Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
M ila
“Does Arthur like his socks folded this way?”
My mother is frowning at a pair of balled socks as if it is the most perverse thing she has ever beheld. My mother’s ability to become deeply offended by very small things is unparalleled.
“Yes, Mother. He does that himself.”
I am heavily pregnant, and my family is here to help. So far, that help has come in the form of questioning literally every decision that has ever been made in this house, big or small.
We moved from the fortress to another building in what is becoming the artistic precinct in the city. Arthur has renovated not only the home, but the surrounding area. He demolished an entire block, built the property in the middle of it, and instituted grassy grounds replete with plants. This is now the only house in New Boston with a lawn. Tall walls protect us from prying eyes, so there is a certain privacy even in the middle of the bustling city.
“What is this?” She holds up a greasy bag.
“Oh, that is from a food place that Arthur likes,” I explain. “We get deliveries every week or so. They make the best burgers, fries, and milkshakes.”
“Burgers?” Mother says the word in the same way Arthur used to say the word Soma. I say used to, because he now snarls it with intense loathing. My husband was always a warrior, but now he is perpetually ready to go to war for me. Protective is an understatement.
“I’m going to inherit the family home,” Maraline tells me. “The entire estate is going to be mine, now that you are married and going to have a baby.”
Some of her intense disappointment at not being chosen to be Arthur’s bride has faded, though I know I saw jealousy on her face when she met him. He is a very handsome man, and the air of tragedy that hangs about him since the rebels attacked has only served to give him a sort of maudlin appeal.
“Oh, Arthur!” My mother melts as he walks into the room. Arthur is only a few years older than her, I realize. “How are you? You look like you’ve been terribly busy. I am so sorry my daughter makes you fold your own socks.”
Arthur looks at her, perplexed, then glances at me with a questioning look. I shrug.
“Mila needs to rest,” he says. “Her due date is approaching, and the doctor says she needs rest.”
“I certainly never rested when I was pregnant,” my mother says smugly. “Of course it is all different now. They coddle mothers. I hope you don’t think you’re going to get to lie around like this once you have the baby, Maraline. Sorry, Mila.”
“Mila will have all the rest she needs, whenever she needs it,” Arthur interjects. “And she needs it now. If you’d excuse us, ladies.”
He gently, but firmly ushers my mother and sister out of our bedroom. They go, smiling and swooning, apparently unaware of their general unpleasantness.
“Do you want me to send them home?” He lies down next to me and wraps me up in his arms.
“No,” I laugh, though in some regards I want to say yes. It is good to see them because they are my family and I love them. It is also good to see them because they have no idea what happened here. The mess with the rebels was kept very quiet. Nobody wanted it becoming public knowledge that several members of the upper echelon of New Boston society were so corrupted they staged an attack on the Archon-General and his family.
I am sure there are rumors, but my mother and Maraline do not know about those, and do not care to know about them. They regard the city with intense mistrust as it is.
“How are you feeling?” He nuzzles me gently.
“Pregnant,” I reply.
“Not for much longer,” he reminds me.
One week later, I have the baby. It is a generally unpleasant experience that does not really bear dwelling on, besides the fact that the birth results in my daughter, who I instantly love so completely I can barely stand it.
Arthur is absolutely besotted as well. In his eyes, and mine, she is absolute perfection.
“Her little toes,” he murmurs. “They’re perfect. How can anything be so small, and so perfect?”
I know precisely how he feels.
The three of us are lying in bed together, bonding as a family, and sharing a kind of love that I am almost certain I have never experienced before. After all we have been through, this feels closer and more wholesome.
“Do you have a name for her?” He asks the question.
“Do I get to name her?”
“After seeing what you went through to have her, you can make any decision you like,” he says, his tone genuinely admiring. “You were a warrior.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Warriors rarely do,” he says. There is a hint of tone in his voice, something like regret, but more than that. Melancholy, perhaps.
“I’d like to call her Lydia,” I tell him. “I know it’s not a traditionally noble name, but…”
“It’s perfect,” he says. “Lydia.”
“And one day we will tell her about who she is named after,” I smile. “We’ll tell her how strong she was. And how brave. And how she gave herself fully and entirely.”
“I think that is beautiful,” he says. “Though I suspect your mother is expecting you to name the baby after her.”
“I am not calling this baby Interfering Wench,” I say.
He laughs. I laugh. Lydia doesn’t laugh, but that’s only because she doesn’t yet have any control over her sweet little face. She understands though, I can tell.
“I think this baby is spoiled.”
