Chapter 2: The king's private chambers
The chair wasn’t so much a throne as a massive, padded contraption of oak and velvet, built to bear a weight Clara could scarcely comprehend. She sat in it, her body already spilling over the sides of the seat that had seemed so vast just a month ago. The servant, a young man with a permanently blank expression, held a silver spoon to her lips. It was laden with a thick, creamy soup, laced with bone marrow and butter.
“Another, my lady,” he murmured, his voice devoid of inflection.
Her first instinct, a ghost from her old life, was to turn her head. She was full. A deep, pressing fullness that made every breath a conscious effort. But the smell of the soup, rich and savory, coiled in the air under her nose, and the ghost of that instinct vanished. She opened her mouth.
The warmth spread through her, a heavy comfort. She swallowed, and the emptiness that followed was immediate, a yawning pit inside her that demanded to be filled again. It was a deeper hunger than any she’d known in the village, a physiological command that overrode all else. Her mind, once occupied with calculations for bread and worries over coin, was now consumed by a single, simple focus: the next mouthful.
King Oberon watched from a divan nearby, sipping wine from a crystal glass. He wasn’t staring at her face. His gaze was fixed lower, on the way her new stomach strained against the silk of her gown, on the soft, heavy rolls of her sides that were pressed against the arms of the chair.
“Good,” he said, not to her, but to the room. “The form is coming along. The distribution is exceptional.”
Clara felt a flush that was part shame, part a strange, thick pride. She remembered the woman in green from the Great Hall, dismissed for being “too firm.” She consciously let her body go softer, sinking deeper into the cushions, embracing the languid heaviness that was seeping into her limbs.
The servant offered a piece of glazed pork belly, the fat shimmering. She took it without hesitation. The crackle of the skin, the unctuous melt of the fat on her tongue—it was a sensation so profound it bordered on erotic. She closed her eyes, chewing slowly, her mind blissfully blank of everything but the texture, the salt, the fat.
“You’re not just eating for yourself anymore, Clara,” Oberon said, his voice cutting through her reverie. He stood and walked over, standing so close his leg brushed against the arm of her chair. He reached out and placed a hand on her belly, his fingers splayed. The touch was possessive, clinical. “You are building a monument. My monument. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her mouth full. She understood. The gold for her family was the seed, but this… this process had become the entire world. Her body was the project.
“The others lacked the… capacity,” he continued, his hand resting heavily on her. “They saw it as a task. A contest. You? You have a gift for it. A true appetite.” He leaned down, his voice a whisper in her ear. “I can make you the most magnificent woman this kingdom has ever seen. A queen in truth. All you have to do is let go.”
He straightened up and nodded to the servant, who immediately brought forward a small, dense cake soaked in rum syrup. “Build my monument, Clara.”
She opened her mouth for the cake. The sweetness was cloying, intense, a stark contrast to the pork. It didn’t matter. It was fuel. It was substance. She felt the bite settle inside her, adding to the immense, growing mass of her.
Later, they helped her to bed. Walking was now a slow, shuffling process, her balance altered by the new weight she carried in front. The grand four-poster bed had been reinforced with extra planks underneath. She sank into the mattress with a groan that was half pain, half relief. The room spun slightly, a dizzying carousel of velvet hangings and gilded carvings.
She lay on her back, because it was the only position she could manage. The weight of her own body was an anchor, pinning her to the bed. She could feel her heart beating, a frantic bird against the immense, soft cage of her chest. She ran her hands over the swollen curve of her stomach, the skin stretched tight and warm. It was hers, and yet it wasn’t. It was his. The king’s project.
A tray of honeyed figs and marzipan sat on the bedside table, a nightly ritual. A test she no longer needed to be prompted to take. She reached for one, the movement requiring a shift of her entire upper body. The fig was sticky, dissolving into a sugary pulp on her tongue.
She thought of her family’s small, cold house, of the gritty texture of the dark bread she used to bake. It felt like a story about someone else. This warmth, this profound fullness, this was reality. The gold was a distant, abstract concept. This, the relentless expansion of her own flesh, was the tangible truth.
She finished the fig and reached for the marzipan. The king wanted a wife over thirteen hundred pounds. She had no idea what she weighed now, but she knew, with a certainty that felt as solid as the bed beneath her, that she would get there. Not for the gold. Not even for him.
But for the next bite.