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It is by a terrible accident that she comes into his care. Thrust at his feet, she is fodder for a fire to feed, a pawn in a game meant to spite another man. He has no genuine like of her, but he keeps up his appearances for the sake of his backstabbing nature. He lives for his manners. He is nothing if not refined, and it is the tick of his impatient smile that worries her most.
She is bid to marry him.
She was to be a whore in a pimp’s ring, a pretty girl to rake in cash. She was groomed so young and some tendencies she was taught remain. She does not speak unless addressed and her own needs are nonexistent as far as the universe cares. Picked from the bunch, her now-husband remarked her as plain and undesirable before cutting her chains and clipping her wings. She moves from one broken cage to another. She would sing, but she is no songbird. There is no joy in this bleak world.
Everything she could ever want is hers upon request. He never speaks more than a sentence or two to her and always keeps his word. They have never lain together in their marriage bed and he cares not if she has other lovers; love is a tedious, niggling thing to him. The affairs of the heart are inferior to the logic of the mind in his eyes, so he trifles not with superfluous things.
He wears yellow eyes by day and night. They are almost feline, but perhaps, they are reptilian, too. They reflect in darkness and startle her when she wanders the palace’s corridors when the shades are drawn and the candles lit. A year into their marriage, he begins to wear a mulberry scar across his face. The once appearance-conscious Emperor has turned into a charity case in the department of looks. Still, he is a magnificent specimen to behold.
An energy flows through him into her. The Force, it is so illustriously named. He is like a high priest in its ways, sitting ceremonies and guiding tendrils of it as he walks. She can feel it in his bones whenever he stands near, invisible currents swirling like whirlpools around his person. Once he muttered she may have its graces as well, but she’d heard not head or tail of it since.
Empress is how she is addressed now, a far better title than girl or bitch. She feels as though she’s only been switched masters, that this hand is no less imprisoning than the last. The benefit is now she does not owe him a thing. He asks for nothing and she gives him nothing in return. Late some nights she tries to recall a time where his hands lay upon her, where they stood closer than a foot apart, but she draws blanks in all her notebooks and stacked magician’s decks.
She is tired. There was fight in her years ago, but her flames licked too high up the chimney and have been dowsed. She is too exhausted to argue with him, or stand up for herself. She is too worn out to do anything but stand beside him when told and smile, never to open her mouth to the onslaught of questions and poison-laced barbs. She is a fixture, a decoration, a sweet on his arm; only there to look pretty and pretend.
He must see things, locked in his tower for so many days in a row. He has counselors and advisors all camped with him, reading things in cracks on the walls and the colors of crystal vials. He disappears for hours on end. It should never matter to her, since she does not sleep in his bed and does not share his space, but it does. It bothers her, unknowing what mischief and sorcery drags on inside the palace walls. Surely the Empress deserves more respect, deserves to know?
She tells him so and he laughs.
You aren’t involved in the matters of the state, he says in a polite tone. He is nothing if not polite. Cruel and vicious and feral, but polite. She imagines him to be a werewolf seated at the head of a grand table, eating only meat and cleaning his teeth with a silver toothpick just to prove his power. He doesn’t find the image nearly as amusing.
When he almost loses her, however, his tune begins to change.
There is an ambush. He is notoriously disagreeable, and he sighs it could only have been so long before this happened in full, but she is caught unawares. Taken hostage. Held captive. She is a fighter and she could win her fair share of unruly brawls, but the medicinals they’d forced down her throat, oh holy water, her head is reeling and she cannot stand with gelatin for bones. She is helpless and she hates the feeling, detests the poison running through the streams in her limbs. Her brain is sick and the sun follows her as she sways. She never stood a chance.
He is no angel when he rescues her sickly body from its restraints. She is too dazed in the moment, but she recalls his savagery running down her spine. His yellow eyes belong to Hunter Wolf and upon the cowardly and foolish he preys. His weapon’s maw drips with blood, its judgment heavy in his soiled hands. Curled into his arms, she is carried away, the red life of his adversaries spilling upon her dress. She can tell how sick she has become, knows how weak her pulse must feel against his fingers. Hazy, feverish, she falls into a dream.
Waking brings her to his bed. The outside world is cold on her too-hot skin and she shivers, slinking back down under unfamiliar covers. She wants to die here before he notices her intrusion, before he can realize he has brought his wife in name only into his rooms. She is not to his standards—he has said so himself—so why keep her around? Throw her out, please, merciful spirits, just let her rest.
The bed dips and she creaks open an eye to see his dark glossy hair and the battered half of his face. He turns to her and her insides twist into intricate knots.
“You have been asleep for days,” he says softly, unsure of where to place his hands. Could he touch her? Or was that too forward? He lets them rest upon his lap.
She nods weakly and tries to draw deeper into her nest of shame. “I failed you.”
