Shattered by Alexia Foxx

were steel in strength and just as unwavering.  “I don’t enjoy this, but it’s all I have, and I will continue on until the day I die, until the day I can finally forget.  My tomorrows are already filled with pain, but I can see to it yours are too.”
    S he gathered up the open folds of her dress and rose, and it seemed like she might leave it at that, but she made it no more than a few steps from him before she turned back.  Her blue dress flared out as she spun and the cloth cracked the air.  “And what about you, Prince Dorthorial? How long can you pretend you don’t want to be here? You have a choice, you have for a while now.”
    “What choice?” Nathan demanded.  She had broken something between them and he dared to raise his voice at her now.  He didn’t try to understand it, he couldn’t.  “You have hurt every part of me.  You’ve taken everything from me.  What choice could I possibly have?”
    Her nostrils flared and she pointed at the ground between them.  “Eyes on the floor then, prince .”  And he complied, but his whole body shook in anger.  Even after all that she didn’t hurt him and by the time she crawled into bed Nathan had already worked his fingers deep into his palm.  It was no use though, the pain wasn’t the same.

***
     
    Nathan felt the cold stone floor bite into his knees as the night passed too slowly.  Perhaps if time might speed up tonight, if he could find himself with fewer hours to fill with thought, he may not have been so tempted to rise.  But he finally made his choice.  She’d told him how this ended already.
    Robin was asleep in her bed.  He could hear her steady breathing stay unchanged as he lifted himself from his place on the floor and stood over her.  In the dim candlelight of her room he could just make out her sleeping face in the shadows.  Nathan swallowed and took the few steps necessary to reach the bed.
    He crawled atop it and knelt over her, his knees pressed down on both sides of her slender waist.  In his mind he was ready to subdue her, when she awoke, but when she stirred he froze instead, paralyzed by a fear he didn’t understand.  He could overpower her, easily, if it were a competition of strength alone.
    W hen her eyes remained shut he found the courage again to move.  His hands went to her throat and encircled it.  He paused there. He took a breath, to search for resolve he wasn’t sure he possessed, and when he looked at her face again she stared back at him.  Dull grey begged him to end this quickly, before they slid shut again.
    “I was wondering how many opportunities I had to give you before you took one,” she mumbled, her voice still soft with sleep.  “I worried you wouldn’t, not once you realized you could enjoy it.”
    “ Was anything you told me true, Robin?”
    “Every word of it, my prince.”
    Nathan pressed harder on her throat, until he felt her heartbeat fighting back against his fingers.  It was the only struggle she put up.  Her arms were unpinned at her side but she didn’t bring them up to stop him.  If she tried he would stop, he’d spare her, but she was accepting this too readily.
    “ You still haven’t told me what we did to you,” Nathan said, to create some reason not to tighten his hands further around her neck.
    “Isn’t it obvious ?” Her eyes came up to his again.  “You made me live with the memory of that day.  You made me live for revenge.”  Robin laughed.  “I told you that I’d make you suffer every pain you and your men inflicted.  Revenge is the last one.  Now take yours and live with the same disappointment I do.”
    “ How did you escaped? You want me to believe they just let you go?” Nathan asked.  He had to keep her talking.  He was scared.  “Because you’re right, I was there, and those that weren’t killed were taken as slaves.”
    Robin laughed again and raised both her hands from her side, until her arms were perpendicular to the bed.