Chapter 9: Bite the Hand That Feeds
The heavy oak door thudded shut, sealing them in a silence that felt thinner than glass, brittle enough to shatter with a breath. The distant, vulgar roar of the feast was a muffled drone through the stone, a reminder of the world just beyond—a world of spilled wine and broken plates and her father’s tapestries torn from the walls.
Evaline stood rigid, her spine pressed against the cold wood of the door. Kaelen’s presence filled the room, a storm contained in leather and steel. He didn’t look at her face. His eyes were on her hands. With a deliberate slowness that made her skin prickle, he reached out and took her left wrist, his calloused fingers, rough from reins and sword hilts, finding the pale, raised scars that circled her flesh like ghostly manacles. He traced them. Back and forth. A clinical inspection. A reminder of the iron she had worn when his father’s army first paraded her through the streets of her own capital.
“A velveteen rebellion,” he said, his voice a low rasp. The words weren’t kind. They were an observation, cool and detached. “You fought the cuffs. Even though it stripped your skin to the bone.”
She said nothing. She kept her breathing even, her eyes on the tapestry across the room—a scene of a gentle hunt, hounds and stags in a sun-dappled wood, now stained with someone’s flung wine.
He released her wrist only to cage her against the door with his body, his hands coming up to frame her face. There was no tenderness in the gesture. It was possession. Assessment. His thumbs brushed her cheekbones, his icy blue eyes searching her warm brown ones for a crack, a flaw, a surrender. She gave him none. Only the unwavering, stubborn silence he was beginning to recognize.
With a sound that was almost a growl of frustration, his mouth crashed against hers.
The kiss was nothing like the chaste, political gesture in the sanctified glare of the hall. This was conquest. It tasted of the feast—of the bitter stolen oranges from her southern groves, and beneath it, the copper tang of blood, whether from the rare meat or a split lip from the brawl, she didn’t know. His tongue forced her lips apart, demanding entry. She remained stiff, unyielding, a statue in his arms. He bit her lower lip, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to sting, to warn. His hands left her face, skating down her shoulders, her arms, coming to rest on the intricate laces of her wedding gown.
He didn’t fumble. His movements were efficient, brutally practical. The laces, which had taken her handmaidens an hour to cinch, gave way under his ruthless pulls with a series of sharp, sighing snaps. The heavy velvet bodice slumped forward. He pushed it from her shoulders, letting the gown pool at her feet in a rust-colored puddle, the color of dried blood. The cool air of the chamber hit her skin, raising gooseflesh. She stood in her thin linen shift, her honey-colored hair coming undone from its intricate coils.
Kaelen took a step back, his eyes raking over her. There was no admiration in his gaze. It was the look a general gave a captured fortification, evaluating its strengths, its points of vulnerability.
“Take it off,” he commanded, his voice gravelly.
Evaline’s hands trembled once, violently, before she fisted them at her sides. The unyielding stubbornness, the core of iron beneath the grace, held. She would not give him the obedience of a sheep. She reached down, not to disrobe, but to gather the fallen gown.
In two strides he was on her. He grabbed the neck of her shift and ripped it straight down the middle. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet room. The fabric parted, baring her completely to the waist. A shocked gasp finally escaped her, the first sound she’d made. He used her momentary shock to his advantage, spinning her around and pinning her front-first against the cold door, her naked skin meeting the carved, unforgiving oak.
“You are my wife,” he breathed into the shell of her ear, his body a furnace at her back. One arm banded around her waist, holding her immobile. The other hand slid down the plane of her stomach, rough and demanding. “This was the treaty. This is the peace. Your body is the seal.”
His fingers found the thatch of curls between her legs, probing without ceremony. She was dry, tense with fear and fury. He didn’t care. He spat into his own palm, the act crude and deliberate, and wet his fingers before pushing two inside her in one brutal, stretching thrust.
Evaline cried out, a short, choked sound of pain. Her forehead pressed against the door. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears came anyway, hot and silent, tracing paths through the dust on the ancient wood.
“You’ll take me,” Kaelen muttered, his breath coming faster now. He worked his fingers inside her, a harsh, mechanical preparation. It hurt. It was meant to. It was a mapping of territory, a forced surrender. When he deemed her ready, he withdrew his hand. She heard the rustle of his clothes, the clink of his belt buckle, the fall of his trousers.
