after
President Melwas Kocur sits across a table from me. The table is wide enough to accommodate serving dishes, flowers, candles, and wineglasses—Melwas has ordered the servants here not to disturb us as we eat, and so we serve ourselves, me only eating things that he’s eaten first. I taste nothing of the food, save for—strangely—the paper-thin apple slices in the salad. They are too tart, pulling my tongue to the top of my mouth, making me swallow unnecessarily. No matter how much water I drink or whatever else I eat, that tartness lingers and stings.
Melwas is as handsome as I remember him, blond hair and a strong face, a wide, muscular build that he clearly dresses to show off. But up close that handsomeness is compromised. By the hardness of his eyes, which are the flat color of acorns pressed into winter mud. By his mouth, which is almost too thin for how broad his jaw is. By the softness of his hands as they cradle his wineglass and pluck idly at the linen napkins.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” he says finally.
I haven’t said anything since I’ve gotten to the table, save for a quiet thank you when Melwas complimented my appearance. I didn’t want to say even that much, but I had decided to be Queen Guinevere and it’s what she would have done. Both to indicate her personal sovereignty was intact and to set the tone for the interactions to come. Much as I resented the idea of being polite to a kidnapper, it was expedient for me to keep Melwas within the bounds of civility for as long as possible.
“Ask what?”
He gestured around the lodge. “Why you’re here. Why I’m here. Why I had you spirited away in such a manner.”
“I assume it’s a move meant to provoke my husband,” I say. I sound much calmer than I feel.
Melwas nods. “Yes, partly that. But Greer, you cannot have forgotten the words we exchanged in Geneva.”
Someday I’ll see what the great hero gets to enjoy every night.
I have not had a challenge in a very long time.
I remember them very well. They are the kind of threats that stay with you, particularly because I knew Melwas meant them as he said them. They weren’t idle words.
I drop my hands into my lap so that their trembling can’t betray me. My face I keep schooled into a mask of perfect calm. “I remember, President Kocur.”
He stands up and comes around to my side of the table, standing behind me and dropping a hand on my shoulder. His touch is corrosive; I feel it peeling away my flesh and my calm, burning through my resolve of politeness like acid. I glance around the room under my lashes—his guards are situated discreetly around the large central room. I could take advantage of his nearness and try to hurt him, but I’d be overpowered quickly and there’s nothing to hurt him with other than a few serving platters and my own fists.
“I want this to be enjoyable, for both of us,” Melwas says. His voice goes softer, the accent more pronounced. “Did you not enjoy the clothes I’ve provided for you? The lovely room? Even my wife does not have such nice things.”
He plans on raping me and yet expects me to find it enjoyable? “The clothes are a thoughtful gesture,” I say. A lifetime of watching diplomats at work helps me find the right words. “But I’m unsure how to feel about our situation.”
“I will win you over,” he says.
“I thought you wanted me as a challenge. To break my spirit.”
The hand on my shoulder squeezes. Hard. “Yes. I do want that. Know this, Greer, if you fight back, I will enjoy it all the more.”
“So what do you want, President Kocur? For me to enjoy this or for me to fight it?”
His hand wanders from my shoulder to the back of my neck, where he fists it in my hair. Tears spring to my eyes at the pain in my scalp. “This will be a compassionate arrangement for you. Women like you are satisfied by such roughness—” he yanked at my hair “—and men like me are satisfied by giving it. I was told about the marks my men found on your body the night they took you. So do not pretend that it will be a great cruelty, me being with you.”
One more hard yank—hard enough to make me cry out—and then he releases me. But as he sits back down, his manner is changed. One of his unpredictable mood swings. “It will be good for you, you’ll see,” he says earnestly, almost contritely. “You will see how much I am willing to do for you, and you will enjoy me when the time comes.”
I stare at him as he resumes eating, willing my pulse to go back to normal. And I realize that Melwas is more dangerous than I thought.
He’s a sadist who thinks he’s kind, a narcissist who thinks he’s humble.
And unless I can find a way to stop him, I am completely at his mercy.
“That’s enough,” he declares abruptly. He raps his knuckles on the table and servants appear from nowhere, scrambling to clear the surface. He gets to his feet and walks back over to my side, wrapping a hand around my upper arm and jerking me to my feet so fast that my chair topples over behind me. “We’re going to your room.”
