Chapter 19
The devil thing makes contact with my arse and I cry out.
I’m overly dramatic today, pushing at the chair leg, arching my back and kicking.
My eyes water and I have to work to catch my breath as swat after swat descends, echoing through our chambers.
I make some childish noises, some woe-is-me noises, some whining groans and huffing grunts.
After a time, my skin trembles before the brush hits it, knowing how much it’s going to hurt.
The pain increases as the spanking continues.
My focus narrows to the pain—it’s all that exists—until I have no fight left in me.
I collapse over Corrik’s knee, still wriggling to move the pain around, but no longer struggling.
The brush clatters to the table and his hand is soft on my poor arse, rubbing it for me. “To the corner with you.” He removes my trousers, which were half off anyway, the dance of spanking released them from my right foot.
I want to complain, I do, but the throb in my arse prevents it. I move to the corner with my pants down and place my hands atop my head—proper corner time protocol.
The chair scrapes across the floor. His clothes crinkle and shift as he sits, his boots creak as he crosses them, and though I can’t see him, I know he’s laid them on the table and has leaned back in his chair so he can keep both eyes on me.
The throb in my arse makes standing still difficult.
“Tristan,” Corrik warns.
I halt my fidgeting allowing the ache to run through me unhindered and think about how I’m not going to slack off anymore. I don’t know how long I stand there—corner time always feels like it’s forever—but at long last, Corrik calls me over for the best part of spanking.
The after spanking snuggles.
I race across the room, climb into his lap, spread my legs to either side of him and let my red arse shine toward the room behind us, as I nuzzle into his chest. “I’m sorry, Cor. I’ll behave myself.”
He hugs me close and I breathe in his scent, content for the moment. “For your arse’s sake I hope so.” He kisses my lips.
But I’ve lost steam, I’ve fallen way behind my projected six-month goal, and something in me has been craving Bayaden.
I wonder if he has a green husband, I wonder if he’s expecting his first green baby, and I wonder if he misses me, or if I was just a naughty fetish he’s long since stopped thinking about.
And yes, I realize it’s not been nearly enough time for any of those things to happen, but the Aldrien king seemed urgent about it; I wouldn’t be surprised if he rushed the wedding.
I sit in my robe on the ledge reading a book, with my looking device nearby.
It’s something magical I can view great distances with, another gift from Corrik.
With it, I have discovered a band of Elves way out, past the marketplace, who practice with swords and bows, who are a form of Elven militia and I love watching them.
“They’re farmers who hope to become warriors,” Corrik told me when I asked about them.
“It’s how some of our warriors begin their service to Mortouge until they are chosen for one of the advanced guards. ”
It’s an odd idea to me still, even though it was this way in Aldrien as well.
The way we do things in Markaytia is different.
A lot of it is different. Women are not allowed to become warriors like they are in other territories.
I always wondered why, especially when I still remember little Asha Tucker kicking my arse when I was seven.
I was sore about it and seven-year-old me was secretly glad she wasn’t in the running for Warlord.
She moved away the next year anyway, but that was the first occurrence that got me thinking about women joining the military.
But even if women in Markaytia were allowed to fight, or if she were a boy and not a girl, she was a servant’s daughter—servants cannot become warriors. All of my father’s men are of special lineage. They don’t have to be royals, but they do have to prove there is a warrior in their blood somehow.
I like the idea that anyone can work his or her way to warrior.
In my depression, I’ve taken to hours of watching them. They are actually very good. I can see where they need pointers, but it’s a good crew to work with. “What are you doing? Come away from there,” Corrik says.
I usually hear the door open; there are several locks that keep it closed and two guards in front, but I was enthralled in my farmer-warrior watching.
Corrik does not like me sitting on the large window ledge with my legs hanging off it.
He comes over to help me, giving a smack to my already sore arse, and shuts the window.
No.
Something goes off inside me, a switch, the animosity I’ve been holding inside so I could get what I needed to get done bursts free.
“No. No! You take everything from me.” I mean that in a lot of ways.
“If I want to sit on the ledge, I will sit on the ledge. And you know what? Screw becoming an Elf. I don’t want to anymore.
Do you hear me? I’m not becoming an Elf. ”
“You have to become an Elf, Tristan. It’s part of the contract, you know this.”
“Oh, I know,” I say the words like a dare.
They always underestimate me, Elves, and I would love to show them why they shouldn’t.
Bayaden learned how clever I was. He believed in me.
The limitations I have, he recognized them in a real way, but instead of keeping me locked up, he helped me find ways of overcoming them.
“Open that window back up now, Corrik, or so help me, I will find a way out of here, and you will never see me again.”
I’ve metaphorically punched him in the gut. But he does move over to open the window wide, while his eyes burn icy cold at me before he storms out of the room and I hear all the locks get done up with finality.
Victory. I climb back onto the ledge and contemplate how I might get down.
