...61...
I ABDUCTED YOU
Peter received them at the entrance when they returned from the court room.
He informed the emperor that there were some issues that he needed to deal with waiting for him on his escritoire.
He dismissed the man with a promise to go to it as soon as he took his wife to the bedroom.
Yes, he had called her his wife and Peter had only smiled.
It was then she realized that she had been the only one shocked by the news.
Her aides had seemed to know of it except Xiera who still wore a puzzled look on her face from all the ongoings.
He took her up the stairs and they were followed closely by the three ladies that made up his entourage.
Her mind brought something up as she thought of the three women.
Why did he not have a man as his aide? Why a woman? She wondered if she should ask him that.
She would do so when they arrived at their destination.
They turned into the left wing, his quarters.
He took her to his bedroom where they met Hyeera who was just done with changing the sheets on the bed.
In place of the pink sheets she had seen this morning was a black polkadot sheet.
'My Lord, My Lady,' she greeted them as she walked towards them with the pink sheets that she had wrapped into a bundle in her hands.
'I like that sheet,' she told the lady with a smile as the emperor walked past the lady.
Hyeera smiled at her.
'I knew you would like it My Lady,' the healer told her.
The emperor took her to the bed and set her down on it tenderly like a baby.
She kind of pouted as he covered her up with the identical polkadot covers.
'I'm copacetic,' she complained to him in a discontented voice.
He said nothing to her, adjusting the pillows behind her.
'Have this My Lady.'
She turned to see Hyeera who presented her with a small cup at the exact moment the emperor came to sit beside her.
'What is that?' she asked with a puzzled look on her face.
'My famous wonder tea?' Hyeera teased with a smile.
Her mistress laughed at her tone.
'Thank you,' she said accepting the cup from the emperor who had taken it from Hyeera.
She sniffed it softly.
And then, tentatively, she took a sip.
The liquid was warm and ran down her throat at once.
Instantly, she felt better.
Wonder tea? Indeed.
It was as good as Hyeera had made it out to be.
She drank some more.
She turned to the emperor with a smile on her face.
"This," she began, raising the cup towards him, "this is good."
He smirked.
'You are copacetic,' he simply began to say to her, 'because Hyeera keeps spiking your morning tea.'
"Oh!"
Her brows quirked.
She hadn't thought of that.
'But-' she began after lowering her cup from her mouth and swallowing the sip that she had just taken.
'No buts,' he interrupted her.
She scrunched up her nose.
'You will stay in bed for the rest of the day. I will make sure that everyone makes sure of it."
She rolled her eyes.
"Now drink your tea before it gets cold.'
His voice was jussive.
She grumbled inaudibly.
Still, she raised the cup to her lips and took more of the tea.
Then, suddenly, a thought crossed her mind and she sat straighter.
Her eyes darted here and there, as if she was searching for gold.
'Where are the others? Outside?' she asked, looking around.
'Yes, and let them rest too."
The emperor sighed softly.
His hands came up to gently brush stray strands of her hair away from her face.
"No more sneaking off the moment you get some sort of secret letter. You hear me?' he said.
She nodded.
'I heard you.'
In the next moment, she drank off about half of her tea.
She looked down at the empty cup, staring at the bottom as if the solution to he problem lay there.
Many thoughts ran through her mind as she finally had time to process what had been happening.
She looked up at the emperor, her eyes boring into him.
He stared right back, unfazed by the intensity of her curious gaze.
"What?" He asked.
She made to speak, but the words died down before she could produce them.
She was unsure if she could really ask him what she was thinking.
Would he get mad?
"You can speak to me, sweet Rose," he mused with a mischievous glint hiding somewhere in his eyes.
She gave him a look that said "really?", and he nodded.
So she cleared her throat.
Then, she asked.
'Am I really your wife?'
His lips began to curve at the corners the moment she spoke.
'Or was that all a sham?' she continued though she already knew the answer he would give.
'You are,' he said after a stound.
She sighed at his words, looking down at the empty cup.
Maybe she really was.
So how come? And was this going to affect their current relationship?
He reached out and took the empty cup from her.
She let him.
'You are really my wife sweet Rose,' he promulgated.
She looked at him.
'I never married you,' she began, her voice bearing a soft tremor.
She had never given her consent
'You abducted me,' she accused him, her mind fugaciously relieving the memory that had come to her earlier once again.
It was that memory of her and the beast in a pub.
She remembered him trying to take her against her will.
She also recalled struggling with him but being unable to overpower hum because she had been kind of high on something.
Maybe alcohol, or sedatives?
She didn't know which it was.
But it must have been one of those because she recalled then that he had bought her drinks, her and the person in her memory that she could vaguely remember.