Baby Lydia is three weeks old, can only see bright colors, and cannot yet focus her eyes, and yet my mother is convinced I have ruined her already. I have done my very best to not respond to any of her maternal jibes over the past few weeks. It is becoming increasingly challenging, to say the least.
“Also, what kind of a name is Lydia? It’s very common.” She screws up her face.
“It’s the same kind of name it was yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. It’s her name.”
“No need to get huffy!” my mother says, immediately becoming extremely huffy. “You should give her something to eat. She looks hungry. Pureed carrots.”
“She’s too young, Mother.”
“Ridiculous! In my day, babies ate solids when we decided they should eat them.”
“You know, if you don’t like the way I am raising my daughter, you’re free to…”
“Arthur!” My mother trills his name. “Oh, it is so nice to see you again. I’m so sorry my daughter didn’t bear you a son. Such a pity.”
Arthur looks at her. There is a brief pause in which he parses that rudeness. I see him come to a decision. “Get out.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have disrespected my hospitality and your daughter for the last time. Pack your things and return home.”
My mother’s face falls. “Oh, but the baby… she needs her grandmother.”
“Nobody needs a sniping old woman.”
“We’re practically the same age!”
I have to hand it to my mother; that is quite the zinger.
“Old enough to know when to hold our tongues,” he says. “I will call you transport to the airport. Be ready in an hour.”
“Please,” my mother says. “I’m sorry to have offended you, but…”
“Oh, so close,” he replies. “You do know the words for an apology, but not the underlying sentiment, it would seem. Do not worry. I know precisely how to make those incapable of regret very sorry indeed. Now go pack, or you will be going to the airport with no luggage at all.”
My mother bursts into tears and runs from the room. I wish I could tell her that it won’t work, but I am busy feeding my daughter, and it is a relief to let my husband deal with her.
He crosses over to the chair where I am sitting with Lydia in my arms, and looks down at me with an expression of loving brutality.
“I will protect you from any and all threats,” he says. “Even those that come from close by. Nobody will ever hurt you again, do you understand?”
I smile and I nod.
A year has passed. Lydia’s first birthday has come, as has my twentieth. A cake has been smashed into her face, the furniture, and the floor. I have enjoyed the remnants that managed to stay on the plate. Life is good.
But something is wrong.
I know it every time I look at Arthur. I see a sadness in him. Something changed the night he rescued me from the rebels. I know he’s been to war before, so I don’t see why the fighting would have caused him to become quite so hollow behind the eyes.
When he looks at Lydia and me, there is love in his eyes, but when I catch him in private moments, I see a different side to him. I see melancholy.
“Arthur?”
“Yes, my love?”
“What is wrong?” I do not ask the question casually. I ask it with the intensity and care with which it needs to be asked, and deserves to be answered.
He looks at me for a long moment. “Sometimes I forget that you know me so well,” he sighs. “There are things I cannot tell you. Not because I cannot trust you, but because I have been sworn to the kind of secrecy that threatens the safety of our family.”
I pause for a moment.
“Sounds serious,” I say.
“It is.”
“Why not just tell me anyway,” I suggest, giving him a grin. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
He snorts. “That’s a good question. What is the worst that could happen? I suppose I could be killed, you could be killed, Lydia could be… I can’t even bring myself to say that. There are things in this world that rely on my silence.”
“Do you remember when my mother was giving me grief about the way I don’t fold your socks?”
He frowns slightly in confusion. “Vaguely, why?”
“You told me that nobody would ever hurt me again.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want anybody to hurt you again either. I want you to stop being so sad.”
“I will get over it,” he tells me.
“No, you won’t. You’ll hide it, and you’ll try to pretend, but it will drive us apart eventually. We are husband and wife. We are parents to a child. We have to share our secrets.”
“We don’t.”
“If you’re going to be sad all the time, then I’m going to be…” I bite my lower lip, trying to think of a threat that might somehow lighten this situation and show him that I can be trusted. “I’m going to be very, very annoying.”
He lifts a brow. “More so than usual?”
Ouch. I can’t be angry at that. I suppose I deserved it. Opened myself up for it.
“All you need to do is continue to be your sweet self,” he says. “Time heals all wounds.”
“I’ve seen your body, so I know it also leaves scars.”
It is his turn to wince at the sharpness of my jibe, though I really did not mean it to be harsh.
I’ve failed in my attempt to broach the subject. Fortunately at that moment, our nursemaid brings the baby in, giving Arthur and me the opportunity to shower her with attention and ignore what is starting to feel increasingly broken between us.
