Mastered By Love (32 page)

A third woman grabbed him
by the arm and spun him around. She yanked his wrists behind him
and locked a pair of handcuffs on him. “Get in the car.”

“
Tariza is trapped under
the carriage. You have to help her.”

“
Shut up.” The woman
elbowed him sharply in the back. “In the car,
Saturnios.”

He looked into the eyes of
one of her compatriots. “She’s hurt. Don’t you want to help
her?”

“
We don’t need instruction
from you, male. Now shut it or I’ll shoot you just for
fun.”

Her mouth was covered by the muffler
she wore, but he could hear the sneer in her voice clearly
enough.

He broke into a cold sweat
under his clothing. What if Tariza was dead? What if her spine or
legs were crushed beneath the weight of the carriage or her head
had knocked against the wall of the building? She could be dying
and these crazy bitches didn’t seem to care. How could they not
care?

“
Her Majesty wants this one
alive,” said the woman behind him.

Shit. If he’d known that,
he would have defied them and done what he pleased. He wrenched his
arms, twisting, trying to pull out of their grip, but they were
strong. Especially for women.

Something hard and heavy cracked against the back
of his skull and he pitched forward to the snow.

He was
cold. Dario groaned at the vicious ache in his head. He pried
sticky eyelids open and peered into the darkness surrounding him.
Where was he? Windowless stone walls were barely visible in the dim
glow of a distant lamp. A prison?

Cold, dry stone met his
bare skin. They’d taken his clothes. He lay on his side, his hands
still cuffed behind him, the arm beneath him numb from the pressure
of his body weight.

“
Tariza,” he said in a
raspy whisper.

Nearby, a chair scraped against the
stone floor. The light swung closer, glaring in his eyes. Booted
feet strode toward him.

“
So, the creature awakes,”
an amused female voice said.

He squinted into the light.
All he could see of the woman was her feet and legs, clad in tall
black leather boots. “Take me to Princess Tariza. Where is
she?”

“
Where you will never be
able to hurt her again.”

He lifted his head. “She’s
alive?”

The woman snorted. “Of
course she’s alive. Did you think we’d hurt our own
princess?”

Thank God.
She was still alive. He hadn’t killed
her.

“
Take me to
her.”

The woman – his jailer? –
laughed. “She doesn’t want to see you, worm. She never wants to
hear your name spoken as long as she lives.”

Pain speared him in his
heart, in his gut. He couldn’t breathe for it. She didn’t want him.
He subsided, laying his cheek against the filthy stone floor.
Tariza didn’t want him.

The jailer poked him with a
toe. “The only reason you’re still alive is the queen wants to take
out everything you did to the princess on your skin. Lucky you.”
She laughed again.

“
He’s awake?” a second
voice, also female, said.

“
Yes. He demands to see
Princess Tariza.”

Both of them laughed.

“
He’s just as stupid as the
rest of them,” the second voice said. “Doesn’t even know when he’s
been beaten.”

“
He’ll know he’s been
beaten soon enough. Let’s get him on his feet.”

The woman in the black boots never
touched him, yet she somehow forced him up using pressure on his
wrist shackles.

There were only two of them, and both
were smaller than he by a significant margin. Dario lashed out with
his bare foot, catching the second woman in her gut. She doubled
over with a grunt.

He fell forward, using his
body weight to drag whatever it was the guard used to control him
out of her tiny female hands. Only she didn’t let go. With a shout,
she bore down on his wrists, yanking his arms backward.

The other guard sprang back
to her feet, panting but unbowed. She pulled a whip from a loop on
her belt and cracked it right in front of his face. He couldn’t
help recoiling.

The guard lashed him across the back.
She must have narrowly missed her comrade, but the other guard made
no complaint. Instead, she cranked his wrists higher behind his
back, wrenching his arms in their sockets. He ground his teeth
together against the pain.

“
Get up,” the second woman
said.

Dario struggled to get his feet
underneath him. They were shackled, the cuffs connected by a heavy
chain. He got to his knees and staggered upright, the chain
clanking. Now that he was standing, he could see a door leading out
of the cell into a corridor with identical stone walls.

“
Fight us again and we’ll
beat you until you can’t move.”

“
What are you going to do
with me?”

She grinned. “You’re about
to find out. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

They’d probably torture him
for information. He wouldn’t talk, no matter what they did to him.
He’d never talk.

“
Move.” Black Boots shoved
him in the back with some kind of stick.

He stumbled toward the
door.

They seemed to have a rod
attached to his handcuffs. The black-booted woman used this to
guide him, or rather to control him. In addition, his feet were not
only chained together, they were also chained to his hands. He
barely had enough length in the chain to take a short stride. Not
enough to run; not enough to escape. He’d been a fool to
try.

She forced him down the corridor to a
narrow staircase leading upward. At a landing above them, a third
woman with black hair tightly bound in a single braid stood holding
a whip in her hand.

She grinned down at them.
“Sleeping Beauty woke up.”

“
He has an audience with
the queen.”

Black-hair turned her back
on him and led the way to the top of the stairs. Her hips, tightly
encased in black leather trousers, swayed provocatively with every
step. She had a fine ass; a fine body in general. Before Tariza,
she would have aroused him. Now, he couldn’t have cared
less.

The stairs gave onto a broad hall that
reminded him of the one at home in Saturnios House. Women in
similar trousers and boots, masculine jackets over all, turned and
stared as his captors escorted him into the chamber. They glared at
him, their expressions rife with hatred and contempt. Some of them
spat at him.

