01. SALRYANNA

She sat alone in her throne room listening to the sounds of the coming war. Not merely coming; it was already here. Right outside, an unexpected strike, a coordinated assault on the castle they had no hope of withstanding, wham, bam, done. A crash. An explosion. An incoming force of arms.

Her eyes closed. She winced with each battle cry, breathed through every crashing door and breaking of glass, even as they came closer and it was clear the invaders were into the main hall. Not long and they would find her now. It was better that it was quick. It would mean less casualties on both sides. Less death. It wasn’t like this castle was truly defended once you made it past the protections of its reputation, and its natural geography, set into the mountain above the valley. And her magic. They’d blown through any magical barrier without pause, which suggested a strong sorcery on the side of the invaders.

She’d sent everyone else away as soon as it became clear what was happening and ordered her soldiers, ceremonial as they were and not even genuinely familiar with the castle, to fight only in self-defence. Run, she’d told them. Resistance was not possible now and she’d not have more blood on her hands than absolutely necessary.

There was too much of that as it was.

Another crash. She breathed out, a shaky gasp, and tried to prepare herself.

Her closest advisor flung open the throne room doors without any of their usual ceremony, rushing in, panic across their face. Tall, androgynous, middle-aged and kind, she always tried to listen to their advice, but knew already what they would say. They pushed the doors closed, barring them hard as she watched from her uncomfortable golden throne at the other end of the hall. She didn’t say it would do no good to barricade the doors, it wouldn’t stop any invading army long and especially not this one.

As soon as the doors were locked, the newcomer ran up the plush carpet runner along the middle of the hall. It was a measure of their panic that they didn’t even stop to bow as they reached her.

‘Your Majesty,’ they said. ‘Please, you can’t be here, you must—’

‘I’m not running,’ she cut them off. ‘Not from this. The valley is under my protection. If I run now, every person in it, every family, every child, will be lost. Even those damned invading soldiers. I won’t have others suffer for my mistakes, Francis.’

Francis shook their head. Not only her closest advisor, they were Governor of the valley and perhaps the only person she’d been able to consider a friend these last five years. Not close, exactly, but closer than she’d allowed any others, and they knew the truth of her position like no other did.

‘Then let me get you away from here. You can regroup, return with force enough to retake the valley,’ they said. ‘We have lost the day, Your Majesty. The armies of the Light have the upper hand. But we can escape, hide, then return to regain ground. If we go now.’

She let Francis say their piece before shaking her head. There were escape routes from the throne room and places she could hide, of course there were. She’d mapped them all out back when she’d first been granted power in this place, the throne, this castle.

Then she’d destroyed all the maps. Betrayal had given her this position. Her betrayal of another and now she would bear the consequences. She knew very well who led the armies now coming for her.

‘If I run, others will pay the price,’ she said. ‘You know that, Francis. I cannot leave this castle. I will not leave innocent people exposed and vulnerable.’

Francis clutched their hands together. ‘Please, Salryanna! He is leading their armies. You know he won’t be merciful, not with you.’

Her eyes closed momentarily. No, he was not going to be merciful. But she hardly deserved for him to be. She’d broken too many promises to him, five years ago, when he’d trusted her and came out the worse for it. She would find out the cost of that soon, no doubt.

Instead of saying as much, she sat straighter and moved her hands in front of her, murmuring a soft mantra. Hoping to summon up…well, anything, really. She was used to power at her fingertips, a magic that was hers to control.

Now there was nothing. No gestures, words, or reserves of power would conjure up a single leaf, vision, or protection. She’d been trying and failing all morning to summon any power at all.

She wondered if the demon she’d sold herself to had also abandoned her. Perhaps; that creature revelled in blood and pain, and this would lead to great amounts of both. More likely the sorcerers of the invading army had planned well in advance and ensured she was blocked from using her power before they even came near.

It was like becoming suddenly deaf or blind. Whole senses taken away. Yet it would be taking significant energy to maintain such a dampening on magic across the castle. So he must have brought powerful magicians indeed.

He would bring the Light. And she, who belonged to the demon, would suffer for it.

‘I’m without power,’ she said, trying to be as open with Francis as she could. ‘I won’t be able to protect you. You need to get out. Get down to the valley. Look after the people. I’ll do what I can from here.’

‘Salryanna, no! They will parade you a prisoner, so all will see their victory, then they will execute you. You have to come with me. Hide. Evade capture.’

‘They won’t kill me. He won’t kill me.’

She believed that with every bone in her body. He wouldn’t kill her, but only because he would want her to suffer and death would make that too quick.

A crash sounded near. Out in the hall. A thumping followed on the big doors to the room.

She stood, turning to the back corner of the room and the small door hidden behind the tapestry there. Pushing Francis towards it.

‘Go, Francis.’

They pulled back. ‘If you’re staying, so am I. That General needs to know the truth and you won’t tell it to him.’

‘How would doing so change anything? Go. Go. You can’t help me if you’re captured too.’

Which was the only argument to hold traction. They swore, hesitating, looking towards the hidden door and the only possible escape.

‘I will find a way to reach you,’ Francis promised. ‘Keep faith, my Queen. I will find a way to help.’

‘Run, Francis.’

And they did. At last. Just in time, for she only just made it back to the dais with her throne when the doors were finally flung open, despite the locks and bars upon them.

A golden army, a troop of men, stormed into the long hall. Swords and sweat and the white-yellow uniforms of the Light spreading out through her throne room. She tried not to react to the Light’s iconography now surrounding her. It was hardly as if the demon she served was any better than their god.

She stood tall before the throne, head held high, but not because she felt proud. Wiping clammy palms against the rich fabrics of her red and black dress; the colours unofficially associated with the demon. She might have felt better if she’d worn weapons on each hip, but she didn’t even have a dagger hidden in the folds of her skirts. What good would it have done? She no more knew how to wield a weapon than these soldiers understood what they were storming into now.

None of that mattered. She was not planning to resist.

As the men filtered through the room, in their middle, striding a path between them and all falling out of their way to make room for him, came their leader.

He marched in as if he owned the place, as if he had every right to it. Dark hair swept back, strong and tall, absolutely furious. Insignia of the Light on his shoulder, the uniform of the General, ultimate leader of the Light’s armies on the ground.

His eyes landed on her from the first. Walking to where she stood in front of her throne. There was hurt written across his face. Perhaps not as raw as five years earlier, when she had so badly betrayed him, landing her power and position by doing so. Yet it was clear her betrayals and lies had not been forgotten, and certainly not forgiven.

So be it. She hadn’t forgiven herself, either.

He came to stand in front of her, face-to-face for the first time in five long, lonely, heartbreaking years. She wondered desperately what she could say.

‘Callum,’ was all she managed, in a strangled, hoarse tone.

He looked at her a moment longer. Then he turned his back.

‘Arrest the witch and get her the fuck out of my sight,’ he ordered his men. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

It was his men who bound her hands, then dragged her away. He didn’t even bother to see to it personally.

She laughs as she lies back on the forest floor. Not caring for the dirt or twigs or leaves, simply content to enjoy the warmth of the day, gazing up at the sunlight speckled through the high canopy above. Beside her, he has propped himself up on one elbow and is stealing kisses when she lets him. They are innocent kisses, their passions are spent, for this moment at least. They’d return soon enough, no doubt. They always did.

‘I love it here,’ she says, almost a confession. She never tells anyone else the things she tells him. Only here, only with him, does she feel safe enough to be honest. ‘This place, where I can see the sunlight and the trees.’

‘You spend way too much time in that awful old castle,’ he says. ‘That’s your problem. You need to get out more.’

