What Have You Done
A luxurious bed and nightstand of solid mahogany. Canopy drapes so fine they looked as though they might dissolve at a breath. Across the walls and ceiling, exquisite patterns said to hold magic centuries old.
All of it was so perfectly harmonious, so beautiful, that it turned her stomach.
The room was its master. Truly lovely, truly refined—and utterly without the warmth of a life being lived.
Roina swallowed a sigh and set about putting the crown prince’s bedchamber in order. She changed the bedding with what she had brought, smoothed every rumpled edge, lit the finest incense so a faint, unobtrusive fragrance would linger, and set a glass of water afloat with fresh petals where a hand might reach it at any moment.
Her body moved by rote, but she had only just come through something dangerous, and in truth she was so worn—in mind and in flesh—that she wanted nothing more than to collapse. If her luck held, perhaps she might rest today. She was thinking, please, just this once, let the crown prince let it pass, when she realized there was a man in the dark.
She swallowed the scream. He bore the insignia of a knight in the crown prince’s direct service. She could not afford to raise a careless commotion.
“…Sir Ethan?”
Fortunately, she knew the face. She pressed a hand to her startled chest and asked.
Sun-browned skin, a massive frame, brown hair and brown eyes. A faint scar along the jaw. He gave a single, heavy nod.
Roina let out a small breath of relief. She could not imagine how she had failed to notice a man this large until now. If Ethan was here, then the crown prince likely had no intention of doing anything cruel today. He never did, not when someone else was present. He showed the viciousness inside him only when he was certain no one else remained.
She bowed her head and meant to slip away, then realized Ethan was staring straight at her.
“Is something the matter? …Ah.”
Dazed and exhausted, she had forgotten to hide the wound on her face. What he was looking at was the cut across her forehead.
“…How did you come by that wound?”
“I’m sorry.”
Roina hurriedly drew out her headscarf and covered the injury.
“I nearly showed His Highness an unsightly appearance.”
“No.”
For an instant his mouth twisted, as if the words displeased him, but the usual blank expression returned at once.
“His Highness has summoned you to the office.”
Roina only nodded. She remembered him kindly: an even-tempered man who treated her well—or, more precisely, one of the very few who treated her as an equal.
Roina entered the crown prince’s office with her composure slightly shaken. He had an odd fixation on her body, yet outside the bedchamber he almost never called for her, and more often than not he ignored her entirely.
Even so… perhaps I can rest today.
She thought it while glancing back at Ethan, the shadow of a guard who had followed them in. She could not be sure. Still, there was one pair of eyes in the room.
She took her place in silence and stood as she always did, but the crown prince’s mood today was anything but ordinary. Until she made her presence known he had been frowning over documents as if lost in them; the moment she entered, he shot to his feet and stared at her without disguise. Then he ground the words out between his teeth.
“What have you done?”
“…Pardon?”
A thud.
Roberto crossed the space in a breath, seized Roina’s wrist, and shoved her against the wall. The impact along her back made her wince, but only for a moment—when he snarled at her with his golden hair in disarray, she froze on instinct.
She lowered her eyes to the floor and drew a long breath. What had she done? The accusation had no context, and her thoughts spun.
When she could not answer, he bit down on his lip and tore her bodice open, then closed a hand over her breast.
“Ngh—.”
It hurt. Anger had put far too much strength in his grip. Tears rose of their own accord, and through the blur she saw his expression ease, just slightly, at the sight of her suffering.
It was always like this. When he saw Roina in pain, he was satisfied.
“You. Since when have you been wagging your tail at the Archmage?”
“What? I don’t understand what you—”
“Ha!”
The corner of his mouth lifted.
“Sly little thing. Flutter your tail because you mean to change masters, then play innocent? You’ll have to be punished.”
“Master. I truly haven’t done any—”
“Lift your skirt.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He was so unlike himself that, though this was not the bedchamber, the word Master slipped out of her before she knew it. He did not hear her through. At times like this, resistance—or any failure to obey—only doubled the pain. Resigned, she hesitated, then dropped her gaze and raised her skirt as he commanded.
Her hands shook. He was a man who guarded his reputation, and never before had he behaved this way outside his own bedroom, with someone plainly watching.
Obedience in an unfamiliar place brought shame with it. The crown prince’s guard stood there expressionless, offering no reaction at all, and that only made it worse.
