Forbidden Desire

9 - A Strange Peace

The silk of my robe was heavy. It felt like a wet weight against my back, the medicinal padding beneath it shifting with every agonizing inch I breathed. It pulled me deeper into sheer pain. An absolute, authoritative shame I hadn't felt the likes of ever before. I didn't look at the glazed, mahogany table. I looked at the grain of the rug, a maze of blue and white that felt like a map of my shame. A trap I'd set for myself.

The hybrid introduces herself into my room, "Good morning, Miss." My bare feet tap along the floorboards and I climb away in retreat from the window, leaving the sky, the birds that I desired to join. "The Lord wishes for you to dine with him.'"

So he can keep my movements? Belittle me? Find amusement in my pain?

"Will you tell me your name? M-My... my name is Lyra." Finally, my shoulders felt weightless from the iron rod that had caged them for over a week. Speaking my name into the chilled air of Blackwood House was a liberation of boundless buoyancy.

Her raven-bound hair falls back as she turns her back to me. This girl had been all I knew since my arrival. My only source of nourishment. She fed my boredom with books shaped as an apology, given my collection of vocabulary was miniscule. She bathed me, clothed my nude, bandaged my wounds and now she wanted to abandon me, her, vocalized word, "Saoirse," she gently whispers, as if a delicate flower that would break were she reckless with her balanced hold. She paves her way to hand me my collar, but this time, as she clips it around my collarbone, it isn't with the distant crisp detachment she usually abodes.

There is a humid air in the way her olive-tanned, ebony fingers move about. As if our hushed tellings were a shared secret. It evaporates into a thin subtle mark as she pulls away, "If you'll follow me, Miss...L... y... ra."

I take the position of fours, crawling behind her like a newborn babe as she leads to down the halls, down the sprawling steps, past the unbothered staff. I'm introduced to his horizon. A vertical shape under his eye. The hybrid, Saoirse allows my entry, shifting to blend with the rest of them. Their palms cupped on aprons, gaze below their master's, heads bowed. Whether in respect or fear, I do not know.

I reached the leg of his chair, the clink-clank of my chain disturbing my nerves, and stayed there as my knees sunk into the plush pile. I waited for the command. I waited for the "Pet" to be acknowledged. The chef's delicious trade distracts my senses from nipping coolness of the marble below. The room, while crowded, still managed to fall empty. It took the same hue of blue, mustard lilies that perfected in the vase heirloom a top the round French surface, and the breeze that passing through the Austrian drapes and the hung-back, translucent voile.

"Why are you on the floor?"

His voice didn't carry my name. It never did. To him, I was girl or pet, or simply a silence he had bought at an auction. But today, the voice was unfamiliar. Lower, strained, as if the words were being pulled through a throat made of glass. His lean was alert, every word a careful, premeditated prayer. A glint of - no, it couldn't be. It wasn't a glint. It was hot-white regret.

"I thought... I thought it would be preferred," I whispered, my gaze fixed on the silver buckles of his boots. "Given our last encounter. My past masters... they did not allow the likes of me to sit in esteemed halls. Certainly not at eye level."

Even the Collector never saw it fit for his showcase to grace the dining room he allowed relatives and friends. My past meals, repeatedly served in sliver platter dog bowls, chipped and dated glassware, and scraps of which were unwanted or unfinished.

I felt the air in the room thicken with a moisture that breached my nostrils. I risked a glance up and saw a dark, visceral flush staining his high cheekbones. Lord Blackwood, the man who had watched my blood mix with the library rain without blinking, who had crawled me through the busy district of academia, was... embarrassed? The guilt was a physical thing in the air, a "blush" that felt like the first crack in his iron armor. A glimpse of the man underneath.

"Should there be silence or anger between us, whoever is at fault does not matter," he said, his voice hardening to mask the shame. And why would he feel that? "You do not belong on the floor. Get up. Sit in the chair."

I climbed onto the velvet cushion, my body screaming as the fabric pressed against the fresh welts on my back. I saw him trace my wince, his eyes dark with a stormy, unspoken conflict.

"How is your back?" he asked.

The question was a jagged apology. A deliberate attempt to forget the past and rewrite it with the now. Something new and raw. It was never done. Masters didn't feel anything for their collection but vicious, heated hate, rooted in the dark histories. We both knew he was the architect of the bandages I wore. For a second, his mask slipped, and I saw a flash of guilt and an unspoken apology. It was the most I had ever received from a man like him... a confession without words.

"The maids say it is... healing," I murmured. "The faded one... the one from the encampment. It still aches when it rains."

The master's jaw tightened until the bone looked ready to snap. "I will deal with the encampment brokers personally. They omitted much from your provenance." He pushed a plate of fruit toward me.