He’s joking; he knows she’s not allowed to leave the castle at all. Sneaking out here to meet with him is going against all the rules of her order—an order that is diametrically opposed to everything the army he serves stands for. He is a private, conscripted by the Light, because aren’t they always conscripted? She is a novice in the dark castle and so far as she can tell the entire point of novices is to obey orders, and it chafes. It isn’t the life she would choose, had she ever been given a choice. But it is the life she has, so she makes the best of it.

She turns to him with a serious expression.

‘Yes,’ she says, simply, then lifts one hand, makes a complicated motion in the air. Out of nowhere, a small white flower is conjured, appearing within her fingers. A daisy. It’s a common flower, a weed almost, but it is pretty and it reminds her of him. Flowers which bloom and stretch towards the sunlight.

She hands it to him, suddenly shy, and he takes it, contemplating its leaves.

‘She loves me, she loves me not,’ he says, with a hint of his wicked grin, though perhaps some vulnerability too. He only shows her that out here, in the forest, with the warmth of the sunlight through the trees on their faces, but she knows it’s there inside him. That he is sometimes just as scared and overwhelmed as she is.

He doesn’t move to pull any petals off as he says it.

‘She loves you,’ she says, with a smile, and he leans down to kiss her again…

…the freezing darkness was broken only when the flap in the bottom of the dungeon door pushed open to allow a strip of light and a plate of some muck shoved through. Gruel, or porridge, or the like. She crouched in the back corner of the cell, which was so tiny she couldn’t lie straight. If she stretched out a leg she could kick over the plate. She wrapped her arms about her knees instead, as if that might help conserve some body heat, shivering even so. They’d thrown wet and fetid muck all over her, soiling her dress, before pushing her into the cell to freeze.

The dungeons of the Witch Queen retained a frightening reputation, but they used to be worse. There’d once been sloping cells which they could fill to the knees with freezing water, so the inmate didn’t dare risk falling asleep, not even after days and days of staying awake, lest they drown. Other cells open to the high sun with no shade in the blistering heat, for an inmate to be stripped of all clothes and their skin to burn day after day. So many tortures possible before an interrogator bothered to pick up a pair of pliers.

She’d shut it all down not long after she took over. Not that she didn’t make some moves to maintain the frightening reputation of the place, which could be useful, but the worst of the dungeons she’d had filled in, and the others she’d just never used. She would’ve liked to have claimed it was because she was better than those who had come before her, that she was more moral, or fair, or just. Really, it had just been her guilt driving that move. Guilt and her memories.

When I am in charge… She remembered that, joking with him in the forest. The two of them so damn young, and so equally at the bottom of their respective orders, that ever being in charge of anything seemed a ridiculous impossibility. He was cannon fodder, conscripted to die in one of the Light’s many brutal wars. She was a novice to use up and slave for those more powerful in her order.

When I am in charge, I will free all the prisoners, she had declared back then, so imperiously. On both sides, because obviously I’ll be ruling all.

I’d fill in some of those castle dungeons if I were you, he’d answered with a chuckle. Never keep a dungeon as a supreme ruler that you wouldn’t survive being thrown in yourself, I reckon.

They’d laughed at that. At the very idea either of them could ever be in charge of anything.

She pulled her knees closer in and wished she had other memories to turn to, but they were the only ones she had where she’d felt warm and safe and, despite it all, loved. Perhaps there might’ve been other memories of when she was very small, with her family, but that’d all been taken away. She’d been so little when given to the castle and there were only vague and blurry glimpses of her past before it left in her head, images she barely understood.

So she turned to her memories of him to keep her warm, no matter it would only hurt more in the long run. When he’d confronted her in the throne room, nursing his pain and anger, she’d seen a hatred in his eyes that threatened to make these warmer memories a lie. No matter. She clung to them still. They were all she had now.

Some indeterminate hours later—time didn’t pass in the tiny black cell like it did elsewhere, at least not when you were stuck in it—another plate was shoved through the crack in the door. She no more leaned over to eat from it than she had from the other. It was possible the food was poisoned, but that wasn’t what stopped her; she might’ve eaten it if she’d known for certain it was. It was probably spat in, but if she’d truly been hungry that wouldn’t have stopped her either. She simply couldn’t find the will to eat. She barely had the will to move.

She closed her eyes and wondered if maybe he wouldn’t come for her at all. Maybe he’d just leave her to rot in this cell, forgotten by the world. No light, no warmth, no sound beyond the scrape of the plate occasionally pushed through the flap in the door. A person would quickly go mad down here, but maybe that would be a relief. Delusion was probably nicer than reality right now.

It was a fantasy. The plates they pushed in were metal. Maybe cheap, but there’d be a finite supply; they’d be back to collect those at some point. She couldn’t starve herself forever.

So she sat. And waited. Maybe she slept at times. Maybe she didn’t. The darkness and the cold were all she knew.

And then…the door opened.

She blinked against the light, turning her head away. Large, male bodies crowded the doorway. One reached down to grab her arm and drag her up, his grip bruising. He and his companions pulled her from the cell and shoved her out into the corridor beyond. She stumbled, only just managing to stop herself falling.

When she finally saw them in the light, dim though it still was, she didn’t recognise the men, but she did recognise the uniforms. Soldiers of the Light. They would have secured the whole castle, maybe the valley. Her heart twisted. Would the valley and all those who lived there, in the shadow of this castle, be safe? He wouldn’t have harmed the people just to lash out at her, would he?

The boy she’d known, that conscripted private, would never. But he was a General now. He was a ruler himself. And the people of this valley were vassals of his enemy, her own dark lord.

She took a long breath, despite the air in the corridor being no better than the thick stench in her cell. She had to keep thinking straight. So long as she was in this castle, the people of this valley would be protected. Nothing else mattered, including what was done to her.

Three men had come to fetch her. She couldn’t tell their rank, she didn’t understand the insignias of their uniforms. They were all large, muscled, ferocious. Bigger and stronger than her. While she had none of her magic to protect herself with.

‘You’ve an appointment to meet, witch.’

They bound her wrists behind her, so tight it hurt, cutting into her skin. She didn’t resist. She wasn’t going to win against them, there was no hope for that, so all she could do now was endure and survive. She went with them when they marched her forward, up out of the dungeons, into the lower basements of the castle. The kitchens and the servants’ spaces, empty for five years. Now, the place bustled and not only with soldiers. There were others, cooks, new servants, people to organise meals, feed the castle, see to the needs of the invading army.

And long before they reached the great hall, she heard the people gathered. Murmurs, movement, voices. She understood, then, what was to happen now. This would be as public as he could make it.

As they entered the great hall, it took everything she had to find courage enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The entire space was filled. Soldiers in their white and yellow uniforms, villagers from the valley spread throughout the hall. Balconies full of watching faces. There were so many. Such crowds. The soldiers all wore weapons, long swords at the ready, though nobody was resisting. All understood who was in charge, the castle had been taken by the Light. And its Queen would be conquered publicly.

Maybe this was personal, after all.

Right down the far end of the cleared central aisle was the dais upon which sat the throne. Claimed in the name of the Light, his gods, like they were any better than her own.

‘Stars and earth, give me strength,’ she murmured, unable to help herself when they pulled her towards it.

A weighted first connected with the side of her head. ‘No magic, witch.’

As if she had any to draw upon. She fought to keep her focus, despite the wallop to her head, but could do nothing to stop them dragging her forward. To the throne upon which he now sat.

