Chapter 7: The Collar of Defeat
The summons came as the sun bled its last across the gilded rooftops, a sharp rap at my door from a silent eunuch with eyes like slate. No words were needed. The throne room at this hour meant an audience, and an audience of one.
My shift was plain, unadorned linen. I did not perfume my wrists. The raw places on my knees were hidden beneath the hem. I walked the familiar route, but the halls felt different, as if the very stones had been listening in the garden and now judged my footsteps. The grand doors, inlaid with electrum and cedar, swung inward.
The throne room was a basin of shadow and low fire. Braziers smoked, casting a dancing light that made the lapis lazuli pillars seem to breathe. At the far end, on the dais that gleamed like hardened honey, Angela sat. She was a sculpture of contained power, her red hair a molten cascade over one shoulder, her green eyes tracking my approach across the vast expanse of polished floor. And at her feet, exactly where I had been the night before, knelt Marisa.
My breath hitched. Marisa’s posture was one of elegant surrender, her slender back straight, her head bowed just enough to suggest devotion. But I knew the curve of her neck. I saw the tension there, the readiness. She did not look up as I entered.
I stopped at the prescribed distance, ten paces from the dais. The silence was a physical thing, thick with incense and anticipation.
“Benedetta.” Angela’s voice was low, a rumble that vibrated in the hollow of my chest. She lifted a hand. In it, a coil of leather glinted with dark red stones. A collar. It was slender, delicate even, the garnets catching the firelight like drops of old blood. “Come forward.”
I moved. Each step echoed. My eyes were fixed on that leather band.
“The arena of our court has a winner,” Angela said, her gaze drifting down to the crown of Marisa’s head. A possessive hand came to rest there, fingers splaying. “A victor is entitled to a prize. To claim what the contest has yielded.” Her eyes lifted to mine, piercing. “Do you understand?”
My throat was too dry to speak. I nodded.
“Marisa won.” The words were final, a verdict etched in stone. “She has earned the right to claim you as her own.”
A sound escaped me, a faint exhalation that was neither protest nor assent. It was the sound of a truth landing, of a secret wish made terrifyingly manifest.
At Angela’s touch, Marisa rose. She unfolded with a panther’s grace, her own simple shift whispering against her skin. She did not look at Angela. Her sharp, clever eyes were only for me. A faint, unreadable smile played on her lips as she took the collar from our Empress’s hand.
The descent from the dais was slow. The click of her sandals on the gold-veined marble was the only sound. My heart thudded against my ribs, a frantic bird. I stood rigid, as I had in the garden, as I had my whole life. The calm influence. The gentle hand.
Now trembling.
She stopped before me. I could smell her—sun-warmed skin, a hint of citrus oil, the metallic tinge of ambition. Her gaze traveled over my face, down to my throat where my pulse hammered.
“Kneel,” she said. Not a request. A calm, clear instruction.
I sank down. The marble was unforgiving, biting into the same tender places. The position was an echo, a perfect mirror of the night before, but now the audience was different. Now the purpose was sealed. I kept my eyes lowered, fixed on the embroidery at the hem of her shift.
I felt the leather first, cool and supple, as she looped it around my neck. Her fingers were deft, brushing against my skin, lifting the heavy fall of my hair. The clasp made a soft, definitive click. The weight was immediate. Not heavy, but present. A constant, encircling pressure. The garnets lay against my collarbone, cold little mouths.
She adjusted it, her fingertips lingering on the clasp, on the side of my neck where the blood raced close to the surface. Her touch was proprietary. Absolute.
Then her hand moved to beneath my chin. She forced my head up. I had to look at her. Her expression was serene, triumphant, and utterly merciless.
“Now,” she whispered, but her voice carried in the vaulted silence, clear as a bell for Angela, for the shadows, for the gods in the pillars to hear. “You belong to me, Benedetta.”
She let the words hang. The collar seemed to tighten.
“Every breath you take is by my leave. Every thought you harbor is my property.” She leaned down, closer. Her breath was warm on my lips. “Every drop of submission in that loyal heart beats for me now. You are my rival. My spoils. My pet.”
She straightened, her hand falling away. The dismissal in the gesture was more brutal than a blow. She turned and walked back to the dais, resuming her place at Angela’s feet, resting her cheek against the Empress’s knee. Angela’s hand returned to her hair, stroking absently, her green eyes watching me over Marisa’s head. There was approval there. Indulgence. A queen observing the natural order fulfilling itself.
The weight of the leather was nothing compared to the weight of their combined gaze. The dread was a cold stone in my gut, the fear of the unknown, of Marisa’s inventive mind given full license over me. But weaving through it, bright and shameless as the garnets at my throat, was the desire. It coursed through me, a shiver that started where the clasp lay and radiated outwards, warming the cold fear, confusing it, transforming it into a terrible, aching need.
I had longed for this in the garden’s secret dark. Now I wore the proof of that longing in the full, firelit open. There was no taking it back. No hiding.
I remained on my knees, the cool stones a brand against my skin, the echo of her words—“my pet, my pet, my pet”—carving a new space inside me where my name used to be.