64. Reward

Reward

Luella

Time isn’t real, it’s a construct to mark the mundane. Let dough rest for one hour before stretching and folding. Allow twenty minutes for a sleeping drought to take hold. Schedule fifteen minutes to braid your sister’s hair.

Pain like this isn’t mundane, not to me, and so time no longer exists. Perhaps I am whipped for only another minute, or perhaps it is days, but finally he stops. My legs have long since given out. My arms are numb again and I’m covered in sweat and tears and blood.

Salt.

He comes up behind me and rips my head back, making me cry out, and whispers into my ear, “Did you miss me, Rose?”

I whimper again and the sound makes me want to grind my teeth. I worked so hard never to be here again. Never to mean that sound. His hand comes around my neck, like a lover’s caress. This is the way someone like Cassius might touch me, and it’s so at odds with what’s happening around me that I almost lean into it. Then, because the hand belongs to Tristan, the touch turns cruel. He squeezes tighter and I can’t speak, can’t breathe.

“I said, did you miss me, Rosebud?” Another tear streams down my face as I remember our wedding night. The mind games. The assault. Of course he’d gravitated towards the followers of Bacchus in the years after as he tried to find a place where his sadistic pleasure belonged.

He’s still holding my throat but I try to rasp the words out. “I’ll only scream for you, princeps .”

His grip loosens. “Say it again.”

“I’ll only scream for you, princeps .” The words feel hollow and broken in my mouth, like dried eggshells, empty and cracking beneath my teeth.

“Rosebud,” he says, coming around to kneel on the bed in front of me. “Say it again.” He puts a hand between my legs, rough and punishing.

I scream. I infuse every ounce of feeling into it as I can and when he withdraws his hand I say, “Thank you, princeps .”

That does it. He releases both of my chains and throws me onto the bed. On my back he comes to lie on top of me, pushing apart my legs. He slaps me and I let out a cry. “Thank you, princeps ,” I say through the tears. He’s frenzied now, getting exactly what he wanted those years ago: a submissive and obedient wife who loved whatever he did to her. Perhaps I would have eventually, if he had groomed me and tempered himself in the meantime. Instead, I had tried to flee.

I don’t try that, now. Tristan wraps a hand around my throat and pushes himself between my legs. I try to say something, but he’s squeezing too hard and a rasp comes out. He presses his hips forward and I squeeze my thighs tighter, trying to keep him away. “Say it,” he commands, pressing into me once more, his golden face eager.

It’s almost sad, how desperate he is for the name his mater would never call him.

I move my lips, but don’t allow any sound to come out. He leans in closer and widens my legs with his, frustrated that I’m not giving him what he wants, until our breaths mingle. He loosens his hold on my throat and says, “Say it, meretrix. ”

“Thank you,” I say, biting down hard on the pearl. As the warm poison explodes in my mouth I spit directly into his, the tasteless and odorless concoction landing right where I aim. “Tristan.”

His head rears back and his face reddens. Before I can say anything he punches me in the face, hard. I feel a tooth shatter beneath his fist and blood pools in my mouth. I spit again, but it doesn’t hit him, landing weakly on my chest, spattering on the white sheets streaked with the blood from my back. My arm, heavy with chains, swings around and I catch him on the side of the head. He falls to the side, freeing me from his weight. I don’t know how long the poison will take to work on either of us.

“Thank you, Tristan,” I repeat. “For showing me what a pathetic, disgusting creature you are on our first night, so that I didn’t have to spend my life enduring you.” I scramble to my feet across the bed from him.

“I was enduring you, you beggar whore, but it was worth it to taste your sweet, sweet sister.” His grin falters as I lunge towards him screaming, swinging my chained hands as weapons, unfaltering as he tries to shove me away.

One of the chains whips his ear and eye, and he reaches a hand up to the fresh blood. I try to hit him again and he blocks me, throwing my arm to the side and punching my ribs. I cry out as I double over, but I’m not done and I swing at the same place again. He brings his other hand up to block his face and I bring my chained fist in again, finally making contact on the side of his head.

“You.” I swing the other hand quickly, catching him on the opposite side of the face. “Should.” I swing from the other side again and he just holds his hands in front of his face, protecting his nose and eyes. “Scream.” The other hand. “Prettier.” I can feel myself growing weak, but I can’t die like this. I won’t die unless he does. I won’t let anyone else lose a Daisy or a Mia. I won’t let anyone else endure this man who holds so much power he doesn’t even know what to do with it except hurt, hurt, hurt.

I must slow enough for him to gather himself because suddenly I’m crashing into the opposite wall and crumpling onto the floor. It’s my body this time. Not someone else's. Not a mask.

Mine.

It’s bruised and whipped and bloody. And it hurts.

“I’ll fuck you to death, you stupid sabine,” he screams, grabbing his metal scepter that he uses when presiding over the Senate.

“Because you can’t get it up, can you Tristan,” I taunt. I wrap the long end of the chain around my fist. “Not even man enough to fuck me with your own cock.”

When he springs for me, I’m ready. I swing one hand and when he moves to block it, I swing the other, catching him yet again on the side of the face with the force of all my body weight. The momentum brings us both to the ground and instead of scrambling away from him, I fling my naked, bloody body onto his. Screaming, I roll him onto his back and raise both hands over my head, bringing them down with a satisfying crunch.

My mind feels muddy, churning like the eddies of the Maero.

Tristan’s not moving. He’s not fighting me. But I keep raising my hands together, letting the momentum carry the weight of the chains into him once.

Crack.

Twice.

Crunch.

The poison is towing me under and my movements are becoming sluggish, but I need him to die first. It’s the principle of the thing, really. I’ve already died so many times.

Isn’t it his turn yet?

I raise my hands again for what I know is the final time, and swing everything on top of Tristan, folding over his mutilated face as my chains grind gold into red, flesh into bone, and revenge into reward.

We’re woven together, like the two faces of Janus. Past and future. Forward and back. Perhaps neither of us can exist without the other, two sides of a monstrous coin. Darkness drags me down, and I can only hope neither of us wakes.