The hard, unyielding resentment in his eyes brought iced terror to her gut. It was that throne, the one he sat upon now, and the power it represented, for which she had betrayed him those years ago. She’d had reasons for the choices she’d made, ones he might even understand if he could ever bring himself to listen to her, but what did her reasons matter when it had all been such a terrible mistake?

She’d chosen poorly. He’d paid the price for it. There was no coming back from that.

Now he was here, assembling the biggest crowd possible to witness her capitulation to him. She clenched her teeth down hard. Pride be damned. Her humiliations were going to get a lot worse before this was done. All she could do was endure and hope to somehow survive.

They dragged her to him, then pushed her to her knees. The cold steel of a sword pressed into the back of her neck to remind her not to move, so she didn’t. She kept her eyes on the stone of the floor and tried not to shake as she knelt in defeat.

The hall, despite being filled with so many, was silent.

He stood from the throne. Walking down the steps with a resounding echo of each footfall, until she could see his boots in her vision. Army regulation, if quality leather. Different from the falling apart cardboard pretence they gave privates back when he’d been one. He was the General of the Light now, of course his uniform was better quality. Had he improved the equipment and uniforms provided to his lower ranks as well, since he had taken supreme command? Did he enjoy being a General? He’d always hated being little more than cannon-fodder when he’d been a private, but had enjoyed the camaraderie of the military.

Did he—

His hand reached down and grabbed her dungeon-matted hair at the back of her head. She squealed pain as he jerked her head up and he bent to meet her eyes.

I love it here…

You need to get out more…

She loves me, she loves me not…

She loves you.

His eyes were neither kind nor forgiving. Not an ounce of feeling in them. That, more than anything, broke her heart, because the boy she’d known had been full of feeling. A young man of passions and emotion and care for the world. Even if he couldn’t feel it for her anymore, even if he hated her for what she’d done, she didn’t want to think of him so closed up and shut off from all that feeling inside of him.

She could barely see the boy she’d known in the face of the man who towered above her now.

I love it here. This place where I can see the sunlight and the trees.

This place where I can be with you.

‘Salryanna. You’re mine now,’ he said, a low, dark tone of threat.

Then he threw her back down and walked around her, leaving her panting, hard, on the stone.

02. SALRYANNA

‘Your Witch Queen has been defeated! The army of the Light is in charge. I rule here now!’

He spoke at volume, for all the crowd to hear. While she knelt on the stones, her hands still bound so tight her fingers were tingling and her shoulders aching. It was going to get worse, for she knew what this was: the public demonstration of conquest. Victory over the defeated displayed for all to see.

Her defeat, his victory. Francis had warned her she’d be paraded as prisoner. They’d also warned her she’d be executed, but he couldn’t do that, not yet. She was the only person in existence who could tell him the secrets of this castle and until he had those he hadn’t truly taken this place, not with any permanence. Her dark lord was still very much in residence; his gods were not.

Which only meant this was not going to be quick.

‘All those who pledge allegiance to the Light will be unharmed! You will be welcomed!’ he called to the assembled crowds. ‘But be warned, any who remain loyal to the demon lord of the Witch Queen will be put to death.’

No. She closed her eyes, forced her lips together so as not to utter a sound. It would not help to protest. She could only hope that the boy she’d known was not so far lost within the cruel General standing beside her and that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be the sort to put innocents to their death for no reason.

He’d been full of honour, once. A goodness. She clung onto the hope that he retained at least some of that now and would allow her people to live and prosper, even if he didn’t grant her the same.

‘As for your Witch Queen…’

She shuddered at the ominous tone in his voice. He moved away from her, but she didn’t look up, it was all she could do to concentrate on her breathing and not think about all the people watching.

Sounds, movement. Stomping feet. Then soldiers surrounded her, grabbing her by the arms and hauling her straight, if still on her knees. She bit the inside of her own cheek to keep from making any sound; tasted blood, as another grabbed her hair, so full of muck from the dungeons she wondered he could bare to touch it. He held her head still and high.

‘The witch is now no more than my slave,’ he told the watching crowd, then gestured to his men. ‘Do it. Put it on her.’

A cool metal went around her neck and she clenched her teeth so as to not whimper at the low, cold burn of it. She recognised what it was immediately. Whatever spell his sorcerers had cast to neutralise her powers throughout the castle couldn’t last long; to maintain that over such a large place would take immeasurable power. They wouldn’t sustain it.

Only this metal they placed around her neck now, this collar, was seeped in the same neutralising effect. It killed her instinctive, magical senses, severing her from the world beyond which she could see and hear and touch. An alienating sense of isolation and fear made her gasp as she was cut off from any magic at all, with hard finality.

They sealed the golden metal collar around her neck with a thick lock, then they handed him the key.

The affront of it was almost as bad as the dampening sense of having no magic at all. The humiliation of having it done so publicly. They hauled her up once it was finished and turned her around, displaying her with that weighted collar to the crowd.

His soldiers cheered. The rest of the crowd were silent. She couldn’t look at any of them, not wanting to meet any eyes. It seemed she did have some pride left after all and it was torn asunder now.

When he turned, with such fury glared her way, she could not hold his gaze. Her eyes dropped to the floor.

He walked past her to the throne and threw himself down on it.

‘Show her around, boys. Make sure they all see what’s become of their oh-so-powerful Witch Queen.’

Laughter. His soldiers full of cheer and victory, taking her by the arms and hauling her forward. Down the central aisle, manhandling her without care or gentleness, pushing her one to the other so she stumbled, before pulling her up and shoving her between them again.

She landed in the arms of one with a dark beard and nasty eyes, who sneered as she bit back a cry, then pulled her to him and ran his tongue up the side of her face.

‘Uh…’

She yanked away on instinct, not ready for that, stomach turning with the wet and slimy feel. It only caused more laughter from her captors, and the next, emboldened by his fellow, shoved his hand down her blouse to grab her breast.

‘Oh stars, no,’ she said, struggling to get any sound into her voice. Not that it would help even if she had screamed it out aloud. She knew what this was: making sure everyone could see she was truly vanquished. It was a strategy, a political manoeuvre. Her intellectual self could appreciate the importance of it, even as the panic began to take hold.

He had to ensure everyone knew his victory over her was total, or else his hold on the castle would be weakened. That meant he had to diminish her in every possible way. Enslaved, publicly, with heavy collar locked around her throat. Everyone knew what happened to slaves. The valley had no slavery, not anymore, because she wouldn’t allow it, but these were soldiers of the Light. They had no such reticence.

Slaves existed to be enjoyed by others. The soldiers yanked at her dress and she could hear the tear in the fabric, even as they forced her down to the floor. She tried to kick out her legs, but there were too many, too strong, and her arms were still bound. She had no magic and no strength. She couldn’t even pray. Not that the demon was ever one to pray to and she would never supplicate to their gods.

Stars and earth, but there were at least half a dozen surrounding her, and would they all take turns? Was that what they would do? Rape her repeatedly in front of everyone?

In front of him?

As they got her to the cold stone floor, one pulled her head upwards, so she could see him. Sitting on her throne as if he had every right to be there. His eyes on her as they shoved her down and yanked her legs apart. She felt one of them right there between them, pushing up her skirts, and gritted her teeth, trying very hard not to cry.

She could understand the political need to illustrate victory. She could even understand a personal desire to lash out in revenge, to hurt her as she had once so badly hurt him. But the coldness in his eyes didn’t even suggest that. He looked simply like this meant nothing to him at all.

That was the moment her head dropped and she just gave up.

‘Enough.’

The command from the throne was hard, loud, and certain of the obedience that would follow. The men about her stopped instantly, and though they did not let her up, they did look to their leader for further instruction.

