Chapter 2: The king
1532 Words
Elena's POV
The crowd went silent, and I felt his eyes on me like a weight I could not shake.
Luis Montero was still standing over me, and his black eyes had not moved from my face. He was looking at me like he was trying to read a book written in a language he did not understand.
I stayed on my knees. I did not move, I did not speak, and I did not beg.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Elena," I said. My voice was small, but it did not shake.
"Elena what?" his voice grew colder.
"Elena Flores." I replied.
He tilted his head, and his black eyes moved over my face like he was reading a book written in a language he did not understand.
He did not recognize me. He could not, because he had not seen me that night at the warehouse. If he had, then I would have been long dead. Back then I was a child, but now I am a woman.
He stared at me for a long time, and then he asked, "Why are you not crying?"
I thought about all the times I had cried in my life. From when my mother died, when my father remarried, when my stepmother hit me for the first time, when I was locked in the cellar, and down to when I was thrown into the truck. But none of it had helped. Crying had never changed anything, it only made them want to hurt me more.
I had learned that lesson in the coldest way possible. Tears were not a tool for healing, they were a signal to predators that you were weak, and the weak did not survive in this world. My stepmother, my father, and the men who put me in chains taught me that.
"Because tears never helped before," I said loudly.
Something flickered across his face like confusion, surprise, or something else I could not name.
He tilted his head, and his black eyes moved over my face again. He was searching for something, and i could feel it. He was looking for the fear that should have been there, the begging that should have been pouring out of my mouth, or the tears that should have been streaming down my face. But I gave him none of those things. I gave him nothing but silence and stillness.
I did not flinch, and I did not look away either. I looked at him like I could see through him, and like he was not a king or a killer or a monster. But just a man.
He had scars scattered across his knuckles, probably from punching people to death, and another across his jawline, like he barely survived a knife fight.
His hands shook.
I saw it. His hands were shaking, and I did not know why or what it meant. His hands were trembling, his chest was rising and falling too fast, and he was looking at me like he had never seen anyone like me before.
The hands that had killed a man without blinking, and had wiped blood on a white handkerchief, those very same hands were shaking, and I did not understand why.
A man like Luis Montero did not shake. He made other people tremble, and whole cities shake just from the mention of his name. But here he was, standing in front of me, and his fingers were trembling like a scared child. I wanted to look away, or close my eyes. But I could not. I kept watching his hands shake, and I felt something strange in my chest. It was not fear, it was something else that I did not have a name for.
Without turning to the crowd, he commanded. "Leave." His voice was cold, hard, it carried power, and no one argued. The men and women in expensive clothes scattered like leaves in the wind, and the courtyard emptied until it was just him and me and the snow falling from the sky.
He looked down at me. His black eyes were still, but his hands were still shaking. "You are not a prisoner," he said. His voice was different now. It carried a bit of softness, and it felt almost confused.
I did not understand why he was telling me this. I was on my knees. I had been beaten, drugged and thrown into a truck like a piece of cargo. Now I was in his fortress, surrounded by his people, and locked behind walls that no one had ever escaped. And he was telling me I was not a prisoner.
The word did not make sense in my mouth, and it did not make sense in my head either. If I was not a prisoner, then what was I? A guest? A gift? A toy? I did not know, and that not knowing was worse than knowing.
"Then can I leave?" I asked.
He did not answer. He just looked at me with those black eyes, and I knew the answer even before he turned away. The answer was NO. It had always been no, and it would always be no. I was not only a prisoner in name, but in every way that mattered.
He walked back through the crowd of people that had already left the courtyard, and his boots echoed on the stone floor. He did not look back, and he did not say another word. He just walked away, then the doors closed behind him, and I was alone.
The silence in the courtyard was so loud that it hurt my ears. I could still smell his cologne, his smoke, and something wild that I could not name.
I stayed on my knees for a long time after he left. The snow kept falling, and it melted on my skin, but I did not move. I did not know how long I knelt there, because I could not tell.
My knees had become numb, my hands were still tied behind my back, and my face was still stiff with dried blood. But I did not move. I was waiting for someone to come back and tell me what to do. I was waiting for someone to tell me if I was going to live or die.
A guard came a while later, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. My legs were numb from the cold and the kneeling, and I stumbled, but he did not care. He just dragged me through the courtyard, through a set of heavy wooden doors, and down a long hallway with torches on the walls.
He pushed me into a room and closed the door behind me. I heard the lock click, and I breathed a little because I was alone now.
The sound of the lock was loud in the quiet room. It was the sound of a cage closing, and I knew that because I had been in cages before. My stepmother locked me in the cellar when I was thirteen. I stayed there for two days with no food and no water. I learned then that being alone was better than being with people who wanted to hurt you. But this was different.
This cage was warm. It had a fire burning in the fireplace, a bed with soft blankets and pillows, and food on a table. This cage was very comfortable, and that made it more dangerous. A cold cage was honest about what it was, but a warm cage was a lie.
It looked nothing like the dungeon I had been expecting. But I did not trust it, because kindness from a monster was always a trap.
I sat against the wall with my back to the headboard and my knees pulled to my chest. The fire was warm on my face, but I did not move closer to it. I did not trust the warmth, or the bed, and i did not trust the food on the table or the water in the pitcher.
Because trust was a thing I had lost a long time ago.
My mother told me to trust people when I was young. She said most people were good, but she was wrong. Most people were not good, they only wanted something from you, and when they got it, they either left, or they hurt you, or they sold you to a man like Luis Montero.
I did not sit on the bed, I did not eat from the food on the table, and I did not drink the water. I just sat there with my back to the wall and my eyes on the door, the way I had learned to sit when I was a child and my stepmother roamed the halls looking for someone to hurt.
I thought about the warehouse, about the crate I had hidden in that night, and I thought about the blood on Luis Montero's hands that night from the man he had killed.
I thought about Luis Montero, and I wondered why his hands had been shaking when he stared at me.
But I did not sleep.
- Writer
