52. Sold

Sold

Luella

I awake in a nightmare. Dark. Damp. The sounds of screaming. Rats crawling across my limbs. I try to move but my arms are too heavy, and I quickly realize they’re chained to the floor.

I shake them harder, panic crawling up my throat and something inside me cracks. Where is Cassius? The heat from last night. The way I wondered if I’d been drugged…

A broken hollow sound leaves me in the form of a chuckle, which grows until I’m laughing so hard I might vomit. The laughs stick in my throat, sounding more crazed with each one, until I realize I’m not laughing. I’m sobbing.

I cry until I feel myself again. Until the woman from last night is washed away by the salt on my cheeks.

I was drugged. On my wedding night.

Cassius played my very own game on me, and I was so naive that I didn’t notice. I fool men by blending in, Cassius fooled me by standing out. Whatever was in the wine was sneaky, too slow to be noticed right away, and not the same as what I usually use and dose myself with daily to build tolerance.

If last night was the kiss, I know what comes today. But I am not praeda. I’m the black widow. I’m Tisiphone.

I’m revenge.

Perhaps it is minutes, or perhaps it is hours, but slowly the screaming dies out. A key scrapes in the lock to this small room and before I can move back the light from the hall blinds me. I flinch back, trying to cover my face but the chains don’t reach. I close my eyes instead, waiting.

“Grab the witch,” a male voice says. A bag is placed over my head and the chains are unlocked from the ground, leaving my hands heavy as someone drags me forward. I fight the panic and listen to each noise muffled through the bag. How many men? Where are we going? What can I use to escape?

I’m yanked forward and I stumble, biting my lip. I can’t reach my pocket if I even still have vials in there. I’m helpless without my potions and poisons.

No, that’s not true.

There are my wits.

There’s a man to each side, and one in front, from the sounds of their steps, the grasp of their arms. I don’t struggle because every ounce of strength will be needed before the end. I know that.

The only light comes from torches, the flames hissing in the damp air as the men lead me away from the small cell in which I awoke. I keep my breathing steady, counting my steps and my breaths.

I refuse to let panic take me, as I have every day of my life for the last ten years. I will not crumble, no matter what happens. I will survive. It’s just a body.

This is my mantra.

I will not crumble. I will survive. It’s just a body.

I remind myself of the time Silas didn’t take to the sleeping drought and I smashed a vase over his head. I reminisce on the time Brutis tried to rape me before the wedding ceremony and I slit his throat. I remember the feel of Maximus' hands wrapped around my throat when he refused the wine I had poisoned and I stabbed my thumb into his eye, blinding him.

I have never crumbled. Janus has saved me, yes, but I also have saved myself. And I will continue to do so.

Slivers of pain shoot through my palms and I fight to unclench my fists. The stone floor is cold and dirt sticks to the soles of my feet as they shove me into a new room. I stumble but don’t fall and the man to my left decides that was a mistake. He kicks the back of my knee and I collapse, chains rattling and bones jarring as my hands join my feet in the damp dirt.

I stay there, on my hands and knees, waiting. The hush of the room tells me someone else is here, and they are in charge.

“Remove her hood,” he says.

They do. We are underground. There is no light, no windows. Yet, the archways, the columns, and the altar before me tell me where I am. A temple. The room is worn limestone, but the altar draws my eyes. It’s brown with rust and death, coated in the remnants of the types of sacrifice that no good Divusian would use. The men here wear masks of the god Bacchus, identical to the cursed fountain that mocked me for clipses. All except the man who sits before me.

The Emperor.

I expected Cassius, or Flavia. Perhaps they are here, and masked. Either way, I expected a face, a name. I expected someone to be here to gloat, but since they are not, I play the game. I wait to see who will speak first.

“Evandia,” The Emperor says.

“Imperator,” I greet, as if this is a pleasant passing in the hall.

“Cassius has decided to make good on his promise.” He smiles, teeth bared in a feral grin that sends a shudder through me. It hurts. The betrayal that I had convinced myself wouldn’t come.

“You’d like me straight from my marriage bed?” I risk to say, hoping it will dissuade him that I was so recently with another.

“Your marriage consummation isn’t complete. You are Evandia and I am Evander.”

He searches my face and I remember the little shift of the eyes I had shown him that day in the dining room. It was a mistake, a miscalculation. I worry once again that I do not understand this man. Perhaps this will not be so bad as it seems if the only issue at play is the jealousy that I had planned for.

I bow my head, itching to reach towards my skirts, to the lifelines that I pray to Janus are still there. I don’t dare, though, not with all eyes on me, and they are on me. The hair raised on the back of my neck, the hush of the room, the collective bated breath; they all tell me this.

The way his closeness, the fervor in his eyes, and his grip on my skirts tells me what he will do, just before he does it. Soon, I am naked, my vials shattered in the pockets of my nightgown across the room.

My face is pressed against the floor, and now my cheek matches my palms, which matches the stomach and the breasts and the body that I inhabit as I watch for what could be minutes, or could be hours, as the violet and white liquid of my shattered salvation seep into the nightgown and onto the dirt floor.

As the day or night continues, the me that stepped into this room seeps away as well, and all I hear are the words from my nightmares.

She just screams so pretty.

I wait for him to be done with the body that isn’t mine.

It’s controlled and not all at once, and… it’s just him. It’s a lesson, so there is no frenzy, no excessive cruelty. Of course there is no intimacy either, even the forced kind. I never thought I’d be disappointed that a praeda hadn’t kissed me, but I’ve loosened the pearl hidden between my teeth and am unable to use it. I hold it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, just in case, afraid the clench of my jaw will release it needlessly.

It takes me a moment to realize it’s over, the numbness and pain mingling to a crescendo of untethered despondence.

Part of me screams to pay attention, that these are the moments where they will think me bent to their will, but my vials are gone. My pearl will only work if he gets close. For a moment, I will allow myself to be exactly as I appear; broken. I accept the familiar swell of injustice and rage and pain and shattering self.

The bag is placed over my head, but before I leave the Emperor calls to me. “See you in a few days, Evandia.”

If I am to live to return, it means I will not be killed. Which means that the Emperor is not afraid of me.

He thinks me just a woman, available for him to use.

A venefica in what I’ve done to Cassius, maybe, but not her.

Not Tisiphone.

Not Vidua.

I feel the jagged edges of me falling into place, into a semblance of a person as I piece each moment together. Cassius sold my body, but not my secret.