She couldn’t raise her head. There seemed nothing left in her body that would give her the strength to do even that. But she heard him stand, heard his boots come towards her.

‘Take her out of here,’ he ordered.

They dragged her up and out one of the side doors beyond the throne, rather than down the main aisle. She didn’t hear what else he said after that. She didn’t hear anything.

She expected them to take her back to the dungeons. She even might have welcomed it. At least there she could hide in the dark.

Instead, they took her up one of the many large staircases in the castle, then along a wide landing to a suite of rooms which hadn’t been used in a long time, at least not during her tenure here. There were many unused rooms in the castle since she’d taken over. She’d never welcomed others to stay within these walls and sent everyone away the instant she had the power to do so, telling them she preferred solitude. She was the Witch Queen, so who were they to question it? There were some who had to come by necessity, a couple of serving women who cooked and cleaned and who would arrive of a morning once or twice a week, then go again well before dusk. Francis, her governor, and occasionally other advisers on matters relating to the Valley, but she mostly left that kind of governing to them. Otherwise, she’d not populated the many towers and corridors and rooms. She’d left them all to the dust.

Now, the place was being opened up. New servants wearing the colours of the Light bustled about, and soldiers, and people she couldn’t place in the scheme of things, perhaps civilians, or camp followers of the army. The suite they dragged her to had been aired out and made ready for use with a full sense of luxury. She didn’t doubt who had adopted it.

This was the biggest suite in the castle, built for the Queen. It was far grander than the small set of rooms she’d used at the top of one of the spires. These rooms were central and massive and decked out for a supreme ruler to take what was their due, so it was no surprise he had chosen them for his own.

The men shoved her inside without compassion or care. She stumbled, almost falling to the thick rugs of the huge sitting room the main doors opened onto. There was a lounge suite around a fireplace to one side, a meals table on the other, doors to the sides leading to the rest of the suite. An arched doorway to the left led into a private study. A large double-doorway to the right opened onto a magnificent bedroom complete with dressing room and separate entrance to what was the real drawcard, a bathing room complete with warm mineral-springs fed pool. The mountain range hosted an extensive network of underground mineral springs which came up in a series of rock pools speckled throughout the valley. The castle was built into the mountain and this suite of rooms had been created around the filtered pool of constantly refreshing water.

It was magic, or so she had always assumed. She knew this suite as well as she knew any in the castle, every inch of it, and yet despite the grandeur and luxury here, she missed her own small set of rooms. Up high in a spire where she could see the ravens the castle was named for flying in the distance. Where she could look out her window to the forest.

Along the back of the sitting room was a wall of glass, a series of long windows and doors opening out onto the balcony. The view here looked down over the valley itself. Perhaps he preferred that, the chance to survey all that he had conquered. Perhaps it was as meaningless to him as it was to her. She’d been offered these rooms once, expected to take them herself upon becoming Queen. She’d seen too quickly the trap that they were. The pretence of luxury when the castle was not a home to her, it was a prison.

One of the men yanked her arm back and the pain flared from the ties cutting into her wrists. Her fingers were numb, shoulders aching from the stress position. It was the least of her physical concerns right now. Four men had marched her in here, all of them had swords, and none of them looked kind.

Did she really need four professional soldiers to guard her in defeat? All those weapons? All that muscle? Hadn’t they realised by now that she was none so imposing, she was small and insubstantial? Or did they still think she had some access to her magic?

The collar weighed about her neck. It was a blunt instrument. She couldn’t feel any sense of anything beyond the physical and immediate, not even what had been the constant undercurrent sensation from the last five years of the demon she was bound to. In other circumstances, that might have come as a relief, except she knew it changed nothing except to make her blind to his presence. Something more dangerous than not.

Perhaps these men, armed soldiers who glared at her like she was a genuine threat, were simply terrified of her reputation. The Witch Queen of Castle Ravenswild, devotee of the demon, her dark lord, demon lover even, and wielder of the darkest magics for her having sold herself so. It was a useful reputation, in many ways. It kept people away. Sometimes she even wished it had anything of truth to it.

Now that reputation would haunt her. The men who pulled her to a stop in the middle of the room looked at her as if she was some demon-loving creature who’d long sold out her humanity. And an enemy denied humanity could be harmed in the worst ways. They laughed, jeering as they knocked her sideways. She stumbled, off balance. One caught her and knocked her back again. She closed her eyes and tried not to wish for anything. She simply had to endure.

One man grabbed her dress at the front and tore it down. She clenched her teeth hard to bite back the frightened cry, anything to stop herself from begging them to stop. Such would only spur them on. She knew this sort. Her fear and pain was what they wanted, even more than her body, and while she might not be able to stop them abusing the latter, she could at least refuse to give them the former.

They would not have the satisfaction of her emotions. Her interior life was her own and nobody else’s, no matter what collar was around her neck. No matter what they did to her body, they would never have her.

The men surrounding her didn’t seem to care for such nuances. Their sinister cheer only increased as another tore her dress further, revealing her corset beneath, which was tugged and pulled until her breasts were exposed too. One man grabbed them and she screwed her eyes shut, fought not to scream. Endure, Sal. Endure.

It didn’t make it any easier.

‘I said enough!’

The men immediately stopped at the furious command from the doorway, stepping back smartly in attention and saluting. Leaving her standing unsteady in the middle, hands still bound, dress hanging off her in shreds, body exposed beneath. She stared at the carpet, not at him.

The General stalked into the room.

‘Public demonstration of victory is one thing, but I will not tolerate such behaviour in my own damned rooms!’ he snarled with real fury.

His men swayed where they stood and did not move, did not speak. Their salutes frozen in place.

‘There is much work to do. Go see to it. Go,’ he commanded. ‘Leave the slave to me.’

They all smartly chorused yes, sir! Then promptly marched from the room. Possibly they went with relief, given the anger in their General’s voice. Her head was spinning from being knocked around and the only thing she was sure of was that his anger was not about being protective of her.

She wondered, vaguely, when he’d developed such skewed principles: declaring rape as valid for political purposes was still horrific, even if he didn’t countenance it in other settings. It did not align to the boy she remembered, who’d been gentle and empathetic and kind.

Clearly he was no longer the boy she remembered.

Once, she might have called him out on the contradiction in his morals. Right now, she didn’t say a thing. She was quite sure he’d throw her back to his men if the mood took him.

He approached her, pulling a knife from his belt. She stepped back in a sudden fear, but he only took her arm, spinning her around. He was not gentle, moving her with some roughness, but it was not like being manhandled by his men, there was no darker intent. All he did was cut the bindings at her wrists.

Feeling rushed back into her fingers. Her arms began to tingle as she was able to move them again.

He turned away without once even looking at her face.

‘There’s food on the balcony. Go eat,’ he said, and it sounded just as much an order as when he’d spoken to his men. She risked peering up, because he hadn’t bothered to even glance at her and it felt safe enough. Unfortunately, she did so at the same time he looked back over his shoulder and she caught his eyes by accident.

He looked down the length of her with clear disapproval. Unimpressed.

‘And take off those rags. They stink of the dungeons.’

She swallowed. She stank of the dungeons, not merely the clothes she wore. Her long hair, her one source of vanity, was matted and filthy. Her body unwashed. But she doubted she could ask for the chance to refresh herself any time soon.

‘What would you have me wear in their place?’ she asked softly.

He shrugged. ‘You’re a slave. You have nothing, you can wear nothing.’

