Chapter Five #2
Or at least, he doesn’t want me to be able to use it.
He’s such a strange man.
That’s a funny thought. But he is strange. He doesn’t behave like any other human being I’ve ever met. He also doesn’t behave quite like the monster I expected him to be. He is a creature entirely apart from any behavior I’ve ever witnessed before.
He is beautiful. Allison is right about that. It’s almost otherworldly, though. And yet, he touched me last night.
The response it created in my body was wholly foreign to me. I’ve experienced desire before, yes, or rather I would say I’ve experienced arousal. In the most basic, physiological sense. Always and only theoretical, and in the confines of fantasies that I am utterly in control of.
Men, I can solve like a puzzle. Men who make sense, like science.
Lucian is not like that.
When he put his hand on me I was so aware of how little control I have with him. The idea sends a shiver of dread down my spine. I tell myself that it’s dread. Because if it’s something else than…
No. I refuse to think about it.
I refuse.
We arrive at my room shortly, and I push the door open.
Lucian is inside, as if it is his room, and not mine.
He has absolutely no respect for boundaries.
But then, I suppose everything in the palace is his.
Everything in the country is his. I wonder if he feels like anything is forbidden to him, or if he feels like all of this is his due.
If he feels like everything and everyone is simply renting a piece of this place that belongs to him, and he is the rightful owner of it all.
Simply because he was born to the throne.
He has been the king for as long as I’ve been alive.
The gap in our ages feels so vast at the moment. Along with the gap in our power, wealth and authority.
He has lived a whole life additional to mine. And also, wields so much more control than I ever will.
He turns to face me, and something ignites in his ice-blue eyes.
The response that he has to my makeover is different than the response the aide had.
It’s nothing like simple recognition. I am immobilized by the expression on his face.
There is something so intense there, so dark.
Like he is exercising an intense amount of control to continue to just keep standing there. To not move on me. Devour me.
He looks hungry. He looks like a predator. I cannot tell whether I want to run away from him, or whether I want to stand and see what he’ll do. Whether I’m frightened or fascinated.
It’s the same feeling that I had last night, only amplified. When he touched my chin I felt things in my body that I have never felt before.
And the truth of the situation simply didn’t matter.
Not that he might be a murderer. Not that I’m being forced into all of this. Not that I should be outraged, and never, ever attracted to him.
There is so much to fear. The fact that he now has total and complete dominion over my life. The fact that I am to be a royal broodmare. The fact that when I marry him he is going to have husbandly rights to my body, and as the king…
Does he feel he owns me as well?
“I see that you have been with the royal stylist today.”
“Yes,” I say. I watch him closely, because as small and undone as I feel in this moment, I recognize that he also feels something. His feelings might be the key to my power.
If I can learn to wield them. If I can learn to find real meaning in them.
The sound he makes, a deep growl in the back of his throat, speaks of approval, though I can’t say how I know that. Only that I feel it. In the way that he looks at me. In the way that my body feels as his eyes skim over me.
“You look…” He moves nearer to me, and then he begins to circle me, slowly.
My heart starts to beat faster. I can’t breathe.
It’s so difficult for me to think. I always think.
My mind is the one thing that I can count on.
It’s the thing I’ve been counting on for a very long time, to get me out of trouble, to change my life.
And I can’t use it right now. There is nothing except for the insistent throbbing of my heart, and the trembling in my body.
“Expensive,” he says finally. “You look expensive.”
I don’t know what to make of that comment. I’m not sure if I should be insulted by it or complimented. I’m not sure if I should ever be complimented by him.
I did choose this. But just because I’m a willing prisoner doesn’t mean I’m less of a prisoner. My options are limited.
“Thank you,” I say. “But if I look expensive it’s only because it was purchased with your money.”
“A better use of it I could not think of.” He looks around my bedroom, and for the first time, I realize why he’s called me up here. I was blinded by his presence. But now I see…bookshelves. Floor to ceiling, and entirely full. “Except for this.”
