Page 13 of Prize for the King
The Tyrant groans and shakes his head like a dog shaking off water. I still look at him rather than my father, who will get up—if only I don’t see what happened to him. If I don’t see it, I reason, it’s like it did not happen.
“There goes my wedding night,” I think the Tyrant says, pressing both hands to his face.
But I’m not sure. He might have said something else. There’s a ringing in my ears, and the whine gets louder, and I don’t understand how I’m able to make such a sound. Don’t I need to breathe?
“Fix it,” he says, his voice coming from afar.
Two graceful, male hands fall on my shoulders, and the whine stops. I draw in a shaky breath. Tears fall down my face, and a gentle hand covers my eyes.
“Come on, little diamond. It will be all right. Here, let’s stand up. Good girl. Very nice. You can keep crying, but don’t look, okay? I’ll guide you out of here. You can trust me.”
It’s Khay, I realize through the fog of baffled grief inside me, grief that feels misplaced, because my father will get up any second if I just don’t…
But I have to see it.
“Wait!”
I push Khay’s hand off my eyes and turn, gasping when I see the body. There is no mistaking it. My father is dead, his face smashed in, an ugly mess of blood, bone, and tissue. He lies on his back with arms and legs akimbo. So undignified.
“Why did you do that, little diamond?” Khay asks with gentle reproach. “You really didn’t have to see.”
I don’t reply, nor do I protest when he turns me, and we resume walking. My legs move without any directions from my brain, as if they are separate from the rest of me.
Out of the throne room, through the echoing entrance hall, its floor dirty with the same bloody mud that covers the Tyrant’s boots, all of their boots. A woman screams in a side room to the rhythmic sounds of flesh slapping against flesh. I turn that way, as if in a dream, and Khay turns me back.
“No. Enough for today.”
“Beasts,” I whisper with numb, bloodless lips. “Monsters.”
“Be that as it may, I am the monster in charge of you, and I won’t let you get any more upset today,” Khay says in a calm, firm voice.
“Don’t you mind?” I ask, my mind briefly diverted from horror and grief by his unexpected reaction. “Being called a beast?”
“I don’t mind,” he says, leading me slowly up the stairs. I stumble more than once, and he supports me every time. “It’s no wonder you think this way after everything you saw. And maybe you’re right. Maybe we are beasts, but there are worse things to be. Hey, move it! Not out in the open!”
He calls ahead, and I realize there are shouts up on the landing, women sobbing, begging, women in pain. Grunts and complaints come from the Agnidari men, but before we reach the landing, the hall upstairs is empty, muffled sounds of rape coming from behind closed doors.
“Why are they doing this?” I ask in a voice completely devoid offeeling. I am numb in and out.
“Because you did it first,” Khay says, and for the first time since I met him, his voice is not kind. It’s vicious. “You did it to my sisters. We only give back what we got.”
“I did not. None of those women hurt your sisters,” I say in a whisper, unable to comprehend his logic.
“No, but their fathers and brothers did,” Khay says with scorn. “No matter. Lead me to your room, and I’ll find you a maid for a bath or whatever you need to get better.”
“I need today to never have happened.”
Khay snorts without amusement. “Too late for that.”
When we reach my rooms, he gets me settled in my embroidery chair by the window, the same one I sat in just a few hours ago, pondering death. It feels like years have passed since then. The room stinks, but I am too numb to mind.
When I see coarse fabric crumpled on the floor, the dress and bonnet my father brought me, I flinch. My throat burns with guilt. Oh, I should have listened. I should have donned the disguise and taken one rape. Now, I’ll have a lifetime of them, and no father.
Khay leaves, and I stare ahead at the wall, now bright with the morning light.Not even a day has passed, I marvel as I sit there, my conscious mind floating somewhere under the ceiling, my body unfeeling, left behind.
Not even a full day, and I am married, orphaned, and my kingdom is lost.
Soon he comes back, leading in a sniffing, red-faced serving girl, who hurriedly fixes her clothes as she comes in.
