"No! Get off of me!" Zaria bucked underneath the lean form,her knee barely missing his nether regions and scraping along his abdomen instead. Her hand was set free, but a fist lashed down at her. Stars exploded in her vision, and a ringing sound filled her ears. When she came around, she was on her stomach with a knee in her back. Her arms were being twisted to the back, and she let out a cry of pain, struggling again as the familiar feeling of cold metal closed around her wrists. Long fingers wrapped around hers, and a contented sigh filled the tent.
"That's better," the man said quietly, his voice like fire, full of anger. He shifted to sit next to her without letting go of her hand. "You are making this all far too difficult, my concubine. Do you know how much work I had to leave behind just to hunt you down?"
"I don't care," she growled defiantly, shrieking when her wrist was forced backward painfully against the shackles.
"If I were you, I would consider changing my attitude." He glared down at her panting face, eyes screwed up in pain. "You are lucky I thought to use this item of yours to find you as quickly as I did. Who was the man that you saw?"
Zaria turned her head to face away from him and did not answer.
"To give you such a valuable gift, he must be someone important. Was he your betrothed?" When she continued her silence, his voice grew hard, and he rolled over top of her again, holding her head in place with his free hand so that she could not look away. "You will forget about him. You are mine now."
His hand grew gentle, and he smoothed her unruly curls back from her face. " I must admit, after being forced to spend the night with the duchess, I was looking forward to the time that we would get to know each other better. She disgusts me, but you...I find you intriguing, especially once I was able to see you better without that awful uniform..."
Duke Berber righted his self, his knee once again settled in the small of her back. His eyes trailed down her body, taking in her snug jeans and t-shirt. "Now, where is your clothing?"
"I am wearing it, asshole," she said through clenched teeth.
"This? This is what you wear underneath clothing. I won't have my guards putting their lecherous gazes on the body of my concubine." He emptied out her bags, rifling through the clothing within with a frown. "Why would you run away without at least taking your dress? It was only an indoor sleep dress, but it would be better than having some brigands find you dressed like this where I can't protect you."
"Protect me?" She howled the words, her eyes opening wide. A long chain of expletives fell from her mouth. The duke sighed and twisted her wrist backward again, breaking her chain of insults with the sound of her scream.
"Again, you are making it difficult." He said with a heavy sigh, working his way out of the tent before grabbing her ankles and pulling her out as well. "Don't mistake my relief for finding you intact as a sign that I will allow you to insult me or try to hurt me."
Once outside, Zaria felt herself hauled upward, and she twisted while trying to get her feet underneath her. As soon as he let go, she tried to turn and run, but she had not taken a step when a hand wrapped around her throat and squeezed. "Stand still." When her vision began to go black around the edges, she nodded her head frantically, barely staying upright when the hand let go suddenly. Something heavy fell around her shoulders, and the extra weight nearly sent her to her knees, and it would have if her forearm were not latched onto with a vice like grip. "Do not ever try this again. I do not want to hurt you, but I will not hesitate to do so should you try to leave me again."
"Then that's what you will have to do," she mumbled as he let go of her arm and straightened his cloak around her shoulders facing backwards, so that her body was concealed but he could still reach her hands unimpeded. He sighed and stretched his hand out toward her tent, dark tendrils shooting out and grabbing the wet shirt that she wore when running. Almost tenderly, he held her head in place and dabbed the wet cloth against her lip and chin. When the cloth came away, she could see blood on it.
"You don't really want that." He tilted his head and watched her lip to see if the split was going to bleed anymore before throwing the shirt back inside the tent. "Now, you can either walk , or I can throw you over my shoulder and carry you. Which will it be?"
When she did not answer,he pinched her chin sharply between his fingers. "Walk, or carry?"
"Walk," she spit out, jerking her head away. His hand slipped through the part in the cloak and held on to her hands, wrapping his fingers around and sighing with relief when the pain faded away. A slight nudge and Zaria began to walk the way he prodded her, her head tilted down to look out for roots and things that would make her trip or could stab up into her bare feet. Her wrist was healed, but she wondered if one more twist would be enough to break it again. Once she looked back mournfully at her tent and all her things, months of preparation vanishing behind her amongst the trees.
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"I will buy you whatever you need," the duke said softly, misunderstanding the reason she looked backward so fearfully. His other hand stayed at his side, the fingers gently waving to keep the canopy of magic over them that was keeping the rain off . " There is nothing back there that you will need."
