Page 61 of Seduced

“Help me,” Alexei blurted out.

“You need to be more specific, my lord,” Nikolaos said, biting back a smile, which irritated Alexei, but now was not the time for anger.

“Tell me what to do. How can you endure it?” he said.

“Endure what?” Nikolaos looked fairly puzzled, but invested in the conversation.

Alexei gestured helplessly around. “Life,” he said.

Nikolaos moved his long legs under the covers to get more comfortable. Alexei, in all his hurry, had somehow managed to bring a candle with him, and in its faint light he could see the prince flash a smile, all white teeth and dimples.

“You won’t like the answer,” Nikolaos said.

“I need it, whether I like it or not,” Alexei bit his lip, fighting a sudden urge to cry as if he were five years old.

“God,” Nikolaos said. “God is the answer.”

“Ah. You are right. I don’t like it.”

Nikolaos considered him for a moment. “What do you not like?”

“I don’t like any of it. What did He ever say that was worth listening to? He told Miss Wyatt…Well, her brother did, but he is a so called ‘man of religion’, isn’t he? He told her vile things about herself. She…I cannot stomach even putting it into words. But I swear to you, the girl sometimes lapses into a pet-like state, as if she has been damned trained or something. Obeys without word, can’t fight back…She is broken. She has been made to feel sinful for pretty much existing and breathing, and to kneel on…” He stopped, shutting his eyes.

The nausea had reached a critical point.

“Made to kneel on what?” Nikolaos sounded absolutely horrified.

Alexei winced. “Never mind.”

“Now look here,” Nikolaos said, sounding harsher than he ever had, “I don’ know who told this lady of yours all this, but it wasn’t God.”

“Oh? And what does He tell you, do you think, then?”

Nikolaos sat up. “That I am enough,” he said simply.

Suddenly, he had all of Alexei’s attention.

They sat talking there until well into the evening, and when Alexei finally left the prince’s rooms, he wasn’t exactly a changed man.

But he wasn’t the same man who had entered them either.

sixteen

Poppy

Poppy, left alone, wandered over to Dante’s rooms, exhausted. She found him in a state.

To his credit, he did turn pink and embarrassed when he saw that she realized how inebriated he was, but Poppy did not comment on it.

“May I sleep here?” she asked, and he just nodded.

She thought she saw tears shine in his eyes, but he quickly turned his face away, making a flourish towards the second bed in his room.

The entire room smelled of something pungent, which Poppy was soon learning was opium. She did not care. She flung herself on the bed, fully clothed, and proceeded to sleep fitfully for the few remaining hours until noon.

She was woken by the clinking of teacups and the smell of hot cocoa, and then by sheer horror.

The sheets all around her were drenched in blood.

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