Page 205 of Seer Prophet

I was naked now, lying across his lap on the towel he still wore.

I could feel that he was hard, but most of his light was still wrapped into mine, focused on holding me still. The emotions I felt on him didn’t feel like they were about sex.

I felt pain on him, but that felt less and less like sex pain, too.

“I’m tired,” I told him. “Revik. I’m really fucking tired. I haven’t slept––”

“I know,” he said.

His fingers and hands massaged my muscles, my skin. I felt fear on him, what might have been guilt, or maybe nerves and guilt and fear wrapped into one. He caressed my hair, blowing warmth on me with his light. I felt a sick tiredness in him now––what felt closer to exhaustion––prominent enough to leak into his voice.

“I know you’re tired, wife,” he said, soft. “I know. But that’s why this can’t wait. I want to do this while you’re tired. I want to do it when you’re too tired to fight me, Allie. When we’re both too tired to fight each other.”

I didn’t really understand his words.

I felt his fear again, though.

Something about that feeling caused my own fear to return, until I was fighting him again with my light, and where I could, with my body. He was right, though. I was too tired to fight him, and the longer he held me down, the more that tiredness turned to something that felt a lot closer to despair.

I couldn’t fight him. I could never fucking fight him.

I couldn’t fight any of them.

Tears were running down my face by the time that much sank in, but I couldn’t make sense of that, either.

The first time he hit me, I sucked in a breath, more in disbelief than pain.

He held me down, testing my light.

Then he hit me again, right on the ass, using his bare hand, and I cried out, writhing against his hands and his light. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t move. I felt his pain worsen as he hit me again. Then again.

The pain got worse, not better.

It got harder to endure, not easier.

At some point, I started yelling at him.

I couldn’t make sense of my words. When he didn’t stop, no matter what I said, I stopped trying to censor those words… or even to track them.

A few things stood out more than others, though.

I called him a piece of shit, like Angeline had done.

I told him he didn’t give a fuck about me.

I told him he didn’t want me, that he’d never wanted me. I told him they were right about him, that he was an abuser, and a rapist. I told him I didn’t care what he did anymore, that I knew I’d never be enough for him, no matter what I did or how much of a whore I made myself for him. I told him he could fuck whoever he wanted, that he could fuck Ullysa or Dalejem or my mother, that I wouldn’t try to stop him.

I told him I didn’t want to be married to him anymore.

I told him he wanted someone weak––someone soft, someone not me.

I yelled at him for lying to me, for breaking vow. For being a coward who never told me the truth, who was incapable of telling the truth to anyone.

I accused him of fucking other people on the ship.

I accused him of wanting Dalejem, of wanting Ullysa, of fucking her after she beat on him, of lying to me and to himself about why he went to her.

I told him he didn’t love Lily.

---