The steam from the coffee rose in silver curls, twisting into the morning light like ghosts. I sat on the chair, the velvet a mockery against the stiff, medicinal bandages beneath my dress, and stared at the porcelain plate. It was too white. Too clean. It made the silence in the breakfast nook feel heavier, like a physical weight pressing on my shoulders. I listen to his staccato breathing, balanced and at ease. The opposite of my tremulous one. Across from me, Lord Blackwood sat like a statue carved from shadows.

Napkin tucked to catch the kitchen's art, cardigan rolled to the sophistication of his elbows. He hadn't looked at me yet, his focus fixed on a glass of dark liquid that didn't smell like coffee. A whiff of metallic tung about.

I waited for the blow. The thundering comments. I waited for the command to return to the floor. But the only sound was the rhythmic tick of a clock somewhere in the hall. "The cook prepared a variety this morning," master said, his voice cutting through the quiet like a dull blade. It lacked the jagged roar of the courtyard, but it still made me flinch. "Tell me, pet... what is it you like to eat?"

I froze. My mind went blank, a hollow cavern where an answer should have been. I looked down at the array of fruits, the golden pastries, and the eggs that smelled of butter and salt. The freshly baked bread, still steaming, an indication it had shortly been pulled out from the oven. A flash of time and I'm back in my cell. Only a number to distinguish me from the rest. The beasts fed us through tubes, and when allowed, a rarity for us to gather, the scraps of their galas provided.

He controls the precision of the dull-edged knife. A professional of repetition. The oily spread of the butter across the grain of the heated toast was overwhelming.

"I... I don't know, Master," I whispered. The word Master felt like a stone in my mouth, cold and heavy.

He finally looked up. His eyes weren't angry. They were searching, cataloging the way I gripped my silk napkin until my knuckles turned white. "You don't know? You've lived twenty years. Surely you have a preference."

"I have lived twenty years on what was left behind." I said, the honesty slipping out before I could catch it. I thought of the encampment, of the grey gruel and the stale crusts we fought over like dogs. For the entirety of their entertainment. "Preference is for people who have choices. I have only ever had hunger and an empty stomach."

A flicker of something, guilt perhaps, passed over his sharp features. He leaned back, the leather of his chair creaking.

"Then we shall consider this your first lesson in 'Choice,'" he said, his tone shifting into something more clinical, more purposeful. "You will eat with me. Every breakfast, every lunch, every dinner. You will try what is put before you, and you will tell me what pleases you and what offends you. You will find out who you are through the things you share with me."

I looked at a small, red fruit, a strawberry, I thought. It looked like a drop of blood against the white china. I wanted to try. It was the thought of being abandoned when he realized my useless purpose, I feared. "And if I find I like nothing, My Lord?"

"Then we will keep searching until the world runs out of flavors," he replied. The silence returned, but it was different now. It wasn't the silence of a predator waiting to strike. The awkwardness had broken down into understanding. One where we both held roles that required fulfilment. If such were met with our absolute performance, then a bright future lay ahead. It was the silence of a map being drawn. I reached out, my fingers trembling, and picked up the red fruit. It was sweet, tart, and cold. A ripe explosion of wet flavor that made my eyes sting. The sweet bitterness a blossoming addiction.

"It is... good," I murmured.

"Good," he repeated, and for a second, I saw the man who had sent up the books as an olive branch and an apology that would determine a reset, "We will start with the basics. Then, we will move to your mind.

"I am told the books I provided remain untouched. Was the subject matter not to your liking?"

I felt the heat rise to my face. "I wished to enjoy them. Truly. But the letters... they are thorns of insult to lack of knowledge. My education was... restricted."

He didn't mock me. Instead, he spoke of Pet Training, "Recreation centers around the city allow for slaves to be... brought up to date," he tried, tailoring it like a suit meant for a Lady. Rhetoric, science, music, the maths and sports. And then he said it: Horses.

The heavy cloud in my chest lifted. I could not contain my excitement even as I tried to mask it as nonchalant curiosity. "Horses? You would let me...?" The kindness of the auction encampment had reached the threshold of allowing a circus. The glitter of the tightrope, the orchestrated dances, all of it held no candle to the horses, the wing of the lasso capturing it's bull. I had never felt so free, so high off desire to escape. To ride into the blazing sunset and leave my enslavement behind.

"When my schedule clears, I will take you riding myself," he promised, his tone indifferent and momentum, though his gaze stayed locked on mine. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to teach you the ways of the beasts."

Then the "cage" returned. The ground rules. I was free to move about the house and society, but never without a shadow. He was to be informed of my every want, everything piece of food I ate, who dressed me, who I interacted with, the when, the date, the time and why. Only his permission was absolute. I was never to speak unless spoken, never to be seen, unless requested. And then, the warning: the Forbidden Room at the end of the East corridor. Never enter.

"We attend a social outing hosted by my cousin later this week," he concluded, his voice turning back to ice. "You will be silent. You will be mine. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master," I said.

Peace had found its resolve, settling like the stitch of wool and the sheltered hug of a duvet between us.