CHAPTER 2
THE PRINCESS
I feel him enter me, and I want to scream.
Not from pain, though there is pain, there's always pain when something that large pushes inside, but from the horrible, shameful pleasure that comes with it.
Each ridge on his cock drags against places inside me that make my body sing. Makes me wet. Makes me want more even as I hate myself for wanting anything at all.
He's talking about murder. About pulling someone's intestines out. About strangling a man with his own guts. And my body is responding. Getting aroused. Getting ready for him. I've been hearing him talk like this for so many years that it's started to sound normal.
What does that make me?
I feel him push deeper, stretching me, filling me inch by impossible inch. He's so careful. That's what makes it worse. He knows exactly how much I can take, exactly how fast to go, exactly where to touch me to make my body accept him.
Fifty years. Fifty years of being awake inside this prison of flesh and bone. Fifty years of feeling everything while being able to do nothing. Fifty years of his voice, his touch, his presence becoming the entire world.
I remember the first year. How I screamed inside my own head until I thought I'd go mad.
How I tried to move, tried so hard that something inside me felt like it would break from the effort.
My finger. Just one finger. If I could just move one finger, I could prove I was still here, still human, still Adelaide.
But nothing ever moved.
The second year, I tried to count the days. Tried to keep track of time, of myself, of who I was before this. Princess Adelaide. Nineteen years old. I liked reading. I liked riding horses. I had a friend named Violet who made me laugh.
By the fifth year, I couldn't remember Violet's face.
By the tenth, I couldn't remember what my own voice sounded like.
Now, I can barely remember being anyone other than this. The girl in the tower. The sleeping beauty. His treasure. His Adelaide.
He's had fifty years to learn.
The ridges catch and drag, and I feel a spark of pleasure shoot through me despite everything. Despite the darkness. Despite the prison of my own body. Despite the fact that he just described murdering someone who came to save me.
This morning—was it morning? I think it was morning, that's what the dragon told me. He bathed me. He always bathes me. Warm water, scented with lavender and rose. He washes every inch of me with those massive, clawed hands, so gentle, so thorough. He talks to me the whole time.
"Your skin is so soft today, treasure. I think the new soap is working well. Do you like it? I hope you like it."
I wanted to like it. I wanted to hate that I liked it. The warm water, the gentle touch, the care in every movement. He washes my hair, works the tangles out with infinite patience, dries me with soft towels that he warms by the fire first.
He dresses me like I'm a doll. A living doll that he can pose and arrange. Today it was the blue silk nightgown, the one that makes my skin look like honey, he said. He brushed my hair. One hundred strokes. He always does one hundred strokes.
"So beautiful," he murmured with each pass of the brush. "My beautiful Adelaide. My perfect treasure."
And I felt... something. Pleasure at the praise. Warmth at being called beautiful. The satisfaction of being cared for.
I hate that I felt those things.
He's fully inside me now, and he stops. He always stops. He doesn't rut into me like an animal. That would be easier to hate. Instead, he just stays there, buried deep, his massive cock stretching me, filling me so completely I can barely breathe.
A prince. There was a prince today. I heard the commotion, heard the shouting, heard the clash of steel, could feel that the dragon was outside. Then silence. Then him, returning to me, blood still on his claws.
"Another one," he said, settling beside me on the bed, running those bloody claws through my hair. "Another fool who thought he could take you from me. He had a whole speech prepared. About true love's kiss. About breaking the curse. About carrying you away to his kingdom."
He laughed. Actually laughed.
"I pulled his intestines out while he was still alive. Used them to strangle him. Do you know how long intestines are, Adelaide? So long. He kept trying to push them back in, kept begging. Actually cried. Begged me to kill him quickly."
And I felt... what? Horror, yes. Revulsion, absolutely. But also... also...
Relief.
Relief that the prince was dead. Relief that no one would take me away. Relief that I would stay here, with him, where it's safe and warm and I'm cared for.
What does that make me?
What have I become?
I love it. I hate it.
I love him. I hate him.
I want him to leave me alone forever. I want him to never leave me.
The contradictions are tearing me apart. Or maybe they're the only thing holding me together. Maybe without these fractured, impossible feelings, there would be nothing left of me at all.
I feel his weight settle over me. Feel his tail wrap around my leg like a shackle. Feel his clawed hand find my breast, my nipple, rolling it between his fingers with a gentleness that makes me want to weep.
He knows exactly how I like to be touched.
Because I do like it. That's the horror of it. My body likes it. And somewhere, in some dark corner of my mind that I don't want to examine too closely, I like it too.
He plays lazily with my clit. It feels like torture. It feels like heaven. I wish I could push against his hand and deepen the pressure. I can tell he's not going to let me come tonight. That feels just as torturous as him bringing me to orgasm.
The wanting is its own kind of prison. Wanting to move. Wanting to speak. Wanting to come. Wanting him to stop. Wanting him to never stop.
I exist only in wanting now. In sensation. In the sound of his voice and the touch of his hands and the fullness of his cock inside me. Everything else has faded away. The princess I was. The life I had. The future I might have wanted.