She remembered then that he had tried to take her and she had begun to fight him off.
But, she was no pugilist under the effect of a puissant sedative.
It must have been the sister that the sender of that letter had spoken off because the lady was familiar.
And she wondered how Hera-Mera knew about her sister.
Anyways, it must have been then.
She was sure that he had taken her then because she had awakened from her slumber in her former bedroom, in his empire and had never been able to leave since then.
'Yes, I did. I abducted you,' he admitted as he poured more tea for her.
She only watched him.
'But then, I married you and you became my wife," he added as he handed the cup to her.
She received it with rage swimming uncontrolled in her eyes.
'I remember no marriage ceremony,' she snapped at him.
He tilted his head at her.
'You are still my wife, wether you were or were not conscious during the ceremony,' he pointed out.
She jerked back and something snapped inside of her then.
And it took every ounce of her willpower to not dump the hot tea all over his stupid face.
'You Mensh! You really did marry me while I was unconscious, didn't you?' she yelled.
He nodded.
'That is because you would never have consented to it had you been fully conscious.'
He flashed her a knowing smile.
The look on his face and the satisfaction in his eyes irritated her.
'That sleazy excuse does not mitigate my anger.'
He chuckled.
'It appears so.'
She humped and looked away from him and to her tea cup.
She lifted the cup to her lips and guzzled the whole thing down in a bid to quell her anger.
She choked on the last bit of warm liquid in her hurry to swallow it.
'Easy there,' he appealed to her.
She leaned forward in an attempt to cough her lungs right out.
He took the cup away from her hands and began to gently pat her back to provide her relief from her choking situation.
She didn't raise her eyes to him then despite that.
'Why aren't you asking me how I remembered all this things?'
'You were bound to remember it Mine because it happened.'
'And why exactly did you take me and marry me?' she asked him in a curious voice. He noticed that she had used the word take and not the word abduct in this sentence.
'I took you, to protect you,' was his reply after a short but rather suspenseful wait.
'Wait, so you are actually trying to say that you took me from everyone that loved me, married me and imprisoned me in your empire, all these things just to protect me?' There were tears beginning to form in her eyes. 'May I ask, why do you have to protect me? What exactly are you even protecting me from?'
'You,' he mumbled. 'Yourself Mine, I am trying to protect you from yourself.' She stared at him with raised brows and confusion written all over her face.
'Myself?' she asked him in complete puzzlement. 'You are trying to protect me from myself?' Her voice was disbelieving. She stared at him for answers.
'Rose, sweet Rose,' he said her name staring at her with those his melanous eyes -made more nigrescent by the intensity of deep raw emotions running through him, lots and lots of it that she could not name each of them- and a tender gaze. 'Mine, you have no idea what it was like, to live when you were like an irony, present and yet absent. It felt like death. I was dead all around without you,' he divulged to her as his hands caressed her face lovingly. 'You have no idea my sweet how close I came to losing you, time and time again.' This time, his confession left her perplexed, more than before. 'I was torturous day in and day out to watch that gloom hang over you. I almost could not bear it.' And for some reason, hi heartfelt words filled her with some sort of pain.
'What on earth are you saying?' she whispered softly in a voice that shook with the compassion that his words had drawn.
He blinked lightly.
'You do know that you do not make any sense to me?' she told him plainly.
He flashed her a wry smile and nodded.
'That -my sweet- you do not need to understand.'
'Then, make me,' she challenged him. 'Make me to understand what it is that is turning you into such a great poet.'
He broke into a painful smile.
'The time isn't right for such,' he simply told her before getting to his feet.
She scoffed.
He was running away again, just like he hard always done.
What was he so afraid of?
She was curious, but she didn't want to find out just yet, didn't want to force the truth out of him.
'Why is the time not yet right for me to know that which I seek?'
'You shall soon know all of that which you desire to know. But for now, you only have to rest.'
Then he turned away from her.
She watched him as he journeyed to his writing table with the cup of tea still in his hands.
He placed the cup down on it and stared down at it.
He stood like that for a long time, just staring at the cup.
It took a few minutes for her to understand that he was not actually staring at the vessel afore him but he was thinking, deep in the thoughts that plagued him, far gone at the time.
'Beast?'
He didn't hear her.
'Hey! Beast?' she called out to him.
And when he still didn't answer her, she simply got out of bed and went up to him.
She noticed the tenseness of his shoulders, the stiffness of his back, the drop of his head as she slowly made her way to him.
She soughed slightly and wrapped her hands around him, giving him a back hug the moment she reached him.
He broke out of his thoughts then and registered her presence.