His tone was so dismissive and uncaring that she didn’t get the sense he intended the same kind of sexual violence his men had been so keen to commit. The refusal to allow her clothes was a humiliation, not a sexual titillation. No doubt it wouldn’t be the last of the humiliations she would experience either, but what was such to her anyway? It was nothing. It meant nothing.

Endure.

Still, she stood hesitating, rubbing her hands to speed up the returning feeling. He took off his uniform coat with a careless ease, throwing it over the back of a chair in the sitting space, his sword belt with it. The weapon itself he took more care with, storing it in a cabinet by the wall.

He obviously didn’t see her as any kind of threat. He was right about that, too. She didn’t know how to use a sword and even if she had, what use would physically fighting him be? Even if she had the strength to overpower him, where would she run? Possibly she could hide somewhere in the castle, she knew it better than anyone, there were places. Only what would that solve?

She didn’t want to run. She didn’t want to be here like this, but she didn’t want to run from him either. This was not how she’d wanted to meet him again, indeed it was the worst possible way they could have come back together. And yet she had still spent every day of the last five years desperately wondering how he was, where he was, what he was doing. Missing him with every fibre of her being, day in and day out.

She’d known he would be angry. She’d prepared herself for his enmity. He was the General of the Light coming to invade the valley and take her castle by force; she had not imagined it would be a pleasant reunion. Yet she was not prepared for the glowering fury in his eyes. She was not ready for the intensity of his rage or the sharper edge in it she began to suspect was genuine hatred.

Had she done that? Caused him so much pain he could not only refuse to forgive her, but could hate her with such force?

‘Did you not hear me?’ he snarled with such implicit threat that she began to undress immediately. After all, what did it matter? Her clothes hung off her in rags anyway, hardly covering a thing, and her pride had been shredded out in that hall.

She was slave now. So be it.

She stripped, her whole body numb. Letting her ruined clothes drop where she stood, because she had no idea what else he wanted done with them, and right now she wasn’t sure she could move without instruction. Defeat washed over her as she stood, naked but for the collar and a myriad of bruises his men had inflicted upon her. She still stank, it wasn’t just her clothes. She was about to ask if he’d like her to wash, but he was already opening the doors to the balcony.

‘Eat,’ he repeated, and gestured with a pointed look to the table outside, laid with food. Two servants in the colours of the Light bowed silently to the General, before slipping away to a hidden corner door at the edge of the balcony. Servant’s corridor. The castle was littered with them.

She wasn’t hungry and didn’t think she could keep down any food, but he wasn’t giving her a choice about it. So she followed him outside, fresh air on her skin. She breathed deep of it. The dungeons had been fetid. Even the air of the hall had been close and thick from the crowds congregated within. It was a relief to breathe back the spring breeze, feel the warmth of the sun on her skin.

‘Sit,’ he commanded. She did as he bid and sat at the table, staring at the food, waiting for something to appeal. It was a selection of fruits, sweet breads, cold meats; luncheon fare. Imported from out of the valley; his supply lines must be strong. She supposed he had torn through any resistance before mounting his attack on the castle. She wondered where his strategic nous had come from.

He sat across the table from her, pulling some breads and meats onto a plate for himself. At a dark look from him, she tentatively took some sweet bread onto a plate, but didn’t raise it to her mouth. He did eat, but when he noticed she wasn’t, he gestured for her to do so with frustrated impatience.

‘You’ve been in the dungeons for three days and I know you ate nothing there,’ he said, and she wondered how he knew. Did his guards report back her untouched plates? ‘You’re all skin and bones as it is. Put something in your stomach, for god’s sake.’

She tore off a small piece of bread and put it in her mouth to appease him. It tasted like ash on her tongue, felt like she was trying to eat stone. It took effort to swallow that mouthful and she didn’t take another after it.

‘Do you know why I’m here?’ he said.

She pressed her lips together, shaking her head. Staring down at the food on her plate for which she could not drum up an appetite, rather than meeting his eyes.

He let the silence sit, eyes held on her, until she felt almost compelled to break it.

‘I might surmise,’ she said, softly. ‘It would be a presumption. Your gods do not like mine.’

‘You don’t follow a god. You bound yourself to a demon,’ he snapped. ‘One who’s spread destruction and evil throughout many lands. The trail of blood leading to this valley is well recorded.’

A hundred and fifty years ago. Since then, the Witch Queens had been in place and the demon confined to this valley. Still, she didn’t say that, because she knew very well that the demon could and would destroy as many lives as possible given the opportunity. She would not defend that entity. There were reasons she could not leave the castle, one being that if she did, the demon would leave with her and wreak havoc far and wide.

None of it mitigated the destruction his own forces of Light imposed on the lands they conquered. His gods, or at least their representatives in the world, were empire builders, insisting all others submit to their will. Hers at least didn’t expect others to happily acquiesce at pain of death if chosen otherwise.

Once, he would have understood that. Now, she wasn’t about to get into a philosophical debate with him.

‘I am here to uncover the secrets of this castle,’ he said, entirely up front. ‘The secrets of your demon. I will unravel his hold on this valley and this world, and return him to the hellish plane from whence he came.’

She closed her eyes, but said nothing. She doubted it would help to suggest that if he banished the demon, then nothing would stand in the way of his gods and their representatives on the ground taking over everything. Those were his forces, after all.

He sat back slowly and crossed his arms. She could feel his eyes hard on her.

‘The secret is in this castle,’ he said. ‘You know where I can find the demon, how I can confront the creature and destroy him. It is the secret you are sworn to protect. I am here to uncover it.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

She looked up, at last a kind of emotion deep down sparking the reaction. She could take humiliations and endure abuse, but she would not stand for being assumed some kind of naive fool.

‘I understand you wish to destroy the demon,’ she said. ‘And that you will destroy me in doing so.’

‘If I have to, yes. So don’t doubt it,’ he said without hesitation, so calmly it rocked her. He would squash her without a second thought if he needed to.

She looked back to her plate. Sitting stiff in her seat, staring at the food in front of her, not taking a morsel, because how could she eat? How could she take anything in? Maybe Francis had got away. If they had, and could get her a signal, maybe she could still make this work. It wouldn’t matter if Callum destroyed her, or hated her, or sold her off on the slave markets to a life of brutality and pain. She already lived such a life. This wasn’t about her. It hadn’t been about her for a long time.

‘What’s the matter, Sal?’ His tone was bitter. It spoke of pain underneath. ‘Think you’d get a fond reunion after all this time?’

She found herself blinking back sudden tears. Ridiculous. After all she’d faced these last five years, after all she’d done and caused to be done, the sacrifices made and horrific choices before her, it was only now the tears threatened? Not when facing rape, not when forced into a collar and enslaved, not when thrown to the dungeons.

It was her name on his lips that did it. The dismissive mention of a reunion she’d never stopped imagining, every moment of every day, for the last five years.

‘I didn’t expect to be forgiven,’ she said, suddenly. ‘I know I don’t deserve it. So I did expect your anger, for that I do deserve. And your hatred, all of it. Only, I…’

She let her words drop. She wasn’t even sure how to say it.

‘What?’ he challenged in a dark voice.

‘I never expected your cruelty,’ she said, so soft it was almost a whisper. ‘I’d hoped I might get the chance to say sorry, even if I couldn’t expect you to forgive me.’

His chair pushed back from the table with a hard, slow screech. There was so much simmering fury in him. He stepped away, as if he were going to walk off and leave her sitting there. Only he turned back at the last moment and slammed a hand down, hard, on the table in front of her.

She jumped at the sudden aggression, her whole body pushing back. He leaned over until he was right in her face.