A few steps later, she looked back once more, the rain falling down in sheets, making it so only the vaguest shape of the tent's dome was visible. For just a moment, she thought she could see one of the trees next to it move, and she wondered if it was one of the duke's guards destroying everything just to be safe. She turned her head forward, her eyes red as helpless tears threatened to fall.
They were walking for only minutes when the road became visible. A half dozen horses stood at the edge, their heads down against the onslaught of rain. All but one had a rider, guards with cloaks pulled down low across their faces to keep the rain out of their eyes. At their approach, one of the guards slid off of his horse and came to stand next to Zaria so that she could be handed up once the duke was mounted.
She tried to squirm free, sure that if she could get back into the trees then the horses could not follow her, but less than three seconds was all it took for her to be sitting sideways in front of the duke. He pushed his left sleeve up on his forearm before reaching around her with his right arm to hold onto the reins. His left arm slid into the gap in the cloak and wrapped around her waist, his hand pushing her shirt out of the way so that the bare skin of his arm was pressed against her. A shudder and a gasp, then a smile spread across his narrow face.
"I had only just learned what it was like to not have the pain tearing away inside of me all the time when you took the relief away," he said in a soft and dreamy voice. She wiggled, trying to get away from him, but his arm tightened and held her in place. "Do stop, or you will fall, and for a little thing like you, that is a long way down."
The horses began walking at first, then sped up into a canter. The raspy voice chuckled, his breath tickling the top of her head. "Perhaps not as high as that wall you went over. It took almost an hour to figure out that is how you got out, and someone was cutting that tree down minutes later. Such a long way to drop to the other side. Our children will be very strong with you as their mother."
At the reminder of her purpose for the duke, Zaria panicked and jerked forward, nearly sliding out of his arms and off the side. His hand slid sideways, and fingers pinched the skin above her hip sharply. She stilled after a yelp of pain, and his hand went back to where it was before. Another sigh, this one tinged with anger, and the two rode silently until arriving at the manor several hours later.
Zaria was not lowered to another guard. Instead, the duke swung off from behind her and threw her over his shoulder, holding her legs in place so that she would not kick him. They walked through a door at the back of the building that she hadn't known existed and down a long flight of stone steps. At the end of a dark hallway filled with thick wooden doors with iron hinges, she was lowered to the ground inside of a small room, barely two square meters.
The room glowed dimly with the magic surrounding the duke. In one corner, there was a small metal chamber pot, in another a lump that appeared to be a blanket. Her legs were unsteady, and she sank immediately to the ground, wiggling backward until she was pressed tight in the corner, scowling at the raven haired man above her.
"I'm sorry, I have to punish you," he said, pulling his cloak off of her and throwing it across his arm. "You embarrassed me with your actions, and I had to get rid of one of my best guards because he could not do the job I left him. You will stay here until you have calmed down, and I will come down occasionally to take care of the curse since you will not be sleeping upstairs with me. I don't think you will be able to control yourself sleeping next to me at the moment. I do hope this doesn't last long. I don't want you to make yourself sick by staying down here longer than you need to."
He turned around smartly and closed the door behind him, the sound of the lock turning echoing around the bare room. With no windows on the walls or door, there was no light at all, and she shivered in fright in the pitch blackness. After a while, Zaria began to yell, screaming for help, but nobody responded, and quickly, the strain on her throat silenced her. The bruises were still fading from the last time when he grabbed her outside of her tent, and her throat ached horribly.
After what she assumed was a few hours she had to use the bathroom, but with her arms bound behind her back she couldn't get her pants down to use the chamber pot she remembered seeing in the corner. There was nothing she could do but hope that someone came along before she had an accident, so she occupied her mind by thinking of the plots of books she had read so that she wouldn't think about her bladder that ached increasingly worse as time passed in darkness.
When the lock turned again, she looked up hopefully, but her expression fell when magical light lit up the room. The tall man watched her for a moment before walking the short distance and sitting down with his back against the wall. He pulled her across to sit against him , tugging her shirt up a bit at the back so that his skin would be against hers when his arm wound around her waist. He spoke, not a word, his head relaxing back against the wall and his eyes drifting shut. Several minutes passed before he heard her whispering something too low for him to hear.