He didn’t turn her around. He kept her pinned against the door, one hand splayed on the wood beside her head, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. The broad, blunt head of his cock nudged against her entrance. He was thick, heavy, fully erect.
“Open your eyes, Princess,” he ordered, his voice tight. “Look at what you bought for your people.”
She forced her eyelids open. She stared at the grain of the wood, at a particular whorl that looked like a screaming face.
He slammed into her.
The pain was a white-hot spike, tearing through her. She arched against him, a strangled scream caught in her throat. He didn’t pause. He set a punishing rhythm, each deep, driving thrust jolting her body against the unyielding door. The impact was a dull, regular thunder. His grip on her hip was vise-like, his other hand now fisted in her hair, pulling her head back to expose the line of her throat.
“That’s it,” he grunted, his control fraying into raw, physical need. “Take it. Take all of it. This is the price of your fucking mercy.”
She lost sense of time. The world narrowed to the slam of his body into hers, the smell of his sweat and leather, the ache of her own violated flesh. The vulgar shouts from the hall seemed to sync with his thrusts, a horrifying chorus. She felt him swell inside her, his rhythm growing ragged, desperate. A filthy, guttural curse spilled from his lips, hot against her neck. He pistoned into her, three final, brutal strokes, and then he stiffened, a deep groan wrenching from his chest as he spilled his seed deep within her, claiming her in the most primitive way his kingdom understood.
He stayed there for a long moment, his weight heavy on her, his breath harsh in her ear. Then, with a shudder, he pulled out. The sudden emptiness was its own violation. Warmth trickled down her thigh.
He turned away without looking at her. She heard the sound of him righting his clothes, the buckle fastened with a sharp click. She stayed against the door, shaking, naked, the remains of her shift hanging from her shoulders.
She heard the bed ropes creak. When she finally found the strength to turn her head, she saw him lying on her bed, on top of the covers, one arm thrown over his eyes. His chest rose and fell with deep, exhausted breaths. The stern lines of his face had gone slack. In moments, the breaths evened out. He was asleep.
Just like that.
As if he had performed a routine duty. As if he had not just shattered her against a door.
Evaline peeled herself away from the wood. Her legs threatened to buckle. She looked at the man asleep in her bed—the conqueror, her husband. His black hair was damp with sweat, his powerful body already surrendering to a deep, oblivious rest. The burden of expectation, the weight of his father’s legacy, was temporarily shrugged off. He looked younger. Almost peaceful.
She did not feel peaceful. A cold, clear fury was crystallizing inside her, burning away the shock and the pain. It was a hard, sharp thing. It had edges.
Wincing, she walked to the carved wood washstand. The water in the pitcher was cold. She poured some into the basin, took a soft cloth, and began to clean herself. She did it methodically, her movements precise. She looked at her reflection in the tarnished silver mirror above the stand. Her lips were swollen. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but dry now. And deep within them, beneath the grief, something new glinted. Not mercy. Not reconciliation.
She finished cleaning and walked silently to a heavy oak chest at the foot of the bed—her childhood chest, filled with linens. Kaelen did not stir. She moved aside neatly folded sheets and blankets, her fingers searching the very bottom. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic counter-rhythm to his steady breathing.
Her fingers closed around cool, wrapped leather. She drew it out slowly.
It was a slender dagger, a lady’s piece, its hilt inlaid with mother-of-pearl from the rivers of Avelora. It had been her thirteenth name-day gift from her father, its blade meant for cutting fruit or thread. She had never imagined another use for it.
She held it now, feeling its balanced weight. She looked from the sleeping prince to the blade, and then to the door—the door he had taken her against. The screaming face in the wood grain seemed to nod.
She did not approach the bed. She did not raise the dagger.
Instead, she padded silently to the window seat, the dagger held tight in her fist. She curled her legs beneath her, pulling a discarded shawl around her shoulders, covering her nakedness. She watched him sleep, the man who was now her fate. The first grey light of a new day was beginning to bleed around the edges of the barred window, casting the room in monochrome. The feast was finally silent.
Evaline of Avelora sat in the gathering dawn, the tiny, sharp weight of the knife a secret against her palm, and began, for the first time, to think not like a princess, nor a bride, nor a peace-weaver.
But like a prisoner planning an escape.