“What is this?” I ask, feeling breathless.
“It is for you,” he says. “Your own private library. Obviously, there is room for it to expand, I didn’t want to make all of the choices for you, but I wanted it to be robust when you saw it at first. Every title in here is on a scientific subject.
Except the shelf,” he says, gesturing to one next to the bed.
“Those are novels, ones that I think you should read. In spite of the fact that you claim to dislike fiction.”
“You think that you can change my mind?”
“I’m quite certain that if you don’t like fiction it’s because you haven’t read the right books.”
There is something in the confidence of that statement that makes my stomach go tight.
There is something in that certainty that I know will apply to other things.
And I might not fully understand all of these things, the way that things are between men and women.
The way that things will be between the two of us.
And yet, I feel this as an echo of that.
And yet, he’s also given me shelves and shelves full of the books I do want.
He cares about what I want.
The realization shocks me.
“You did all this for me?”
“Of course,” he says. “I want you to like it here. I want you to be comfortable.”
“You…you want me to like this?”
“Of course I do,” he says, as if it is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard, the idea that this man who makes edicts out of other people’s lives might not care about their happiness. “Your time will be spent here, in the majority—you must have access to the things that bring you joy.”
I am rattled by this. By this statement that I’m going to spend most of my time here.
“What about the potential for studying at university?”
“We have the ability to bring top-tier teachers in for you. For you to join in classes virtually anywhere in the world. There is no need for you to go to university.”
“But…” I realize that it was a childish thought.
I realize of course that there is no queen or king sitting in a classroom in a regular university, living in another country.
That there’s no way he would ever let me live away from him, especially not because he sees me as his potential baby factory.
But hearing the words, fully having to accept it…
Perhaps I wanted a different life more than I realized.
More than education, but a chance to be away from here.
I then realize how much I was hoping he would simply change his mind. How much I was hoping that he would realize that I was young and I deserved to do more. How much I was hoping that this would all magically work out. I thought that I was practical.
I’m not.
I’m just a girl. One full of hope that I have no right to have.
One full of an unrealistic and shattering amount of optimism. I’ve walked myself into a prison, and I was so certain that because I had done it of my own accord, that I would have some control over when the door was locked.
But this man is my jailer. And what he says is what will be.
I had too much confidence in myself.
“I was hoping that I might actually go somewhere for school,” I say.
“It is impossible,” he says. “Do you have any idea how dangerous the world is? Especially for someone with a raised profile as you will have. There is no way that you could ever safely navigate something like that. No. You must stay here.”
“You said that I would be spearheading committees and—”
“Yes. In the palace. I have enemies, sparrow. You must be kept safe.”
“You… You’re talking about putting me in a cage.”
“Yes. The cage will keep you safe. But look, look at these books. Look at this life. I can make you the most beautiful cage. You will not even see the bars.”
I stare at him, and I know that he believes this is true. I know that his arrogance makes it so that it seems impossible to him that I might not simply fall in line with what he wants. That I won’t think this is the greatest idea devised by man or beast.
“All I will see is the bars, Lucian,” I say.
He stares at me for a long moment, his expression turning to stone. “Then I will make them beautiful too.”
And then he leaves me standing there, utterly bereft. All of my hope drained from me. I have to face the truth. I sold myself into marriage. And I have no control over anything.
I don’t want to meet him for dinner. But the king has summoned me, and I’m told that I have no choice.
I weigh my options. Because I know that I can refuse him.
I can certainly stay in my room, force him to carry me down physically, or for him to get the guards to do so.
I have more control than they want me to think.
Because I can opt to be uncomfortable. I can opt to make it a war.
I decide not to, because I don’t believe that it will help me. And as much as I would love to have a fight simply for the sake of it, I know there’s no purpose to it.
I take a deep breath, and I begin to walk down the spiral staircase. Now I’m taking the stairs simply to prolong the amount of time it will take before I have to face him again.