No Fury

Now: Four

The rumors circulate the castle like the constant, seeping chill. They say the prince has remained pure. That he will wait to take a woman until he is married.

We'd both turned eighteen the week before Sir Douglas dragged me to the prince's rooms.  The prince is of age; he will wed soon.

He clearly didn't want to wait until he is married.

I greet the cloudy day in a fog, back in my own cot. I am less sore by morning, but I am no less bewildered.

Over pints in the ale house that twilight, and in the small, damp corners of our quarters, the men obliviously proclaim it unwise for the prince to go into a marriage innocent. He should know the touch of a woman, they say. He should get it over and done with.

The women all find it romantic. He should wait, they say. He should learn how to be a man with the woman who will make him so.

We discuss it because we care, you see. And because our lives are small.

We discuss it because in whatever way we all want to believe, he is ours.

Throughout it all, I keep my lips together as I stare into my ale.

~~

It hurts less the second night he takes me, but the prince still does not look at my face.

Does he even know it is me that he claims?

I don't care for my arms held tight to the massive headboard, don't care for the steward in the room with us during life's most intimate act, even with his gaze averted. But I don't dare complain and risk a beating, or worse.

They needn't restrain me. I won't struggle. I should struggle, of course. Or beg the prince to not ruin me this way. But I can no more hate the feel of my friend-my future sovereign-over me than I could have put a knife to his throat.

Instead, I stare at his face as he climbs onto me: his eyes are screwed shut, his full mouth a harsh line of misery.

On this second night, he places a careful hand on my hip as he eases back and forth, determined to work his body back into mine.

An inch at a time. Deeper, deeper.

His hand is large enough to curl half around my waist. His palm is warm and smooth, fingers trembling. It is the first time I've felt his touch in all my years; he is doing exactly what I've always dreamed he would do, but it is nothing like that dream at all.

He pauses once he is fully seated within, looking down in the darkness at where he rests between my spread legs. He stares at himself inside me, mouth parted.

Inside, he jerks tighter, grows thicker.

And then his eyes fall shut and he finds his pleasure only a moment later.

What's my name? I want to ask.

But I don't. I watch his face as pleasure flickers across-relief in his brow, a tremble in his jaw, a deep gusting exhale-and then realization set in and he slips from me, rolling to his back.

With a wave of his hand, he sends me away.