Noticing where her eyes had gone, the crown prince snorted.
“You spread your legs whenever I order it, and you still have the nerve to worry about who’s looking?”
“Hhh… no…. No, I don’t…”
Roina could not still her trembling body, and the tears she had been holding spilled over. It was vicious. She had thought she had given up, thought she had grown used to it. She had not.
When the shaking would not stop, Roberto twisted his mouth into a smile, looking for some reason displeased.
The maid’s uniform, meant to be buttoned neatly to the throat, had been ripped open at the top and hung in ruin, baring her underclothes—and even those had failed their purpose, caught precarious along the pink of her nipples. The woman wearing them shook with shame and terror as she held her own skirt up, and beneath the hem a garter belt and stockings drawn high on her thighs gleamed, lush and exposed.
Roberto did not like that she was afraid of him. Her shame, her writhing in pain—those had clearly been his pleasure, and yet today even that displeased him to a sickening degree.
“Turn around.”
Leaving her to tremble pitifully, Roberto gave the order to Ethan. The loyal servant who was all but his shadow bowed his head and turned his back.
Once the knight had turned, Roina lifted the head she had kept lowered and stole a look. What was this? Another of his whims? The man who had been driving her so mercilessly was gone; the crown prince, with his fine-spun golden hair and the face of an angel, was gazing at her with a benevolent expression. Jewel-blue eyes glittered, full of sorrow.
Roina flinched and trembled all the harder. She had never seen that look when they were alone. Was this not exactly the face he wore when he hid his nature and dealt with some ordinary noble lady?
“Roina. Have I failed to give you so very much, all this time? Why are you shaking like that?”
Roina bit her lip, then released it at once. Did the crown prince truly not know? Had he lost his mind? Inside she was struck dumb, but outwardly she had to wear a docile face.
“No… Your Highness has shown me a grace as vast as the sea. If not for you, I would have wandered the streets and ended my life as nothing but a beggar.”
The words came out on their own. This was the real Roina’s memory—the life that had existed before she came into this body. But the one who had saved that life, then ravaged it as he pleased and killed it, was Roberto himself. What had been given once and taken back again left her owing him nothing.
When she possessed this body, she had known by instinct that its owner had died in the instant before she arrived. And she, too, had died in her original world in the instant before she came here.
That was why she had accepted this life, one way or another. There had been no way back.
The crown prince smiled gently. Anyone who did not know what lay behind it would have lost their soul to that smile. He slowly bent his head and breathed against Roina’s ear. A soft, damp sensation brushed her earlobe. Against her will, a tingling ache stirred low in her belly, and a moan slipped out before she could stop it.
The crown prince smiled, sweet and melting, like a sugar doll on the verge of dissolving. As if the man who had looked ready to devour her only moments ago had been a lie, he behaved like someone else entirely. He cupped the breast he had gripped so painfully and stroked it, as if in comfort. Unlike before—gently, so gently—Roberto kissed past her ear to her throat and nuzzled the line of her neck with moist lips and tongue.
She had braced herself to be handled roughly, as always. When he treated her instead like a beloved lover, the body that had been trained over a long time did not know what to do with itself and flushed hot. It had nothing to do with her will. Every sense of hers stood on end and turned toward the crown prince wrapped around her. Each time his lips followed her skin to her collarbone, each time his tongue licked her pale skin as if in play, her mind went white as though sparks had burst behind her eyes, and her toes curled.
Roberto caught the reaction at once and laughed softly against her skin, his mouth still on her. The breath of that laugh touched flesh already too sensitive, and Roina flinched again.
The sensation was so dizzying she could hardly breathe, and she could not speak. Roberto made no sound either. For a little while the room held only silence, the soft successive whisper of Roina’s clothes being peeled away and falling, and, now and then, the tremor in the moan she tried to hold down.
Whatever he was thinking, Roberto let his lips glide over her with genuine softness and teased the nipple that had drawn tight, flicking it with his tongue as if to toy with her. Exposed to the cold air, the nipple met the soft, hot, wet brush of his tongue in the lightest touches, and the stimulation and the tension of it came on harder than if he had sucked outright.
A shiver ran up her spine, raising gooseflesh. He kept his mouth on the sensitized nipple and called her name. Every small movement of his lips sent a chill through her so sharp she thought she might go mad, and before she knew it she had caught the crown prince by the shoulder.