Rule and Ruin

eighteen; the taste of power

chapter sixteen.

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MEN WHO CRAVE the taste of power are perhaps the most dangerous of them all.

What does power taste like?

Blood that trickles down her skin, mixed with the salt of her sweat, the sickness of her tears - what does that taste like?

Bitter with hatred, sour with desperation. Wang's wicked tongue could not get enough. He had his way with her, relishing in the taste of power that came from her sweet defeat.

Selene had known all this time that he was a sick, sick man, but sickness is always worse than one could ever expect.

How sick his breath was in her ear, how sick his touch was across her skin, how much his perversions made her feel sick. He had taken her in any way he liked, and nobody was there to stop him.

Selene, he would whisper his name each time, like it was a curse.

She learned just how much she could hate her own name.

Her name used to be a threat. It used to draw fear in the disobedient. And now, the same man uttered her name with such corruption. Her name was nothing more than an utterance of aberration. A few syllables of delusion. A word of mockery.

She remained chained against the wall as Wang used her.

To rule and to ruin. To love and to lose. To defy and to leave for dead.

Selene decided she was dead. They had carved the living out of her. Her beating heart was not alive if the blood it pumped no longer belonged to her.

There was nothing left for her. There was nothing left of her.

The day they finally let her out of her cage was the day she thought she was finally going to die. She was almost happy.

"Come with me, Selene," Dino said from above. He appeared in front of her, so tall and towering. She could not bear to look up and up to meet his shadowed face.

It drained all the energy she had left to stand and stumble after him. She gripped the gray walls of her prison for support. He walked out of the room and she followed, completely blind of where she was going.

She lifted her head to see Wang's men sneering at her. They lounged against their stations, eyes hungry for a taste of her brokenness.

She continued to trail after Dino, grunting when she brushed past one of the men. She felt the softness of his clothing fabric as her thieving hands felt freedom for the first time in weeks. She kept her head down. Silent. Submissive.

They were outside now. Selene nearly cried because she had not felt the outside air since her imprisonment. She flinched at the crisp wind that dug into her open skin.

"I felt like you deserved a nice little walk," he said, lacing his voice with sick sympathy.

She breathed the air that did not feel like poison.

"It seems I was wrong," Dino said, leading her down a path of flowers. "He's not coming for you."

That's right. He's not.

"Don't you see?" he continued. "No one will ever care for you the way I did."

Selene stared at the red peonies, blooming so widely in shades of blood.

It pains me to see you like this, but you understand, right? You understand the business."

She nodded feverishly.

"I'm sorry," she said to Dino. "I'm sorry."

He regarded her. "Sorry can't fix it."

"I know," her voice was small and cracked. "It won't fix anything. It won't fix the fact that you killed my father. Or that you lied to me. It won't fix the fact that I don't know who I am anymore. I can wander these streets but I will never belong anywhere. Everything I was, everything I am, is a lie."

"It's the business," Dino stepped towards her and ran a hand through her hair. "Your father wouldn't have blamed me. He would have understood."

Selene closed her eyes.

"None of it was a lie. You know exactly who you are," Dino said, brushing a finger down her cheek. "My daughter."

Selene nodded, and a tear fell down her cheek.

He hugged her and she let him, because she welcomed any form of contact that wasn't torture, even if it came from him. He folded her into his large embrace.

She cried and she cried and she cried.

And then when she was all cried out, she slipped the knife from her sleeve and stabbed him in the gut.