Chapter 8: The Empress's Favor
The collar had not left my neck. I slept with its weight, woke to its presence, felt the ghost of its pressure even in the bath when the maid’s careful fingers undid the clasp for mere moments to wash the skin beneath. It was my new truth. The court saw it and understood; looks that were once warm with camaraderie now held pity, curiosity, or quiet scorn. I was no longer merely the Empress’s ancell. I was Marisa’s prize.
Three days after the clasp clicked shut, we were summoned again to the throne room.
Angela reclined on the great sunken throne, a goblet of wine held loosely in her hand. She looked like a lioness after a kill, sated and watchful. Marisa stood beside her, not at her feet today, but leaning against the arm of the throne, one hand draped possessively over Angela’s shoulder. They were a portrait of aligned power.
“The novelty of a victory fades,” Angela murmured, her green eyes lazily tracking my approach. “But the maintenance of a new order… that is an ongoing delight. Come here, Benedetta. Closer.”
I moved forward, the soft soles of my sandals whispering on the obsidian floor. I stopped at the base of the dais, looking up.
“Kneel,” Marisa said. It was not the sharp command of the collaring, but a casual, assured reminder. A test of reflex.
I knelt. The cool marble kissed my skin through the thin silk of my robe. My eyes stayed down, fixed on the golden inlay at the dais’s edge.
“Look at me,” Angela said. I obeyed. Her expression was unreadable, a mask of regal contemplation. “Marisa tells me you’ve been quiet. Obedient. But obedience is just the absence of noise. I wish to see the shape of it. I wish to see her train you.” A slow smile touched her lips. “Show me how you manage my fallen favorite, Marisa. Show me her place.”
Marisa’s fingers tightened on Angela’s shoulder. I could hear the smile in her voice. “Of course, my Light.”
She pushed off from the throne and descended the three shallow steps. She carried a small bronze bowl, piled with fat, purple grapes. She stood before me, looking down. “You heard our Empress. This is a show. Your performance matters.”
She placed the bowl on the floor just out of my reach. Then she plucked a single grape, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “On all fours. Like a devoted creature at a waterhole.”
A hot flush crept up my chest, into my throat, beating against the garnet collar. The silence of the vast room was absolute, waiting. I could feel Angela’s gaze, heavy and expectant. My hands trembled as I placed them on the floor. I lowered my torso, shifting my weight onto my knees and hands. The pose was profoundly vulnerable, my head lower than hers, my back exposed.
“Good,” Marisa purred. She didn’t move the bowl. Instead, she brought the grape to my lips. “Now. Take it. Gently.”
I parted my lips. She placed the grape on my tongue. The skin was cool, slightly taut. I closed my mouth, the sweet burst filling it.
“Do not chew yet,” she instructed, her voice a low, intimate thread. She took another grape. “Eat from my hand. Only from my hand. This is how you are fed now. This is how you remember your source.”
Another grape. Then another. Each time, her fingers brushed my lips. Each time, I had to wait for her permission to swallow. It was a slow, deliberate ritual of subjugation. The sweetness of the fruit cloyed. The posture ached in my shoulders. Shame was a bright, burning coal in my stomach.
But beneath the shame, something else uncoiled.
With each grape, with each passive acceptance, a secret part of me sighed in relief. The contest was over. The striving was done. I had lost. This was my consequence, my defined role. No more guessing, no more balancing between her tempers and Marisa’s schemes. I was here, on the floor, owned. The simplicity of it was perversely calming.
“She learns quickly,” Marisa said, not to me, but to Angela on her throne.
“Does she?” Angela’s voice came, rich with interest. “Or is she merely hiding her teeth? Benedetta has a deep well. I know this. Show me she’s been drained.”
Marisa’s clever eyes glinted. She crouched down, bringing her face level with mine. Her voice dropped to a whisper meant only for me, though it echoed in the listening silence. “Admit it. Tell our Empress what you are. Tell her what this is.”
My mouth was sticky with juice. I could feel a trickle at the corner of my lip. I didn’t wipe it away.
“I…” The word was a rustle. I swallowed, the sound loud in my own ears. I looked past Marisa’s shoulder, to Angela. Her gaze was like a physical touch, pulling the truth from my marrow. “I have been put in my place.” The admission was ash and honey on my tongue.
“Louder.”
“I have been put in my place!” The words rang out, clear and damning.
“And?” Marisa prompted, her breath warm on my cheek.
“And I belong to you.” Saying it was like breaking a seal. A tremor ran through me. “I am your… your pet. Your spoil.” The crude, court-sanctioned words felt foreign, yet they fit the raw, exposed thing I was becoming. And saying them, hearing them hang in the incense-thick air, did something treacherous to my blood. It warmed the cold shame. It stoked the coal into a different kind of heat.
A low, resonant laugh came from the throne. Angela’s laugh. It was a sound of pure, delighted approval. “There,” she sighed, satisfied. “There is my Benedetta. Not so calm. Not so gentle. Just honest. Finally.”
Marisa smiled, a true, victorious smile. She picked up the bronze bowl and placed it before me. “Finish them,” she said, a casual order now. “You may use your hands.”
But as I reached for a grape, my fingers faltered. The hierarchy was no longer a vague tension. It was this: Angela on high, watching, indulgent. Marisa beside her, holding the leash. And me, here on the floor, feeding myself from the bowl of my own defeat.
And the most shameful, electrifying truth of all, one that curled deep in my belly as I swallowed the last of the grapes, was that I loved them for it. I loved her for it. My loyalty hadn’t shattered; it had merely been melted down and recast in this new, debased shape. To be the favorite was to be anxious. To be the slave was to be free of everything but the weight of the collar and the sound of their approval.
I kept my head down as Marisa returned to the dais, as she leaned into Angela’s side and received a lazy, praising kiss on her temple.
The show was over. The training had begun. And kneeling there in the aftermath, my lips stained purple, I knew with a terrifying clarity that the person I had been was the one truly left behind in the garden. The woman who remained was theirs, utterly.
And part of her was glad.