‘I lost everything because of you,’ he said. ‘I came running that day because I thought you needed me. Because I would’ve died for you. Only for you to throw it in my face. You turned your back and left me for the wolves.’

He straightened, giving her some breathing space, though he glared down at her still.

‘When I was caught, I copped a public flogging that put me out for six weeks,’ he said. ‘And when I survived that, against all expectations, I was sentenced to a year in the salt mines for the betrayal.’

She gasped, unable to help herself. ‘The salt mines?’

‘Yes. Most don’t survive six months out there. No one survives a year. But it turned out the making of me.’ He crossed his arms, looking furiously down. ‘I led the rebellion of the miners. I got us all out. Then I marched on the Light’s command and negotiated my own position.’ He pointed back inside. ‘Those soldiers, they’re loyal to me. Not to my god, not to the Light. To me. I trust none but them. And no, you will not be getting your fucking chance to apologise, because it is way too late. You don’t get to say sorry just so you can feel some kind of absolution. I’m never allowing you that.’

‘Callum, I didn’t know, I couldn’t have, I—’

He turned his back, waving a dismissive hand. ‘Eat something, then go wash. You stink of the dungeons.’

He stalked away, leaving her sitting in front of all that food, thinking only of the salt mines. That slow death sentence of the worst kind of cruelty, each day an agony worse than the one before it, over weeks and months, until the body gave up. How long had he suffered there, before he’d found a way to fight back? How bad had it really been?

The tears blurred her vision despite herself.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered anyway. ‘I’m so sorry.’

03. SALRYANNA

She remained sitting at the table out on the balcony for as long as it took to stop crying, then for a little further time again, enough for him to think she’d tried to eat something. She didn’t, she couldn’t take a single bite, but she pulled apart the bread on her plate and added half a strawberry, so it looked like she’d had something.

When her emotional armour was back in place, and her pretence at eating would be enough to satisfy a casual glance, because she doubted he’d give it anything more than that, she got up. He’d told her to wash and that was one command she could follow without reservation. She really did stink.

He wasn’t in the sitting room. For a moment she thought he’d gone from his rooms entirely, until she heard movement in the study. Her destroyed dress was still where she’d dropped it, so she picked it up and took it with her into the bathroom. It couldn’t be saved and he didn’t want her wearing it anyway, so she dumped it down the garbage chute off the main bathroom, a long drop down to the rubbish pits far below.

She would not resist his orders, she would be his slave, if that’s what he wanted. Obedient and as compliant as he liked, because she had no other choice now and she still felt so numb it was hard to care about such things. When she did let herself care, when she allowed a crack of emotion through, like when he’d told her about the salt mines and what he must have suffered, it became too much and she couldn’t bear it. She had to shut it off. It seemed to work for him, after all.

The mineral-springs fed pool took up the back third of the huge bathroom. Continually refreshed water filtered through from the warm natural springs below, available for bathing at any time. She’d always assumed it was magic, though when the last Witch Queen had used these rooms, one of the servants had told the novices that it wasn’t sorcery so much as cunning artifice. Pipes built into the castle to capture the water and bring it flowing to this interior pool, other pipes to take it away again so it was refreshed and didn’t become stagnant and dirty. She still thought it was magic, or as good as.

Walking into the bathroom now, she rather wished she could go back to those days and ask that servant how it worked. She would’ve liked to know such things. It was luxurious to slip into the warmth of the water, the grand pool built for Queens. Almost too hot, but she liked that sensation. Once in, she scrubbed and scrubbed, until her skin was red raw and stinging.

Her hair was a lost cause. It almost brought her further tears, as ridiculous as that was given all else. The long raven locks of her hair had always been the one thing, perhaps the only thing, about herself that she’d genuinely liked. She’d always kept it long and when loose it hung to her hips, though she’d braided it most of the time. They’d pulled the braids down in the dungeons, yanking her hair out of its ties, then thrown muck all over her before leaving her to freeze in the dark. Now the length of her hair was so matted she couldn’t even unbind the few braids that were left to wash them properly, and the hair she could release remained sticky and slimey, even after thorough washing.

So be it. She stepped out of the wonderful bath and down the room to the long counter with the polished mirror travelling its length. Not acknowledging her own reflection, because she didn’t want to contemplate that collar around her neck or the finger-shaped bruises on her breasts. Or the fact that he was right. She was all skin and bones.

She looked about her for something sharp. He hadn’t bothered to hide his sword from her, nor did he seem to be guarding her particularly closely, so she assumed he wasn’t caring about other potential weapons being in her reach. Maybe he thought he’d easily counter it if she did try for a blade; he was a professional soldier and she was undoubtedly no match for him physically.

She didn’t intend to fight him, just as she didn’t intend to resist.

Spread out on the bench was a shaving kit. Cloth rolled open, brush, straight-edge razor, soaps, comb. The sight gave her pause and for a few seconds she could not even step towards it. It felt almost an intimate thing. To think of the General, Callum, shaving, a private moment, not one where he put on a public face. It was hard for her to picture it. She could no longer imagine what he must look like behind the furious facade he put up.

She made herself move to the kit and found, along with a sharp-edged razor, a pair of small scissors. They’d do.

She had to look in the mirror then, heart dropping as she did. She looked awful. Not only her matted hair, but the bags under her eyes, the misery in them. All skin and bones. It’d been a long time since she’d worried about her appearance, there’d been so little reason to care. Now it was like seeing herself for the first time in years. She did not look good.

Focus. What she looked like didn’t matter. Hair. Without further hesitation, and without letting herself think, she pulled all of her matted long hair into a low tail, tied loose at the neck. Then she used the scissors to cut through the lot.

The weight dropped from her head in cascading locks. Hair falling to the floor around her. She cut right through the single tail, then let what remained free, so it hung about her face. It sat about chin height, all the same length, mostly. The scissors cleaned up any stray bits that looked out of place.

Frowning at her reflection, she couldn’t decide if it were awful or just strange to see herself without long hair. Ultimately, she decided it was okay. Different. Not bad. It was only hair. What use was vanity for her now?

She put the shed locks into the garbage chute, chasing her clothes, went back to the bath and washed the hair that was left. It was so much easier, and lighter, and almost freeing, really. She spent quite a time in the bath, half-expecting him to come yell at her throughout, but he never did. Eventually, she got out and looked in the mirror again. Still awful, but the hair was an improvement.

She had no makeup here, and could only use his comb, which she hoped he was okay with. When she was done, she put everything back exactly as she’d found it, carefully aligning his things on the bench so as to imply she’d not touched anything. Just as she’d artfully arranged her plate outside to make it look like she’d eaten. A different kind of magic.

When she turned, he was standing in the doorway watching her. Leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and his expression narrow. She jerked straight, with a sudden flush for not knowing how long he’d been standing there.

‘You cut your hair,’ he said.

A bolt of nerves tied up her stomach, for his tone was grim. Not the same hurt fury she’d heard from him before, though. This was mildly disapproving, perhaps a little surprised, but no more.

‘It was matted. I tried to wash it. But after the dungeons I couldn’t, I mean, it was impossible,’ she said, stumbling her words and hating herself for it. ‘Cutting it off was the only option.’

‘Hmmm.’

He stalked forward and it took all her willpower to hold her ground, not shy away. When he took her by the arm, she almost squealed with shock, rather than genuine fright. He’d kept a physical distance between them this whole time, only coming near her when he needed to cut the bonds around her wrists, then backing right off again afterwards.

She wasn’t ready for the physical contact, nor the way he firmly turned her around and pushed her downwards, to lean over the bench. She found herself bent over it before she even knew what was happening.