And there were men, or at least males.
Most wore short tunics in deference to the winter cold, with
half-boots on their feet and thick leather collars on their necks.
They knelt at the feet of some of the women, their heads down in
submission. Some of them sent furtive glances his way as he passed
them.

Their faces were as full of
hatred as the women’s.

Dario kept his head high,
his face impassive. In this strange place, he was the foreigner,
the alien, although their ways made his stomach turn. Men should
not be cast down. They shouldn’t bow their heads and cringe before
their women.

Why did the Concordian men hate him?
Was it loyalty to the princess and anger over his supposed crimes
against her, or would they hate any Saturnian man?

He puzzled over their odd reaction to
him as his guards pushed him onward, all the way across the echoing
space to a large carved door at the other end. Two women in the
blue and gold colors of Concordia stood there, one on either side.
They wore swords on their hips.

“
Saturnios?” one of them
said.

“
The very same,” Black-hair
replied.

“
She’s been waiting.” The
guard opened the door.

This new room must be the throne room
or audience chamber. It was much smaller, with walls painted blue
spangled with gold stars. At the far end, a blonde who looked like
an older version of Tariza occupied a golden throne. He remembered
her from the conferences earlier that year; she looked much more
imposing here than she had in the Bellerenic embassy. More women,
mostly dressed in leather and wool, lined the room on one side,
leaving the other wall empty.

The assembled women muttered to each
other as the guards brought him before the throne.

“
Dario Saturnios, Your
Majesty,” Black-hair said. The others fell silent.

“
I see that. Thank you,
Rosaria.”

Rosaria bowed.

The queen fixed a stern
gaze on him. “You stole my daughter.”

He met her gaze without
flinching. “I did.”

“
You will begin to pay for
that now.” She looked over his shoulder and tilted her head toward
the left side of the room. “Go ahead.”

The woman behind him gave him a shove
toward that side of the room. A large metal loop stuck out of the
wall, right from the center of one of the painted stars. Rosaria
stepped up, uncoiling another length of chain from a loop on her
belt. She clipped one end of it to his collar and the other to the
loop in the wall.

“
Let’s get his hands up
there, too,” said the woman behind him.

Her slim fingers brushed
against his wrists as she unlocked his handcuffs. Rosaria caught
his right wrist, yanking it over his head, while the other woman
took his left. They lifted his arms up and attached them to a
couple of links at the top of the chain. They were well-coordinated
with each other and knew just how to manage someone as big and
muscular as him; obviously they’d done this before many
times.

Rosaria leaned toward him
and grabbed his cock, fondling him rudely. “Two stripes for every
one the princess received,” she whispered in his ear.

She walked around behind him. A crack
split the air. Dario forced himself to keep still, to show no
reaction. She was only trying to spook him.

The second crack landed on his skin.
Searing pain. He gritted his teeth. Another crack and another. The
women behind him clapped.

“
Saturnian dog!”

“
Beg for mercy!”

He flushed with
humiliation.
Damn them. No-one clapped or
shouted when the king beat Tariza. No-one but he and the guards had
witnessed it.

Rosaria laid down another
blistering series of strikes. His skin burned and he flinched each
time the whip touched him. It was weak of him, but he couldn’t
control the unconscious movement of his body as it writhed under
the lash.

His breath sawed in and out so harshly
he was sure all the observers in the room could hear it. Sweat
rolled down his forehead and dripped in his eyes, making them
sting. The next strike forced an agonized hiss from between his
lips.

“
That’s the total, Your
Majesty,” Rosaria said.

“
Continue until he
screams.”

“
Yes, Your
Majesty.”

He’d never felt pain like
this. His entire back was on fire. Hot liquid ran in rivers down
his skin – blood and sweat, or maybe just blood. He didn’t know. He
couldn’t think. The fire had entered his brain, wiped all thought
from his mind, erased everything into a white haze.

Something cold and wet splashed
against him, bringing worse fire that burned all the way to the
bone. He heard a voice shouting, screaming hoarsely, and realized
it was him. The women broke into grim applause and shouts of
derision.

“
Enough,” the queen said.
“Take him down and let him rest for the next round.”

They unlinked his arms. He could
hardly feel them; all the blood had left them and they were numb.
His knees buckled. The women caught him, one on either side and
supported him out of the chamber.

He stumbled forward in a
blur of pain. His back seemed to burn all the way through to the
other side of his body. Around him, crowds of people yelled taunts.
He couldn’t understand their words, could only hear the noise of
their shouting.

He and the two guards descended into
the cold prison once again. His feet were wet. It made the stone
floor feel like ice.

The woman in black boots
who’d been there when he’d awakened was sitting in a chair outside
his cell. She jumped to her feet as they approached.

“
He looks
ruined.”

“
He’ll survive,” Rosaria
said. “That salt water should keep out infection.”

She and the other threw him into his
cell. He staggered forward until he lost his balance and crashed to
his knees. The door clanged shut behind him.

“
I could use a drink,” said
the guard who’d pushed him up the stairs. She laughed. “Who’s with
me?”

“
I’m still on duty,”
Rosaria said.

“
Maybe we’ll bring you
something later.”

Two sets of booted feet
clumped down the corridor, away from him. He lay, shivering, on the
stone in a pool of his own blood and the salt water they’d thrown
on his ravaged back. They hadn’t even asked him any
questions.