Chapter 16 Regret
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REGRET
The guards had never liked me.
To them, I was a reminder of their king’s shame, a living embodiment of royal indiscretion.
Some feared me for the rumors about my mother, whispers that she’d been more than human.
Others simply despised what I represented…
The possibility that blood could be tainted, that the line of succession could be questioned.
Over the years, their dislike had manifested in countless ways. Items missing from my chambers. “Accidental” shoves when I passed. Ale spilled on my gowns at feasts. Small cruelties delivered with smirking faces and insincere apologies.
Once, when I was eighteen, I’d overheard two of them discussing which parts of me they’d like to sample, their words growing increasingly vile as they described what they’d do to the “witch’s daughter.”
They’d known I could hear them.
That had been the point.
It was after that night that I’d first taken a lover.
A visiting knight from a minor house, who’d looked at me with something other than contempt or fear.
He’d been handsome in a common way, with calloused hands that had moved over my body with surprising gentleness.
I’d given myself to him not out of passion, but out of a desperate need to feel something, anything, that resembled connection.
He’d left the next morning without a backward glance. I’d expected nothing else.
After him, there had been others. A nobleman’s son who’d treated our encounters as a thrilling secret. A musician whose fingers had played my body with the same skill they’d coaxed melodies from his lute. A foreign dignitary who’d found my “exotic” eyes fascinating. Then Darius, of course.
None had loved me. None had even stayed long enough to pretend they might.
I’d known what I was to them—a curiosity, a forbidden dalliance, a story to tell their friends when deep in their cups.
The king’s strange daughter, with eyes that sparkled with silver in certain lights.
The girl whose mother had vanished. The princess, hardly in name, who could be bedded without consequences because no one of importance would care.
Even Darius, although I knew he cared, did not care enough. He did not fight for me.
I’d told myself I didn’t mind. That I was using them as much as they were using me. That the brief moments of warmth outweighed the emptiness that followed.
But alone in my cell, I could no longer maintain such lies.
I’d sold pieces of myself for scraps of affection, and even then, I’d been cheated in the transaction.
The emptiness after each encounter had only grown deeper, a chasm inside me that nothing could fill.
Not their hands on my skin, not their whispered words of momentary desire, not the fleeting pleasure that faded all too quickly.
Each time, I’d bathed afterward, scrubbing my skin until it reddened, as if I could wash away the knowledge that I’d once again mistaken physical touch for genuine connection. As if I could cleanse myself of the desperation that had driven me to their beds in the first place.
The worst part wasn’t that they’d used me. It was that I’d known they would, and I’d allowed it anyway. Because being wanted, even falsely for a single night, was better than the alternative—being no one to anyone at all.