cell, his shadow falling over Oscar’s hunched form.
“Get up,” the guard grunted.
A spark, guttering and almost dead, flared in Oscar’s gut. It was the same spark that had made him hold a crumbling line, that had told him to die on his feet. It wasn’t courage. It was the last, automatic twitch of a beheaded thing. He didn’t get up. He lifted his head and looked past the guard, directly at Darcy’s sharp, composed face.
“No.”
The word was raspy, barely louder than the rustle of straw. But it stopped the guard. He looked back at Darcy, uncertain.
Darcy’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. He stepped fully into the cell, the door closing behind him with a soft clink. The space felt instantly smaller, charged. He surveyed Oscar’s naked, mud-streaked defiance with that same analytical curiosity.
“‘No’ is not a word that exists for you here,” Darcy said, his tone still conversational. “It’s a linguistic artifact. Like ‘freedom’ or ‘honor.’ Empty sounds.” He folded his arms, the ledger tucked under his elbow. “You need to come to the fitting room. The alternative is significantly less personal.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Oscar said, forcing the words through his teeth. He pushed himself up the wall, his legs trembling, until he was standing. He was taller than Darcy, broader, a warrior facing a scribe. The difference was a cruel joke. “Do whatever you’re going to do right here. Get it over with.”
Darcy sighed, a faint exhalation of disappointment. “Here? Like an animal in its own filth?” He shook his head. “Varek said you were proud. I see it. It’s the pride that makes this necessary.” He took a half-step closer. Oscar could smell him now—sandalwood soap and clean linen. “You are a virgin. In all the ways that matter now.”
Oscar’s breath hitched. His face, already pale, drained further.
“It’s in your record. A knight, devout, never married.” Darcy’s pale eyes held his. “That’s a problem. Virgin tissue resists. It tears. It complicates the process with unnecessary pain and damage.” He spoke like a carpenter discussing green wood. “The first penetration must be done correctly. With care. It sets the tone for everything that follows.”
“Go to hell,” Oscar whispered.
“The other option,” Darcy continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “is the conditioning frame. It’s a mechanical device. It secures you in a kneeling position. A… component… made of oiled leather is attached. It rotates. Slowly. It penetrates. It withdraws. It repeats the motion for eight hours. No one touches you. You are alone with the machine. It’s designed to bypass resistance, to teach the body to open on command, and to break the spirit utterly. It’s very effective. It’s also deeply unpleasant.”
The clinical description was worse than any shouted threat. Oscar’s mind supplied the image: cold metal, relentless rhythm, isolation stretching into a screaming eternity. His defiance wavered, a crack in the dam.
“So you see,” Darcy said softly, closing the final step between them. They were almost touching. “My way involves a human touch. My attention. Even a shred of consideration. The machine offers none. This is your choice. My hands, or the machine’s clockwork.”
Oscar’s whole body was a knot of tension. The memory of the nobleman’ grunting, of Finn’s arched back, fought with the terrifying sterile horror of the machine. Pride screamed at him to spit, to fight, to earn a beating. Primal survival instinct hissed at him to choose the lesser evil.
“I. Won’t. Choose,” Oscar ground out, each word a struggle.
Darcy watched the conflict play out on his face. Then he moved.
It wasn’t a brutal strike. His hands came up, not to punch or claw, but with precise, almost delicate intent. His thumbs and fore fingers found Oscar’s nipples, hardened from the cold, and pinched them—hard.
A sharp, shocking bolt of sensation shot through Oscar. It wasn’t just pain. It was an intimate, startling violation that bypassed his guard completely. A hot flush of blood rushed to his face and chest. He gasped, blinking in confusion, the defiant words dying in his throat. He hadn’t expected this. He’d expected a fist.
Darcy saw the blush bloom across the knight’s cheeks and chest. He held the pinch for a second longer, feeling the nub of flesh tighten further under his fingers, watching Oscar’s hazel eyes go wide with something other than hatred—with bewildered, humiliated shock.
Then Darcy leaned in and kissed him.
It was not a brutal, conquering kiss. It was firm, deliberate, and surprisingly soft. His lips were warm and dry. There was no passion in it, only quiet authority and a chilling, absolute possession. The sandalwood scent filled Oscar’s nostrils.