'Mine?' he said to her.
'Let me hold you,' she half whispered to him as if afraid that he would disappear from her sight.
'Hmm,' was his only answer as his palm came up to hold hers which was tightly wrapped around him.
He caressed her arm, stroking her fingers tenderly with his.
'What is it, what are you afraid of beast? What is it that scare you so?' she asked him, sensing his fear, all of his worry and anxiety.
'It is you that I fear.'
'It is I that you fear?' she asked him, unsure that she had adequately heard what he had said to her.
'Yes Mine,' he continued. 'I fear that you shall be taken away from me. I fear that harm may come to you. I fear that I will lose you,' he poured out his heart to her, leaning forward and supporting himself with his both hands on the table.
'I have no where else to go except with you,' she finally confessed, to him and to herself.
'Then stay, stay with me sweet Rose, stay,' he implored.
'I will go nowhere.'
The assurance behind her words were strong and vivid, said with surety.
'And how sure are you about that?' he asked her as he loosened her hands around him and turned to look at her face.
She stared up at him as his hands wrapped around her waist and pulled her to him.
'I do not know why exactly.'
'How can you promise me that which you are not sure of sweet Rose? You are making me empty promises and you know that it is not fair.'
'I actually have a reason for saying that beast. It is just that I cannot name it yet. Whenever I do, I shall tell you, agreed?' she explained.
'That has succeeded in appeasing me sweet Rose.' He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose and then her lips. She only smiled at him. 'Now,' he said lifting her into his arms, 'of to bed you go to rest.'
'Seriously, this is still ongoing?' she grumbled. He chuckled.
'Yes it is Mine,' he answered as he placed her in the bed, settling her atop the bounty of pillows.
She did not protest as he tucked her in.
He stared down at her for a moment when he was done.
'Rest well,' he wished.
She nodded slightly in response to that.
Then, he leaned in and planted a kiss on her forehead.
When he straightened, it was to turn away from her.
'Why did you marry me?' she asked again in a solemn but serious voice.
The question halted him.
He stood there backing her, for a while, trying to process just what to say to her.
'Rest,' he finally admonished her and resumed walking, headed for the bedroom door.
Then he had a change of mind and veered towards his escritoire.
He went there and took a seat, settling in.
He took a pen and began to go through the things that Peter had left for him.
She watched him work fron across the bedroom, not feeling sleepy enough to do as he had asked her to.
He finished perusing the loads of papers and gathered them into three different categories.
He signed the first category and placed them on the other side.
Then, he opened his ink pad and took the royal seal.
He stamped the rest of them.
He gathered all of them and placed them in one of the boxes stacked to the left of him, use to the wall.
He had refused to answer her question, telling her instead to rest in bed.
It was an evasion and she knew it, knew that he knew that she knew it too.
She watched him work, unable to fall asleep.
His dark hair occasionally fell across his beautiful face and he kept on pushing it back.
She acknowledged that he was pretty, very handsome.
He was celestially beautiful, the kind of beauty that made one understand why joy was essential in life, a puissant beauty that luxated her heart from its core.
Suddenly, something dawned on her, making her uneasy.
She hesitated to ask about it, but she totally needed to know.
'Have we ever?' she asked the half question with cheeks that were beginning to redden.
It encrimsoned quite quickly.
He looked up at her and understood the half question by the state of her visage.
He leaned back in his chair and laughed in amusement, totally humoured.
'Yes sweet Rose, yes we have.'
'I don't mean that and that, I mean the actual thing you know?' she continued in embarrassment.
'Yes Mine, we have done that which you are asking about.'
'Cad,' she sneered at him, irritated and extremely embarrassed.
'Do not blame me, it was the fault if the drugs,' he pointed out. 'You forgot all about the encounter as soon as you awakened.'
She glowered at him in disbelief.
"You know, that's rape?" She said to him in a quiet voice.
He stared at her for a long time, his eye just going deep into her soul.
"I would never do something against your will."
"Yet you hold me hostage?" She asked, sitting upright.
"That, that's different. I am trying to protect you, Mine."
"From what?" She snapped. "Tell me." She pressed.
He made to speak, and then, he just gave up, leaning back in his seat.
"I can't tell you that," he said to her in a defeated voice.
She made a tsk sound.
"I can't even say I am disappointed," she grumbled and lay back down.
There was silence for a while.
Then, he stood to his feet, took the box that he had packed those papers and headed towards the bedroom door once more.
He turned to her at the last minute and met her gaze.
Then, he said to her, 'I married you only because I love you Mine.'
And whereupon he was gone, leaving her fulsomely flustered.
...OmaPhinaPhire