Teach Me Dirty

Immediately, she coughed, spitting the catarrh across his face. He froze for only a moment before a fierce, scorching slap landed on her cheek, and she screamed, tasting her blood. His other hand shot up, scrubbing the filth from his skin with an angry force that made her stomach turn. Then, without a word, he seized her by the neck, holding her close as his dark eyes bore into hers. “You b***h…” he growled, his voice low, and sounding dangerous. She slapped at his hands on her neck, her claws scraping against his grip, struggling for each desperate gasp of air. Her chest heaved, her throat burning, yet she refused to yield. He didn’t relent, he didn’t even flinch… how dare she spit her contempt in his face, defying him so boldly. She had thought he wanted to strangle her to death, and for a moment, the world narrowed to the choking grip around her neck. Then he released her, and she gasped, coughing violently. But freedom a lie… he seized a fistful of her hair, yanking her backward. She screamed, every inch of her scalp on fire, her head pulled like a rag doll. “Let go!” she cried, struggling, and clawing at his hands, but he didn’t care. His eyes were dark, unyielding, and merciless. He dragged her roughly along the cold, uneven pavement, each step scraping her skin against stone. When they reached the high stair, he finally released her hair but gripped her head, forcing her to face the gruesome sight above. A decapitated head, impaled on a spike, leered down at her with empty eyes. Her heart shattered, and her knees gave way instantly. She sank to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably, fresh tears streaming down her face. Her hands clawed at the cold stone as grief flooded her, leaving her trembling and broken. “Father!” she cried out, her voice cracking, as though the dead could somehow hear her. The memory of him, lifeless and defiled, burned fresh in her mind. Nudoz had done this… he, the monster, the beast… who else would slit a father’s throat and force his daughter to stare at it? Her chest heaving with sobs and anger, and hatred coiled around her heart. Every fiber of her being screamed vengeance. She despised Nudoz more than any living soul, more than fear, more than grief itself. “You know whose head is going to be there if you don’t behave yourself? Your mother’s.” His voice was cold, each word a blade against her heart. He wasn’t bluffing… Nudoz had already killed her father, and she knew without doubt he would do the same to her mother. And this made fear clawed at her chest. “No! Don’t hurt my mother… don’t,” Kehanar cried, her voice breaking, and the tears kept streaming. “She did nothing to you!” Her hands trembled as she reached out, pleading, desperate to make him relent, but the beast in front of her seemed deaf to mercy. She begged inside her heart, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her break. Her pride trembled, yet her fear for her mother’s life burned far deeper. Nudoz turned his back on her as if her words were nothing but dust… her words mean nothing to him. He took a step away, then paused. Slowly, he glanced back at her, his gaze cruel, before flicking his eyes toward the steep stair beneath them. “If you think you won’t be able to watch me kill your mother next, you can jump from here and die. Then, I’ll cut your head off and place it beside your father’s.” The threat settled like a death sentence, stealing the strength from her bones. He turned, and walked away, each step echoing against the cold stone, leaving her trembling in place, uncaring whether she would jump or live. Kehanar remained kneeling, her body pressed to the ground, numb and broken, unable to rise. Her eyes had long since averted their gaze on her father’s head impaled on the spike. The sight seared into her mind, a cruel and unending torment. She stared down the long stair, torn between following Nudoz’s cruel suggestion and the unbearable thought of witnessing her mother’s death, just as her father had been slaughtered. Then, from behind her, two guards emerged, seizing her roughly. They looped a heavy chain around her neck and began dragging her upward. She winced, biting back a cry of pain, the metal biting into the same place Nudoz’s hand had once gripped. They dragged her back to her cell, the door slamming shut behind her. She sank to the cold, stone floor, shivering, her tears still wet on her cheeks. She sniffled through the pain, trying to steady her trembling body, and stared at the shadows around her, wondering how her life could be ripped apart so completely, so suddenly, in the blink of an eye. Six nights ago, she had been a princess, walking the halls of Taringhal with servants bowing at her feet, her father, King Malo, commanding respect and fear as a powerful ruler. Who could have imagined that Nudoz would strike so brutally, slaying her father, shattering her world, and enslaving the entire kingdom? Now she and her family were prisoners, their lives turned upside down, and their power stripped away in a single, merciless night. “Take off her clothes. She’s a slave and not allowed to wear those,” a guard barked from outside. Kehanar’s weak, terrified eyes snapped open, and widening in shock. No… they shouldn’t, they wouldn’t dare stripe her clothes off her. The walls of her cell seemed to close in, suffocating her, and every instinct screamed that her dignity were slipping away. The heavy door creaked open, and she forced herself to stand immediately, her body was trembling so badly. A cold, cruel voice slithered into her cell. “Let’s see how the princess looks beneath that gown,” he sneered, his eyes glinting with malice. “Would your breasts be firm, tempting, and suckable… or sagged and worthless?”