Arthur
I refused to discuss the matter with Mila, and now I do not know where she is. I have noticed that she has been getting up earlier in the morning and going out. She leaves baby Lydia with the nursemaid.
One morning, I wake up as she is sneaking out of bed. It is only three in the morning. I follow her out of the house and downstairs. I am surprised to see that she enters the garrison. Though we moved from the tower, I still keep a small unit here on the property. We need to be well defended by soldiers whose loyalty is proven.
She has been much better behaved with the soldiers since we lost Lydia, but I did not know she was this familiar with them. It seems we have both been keeping our secrets.
I find her in the middle of a circle of three soldiers, training with them. I watch as she wields a sword. She is a novice, but there is a fierceness and a drive that shows she has made quick progress already, and will continue to make more. The soldiers she is working with are all women, and they are all well seasoned. None of them is as good as Lydia was, but I know all of them would make the same sacrifice she did if they were called to.
As I watch, I think about loyalty, how it can be so beautiful and so destructive at the same time. I think about what I have been loyal to, and why. And I watch my young wife do her best to become what she believes she needs to be.
I do not interrupt, not until the session ends. As the soldiers file out, I take hold of her and pull her into the same shadows in which I was lurking. I am sure they all knew I was there, and I am equally sure they all assumed that if I was not stopping them, they should not stop. They were right.
“Oh,” she says. “Arthur!”
“What are you doing?”
Mila looks up at me, her chin jutting out as she prepares to defend herself. She thinks she might be in trouble. She is not.
“I don’t ever want to depend on someone else’s life to save mine again,” she says. “Lydia should still be here, and I should know how to protect myself and my baby.”
“We won’t lose anybody else,” I say, hating the words because they feel like a lie to me.
“You don’t know that. I don’t know that. Even with the Artifice looking after us, bad things happen, because people are people.”
I think back to the sweet girl who came to me just over a year ago. I have taken so much innocence from her. Her physical and sexual innocence, and her moral innocence as well. She’s seen more than anybody should ever have seen.
“Don’t tell me I can’t do this, because I won’t stop,” she says.
“Is that right?”
Mila
He lifts a brow at me, before sweeping me suddenly up into his arms.
“Are you going to tell me what you will and will not do?” He questions me gruffly. “Are you going to be a disobedient bride? I think you’ve forgotten what I do to young ladies who don’t listen to me.”
I can tell he is not truly angry. He is being gruff, but there is a look in his eye that tells me he is pleased with me. The distance that has been feeling as though it might swallow us both up is diminished by this playful little conflict.
I am carried out of the general garrison and back inside the house, right through the entire place, all the way to the bedroom where I am kissed and stripped and finally fucked by my ardent husband.
“Get that sweet pussy on my cock,” he growls, pulling me down on his dick. I am sitting astride him, looking down at him, his hands on my hips as he locks me in place. His cock connects us, makes us one creature for a time. There is an intimacy to this position that I have greatly missed.
“We need to talk,” he says, fucking me slowly.
“You want to talk now?” I moan the question.
“Yes. Like this,” he says, rolling his hips skillfully to make his cock stretch me most expertly. He stretches his palm out, his thumb rubbing my clit as he finally talks to me.
“I can’t tell you everything I know about the world,” he says. “I wish I could, but it would put you in danger. What I can tell you is that I spent a lifetime serving the Artifice, and now I serve only you and our family.”
Those words would have been blasphemy before. If I know one thing about Arthur, it is that he is completely, fanatically devoted to the Artifice. He loves me, and he loves the baby, but the Artifice is what his life has been dedicated to.
“Nothing matters to me as much as you do,” he says. “I will continue to hold my position, and to serve the machine as long as it serves us. But I will never put you in a position of danger again.”
“You can’t stop it. We are important people, and you represent power and order. People will always be coming for you, and us, by extension.”
“What if I was to give it all up? Become normal?”
I laugh, feeling myself clench his cock as I do. “You’re not normal. You’re extraordinary, and you always will be. You are who you are. I just want to be ready. I want to be your equal. Your mate in all things. I don’t want to be the helpless little thing I was.”
“I am so proud of you,” he says, pulling me down to kiss me deeply. “Do you know how much I love you?”
“As much as I love you, probably.” I smile back at him. “Now, fuck me already. It’s time we had another baby.”
He grins up at me, his smile bright, his eyes lit with love.
“Yes, ma’am,” he rumbles, thrusting hard inside me. “Right away, ma’am.”
The End