“Those words are mine.” Still, he does not touch her. “It is my fault you suffered on my behalf, and for that I apologize.”
He never feels remorseful. She tries to sit up to see if he too has caught ill, but her energy is without her and she barely moves. She realizes then that only the candles give light, the windows darkened expanses.
“Where do you intend to sleep?”
“I figured in my bed would be the proper place.”
“Won’t that be a scandal?” she asks, nodding to the fact that she was present in his sheets.
“We are technically married,” he says softly, brushing dark locks from his face. “It would make sense for us to spend time in each other’s company once in a new moon.”
He disappears, however, and she does not see him return before fitful rest claims her again. She is a mess of turns and tugs of the sheets, skin uncomfortable and temperature distraught. When she wakes in the morning, the other side seems entirely untouched, made up properly with unwrinkled sheets. She is certain he does not do his own folding, and alone once again she slept.
As the days pass, he looks at her more. She is allowed his glances while they dine and she finds he passes her more often in darker corridors. His eyes are still that of a hunter, still hungry and wild. Shivers slither down her spine whenever she senses him near. Her predicament may be a step above being an object in a foreign bedroom, but this situation is no more desirable than the last.
She begins to fear that he will approach her inappropriately, or demand what is his by the right of God’s will. They are wed; it is only so long before he consummates their vows. Sure, it has been over a year and he has shown nothing but bitter disdain for her, but things change. She is painfully aware of how often things sway without permission.
Two weeks after her recovery, he corners her in her sitting room, waiting for her handmaidens to leave before invading her space. He is a tall man, a broad man, and his robed figure eats away at the doorframe. She can feel fear begin to grow like a diseased blossom in her heart, and it beats faster, causing the sickness to spread.
He quirks the eyebrow above his plum-stained cheek before his low voice rumbles. “You were curious about the ceremonies, were you not?”
She nods, the arrow she’s sharpening in her fingers stuttering with her choked anticipation.
“You can put that down for now and follow me, if curious you remain.”
Unarmed and unprotected, she is fitful as a field mouse as she trails behind Hunter Wolf. His steps are like fire dancing in a smoke ring, the sway of his shoulders more menacing than she cares to admit. Up the stairs into the tower they climb. He beckons for her to sit on the floor across from him. Candles light, but without matches, without fire. She stares peculiarly at him and does not ask the required question.
It is only a moment before she feels it.
Like a breeze from nowhere, the unspoken, unseen presence of this Force is flooding around her, robbing her breath and tricking her eyes. She sees glimpses of his past, of the small prince born to be a king. He outshines his expectations and an Emperor he becomes, his teeth bared in the of face opposition. She watches in a memory how his eyes change from brown to lightning, from dead earth to wild sky. It travels beyond the realm of unsettling.
“They were not always yellow,” she says softly.
“I can show you this, how it works,” he says, gesturing to the stir in the air. “If you so desire, I will teach you.”
For the first time, his hand reaches out to her.
She draws back.
"I bid you not touch me,” she says through a shaking voice. With quivering legs she stands and makes a quick exit, disappearing down stairs too soon to see the burnt expression in his eyes. She fears he will follow and reprimand, but he does not.
She catches no sight of him again for weeks. He is neither there when she takes supper nor present in the halls. One of his lords tells her he has left on a hunting trip, not to return for two months. At first she feels anger—can the Emperor not give notice to his wife? But then she corrects herself that theirs is a marriage in name only and he owes her nothing. He may come and go as he pleases and never warn her because she is a statue, not a wife.
She does not think she would fancy being a proper wife.
She does not fancy being here at all.
Through his disappearance, she takes it upon herself to rectify her hollow knowledge of weaponry and defense. With him gone, he cannot order her away from practical arts. She would become strong, then, she would be able to defend herself.
When he finally returns, looking all the worse for wear, he seems unimpressed that she greets him with an outstretched sword. “Enchanting,” he says dully and takes his leave.
She tries to fight the urge to track him down and demand something from him—though she’s unsure of what she wants. Bursting into his chambers proves to garner no response and he frowns now, agitated.
“I should consider having you locked away and searching for a better wife, one who isn’t so repulsed.”
“You’ll have difficulty. Not even the dumb ones are stupid enough not to fear you.”
“What a tongue you’ve procured in my absence.” There’s no tone in his voice, no hint of emotion. “Pity you won’t rouse anything with it.”
“I want this sham annulled.”
“No.”
“Why not? You hate me.”
With a turn of his robes, he disappears. “I’ve never said such things.”
Stressed, annoyed, and defeated, she stalks back to her rooms. He is too confusing a man for her to begin to want to understand, and the willpower it takes demands too much from her. She should vanish in the night, run off and never return. He can claim something to the public and be wed to a noblewoman born and bred to put up with the whims of someone like him.
Instead, she finds him in her chair. His golden eyes follow her as the shock creeps into her face.
