Bound to the Hybrid King

Chapter 3: Summoned

Theia went to that place inside her mind. Where she so often retreated to when the room became somewhere she could not afford to be. It was no longer her on the bed, it was no longer her body being touched. She was still and somewhere far away.

Callan weight came down against her body and his grip moved from her wrist to her hip and the words continued, whispered with a closeness she had no way to increase the distance from.

You’re mine, do you understand that? You've always been mine.

He yanked her nightdress off, ripping it. Forcing her legs apart with his own.

No one is coming for you.

No one else wants you, Theia.

Be a good girl.

He gripped her hair so tightly her scalped screamed as he yanked her head to the side and he kissed her hard.

You’re nothing without me, nothing at all…

He undid his belt and pulled his pants down and then pushed himself into her hard and with all his anger. Pinning her wrists above her head with a hold that felt like he might snap them. She yelped despite herself.

But she did not fight. She had taught herself not to fight. She had learned through a very specific and detailed education that fighting produced a version of this that was somehow worse and longer and left ever uglier marks. Instead, she made herself go very still. The fire in the grate burned even lower, and she looked at the ceiling and the shadows it threw, she was somewhere else, almost, almost somewhere else.

Afterwards, he stayed and he was gentle.

It made her want to vomit.

This was the part she had spent the longest failing to understand. He would lift himself from her and settle beside her, and his hand would go to her hair with the same tenderness he might offer something he was trying to cherish. He would smooth it back from her face once, twice, three times, and his voice was low and even and almost kind.

'There, that’s a good girl.’ He murmured against her temple. 'See. You're all right. It’s ok.'

She did not say anything.

'You always think it's going to be something it isn't.' His thumb moved along her jaw, the same jaw he had gripped hard enough that it now ached. 'You make things harder than they need to be. You always have.' A pause. The fire cracked with its dying embers. His breath was still coming slowly back to its ordinary pace. 'You imagine things, Theia. That's what you do. You've always been so dramatic about this.'

She remained very still.

He kissed her forehead. And stayed beside for a while. The gentleness she had decided was worse. So much worse than anything else.

'Sleep,' he said finally, then stood, and she heard him moving around the room, the familiar sounds of him putting himself back into order, and then the door opened and closed, the footstep retreated and then there was silence.

When she was certain he would not return, she let out a breath that had been living somewhere behind her sternum for the past two hours, and she turned onto her back and began taking inventory of her body.

There was an ache in her wrists where he had gripped too hard, already tender and certain to be bruised by morning. The tightness across he’d hit her, would bloom purple soon. The still lingering pressure of figure tips on her shoulder would mottle her skin with marks. There was also a small cut at her collarbone, shallow but visible, she didn’t remember what had caused that, but she knew that it would need concealing beneath a higher collar or scarf tomorrow.

She noted each new injury carefully, methodically.

She did not sleep for a long time.

And she did not cry.

She had cried, many times, in the early months, it had changed nothing except to make her chest hurt worse the following day. Instead, she lay watching the frost patterns on her window, memorising them as if they were a language she might one day understand. She waited for her heart to find its way back down into her body, where her mind never seemed to want to stay.

He is the only one who comes, said the small, treacherous voice that lived in the same place as her loneliness.

She hated that voice, but she had never managed to silence it entirely.

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She was summoned to the throne room three days later, an event so unusual that even the servants tasked to ensure she was presentable seemed faintly startled by the order. They murmured to one another as they walked the hallway to her rooms. Then they presented her with a gown of pale blue silk that Theia recognised, distantly, as having belonged to her mother. Thankfully, it was long-sleeved and the neck was just high enough to cover her collarbone.

To their confusion and maybe distress, she dismissed the two handmaidens once they delivered the dress. She had not allowed anyone to help her dress in years, it was easier that way, than explaining away the bruising and scars. She wasn’t sure why they were surprised, she didn’t have her own hand maidens anyway and she didn’t need them.

She was capable of putting on a stupid gown by herself.

An hour later, she left her room and took a series of quick but uneasy steps through the gilded halls to the center of the palace.

She had not stood in the throne room for some time, maybe a year ago? Two? The last time a duke had visited from Tialian. Somehow in that time she had forgotten how the space swallowed sound, how the high ceilings made even every sound echo. Iskeld nobles lined the hall in their finest, a sea of unfamiliar faces that turned, briefly, to take in her arrival before returning their attention to the dais. To her father and to the man who stood beside him.

King Aldric did not look at her as she took her place near the front of the gathered court. He looked, instead, above the heads of his assembled court, the way he always did when he had no wish to see anyone’s feelings on what he was about to announce.

Nerves laced Theia stomach. She did not know why she had been summoned, but a sinking feeling told her it was not good. She kept a faint, pleasant smile on her face. No one looked at her. No one spoke to her. She was grateful in a way. Sometimes she felt like she’d forgotten how to interact with people beyond Isme and Mikka.

Her father's voice boomed, commanding. Dominating the entire hall's attention. All the rustling of skirts and low whisper stopped immediately.

‘Iskeld has known discontent, war, prejudice with the Aretrea for too long,’ he began, his voice pitched to carry, rich with the authority of a king. ‘For too long, we have known the pain of loss, the unease and discontent with those that carry otherworldly powers and it cannot continue. I will not allow it to continue. I will not allow my people to suffer the whims of these creatures anymore. We will no longer lose our people to this warring the Goddess Born. The wolves and the vampires have managed to settle their eternal differences. Now aligned. We too must now align ourselves. To keep Iskalia safe, to keep our borders secure. So, the discontent, the fear, the prejudice ends now. In the interest of peace for all our peoples.’

Theia almost laughed. Only her father could command his kingdom to simply stop their ridiculous prejudice of creatures that were so other to humans. As if it was that simple to command human mindsets and emotions, and a royal decree was all it took to simply put an end to it. A murmur moved through the hall, low and uncertain. At least she wasn’t the only one confused.

She should have known that her father would not simply command it but ensure it. As the whispers grew and gained more gravity, Theia felt her pulse tighten. Something wasn’t right. She had missed something important. That was normal. But what wasn’t normal was the weight in air.

‘To achieve this peace, a treaty has been brokered, and it will be sealed,’ the king continued as dread crawled up Theia’s spine. Even now, her father did not look at her. 'My daughter, Princess Theia, will be wed to Nikolai Ashryn, The Hybrid King of Aretrea, whose rule has brought peace between the vampire and werewolf and the Goddess Born kind for almost a century. Now he and your loyal princesses’ marriage will broker a new peace, one that will allow humans to live without fear.’