Mastered By Love (16 page)

Dario lifted the mug to her
lips. “Drink.”

She sighed. With uncharacteristic
meekness, she obeyed his order.

“
That’s right,” he said
softly. “Take all of it. It’s a long time until
morning.”

He half expected her to
mock him or make an unslavelike snorting noise. She didn’t. Her
head remained bowed as she slowly drank the tea, her voice silent.
A shiver of unease went through him.

Surely this was an
improvement. Maybe Paolo was right and she’d learned her lesson.
Maybe now she wouldn’t fight him anymore. And with her newly
obedient demeanor, she’d be less likely to draw the irate attention
of other Saturnian men.

He would take care of her,
protect her, teach her proper ways. She’d adjust and learn to be
happy.

All in all, it was an
improvement.

***

The next morning, she
wasn’t in bed with him. Dario leaped up fully dressed and tore out
of his tent. Damn her to hell. He was going to kill her himself if
she didn’t behave better than this.

Men and slaves were already
awake, talking in low voices as they broke camp. He glanced around
wildly. She wasn’t with the other women – no surprise there. Had
she tried to run again?

His gaze fell on Paolo and
the horses. A short, heavily bundled figure stood next to him, one
small mittened hand on the neck of Dario’s stallion. A lock of
blond hair had escaped the figure’s head wrappings.

Tariza.

He strode toward the pair.
They turned to look at him as he approached, Paolo looking slightly
guilty. Tariza dropped her gaze, just as she ought, her mouth flat
and expressionless. Her compliance made Dario’s stomach
turn.

“
What are you doing out
here?” he said harshly.

“
I came to see the
horses.”

“
She asked me to accompany
her, milord,” Paolo said as if defending her. “I thought it would
be all right.”

Odd. Last night he had nothing but
contempt for her and now he was her champion.

Dario looked at the way
Tariza had sidled up to the animal. Blaze didn’t usually suffer the
touch of strangers, especially women. But he seemed content to
allow Tariza to stroke the heavily muscled column of his neck. As
Dario watched, the stallion nudged her with his nose and her lips
curled up in a ghost of a smile, petting the white streak that
marked his face.

“
He likes you,” he said in
surprise.

Tariza didn’t answer. She
continued to stroke the stallion’s nose.

“
His name is
Blaze.”

Still, she said nothing.

“
You really do like
horses.”

She glanced up at him, then
seemed to think better of it and looked away again. “I told you,”
she said, her voice low and toneless. “It’s what I do.”

Slaves – women – didn’t
normally have anything to do with horses. They were indoor
creatures and rarely went anywhere near the stables. But Tariza
wasn’t the usual slave, for all her current
submissiveness.

She looked beaten,
defeated, her spirit leached out of her. He’d said he wanted her
capitulation, and now apparently he’d gotten it, but it tasted
sour. He missed her smart mouth. This new version of her was like a
pale facsimile of the Tariza he knew.

When they were settled in Saturnios, he’d take her
riding. Maybe she could have a mount of her own, at least now and
then. It would cheer her, make it easier for her to adjust to her
new life.

Saturnios was
a monstrous city, in size as well as culture. It
sprawled across the entire floor of a broad valley, its red tile
roofs of all shapes and sizes lightly dusted with snow. A multitude
of chimneys sent up columns of smoke, contributing to a thick haze
in the air. Tariza stared numbly at the sight. After her near death
by freezing, she’d been numb inside, as if the ice had gotten into
her soul.

She didn’t even feel the
brutally cold mountain wind as they picked their way slowly down to
the valley.

People in the streets
stared at them as they passed, yet no-one cheered or spat or showed
any sign of knowing who she was. Today she was just another female,
just another slave held on the saddle of her master. If she’d had
any feelings left, she might have been grateful for the anonymity.
But she was ice, inside and out, and ice can’t feel.

They wound through one
street after another, buildings crowding around them on every side,
the claustrophobic air of the city occasionally giving way to open
spaces where the people worked gardens in the summer or kept small
livestock. There seemed to be no broad avenues, no boulevards in
Saturnios – unless they were coming in by the back alleys. But why
would Dario want to hide his entrance into his own city?

She couldn’t seem to bring
herself to care enough to follow that thought.

Eventually, as the sky was
beginning to darken, they came to an area of finer houses, mansions
and small palaces. Then they rounded a corner and there it was –
Saturnios House. She recognized its distinctive facade from
pictures she’d seen. The heavily rectangular edifice took up an
entire city block. Lights glowed from the windows and guards in the
Saturnios uniform of black and red patrolled the grounds and stood
at attention at the grand entrance.

They turned down a side road and rode
through a narrow gate rather than entering through the front. In
the great courtyard, uniformed men ran to take their horses. Dario
dismounted and pulled her off the back of his stallion.

She stood there in the dusk with a few
isolated snowflakes falling from the sky and stared dully at the
thick stone walls rising all around her. The voices of the men
seemed strangely far away.

Dario put an arm around her
shoulders. “Come.”

She went with him up a
precipitous stone staircase and through a heavy wooden door into
the palace. They seemed to have entered in a kind of servants’ hall
or side corridor, narrow and dark and unadorned, smelling strongly
of the wash they’d used to clean the floor. Had they come in
through this unprestigious way because of her presence or for some
other reason? She gave a mental shrug. It wasn’t as if it mattered
to her.

Dario led her along the
corridor to an equally dark and narrow staircase, climbing swiftly
upward. She went with him as silently as she’d ridden through the
mountains, as if all her words had left her – but it was really the
ice in her soul keeping her so quiet.