There is only this. Only him. Only the endless present moment of being touched, filled, possessed.
Sometimes it even feels like I can sense he's about to walk into the room. My mind plays tricks on me. Tells me it can feel where he's at in the castle. I know that's not true. Just a way my mind is passing the time.
Is this what it means to lose yourself? To have your identity stripped away until you're nothing but nerve endings and contradictions?
He knows everything about my body. What makes me gasp. What makes me clench. What makes me come even when I don't want to.
"Mine," he murmurs, and I feel his breathing slow, feel him starting to drift off to sleep.
But I know things too. I've learned things. Fifty years of observation, of listening, of being present for every moment of his life even as he thinks I'm absent from my own.
I know he's afraid of losing me. I know he killed his own father when he wouldn’t allow him to take me, and that guilt eats at him even as he justifies everything he does. I know he believes, truly believes, that he's protecting me. That he's the hero of this story.
I know he's insane.
And I know that somewhere, somehow, something is changing. I can feel it. Not in my body. My body is still frozen, still unresponsive, but in something deeper. In the magic itself.
Earlier, when he first pushed inside me, when the pleasure and pain mixed together in that overwhelming wave, I felt... something. A flutter. A loosening. Like a rope that's been pulled taut for fifty years, suddenly developing the tiniest bit of slack.
And I tried. God, I tried so hard. Tried to move my mouth, tried to part my lips, tried to make any sound at all.
I don't know if I succeeded. I don't know if anything actually moved. But I felt something. Something different. Something possible.
The thought terrifies me.
Because what happens if I can move? What happens if I can speak? What happens if he realizes I've been awake this whole time, conscious for every moment, aware of everything he's done?
Will he be horrified? Ashamed? Will he let me go?
Or will he be pleased? Excited? Will he find new ways to possess me, now that he knows I can feel it all?
I don't know which possibility frightens me more.
He's going to sleep inside me. Buried deep, his cock pulsing occasionally, his claws playing idly with my nipples. His heavy wing cocooning us together. This is what he wants. Not to just fuck me. Just to be inside me. To possess me so completely that even sleep doesn't separate us.
I hate this.
I hate how good it feels to be filled by him.
I hate how my body has learned to crave this weight, this fullness, this constant intimate connection.
I hate how safe I feel with his tail around my leg, and his wings protecting me from cold, and his hand on my breast, and his cock buried so deep I can feel it in my stomach.
I hate that I'm beginning to love it. Look forward to it.
No. No, I can't love this. I can't love him. He's a monster. He killed someone today and told me about it like he was describing the weather. He's kept me prisoner for 50 years. He fucks my unconscious body and calls it love.
The routine of it has become my entire existence.
Wake to his voice. Feel his hands bathing me, dressing me, touching me.
Listen to his stories about the princes he's killed, the knights he's slaughtered, the kingdoms that have sent their best warriors to die in my tower.
Feel him inside me, around me, possessing me.
Sleep. Wake. Repeat.
For fifty years.
And somewhere in those fifty years, the girl I was has disappeared. Princess Adelaide is gone. There's only this now. Only the creature I've become. The thing that exists in the space between hatred and need, between resistance and surrender.
But his claws are so gentle on my nipple. And he's so careful when he enters me, making sure I'm ready, making sure the ridges on his cock stimulate me enough that my body opens for him. And he knows… he knows… exactly what I need.
I feel him twitch inside me, and my body clenches in response. Pleasure ripples through me, unbidden, unwanted.
Does he? Does he really know what I need?
Or have I just been trapped for so long that I've forgotten what needing anything else feels like?
I'm falling for him.
Wanted. Unwanted. The words have lost all meaning.
The thought makes me sick. Makes me want to claw my way out of this frozen body and run as far as I can. But I can't move. Can't speak. Can't do anything but feel as he plays with my nipples and sleeps inside me and holds me like I'm something precious.
I don't want to have feelings for him.
Maybe I am precious to him. Maybe this is what love looks like when it's twisted by isolation and obsession and fifty years of having no one else.
Maybe I'm just as twisted now. Just as obsessed. Just as isolated.
We're both prisoners here. He's just the one who can walk away.
Except he never does.
I don't want to need this.
But in the darkness, in the endless prison of my own mind, I can't lie to myself anymore.
I am beginning to love him.
God help me.
I'm beginning to love my captor.
And the worst part, the truly horrifying part, is that I don't know if these feelings are real or if they're just what happens when you have nothing else. When someone becomes your entire world. Your only source of touch, of warmth, of care, of pleasure. How can you not develop feelings for them?
Is this love? Or is this just survival?
Is there even a difference anymore?
I feel that flutter again. That loosening in the magic. And I try again, try to move my lips, try to make a sound, try to do anything that proves I still exist as more than just a body for him to possess.
Something shifts. Just barely. Just enough that I feel it.
My mouth. I think... I think my mouth moved.
Terror floods through me, cold and sharp.
And beneath the terror, something else.
Hope.