Aftermath

I was still laying there when Castor came to my room some time later. How much later, I didn’t know, for time had lost all its meaning to me. Blood still smeared over the inside of ivory thighs and my eyes were red rimmed and weary, knowing there was nothing I could do to fix what I had so badly broken. My fingers clutched tightly at the fur beneath me, no cover veiling my damnation. In a moment when I should have had it all, I had nothing.

He called out my name, but at first I didn’t answer, wishing I would never have to answer anyone again. "What's wrong with you? Going to spend all day in bed?" And then he realized and I could see the flash of anger over his face. "Who? Who?!"

"Aiden. He did not rape me, but he does hate me. It was what you wanted, yes? For him to be my.. first." Even now I felt the need to protect him, even after what he’d done. What he’d said.

"I do not hear them anymore. They have .. abandoned me." Aiden? The cards? Had he guessed either he would have been right.

He picked my up and I curled against his chest, where he ran me a bath. Sometimes I find it strange how a cruel man can relay such bouts of kindness. "You are frightened?"

"Yes." I could not look at him. I dared not see what I thought would be found in his eyes. I was ruined and in more ways then one. "You will not need me now, for I can tell you nothing. The cards are silent." I slunk down into the water, then curled to one side of the tub, hugging its edge. "He left me, laying there." I tried to eradicate the seen from my head. "What will I do?"

"For as smart as you are you have to be the stupidest of women I have met. Do you remember me telling me you that you should cultivate other skills besides your gifts? And now you are useless.. to me.. You forget that is not up to you. You have submitted. You belong to me. But you are not of any use to me, so I should kill you right?"

I didn't dare speak, for fear my voice would crack, only a simple nod of my head in answer to my death. Ehns passed before I could force myself to look up at him. "You knew he would recognize the slave bracelet you gave to me, didn't you? You wanted him to.. be angry at me. Did you know that it would push him over the edge as well? That he would take my virginity for such an offense?" Or maybe he hadn't. FI was so confused right now I couldn't seem to see past my own grief. The words had been soft, no animosity within, nothing but quiet desperation.

"What do you think? You think a man that loves you could be stilled by the fact that you wear a man's collar. Do you honestly believe that man didn't know I've been fucking for hands. He would have been a fool.. He knew already my dear.. and still he had sex with you. You said he did not rape you, so what was it then? What did he say? What did he do?"

I recanted the story to him once again, trying my best not to fall apart. Not an easy task for a woman who was.. falling apart.

"Perhaps now with the loss of your gift, with having disgusted the one good person who loved you, and with being nothing more than a worthless piece of ass you will begin to understand that what I said to you about you having more skills than just one to fall back on. Get out of the tub dry yourself You have a very simple choice to make." He removed the blade from his sleeve, cutting the slave band from my wrist. "If you’re not worth having I do not want you."

I felt like I was walking through the mist of a dream. Or to better describe it, a nightmare. I watched the leather fell to the floor, tempted to pick it up, but I did not. I rose from the tub, towel draped, neither sitting nor kneeling. merely just.. existing.

What, what could I possibly be good for? I didn’t know anything else. I’d never been in a position where I had to. Eyes drifted towards the window, then the hall door, before they at last swept back to the man sitting in the chair. I couldn’t seem to keep my thoughts on one thing.

"Focus Astraea. I do not tolerate failure or weakness. So if you have nothing to offer me then I will simply kill you. You have a choice to make Aiden took your gift but as I have said many times before, your gift does not define you. It is a part of you. You asked me what I can teach you once.. I can teach you to adapt. You are not meant to be a kneeling, serving slave, it is not in you, but neither are you meant to be free. So what is it? Adapt or die?"

Focus. Yes, perhaps if I focused I'd be able to ... what? Learn to cook? Sew? Sell flowers on some Arian street corner? Adapt. Die. Wasn't it all the same? "I don't understand. If I am not meant to be a slave, but neither am I meant to be free.. what possible choices do I have left?"

"Foolish wench have I taught you nothing? Let me guess, you believe that the things I do are all about viciousness and cruelty. They are not about moving between the lines of social norms. I teach, regardless of whether the lesson is desired or not. I am not exactly a villain, but no one would ever call me a hero. Did you think that perhaps like me you can create a space between to hard lines to be. A space between free and slave? And once you have figured it out, find a niche in which to thrive...a use? Come here.."

How very logical he made it all sound. But even so, I was drowning in the emotional aspect of it all. Two steps was all it took me before I was standing in front of him, unsure whether to kneel, stand, sit or crawl. A use, yes, I needed a use. Perhaps a project. Something to throw myself into,

something that would force me to forget all my woes and self pitying sorrows. "What do you think I would be.. good at."

"This is not for me to decide. You can not find purpose in something I define. If I was to do that you would enjoy it at first.. pleasing me but after a while it would come to you that this is not what you want. Decide and tell me. You have time. For now your decision to live and adapt is all I require." His touch was gentle, soft, pushing the still damp locks from my eyes, his hand cupped against my cheek. "I had longed for sometime to be your first, but I could not." Why he could not he would not explain, telling me only that in time, I would understand.

He kissed me, then turned me around, a blade set to my throat. "Death.. of Adapt.."

Death or adaptation. How I had wanted to scream for death, to push my neck into the defeated sharpness of blade and end it all, but I couldn't. There was still a thread of hope, though distant, that I could live.. and maybe even be .. happy. My eyes closed, my breath raspy with the words that would seal my destiny, one way or another. "I will.. adapt."

"Yes you will." He grabbed my hair wrapping it viciously around his hand, cutting it, before he sent me stumbling to the floor. "This is the old you." He held aloft the hair he'd cut away in his hand, motioning to the mirror with his other. "And that is the new you."

Of all the things I might have expected from him, that wasn't one of them. My hand had raised to see what he'd done, even as I moved to the mirror. He hadn’t cut it all off, he hadn’t shorn it to the scalp, but left me plenty enough to work with. A new look, for a new woman. I was certainly.. that. Or if not new, then different.

"What is it you want Astraea?"

To change the past, the one thing I could never have.

"What is it my love.. did you expect from me companionship?"

"No, of course not. I've never said as much. I know you're not the companionship type. If that was all I wanted, I would have stayed with Aiden. I know what kind of man you are. And still I submitted to you. I know what you do, but it didn't matter. I didn't even care how you treated me, I just wanted to be near you, by whatever means possible. I don't really know what I expect from you, any more than I do myself."

"I do not expect... anything. I want from you nothing. That is why you are mine to possess.. You are the first thing I have ever just wanted.." He looked at me then into his cup. "Is that wrong?" He smirked. I hate it when he smirks, never knowing if what he’s telling me is true, or simply something more to reel me in.

"No. You are right, I am yours to possess. If it is a coinbox girl that you want me to be, then, for you. I would. But that doesn't mean I would like it." Something he had called me earlier. I thought perhaps he had been joking. I still hoped he was. "My love for you knows no bounds. It's unconditional. Knowing you want me is enough."

He laughed as if he were privy to some joke that I was not. He ordered me to him and fashioned a cup held by a strap to my throat, producing a gold tarn from his pocket and dropping it in. He was smiling. Waiting.

I smiled too. Not because I was a coinbox girl, but because I was his coinbox girl.

I cannot change the past, I can only learn from it. Soon my present will melt into my future. Things will change. I will change. I can only pray that it is for the greater good.. and heal the wounds as best I can.