Things become uneasy between me and Corrik.
He stops spanking me for things, which even I admit he should be spanking me for, and this is not good.
I need to be spanked like I know Father spanks Papa, but I’ll never ask.
Corrik visits less, and I begin to resent him for that too, along with everything else.
I know that this time, he’s not sitting outside the door for me.
What I said hurt him, but I’m angry again, and my anger won’t allow me to apologize.
I am right, my ego tells me, and there seems no other way out than to manipulate him.
I hate myself for it, it’s not how I operate, but my options seem few and I just want a day out of this room. One day, that’s all I ask. I try not to let Corrik see me cry, but eventually, he does. “Tristan,” he says, climbing onto the bed.
“No. Stay away from me,” I sob. “This is your fault. And I’m not going to reach my goal, and I’ll be stuck up here longer.”
It is breaking me apart. If only Father could see me now, he’d take back everything he said. All it took was locking him in a room and the Great Tristan Kanes was defeated—that’s what the books will say about me.
He pulls me toward him anyway. He’s shirtless and I’m naked, his skin is cool against mine, but I like it. I need him even when I hate him. He lets me cry against him. “You’re so close, Tahsen. It’s just a little longer and then we will have to travel.”
Travel sounds exciting. I sniffle. “To the East?”
“That’s right. Mountains far to the East. This is where you will have to pass the final test and then you will become Elf.”
I nod.
“I am sorry, my darling. I never should have implied that I was going to board up the windows. I saw the fear in your eyes, and you reacted in kind.” His ears move with the lines of his face, it makes my chest pang with sadness. He does try.
“I was horrible and hurtful. I’m sorry too, but yes, I was scared. I’ve never been so defenseless in all my life.”
“You’re hardly defenseless, Tristan. Half of my protections are to keep you from breaking out. I know if you really wanted to, you’d find a way.”
That makes all the difference. “Thanks, Cor. The worst of it is thinking about how weak you think I am.”
“No, my mate is strong. But we all have things we cannot fight and for you, that’s Elves.
” We’re quiet for a time and I enjoy him running his hands through my hair.
“Tristan, could you leave me so easily? I mean, in your heart. Of course, you could figure out a way to leave, I believe that, but could you turn away, never come back without a single thought?”
One of my biggest character flaws is saying things like that, hurtful things I can never take back. But the problem is, I did mean it at the time. “I could not leave easily, Corrik, but I could leave if I needed to.”
“You won’t though, because of Markaytia, not because of me.”
It hits me. I still haven’t told Corrik I love him.
There has been too much going on, making my feelings go everywhere.
I’ve been waiting for a pure time, but there hasn’t been one.
I don’t want to say it to him out of duty or obligation, I want it to come out freely, but something keeps blocking it.
This means Corrik still doesn’t know, especially when he knows that while I have shelved my outward resentment about his “protection plan” it is still there.
Plus, with all the turmoil, it must be hard for him to feel my love on his own, without the words for more certainty.
“Ultimately the reason I will stay despite what you choose to do is because I have made an oath in the name of Markaytia. But if that reason didn’t exist, then I’m sorry, but my love for you would not hold me here, which has nothing to do with how much I love or don’t love you.
I have to love myself first Corrik; being confined like this is dampening my soul. ”
“I can understand that. It’s not forever.”
“I know. It’s just hard.” I take a breath. “I will get through it. We will get through it, but Corrik, don’t doubt that I love you. I’ve never said it, so I’m saying it now. I love you and I just want everything to be as normal as our lives will ever be, so I can enjoy you.”
“Me too, though, you must have known even before we married, life here won’t be the ‘normal’ you are used to.”
“Yes. I know it’s different here. That you are deviant creatures,” I say. “Which I have wondered about. There have been no lessons of the kind you tried to teach me on the ship.”
“That is a time commitment, I knew you’d want all spare time to study and shoot arrows into our fine tapestries,” he teases me. I laugh. “Did you enjoy those lessons, pet?”
A shiver runs through me. “When you weren’t whacking me with your crop, I did.”
He smiles wide, but it fades. “Tristan, I’m not sure how submissive you are.
You’re a brat and I worry that outside of here, there will be an all new prison for you to have to adapt to and hate me for.
I love you, more than I have words to tell you and seeing your heart break, is breaking mine.
I’m starting to think that … that I should never have taken you from Markaytia.
I was selfish and arrogant. I had my vision and assumed that it meant all it was prophesied to be, that you would love it here.
But now, I’m not sure you will. I fear the Gods are playing tricks on me. ”
“No. If the Gods say it’s so, it must be so, but wasn’t it you who told me marriage is work? Maybe getting there isn’t easy, but once we arrive, it will be worth it.”
“Once again, my wise husband saves the day. It is decided then, we shall succeed because we will work with what the Gods have given us.”