Oscar froze. Every muscle locked. The world narrowed to the pressure on his mouth, the lingering, thrumming pain on his chest, the utterly surreal fact of this kiss. A jagged thought splintered through the panic: This isn’t what Varek would do. The violence he had braced for had been replaced by this… this calculated intimacy. It was worse. It was confusing.
And, to his horror, a traitorous part of him noted the simple, human warmth of it, the strange, awful gentleness after so much brutality. It was a spark of contact in the void, and it pleasantly, terribly, surprised him.
Darcy pulled back, just an inch, his lips parting from Oscar’s with a soft sound. He studied the knight’s stunned, flushed face, the conflict raging behind his eyes.
“See?” Darcy murmured, his breath mingling with Oscar’s. “My way is better.”
Oscar stepped back. The movement was pure instinct, a jerking recoil from the confusing warmth of Darcy’s mouth, the startling intimacy of the touch that had preceded it. His bare heel slipped in the damp straw.
Darcy immediately stepped forward, closing the distance Oscar had tried to create. His arms slid around Oscar’s waist, not in an embrace, but with a firm, possessive purpose. Both of Darcy’s hands clamped down on the swell of Oscar’s ass, his fingers digging into the muscle with an appreciative, testing squeeze.
Oscar’s entire body went rigid. He sucked in a sharp breath, his hands coming up to brace against Darcy’s shoulders, not to push him away, but to find balance in a world that had just tilted on its axis. Darcy’s thumbs stroked along the crease where cheek met thigh, a slow, deliberate exploration. He could feel Oscar’s asshole clench tightly in reflexive, horrified response through the thin barrier of the leather strap.
“There it is,” Darcy murmured, his lips close to Oscar’s ear. His voice was a low, conspiratorial hum. “That’s just fear. It’s okay.” One hand continued its slow, circular massage while the other dipped lower, a single finger tracing a line that made Oscar shudder. “Your body is smarter than your pride. It knows what it needs to do. It’s learning to open.”
Oscar stood frozen, his mind a blank white static. The sensations were too much, too contradictory—the harsh grip contrasting with the almost tender rubbing, the clinical explanation paired with the physical intimacy. He was a statue held up by Darcy’s hands.
Darcy felt the paralysis. He used the moment. In one smooth, shockingly strong motion, he bent his knees and shifted his weight. He swept Oscar clean off his feet, one arm hooking under his knees, the other supporting his back.
Oscar gasped, his arms flailing momentarily before clutching at Darcy’s neck for stability. He was being cradled like a bride, his head dizzyingly high above the ground. The straw-covered floor of the cell yawned beneath him.“See? Easy,” Darcy said, looking down at Oscar’s utterly bewildered face. Then he gave the ass he was holding a loud, stinging slap.
The crack echoed off the stone walls. It wasn’t a brutal blow, but it was sharp and decisive. A hot bloom of pain radiated through Oscar’s skin, cutting through the overwhelming fog of shock. His eyes, which had been wide and unfocused, snapped onto Darcy’s with a sudden, lucid intensity. The spell was broken.
“Good,” Darcy said, adjusting his hold and turning toward the cell door. “Now you’re present.”
He carried Oscar out into the corridor. The guards averted their eyes, their faces professionally blank. Oscar, held aloft and utterly exposed, saw the other cells blur past. He saw the blacksmith staring hollowly at the wall. He saw Finn, still curled on his side, who turned his head and watched them pass. The boy’s eyes held no hope, only a numb recognition.
Oscar shut his own eyes, humiliation heating his skin more than the slap had. Being carried like this was a different kind of defeat. It was a demonstration of total physical control wrapped in a grotesque parody of care. He was not being dragged; he was being transported.A prize.
Darcy pushed through a heavy oak door at the end of the corridor with his shoulder, entering a smaller, cleaner room. It was warm, lit by several lanterns. The walls were lined with shelves holding bottles of oils, soft cloths, and strange, smooth器械 of dark wood. A large, padded table stood in the center.
“This is the fitting room,” Darcy said, his tone returning to that pleasant, instructional calm as he lowered Oscar onto the table. The padded leather was surprisingly warm against his back. “Where we separate the knights from the war wives.”