He paused at a landing one
story up and opened a door into a passageway as wide and grand as
she’d expected, with fancy plasterwork on the walls and ceiling,
and a rich Concordian carpet in tones of cream and blue on the
floor. The first chamber they came to had wide double doors, which
Dario opened to reveal a well-appointed sitting room near the
fireplace, a dining area and, in the back, an elaborate bed with
blue hangings.

Tariza shuffled in and stood dripping
melting snow on a carpet with colors similar to the one in the
corridor. The air in the room felt cold and still, as if no-one had
been in it for days. Dario pulled a bell rope on the wall, probably
to call for a servant.

He turned to her, his dark eyes warm.
How could he look so happy in the face of her despair?

Stupid question. Of course
he’s happy. You’ve capitulated.

“
Soon we’ll have a fire in
here and some hot food.” He unwrapped his scarf.

Tariza nodded to show she’d
understood.

Yet another uniformed male
appeared. Dario conferred with him, but she didn’t listen to
anything they said. She stared out the windows instead.

She could see candle and
lamplight flickering in the windows of nearby buildings. It seemed
odd they would put a prince in a room facing the street. Shouldn’t
he be in one of the rooms that faced into the courtyard? Not that
she cared. It didn’t matter to her if Dario was vulnerable to
attack while he slept.

The servant left. Minutes
later, another arrived and started a fire in the fireplace,
followed soon by a second who stood near the door and bowed to
Dario. “Your Highness, His Majesty commands you and your slave to
attend him in his private chambers.”

Dario’s jaw clenched for an
instant, then relaxed so quickly she wondered if she’d really seen
it. “Excellent,” he said. “We’ll be there in a moment.”

The servant bowed again and
left. Tariza watched Dario out of the corner of her eye. He was
frowning. She lowered her head and waited with her hands clasped
before her. Whatever was wrong, she didn’t care. She didn’t care
about anything.

He reached into the drawer
of a small table against one wall and drew out a slender lead made
of braided leather, dyed the color of cherry brandy. Turning to
her, he clipped the lead to the collar she wore. “Here in the
palace, you must be on a lead. It isn’t safe for you
otherwise.”

Why not?

But she didn’t say the
words.

“
Come along,” he said,
giving the lead a gentle tug. “We might as well get this over
with.”

They left his chambers and walked down
the grand hallway to an even grander staircase that swept upward
from the first floor. It curved onward to a third story. Dario
climbed the stairs with her in tow.

The king’s chambers were at
the head of the stairs, behind double doors even more elaborately
carved than Dario’s. Uniformed guards in black with red trim and
armed with swords flanked the doors. They opened them at Dario’s
approach.

He led her into the room beyond. It
was outfitted almost like a throne room, with an impressive chair
at one end, near the enormous fireplace. A sitting area lay off to
one side of the roaring fire. The king sat on a couch there, with
an emaciated naked woman kneeling at his feet.

The woman had long, black hair and was
covered in bruises and welt marks. Tariza stopped. What had they
done to her? Why was he displaying her in that state?

Dario looked over his
shoulder at her. “Come on, Tariza,” he muttered. “Don’t act up
now.”

***

Dario swore
silently. This was not the time for Tariza to get
stubborn. He tugged again on the leash, hoping his uncle hadn’t
noticed her hesitation. She blinked and moved forward, so he led
her all the way to King Grasos and bowed deeply. Tariza merely
stood there, staring at his uncle and the slave. The slave was
Miri, the Concordian scout Grasos had taken so much joy in
breaking. It was almost as if the king had known Dario was
approaching with the former princess of Concordia.

He leaned close to her ear.
“Get on your knees.”

She swallowed so hard it was
audible.

“
Do it now, Tariza. This
isn’t the time to act up.”

Thank God, she dropped to her knees
without a word. But her gaze remained on the slave, and not on the
floor where it belonged.

Finally, Dario looked at
his uncle. The man was glowering more poisonously than he ever had
before. Shit. This wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“
I heard you’d acquired the
princess for yourself,” Grasos said, “But I didn’t believe it until
now.”

Dario bowed his head.

“
What the hell did you
think you were doing? You knew I had plans for her.”

“
My abject apologies,
Uncle. I desired her for myself and I couldn’t resist
her.”

“
Couldn’t resist,
eh?”

“
No, sir.”

Grasos drummed his fingers
on the arm of the couch. “I find that hard to believe.”

“
I have thought of little
else than taming her, ever since I met her at the Bellerenic
embassy.” It was the truth.

“
You’ve denied me my
prize.”

Dario inclined his head
toward the other slave. “But you already have a
Concordian.”

Tariza made a tiny squeak. He glanced
down at her. She was trembling.

“
Am I to be denied my own?”
he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “It’s been a dream of mine
since I was a boy, to tame one of their women.”

Grasos narrowed his eyes.
“Has it indeed?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well, as you can see, this
one is all but useless.” He kicked the slave lightly. “She was all
too easy to break. I need a better challenge.”

Perhaps if he hadn’t beaten
all the spirit out of her, he wouldn’t be so bored with his woman.
The sadistic bastard had indeed broken her. According to palace
gossip, she hadn’t said a word in months. But Dario couldn’t speak
of these things to his uncle.

“
I heard also that you
marked her,” Grasos continued.

“
I did.”

“
Show me.”

Dario bent and took
Tariza’s right hand. He pushed her sleeve back to display the
tattoo.

The king’s nostrils flared.
“It seems you have outmaneuvered me, Nephew. I have to give you
credit; you’ve been a clever little shit. But there will be a price
to pay.”