Then he gave her half a dozen hard wallops across her backside with his open hand.

Her gasp was audible. It hurt, stinging badly, but it was the shock which took her breath away. Her eyes wide and cheeks flushed red when he let her up again. She straightened slowly, with a confused frown.

‘You’re my slave now,’ he told her. ‘You might have sold your soul to the demon, but this body belongs to me.’ He gestured to her, up and down with hand. ‘You’ll not do anything to it without my explicit permission. Understand?’

She gaped, still feeling the warmth on her buttocks. Only slowly getting her head around what had just actually happened. He had spanked her.

She had no idea what to say, but he was clearly waiting for some kind of acknowledgement.

‘I understand,’ she finally managed, with a dry mouth.

‘You’re lucky I like it,’ he said, then turned to walk past her towards the pool. ‘Short hair suits you.’

Thankfully that last was thrown over his shoulder, so he wasn’t looking at her when he said it, because she could feel herself go bright red in the cheeks and wasn’t sure if it was from the spanking or the offhand compliment on her hair. The whole thing left her standing awkward, shifting her weight foot to foot, and feeling way more exposed than at any other point so far.

He was by the bath, fiddling with the cufflinks on his shirt. A formal kind of uniform for parading victory, including her very public enslavement. After a moment’s frustrated trying, he gave up on the cufflink with a terse cluck of his tongue and held out his arm towards her.

She hesitated, not immediately understanding the unspoken order. When he raised his eyebrows at the delay, clear warning in his expression, she jumped forward.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, still playing catch up. Slave. Right. ‘Sorry.’

She took his wrist and undid the cufflink for him, then the next, and put both carefully on the bench. He didn’t move or voice any other command, but the expectation was obvious, so she undid the buttons and ties of his shirt next, undressing him in silence. It was a service one might typically expect of a slave and, though she’d outlawed slavery in the valley the instant she’d come to power, she still knew how it worked.

It was a good thing he’d told her about the flogging he’d experienced before the salt mines. She wasn’t sure she could’ve kept her silence on sight of his scars if she hadn’t been warned. Even still it was hard not to gasp at the severity of scar tissue across his back, stark against the otherwise warmer tones of his skin. The flogging must’ve been very bad. He said he’d been put down for six weeks, which was a long time and suggested muscle damage, or maybe there’d been infection of some kind.

To recover after a flogging like that would not have been expected. Then to the salt mines after. It was an execution by any other name; they’d been trying to kill him.

This was the result of her choices, her decisions. Her lies and betrayal of him. He’d disobeyed his superiors solely to save her, risking everything for her sake, and she’d turned her back on him, let him be captured. To face the consequences of simply daring to care for her. Nobody had ever cared for her except him and this was what he suffered for doing so.

She fought not to call attention to the suffering written across his body, though he must know all she was seeing as she undressed him. As she returned from putting his shirt aside, struggling to keep the emotion off her face, he lifted a hand to her chin. Turned her head to one side, then back the other way.

Examining her new haircut.

‘It’s very different,’ he said, as if it were some clinical inspection. ‘You always had such long hair.’

She let him manoeuvre her as he will. As he’d said, her body now belonged to him, he could do with it what he liked.

‘It will grow again, if you prefer it long,’ she said.

His eyes clouded and he let go of her chin. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, with such severe neutrality she wondered what his plans for her were. Growing her hair would take time and perhaps he did not intend to spend such a length here. His aim was to divine the castle’s secrets and find the demon. That meant her secrets, for she was the Witch Queen, that was her role, to protect what she knew. To not let anyone share the knowledge she had been given, friend or foe.

That was who she was. It was the entire point of her existence since her binding. Before even that, for wasn’t that why she’d been given to the order as a child? To prepare her for a life bound to the demon?

He knew that. Which meant he must have some plans for trying to draw information out of her, for he’d know she’d never willingly give it up. Interrogation, maybe? She didn’t doubt he was capable of it, even to torturous degrees. Even to her. Once she wouldn’t have thought so, but now she’d seen enough to not hope for mercy.

One way or another, he didn’t plan for this situation to continue long term.

After a curt gesture to continue, she undid his belt, then his boots, kneeling to slip them off his feet. His pants too. She kept her eyes to herself and was very careful where she put her hands. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen him naked before. On the contrary, it was very hard not to think of the last time, out in the forest before everything went awful. A warm day like this one, spring sun speckled through the canopy above, the two of them kissing, touching, revelling in what little time they could be together.

Planning to run away. So full of plans, they’d been. So determined to find a happy future together, no matter the odds stacked against them.

They’d been so naive.

She couldn’t help but notice he was fairly hard as she stripped him of his pants, even though she tried not to look. Would he require sexual services of her? Was that what this was? It wasn’t unusual for slaves. She wasn’t concerned about her physical capability of performing such duties, but emotionally how would she manage? Sex with this man, only not like it was before, now as his slave. Surely it would break her heart all over again.

She shook that thought out of her head. What did that matter? He would order and she would fulfil those orders and, broken heart or not, she would endure. She had survived the last five years, she could deal with this too.

In the end, he only turned to step down into the bath.

‘Attend me, slave,’ he ordered. The anger of earlier had dissipated, but the cold distance in his tone was cutting.

She followed slowly, stepping carefully into the water. The bath was long, rectangular, with steps along the sides to sit upon, and deep enough to rise to the waist even for him, who was significantly taller than her.

He waded across to the far side, but when he turned, he jolted unexpectedly, with a hiss of genuine pain.

‘Are you o—’ she began, before cutting her own question off. It was not her place to ask.

He waved away her unspoken concern. ‘My back,’ he said, dismissively. ‘I’ve been inside and inactive for too many days. The scars stiffen up. It’ll pass.’

Oh. Just one more thing she was responsible for. Chronic pain caused by his one-time efforts at rescuing her.

‘I’m sor—’ she began on instinct. This time, he was the one to cut her off.

‘Don’t you dare,’ he said, snarl back in his voice. ‘I’ve told you, you don’t get to apologise. You’re going to live with your guilt.’

Her shoulders drooped and she stared at her hands, as if there were blood on them still. Like she wouldn’t be living with this guilt for the rest of her existence, whether he let her apologise or not. She could’ve thrown herself to her knees and begged him to forgive her, and he could even have said that he did, that she could have all the absolution it was within him to provide, and it would make no difference. For this, she would never forgive herself.

But it would be of no use saying any of that.

‘Tell me if I’m overstepping, but I trained as a healer,’ she said, still looking at her hands. ‘Sometimes, massage can help with scar tissue. I could…I mean, only if you wanted…’

Her useless words dragged off. She risked a glance up to find his eyes on her, cold as ever, if also turning rather cynical. For the longest time there was only silence and she regretted speaking to the very marrow of her bones.

Until he huffed a breath.

‘Go on, then,’ he said, like he’d waged some internal battle and somehow lost. ‘Might as well try.’

It made her wonder just how bad his back could get. He was a warrior, a soldier, his physicality was at the core of his life, his ability to move as he needed to. These injuries had not held him back, he was the most successful General in the history of all their lands. Yet having seen those scars up close, and hearing too the resignation in his tone now, she knew they must cause him ongoing discomfort, if not outright pain. He didn’t show it, for the most part. But he’d given her a glimpse just now.

She sat behind him on the steps, half out of the water, and with tentative hands reached to his shoulders. Touching him for the first time in five years. The scar tissue across his back was bad indeed. Had he received any aid for his wounds at the time? Probably not. They hadn’t been trying to heal him.