“If you detest me, I will let you go.” He stands, the bulk of his frame towering, intimidating. “But you must do something for me first.”
“Which is?”
“Spend the night with me.” Before she can scoff, he holds up his hands. “Humor me and I will grant you what you wish. A favor for a favor.”
Reluctantly, she agrees.
She is led back to his quarters, as it appears he always demands the upper hand. His servants undress her instead of he himself and it eases a small amount of tension from her stomach. When they are alone, it returns.
His amber-hued eyes catch the dying light of the moon and she shivers at the hunger reflected within. He is still monstrous as he leads her to bed. His back is bare and she feels an old, familiar sting creep its way back into her behavior. Choking back tears, she offers him what she’d offered countless others before she was taken away by his hands.
“I don’t want that.” His voice is firm. He is propping himself up on one arm, his back to the sky so his face is soot and his body is shadow. “Doing such a thing would never allow the marriage to be annulled; why would I trick you?”
She doesn’t answer.
With a sigh, he lowers himself back to the mattress and lays facing her, eyelids heavy and position reserved. He must be at least a half-foot away not an inch of their bodies touching.
“Is this all you wanted, then?”
He shakes a tired head and moves closer. Strain and worry are clear on his partially hidden face when he brings one arm around her waist. He seems to struggle with whether he should move closer or retract and switch sides. “I’ve never shared a bed before, even in the loosest of senses.”
“This was poor timing.”
He shrugs. “I had never quite wanted to, either.”
“Am I the test?”
“No. You’re the exception.” He sighs and it is low. “I would prefer to kiss you, but that would be inappropriate.”
“We’re wed.”
“But you do not wish to be.”
Experimentally, she raises her hand to his cheek. As if it were instinct, he presses into her touch, twists his head to kiss her palm.
“You are a weakness. A soft spot. It was no mistake you were targeted all those months ago.”
“You’ve been nothing but cold.”
“I never professed to be a smart man.”
As if paying homage to the devil, she shifts closer, moved by a truthful mouth.
His lips are soft, gentle, and without knowledge of this act. He follows with her. When her fingers brush his hair his arm tugs her closer, but his kisses remain slow. Is this all he wanted?
When he breaks from her, it is to wrap her tightly, to tuck her head under his chin. It is a strange comfort to feel his body heat mingle with hers. She slips one arm around his waist to sleep.
He is still there when she wakes in the morning, only now he is partially under her. One of her arms had slipped across his chest and her head rests on his shoulder. She can feel his hand against her back, feels the rise and fall of his breath.
“Shall I prepare the annulment?” His voice surprises her; she believed him asleep.
She sits up to look down at him. His yellow eyes are open and waiting. The expression he wears is not one of enjoyment. Dark haired and pale, there is a charm to his odd looks. She can feel his fingers stroking circles on her skin.
“No,” she says softly before settling back against him. Perhaps marriage to him is not the worst of things. It could be better, but this is not a tragedy in itself. “I want to see where this leads first.”
He lets her rest for a few minutes more before rolling her over and coating her with kisses.
It is strange to now be in his graces. He walks beside her, takes her with him on rides. She is allowed private jokes and quick kisses out of sight. To be in his favor is so different than to be on its edge. It becomes easy to forget what he is, who he is. The truth of those yellow eyes vanishes for a month of sugar-sweet bliss. But desserts do not last and neither do illusions.
One evening he returns soaked in blood. His black hair drips red and there’s a laceration above his lip. It is much more difficult to forget the origins of the beast now. He wipes his mouth with the back of a stained hand and apologizes before disappearing to bathe.
He slips into bed clean. His arms embrace her, but she does not forget that the reddened mess was not from a boar or a bear he had slain. It was now chilling to be pressed to his chest, to feel iron pull around her waist and hips. The nightmare had to return, she knew. There is no point in denying what he is.
When he kisses her now, it is like swallowing poison laced with honey. The taste—the feel—is divine, but the act is tainted and dangerous. Even with what he is, she has become at home beside him and she fears ripping away will be like tearing at thorns hooking into her flesh.
“Am I the only one you want?” she asks softly into a dark night.
His lips are to her neck, a place they frequently find solace. “Yes.”
“There are prettier women, ones who won’t ask questions after your whereabouts or scars.”
“They’re not you.”
“You frighten me,” she blurts. “What you are, what you do, it’s horrifying to be around.”
He rises onto his forearms and looks curiously into her eyes. “You’ve nothing to fear from me.” He kisses her forehead. “Nothing at all.”
She’s his weak point, she knows. She’s a soft spot in his enamel and bone, the caries in his teeth. He nips her cheek and she turns her head to reciprocate. He tastes of syrup and she does nuzzle closer, much to her own chagrin.
He cloisters around her. “You’re safe with me. I’ll never harm you,” says Hunter Wolf.