Page 34 of Rogue's Pawn (Covenant of Thorns 1)

“I don’t think so. She’s only a human, of course. Perhaps you should speak more slowly.”

“Loook, sweet baby darling,” she drew out, “see the yummy food?”

“Eat.” Scourge trailed the whip over my tender skin. I obeyed, bending over the plate and lapping up the tasteless patty while Marquise stroked my hair and trilled her delight.

They left me then. Alone with my humiliation and a licked-clean metal plate.

The food was drugged, of course. At least it made the time go faster, the stones around me pulsing in a light fog until I blacked out, waking to a glassy half-existence. By the effects, I thought it must be a hypnotic. Soon I was unable to think at all.

All the better to take suggestion.

Their two next visits went just the same, with me quickly learning what they wanted. Of course, they only wanted easy tricks. Crawl. Sit up. Lie down. Roll over. Just to make me obey. Scourge only struck me with the whip once, when I tried to tuck my hair behind my ear while eating. Otherwise I gratefully gobbled the food they gave me, chagrined to be pleased by Marquise’s effusive praise.

On the fourth visit, the door opened when I didn’t expect. I’d been pacing at the end of my leash, trying to focus my mind. I dropped to my knees, but not before Scourge saw me.

“You will not stand upright,” he said, as if speaking to the mental defective Marquise thought me to be. The whip cracked against my thigh and I clamped my lips on the scream. The whip cracked again. Burying my face in my hands to muffle all my cries, I writhed at his feet while he whipped me, the pain obliterating all else.

It ended when his hard fist wound into my hair and he yanked me to my feet.

“Do you stand?” he asked.

I shook my head frantically, as best I could trying not to reach up to relieve my screaming scalp. I sobbed incoherently. Slowly he lowered me to my knees, still holding me upright by my hair.

“Perhaps you need a reminder. My knife, Marquise.”

She glided into view, handing him a golden knife that gleamed sickly in the gray light. She wrapped her arms around Scourge from behind, watching around his shoulder with glowing white eyes that reminded me of Christmas ornaments. A stray thought I couldn’t quite grab on to. I tried to remember what a Christmas ornament was and couldn’t. I couldn’t think of anything as the blade sawed through my hair, roughly ripping it away.

“Kneel straight. Don’t move,” he said.

I trembled so, I could barely stay still, but I managed as Scourge shaved my head. The blade scraped over my scalp, catching me here and there, but I made sure not to flinch. Tears seeped from under my lashes, but they were like the blood flowing from the wounds on my head—I could not stop either thing. Locks of my hair drifted down, brushing my skin.

Finally, he finished.

“Now, thank me.” His eerie flat voice whispered over me. Confused, I sat paralyzed.

“Kiss his feet, darling girl,” Marquise said. She lay draped over the bed now, languid and lovely as new-fallen snow. Alien and horrifying in her beauty.

Scourge waited, impassive. Though I’d seen the gleam of pleasure when he whipped me. He liked it when I resisted. They both drank up every moment of my pain and humiliation, bright-eyed and sated with it.

At that moment, I took the last bit of myself and locked it away, down deep where they could never reach it. I turned the key and gave up everything else to being what they wanted.

Otherwise I couldn’t survive this.

I bent over and kissed Scourge’s boot, pressing my lips to it, numb, blank as a clean slate. Marquise squealed and clapped her hands.

After they left, I ran my hands over my bald head, as if it weren’t part of me. When my knees ached from kneeling so long, I crawled over to my bed, which smelled of Marquise.

I slept and the Dog chased me through ragged dreams of shattered delirium. Its eyes were deep sapphire like Rogue’s. It seemed both wild and loyal. But I fled, terror driving me into the shadows where Marquise waited for me with her poisonous affection.

Time dragged on, the boundaries of it disappearing entirely. I waited for my trainers with a kind of eagerness. They had me practice more tricks, Marquise leading me around the little room on a leash while Scourge gave me various commands and I performed like a circus pony. I learned to obey without thought.

I forgot anything but pleasing her and avoiding his whip.

I don’t know what made them decide I’d had enough. I had no thoughts at that point. One time—it turned out to be evening—Marquise came to my cell alone and handed me a gray swath of silk and kissed me on the cheek.

“Stand up, sweet baby,” she coaxed me.

I started shivering, afraid of the trick.

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