Yet he hadn’t been killed, despite all they’d done. He’d survived, healed, and thrived. He must be proud of that. She was proud of him for that, for all the lessons he must’ve taken from it he was now using against her. She’d always admired the strength of him, the drive and passions he was full of. He’d had such optimism and hope when they were young. She’d always been the more cynical one, but he thought he could change the world. And he could. He did.

Perhaps he hadn’t realised that he would also be changed, in his efforts to change the world around him.

Her hands moved softly over the mess of scar tissue, smoothing across his shoulders and back. Slowly, allowing her touch to firm. Not much at first, it would take time to understand where the worst of the stiffening was and the points of pain. Her training came back to her as she worked, the one part of her novice years she’d actually enjoyed, lessons in healing and in growing things. Flowers. Daisies, even.

He hissed momentarily; she’d accidentally pressed too hard on a pain point. She pulled her hands off him instantly, heart thumping with the mistake.

‘Sor—’

‘Keep going,’ he cut her off. ‘And stop damn well saying sorry.’

She put her hands back on his skin, massaging his shoulders and along his back carefully. Learning the tighter points, pressing firmer once she was more sure of herself, to work at the knots in the muscles and the rough scar tissue where it was worst.

‘The scars must hurt at times,’ she said, unable to help herself.

‘I’ve got used to it. Pain is like that,’ he returned, so darkly she had to bite her tongue to stop herself apologising again.

‘Yes,’ she said instead, because pain was like that. You got used to its presence after a while. It became a part of you, until you couldn’t tell who you were anymore without it. Until pain was all you were.

Not all pain was physical.

‘You will remain in my rooms for the time being,’ he said and she had to shake herself to focus. ‘I don’t intend to lock the doors or set a guard, but you would be well advised to obey my command not to wander. Inside my rooms, you will be physically safe. Step outside them and my men will view you as fair game. You will have no protection. I will not call them off next time.’

Her lips tightened. ‘I see. These rooms may be larger, but they are just as much my prison as the dungeon cell was.’

‘You have no freedoms now. Best you understand that.’ He rolled his shoulders under her hands. This time he didn’t grimace or twinge in pain; maybe the massage was doing him some good. ‘You will obey and you will serve and I will not hesitate to turn to corporal punishment if I deem it warranted to teach you a lesson, either.’

She thought of the spanking earlier. That should not have brought heat to the pit of her stomach, but she found it very much did and had to catch her breath in confusion at her own response.

To cover, she clucked her tongue softly.

‘I will not disobey you. I fully understand my situation,’ she said. ‘You do not need to threaten me with sexual violence to ensure my compliance. Is that how the Light always operates? Through use of public rape as a weapon?’

He stretched his arms, experimenting with movement in his shoulders. His range did look freer now and she was glad of that.

He glanced back. ‘How else do you think they kept us in line in the salt mines?’

Oh. Oh no. Her jaw snapped shut, her indignation at being threatened suddenly evaporating in the face of his direct experience. He moved across the pool from her, not dropping his gaze. While her whole being drooped with understanding.

‘Oh Callum, I’m so sorry—’

‘One more attempt at apology from you and I will flog you myself. You’ll know how it feels then.’

She pressed her lips closed and absurdly felt like apologising for trying to apologise too much.

‘Maybe I should tell you all the fine detail,’ he said, some of the cruelty back in his tone. ‘Perhaps that’s the interrogation path I should adopt with you. Tell you all about the rapes, the starvation, the beatings. What salt does to the lungs when you breathe it in day and night, how it feels under your fingernails, in your eyes, down your throat. That would wear you down faster than any other technique I might employ, I’m beginning to think.’

She couldn’t blink the tears away, mute with the misery of it. She was afraid to open her mouth lest she say sorry again. He didn’t want her empathy, he’d made that quite clear. He most especially didn’t want her sympathy. What he wanted were her secrets and he was quite prepared to use her emotional trauma, and his own, against her to achieve it.

She wiped hard at her eyes.

‘Are you so surprised?’ she said. ‘That I might feel awful to know what I’m responsible for? That you suffered so much because of me? I didn’t do what I did from a lack of care for you.’

His expression closed up.

‘Save me the song and dance about how hard it was for you to hurt me. Believe it or not, I can deal with a little heartbreak,’ he said. ‘This isn’t actually about us. I have a job to do here. My only care is to discover the secrets of this castle, the secrets you protect. How to reach the demon and how to destroy him. That is all.’

‘I can’t give you what you want,’ she said, not hiding her despair.

‘I never expected you to do so willingly. You made your choices five years ago, when you chose the demon’s power over any affection you might’ve felt for me,’ he said. ‘I will get your secrets from you. I will do whatever it takes to break you down in order to get them. If that means twisting your guilt until you’re a quivering psychological mess, at least that’ll leave less blood on the carpet. But if that doesn’t work, I’m perfectly capable of doing it the old-fashioned bloodied way too.’

Her whole body shuddered with the threat of it. Shivering with panic. If he’d strapped her down to a chair in the dungeons and brought out a whole host of metal torture implements, she’d have coped with that far better than this.

Maybe she should just tell him the truth. If he was prepared to detail out his suffering in order to hurt her, maybe she should do the same back.

Only it wouldn’t be the same. She’d made her own knowing choices all the way along and she wore the responsibility for their consequences. He’d had no choice, and no responsibility, for any of it.

‘I cannot tell you what you want to know,’ she said. ‘Even if I wanted to. It doesn’t matter what you do to me, or how fierce the tortures you put me to.’

‘Don’t try to tell me you don’t know. The Witch Queen exists to protect the demon.’

‘It’s not that. It’s only…’ She swallowed, mouth dry. ‘It’s part of the binding. What I went through when given to the demon, when becoming the Witch Queen. The binding stops me from revealing the demon or how to reach him on this plane. I can’t tell you such secrets, the binding won’t allow it. That is my burden to bear.’

He was silent, watching her with narrowed eyes. Perhaps trying to decide if she were telling the truth or lying to protect her own skin.

‘Your burden to bare?’ He sounded cynical.

‘More than you could know.’

‘Hmmm. My magicians warned me such was probably the case,’ he said. ‘I have not come unprepared. Even now the Light’s best sorcerers are preparing methods of breaching the binding upon you.’

Her chest tightened. ‘The binding is impossible to break.’ Which was perhaps not entirely true, but it was close enough.

‘We might not need to break it entirely. Simply breach it enough to force you to speak what is forbidden,’ he said. ‘That’s what my magicians believe. They know what they’re doing.’ He gestured to the metal collar around her neck. ‘They’ve managed to keep you quite subdued, Witch Queen.’

Her entire body went still. His magicians were powerful, she knew that already. Were they powerful enough to skewer the binding? They could never break it entirely, but could they crack it open enough to get the information they wanted? Make her tell them the truth about the castle’s secrets? Where and how to find the demon?

Her heart thumped with the fear of it. She fought that down. It would take them time even if they could do it and they probably couldn’t. None were stronger than the demon, that was why the Light marshalled so many forces. Her dark lord’s power was greater than any, especially here in the castle.

But…what if he could? What if Callum could do it?

What if he could beat the demon, after all?

Never in her life had she considered it a possibility. Now, a sneaking wonder wove its way under her skin. What if…

Before she could say anything at all, a noise came from the other room. A door opening.

A call: ‘General?’ Official, loud.

Callum turned to step out of the bath to go see to his business. While she remained shaking in the water, slowly coming to understand that all her assumptions about the few protections she still had, protections this castle had afforded her for five years now and which she’d been relying upon to defeat even Callum and his armies, might just be useless after all.

Fresh Out of Virgins 🌶️🌶️