The day was going splendidly. The shackles were chafing at her wrists and ankles. The servants had dropped the litter and spilled her unceremoniously into a mud-slush puddle, and she was developing a headache from constantly having her head knocked against the “resting pole” they’d chained her to. To top it all off, the brief swim had drenched the rugs meant to keep her warm and torn the cover that protected her from the wind (and prying eyes)… and it was starting to snow again.
This was not what this day was supposed to be like. When she was a little girl, she’d seen one of her sisters married. The entire city celebrated for three days; the palace, a week. There had been cakes and dancing and feasting. She’d worn small white flowers in her hair and a beautiful golden gown. Her sister wore a gown covered in jewels that had taken 6 seamstresses to make. Her veil had sat upon an elaborate crown that rested perfectly on her auburn hair, and her prince had been proud and gracious, standing at the end of a long marble stair covered in fresh rose petals.
Her day did not resemble that wedding in the slightest. She had woken to dull grey skies that spat sleet on the road she was carried down to the chapel. It had been lined with sheep and cattle and ignorant serfs instead of well-wishers. She was wearing the same dress she’d worn since the day the “Emperor” had taken the castle. It was dirty, and torn along the hem where it had caught the ground as she’d been dragged to her cell. They hadn’t even allowed her to bathe. Her hair hung lank and stringy around her face, the pins all lost over the last week.
She had been married by a PRIEST, for crying out loud. Not a Cardinal, or an Archbishop, no. The royal marriage had been done by a priest. A common man in a common church in a common village. It was petty vengeance, of course. The Emperor had been getting back at the Pope for refusing to recognize his authority without royal lineage. So, he summoned her from the cellars and carted her out to the country to be married to him, and now she was being taken to some broken manor to be defiled, so he could announce the marriage valid and consummated, and claim the kingdom unchallenged.
The wind howled and snowflakes swirled into litter and it jerked to a halt. Her head snapped forward and cracked into the pole again. She swore loudly and wished she could reach to rub at the spot with her hand. Her forehead was slick with wet, but no blood. One of the guards poked his head into the hole in the cover and laughed at her.
“Now, now, Empress. That language isn’t appropriate for someone of your breeding.” He spat at her feet and cackled, sauntering off to join the other guards. She hissed at him, teeth bared, as soon as his back was turned.
She hated him. She hated this place, she hated this day, she hated this weather. But there was nothing she hated more than the man whose voice was booming even now that she be moved up to the master bedroom. They would come put their filthy hands on her, and lead her up a stone staircase to wait, and they would go back to the dining hall to laugh about how their Emperor would take the last step in breaking her kingdom tonight, when he broke the King’s Daughter.
And that evening, full from feasting and sour from drink, he would enter the bedchamber and expect to find her cowering in fear. He would expect to mount her, and strip her of dignity and destroy her family, and then cast her back to the cellars to finish her short, miserable life in the dank and cold, surrounded by commoners.
Because, surely, she would never willingly become his wife and help-meet She would always be a danger to him, to his precarious title, to his life. So his first order of business must be to break her, and then gleefully put away the broken toy.
As the guard left the room, she shifted on the bed, moving as close to the headboard as she could. The shackles at her ankles had been removed for their lord’s convenience, and length had been added to her wrist chains for his pleasure. She twisted, and reached, and kicked and thrashed until finally, she held a large clump of pettiskirt in her hand. She took out the stiletto sewn into the seam of her heaviest skirt, and her eyes glittered in triumph as she slid it into the hidden pouch at her wrist.
A clever Emperor, married for a title to a woman unwilling, would know the first order of business must always be to dispose of the woman as soon as possible, for surely you could trust her no farther than you could throw her.
For an Empress married under duress to a man seeking her title, the very first order of business must be the disposal of the Emperor, since only a fool would think himself safe as long as she still held spirit.
Lucky for her, the man was an Emperor–-but not a clever one. His first order of business would be revelry. He would need to stroke his ego, enjoy the spoils of war, and bathe in the casks of red wine.
just girly things: not being able to determine if a man is being nice to you because he’s sincere and views you as an autonomous human being or if he’s being nice to you because he views you as a conquerable object
