CHAPTER 10
THE PRINCESS
I have been living with Prince Benedict in his castle for three months.
Three very long months. Our wedding happened a week after he kidnapped me.
It was an embarrassing spectacle. Dignitaries and royalty from all over came to witness the wedding of the Sleeping Beauty to the knight in shining armor who gallantly saved her from the treacherous throws of the Deadly Dragon.
They toasted to my rescue. My rescue. As if I'd been languishing in misery rather than living with a dragon that actually saw me. As if being dragged back to this gilded prison and paraded before strangers was somehow my salvation.
Our wedding night was as awful as our first time having sex.
Prince Benedict couldn't find a pleasurable spot on my body even if I drew him a detailed and colored map.
Even if I guided his clammy, too soft hands directly there.
He doesn't try. He doesn't ask. My pleasure is not even an afterthought.
It simply doesn't exist in his conception of what sex is supposed to be.
I am a vessel. A womb with a decorative exterior. Something to be filled and forgotten.
My dragon's words from that first decade with him echo in my ears.
"They would have used you up. Bred you until your body broke. Called it duty and honor while they destroyed you."
He was right. He was so fucking right, and I hate that I didn't believe him sooner.
Prince Benedict visits my bedroom chamber every night, like clockwork, like I'm a chore on his royal to-do list. From all the romance novels my dragon read to me, I gather that we are having missionary sex.
It's always uncomfortable and leaves me feeling chafed and itchy afterwards.
I have yet to get wet once. Not once in three months. He comes inside me, because of course he does, that's the entire point of me, isn't it? Then he rolls over and heads to his own chambers. I'm not sure what he does in his own rooms, and I don't care.
Other than visiting me for sex, Prince Benedict spends no other time with me.
I'm not sure he even knows what color my eyes are.
I'm not sure he's ever looked at my face long enough to notice.
I am a duty. A broodmare dressed in silk and jewels.
They call this a fairy tale ending, and I want to burn their storybooks to ash.
I fill my days with anything that keeps me from screaming.
I read in the library, though the selection here is pathetic compared to what my dragon curated for me over a century.
I walk through the manicured, controlled gardens.
The blooms are pretty, but all the colors are pale and lackluster. And I watch.
The training yard is visible from the east garden if you know where to stand behind the hedgerows.
I discovered it by accident in my second week here, and now I go every day.
I watch the knights drill with their swords and daggers, memorizing their footwork, the way they pivot and strike.
The angle of a blade during a parry. How they shift their weight before a lunge.
When I'm alone in my chambers, which is most of the time, I practice.
Over and over. The movements burned into my muscles through repetition.
I started with a letter opener I found in the writing desk.
Then I got bolder. A kitchen knife, slipped into my sleeve during a lonely dinner.
A decorative dagger from a hallway display.
A short sword from an unguarded armory when I pretended to be lost. They're hidden now, wrapped in silk scarves at the back of my wardrobe where the maids never look.
I practice until my arms shake. Until sweat drips down my spine. Until I can execute a disarming technique without thinking.
I need to be ready. For what, I don't know yet. But I will not be helpless. Not anymore.
The strangest part of my new life isn't the weapons training. It's what's happening to my body.
Last week, I was careless with one of the knives.
The blade sliced across my forearm, deep enough that blood welled immediately, running down to my wrist. I grabbed for a cloth to stanch it, and watched as the wound simply.
.. closed. The skin knitted itself back together before my eyes, leaving nothing but a smear of blood as evidence.
I stared at that spot on my arm for almost an hour in shock. It was there and then... it wasn't. I thought I'd imagined it. Some trick of panic or light.
So the next day, I tested it. A deliberate cut across my palm, shallow but clean. Same result. It bled for perhaps thirty seconds, then sealed shut as if it had never been. No scar. No pain.
The burning in my stomach, the one that's been there since I woke in this castle, has spread. It's in my throat now as well, a constant simmer of heat that intensifies when I'm angry, which is often.
Yesterday, I was alone in my chambers, pacing and furious about another humiliating dinner where I was paraded like a prize mare, when I felt the heat surge up my throat.
I opened my mouth to scream... and I swear to all the gods, a small flame flickered out.
A flame! Just for a second. A tiny orange tongue of fire that dissipated as quickly as it appeared.
But I was alone. No one to confirm it. No one to tell me I'm not losing my mind.
Maybe I am losing my mind. Or maybe I'm finally finding something that was always there, buried beneath a hundred years of sleep and three months of captivity.
I don't know what it means. I don't know what I'm becoming. Maybe the magic from the sleeping spell is coming back? Maybe it's a bad side effect? My dragon isn't around to ask and there are no books on magic in the library. I checked. Twice.
Either way, I practice with my stolen blades. And I wait.
It's been two weeks since flames shot out of my mouth.
Two weeks of trying to recreate it. I've stood in front of my mirror, furious, screaming silently with my mouth open.
I've imagined the prince's face. I've remembered every humiliation, every violation.
The burning intensifies, surges up my throat until I'm certain, certain, that fire will pour out.
Nothing.
Just heat. Just that constant simmer that never quite boils over into something useful.
I'm in my chambers, practicing a disarming technique I watched one of the knights demonstrate yesterday, when Prince Benedict walks in without knocking. He never knocks. Why would he? I'm his property.
"Adelaide." He doesn't even look at me, just walks to my window and stares out at his kingdom. His kingdom. Everything here is his. Including me. "I've arranged for the palace physician to examine you."
I finish hiding the knife in my wardrobe. He's still not looking at me, so he's non-the-wiser. "Examine me for what?"
"You're not pregnant." He says it like an accusation. Like I'm failing at the one job I was kidnapped for. "It's been three months. You should be showing by now."
The burning in my throat intensifies. "Maybe your aim is off." I pick up a book and pretend to read it so I don't have to look at him.
He turns, finally looking at me. "Excuse me?"
"Your aim." I set the book down carefully, deciding to meet his eyes. "Or maybe it's not aim. Maybe it's the equipment. Hard to hit a target with a toothpick."
His face flushes red. "You ungrateful little—"
"Ungrateful?" The word tastes like poison. "For what exactly should I be grateful? The nightly humiliation? The complete lack of pleasure? The fact that you can't find my cunt even when you're inside it?"
"You're a princess now," he snarls, stalking toward me. "You should be on your knees thanking me for saving you from that monster."
"That monster made me come so hard I saw stars. Actually paid attention to me. He read me books every night. You make me want to fake sleep for another hundred years."
"I'll have you know," Benedict sputters, "I've read extensive texts on marital relations. The royal physician himself told me I'm quite... proficient." His voice cracks on the last word.
I arch an eyebrow. "Texts written by other virgins, I assume? Did you compare notes in the castle library?"
His face burns crimson. "I know exactly what women want!"
"Clearly," I drawl, "which is why you're so desperate to prove it."
His hand shoots out, grabbing my arm. For a moment, I think he's going to hit me. Part of me wishes he would. At least then I'd have an excuse to use one of my hidden blades.
But he doesn't hit me. Instead, something shifts in his eyes. Something darker. Hungrier.
He pulls down the front of my dress, exposing my lace-clad breasts.
Then his mouth is on my breast through the fabric of my bra, and he latches on like a starving infant.
The sounds he makes... wet, desperate suckling noises mixed with these high-pitched whimpers that make every hair on my body stand on end.
"So soft," he whines against my chest, his voice muffled and petulant. "Mother always said... she always said a wife should... should nurture her husband..."
Oh God. Oh God.
I feel bile rise in my throat along with the burning. He's actually nursing. His mouth working at my breast through the fabric, making obscene wet sounds, little frustrated whimpers when he can't get what he wants.
"Why don't you make milk yet?" he complains, pulling back just enough to look at my chest with genuine disappointment in his eyes.
Like a child denied a treat. "You're supposed to make milk.
That's what breasts are for. Mother's physician said once you're pregnant, you'll make milk, and then—" He cuts himself off, latching on to the other breast with renewed fervor.
The burning in my throat intensifies. I want to vomit. I want to scream. I want to set him on fire.