Dread hammers in my chest as he pulls me down the wide staircase to the second floor, and I realize this is it. Queen Guinevere has failed, hoping to steer my captor into civility has failed, and now I have a choice—yield to a man who almost certainly wants to rape me, or fight back. And for the tiniest second, I wish I were any other woman than Greer Galloway-Colchester. I wish that I were a fighter, a boxer, a cop, or a soldier. I wish that I were the kind of woman that shot arrows and brought down empires, that knew all the ways to make men like Melwas hurt. But I’m not.
I can name all twelve of King Arthur’s battles, I can recite Chaucer by heart, I can speak Old English as fluently as any Mercian warrior. I can spy on politicians, I know how to leverage a bill into a law, I know how to word statements so they can mean everything or mean nothing at all. I can wield power over a classroom of thirty students, I can wield power over the press or in rooms with large conference tables and stone-faced lawmakers—all of that I have been trained to do since birth. But here? Against someone who would do me bodily harm, who has guards with guns and batons at the ready?
I don’t know what kind of power I can possibly wield here.
We reach the door to my room, and I see Melwas’s men ready behind us, and I make a calculated gamble.
“Please,” I say quietly. “I want it just to be the two of us.” I put enough of my real desperation into my words to make them tremble the slightest bit. Let him mistake it for excitement.
He does. He licks his lips, staring at my face and then dropping his gaze down to my chest, where the red silk dips low over my breasts.
“Stay out here,” Melwas orders his men, and then pushes me into my room. He locks the door behind himself and takes off his jacket, tossing it on the floor and starting in on his cufflinks.
I watch for a minute, disoriented. How many times have I watched Ash do this exact same thing? Unfasten his cuff links, slide off his tie bar, forearms flexing as he rolls up his sleeves? How can two men have so many of the same ingredients and yet come out so differently?
I walk over to the floor-to-ceiling window and stare out into the darkening evening, pressing my forehead against the glass. I’m exhausted, the tendrils of a fierce headache working their way into my brain. I can still taste those apples.
But this is my chance. Locked alone in a room with Melwas, without his guards. I don’t know what my plan is after I subdue him—or if I can even subdue him at all—but it will be the best chance I have.
He might want to tie you up, I think. You have to do it before then.
Sleeves rolled up, Melwas stalks toward me, pressing my body into the cold window glass with his own. Every inch of me, every corner and curve of my skin, is alive with disgust, is alive with no, as if no were an emotion, as if no were a physiological response. But I hide it, resisting the urge to shudder or shove him away because I know from the one self-defense class I took in college that timing is everything. Strike to the eyes, knee to the groin, knee to the head. I can do that. Eyes, groin, head.
Eyes, groin, head.
One, two, three, easy as that.
Melwas’s hand comes up around my throat and his other hand slides across the silk to my stomach, going down to cup my pubic bone. His grip is hard, painful, and I can’t help the hot flush of shame and fear that stabs through me, the tears that spring to my eyes. I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this.
Eyes, groin, head, the Queen in my mind reminds me. Wait for it.
But waiting is the worst thing I can imagine, standing still as Melwas murmurs things into my ear that I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind, these disgusting lies that are no less insidious for how disgusting they are. That I want this, that he’s doing me a favor by giving it to me, that women like me—women who like surrendering control—welcome being taken by force.
I hate it, I hate it all so much, I hate the lies, I hate the hard, hurting hand that kneads my unwilling flesh as he says it. I hate the way his lies connect to my darkest fears, like confirmation that there is something wrong with me and the way I want sex.
But I know they’re lies. The very way my body reacts right now—with terror and revulsion—is evidence of that. And that certainty gives me the patience to wait just a moment longer, until his grip has loosened and the hand at my genitals drops back to fumble with his belt.
Now.
I prepare to spin, pressing my fingertips together so they all meet in one concentrated point, and I’m ready to drive those points right into his flat acorn eyes when there’s a knock at the door.
Melwas groans and snaps out something in Ukrainian.
Not-Daryl responds through the door, sounding both apologetic and urgent.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Melwas echoes, his hand moving away from my throat. He walks back toward the door and I turn to follow him with my eyes, my body still tensed and my hands still formed into beak-shaped weapons.
Melwas conferences with Not-Daryl for a few minutes, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes, and then seems to come to a decision. “I am very sorry,” he says, “but I must cut our evening short. Some business awaits me and I must tend to it personally.” He reaches out to stroke my hair and I pull back on instinct. I hear Not-Daryl make a noise in the doorway.
Melwas frowns. “Perhaps it would be good for you to consider the things we’ve talked about tonight.” He nods at Not-Daryl and two other men in the doorway, and before I can stop it, I’m being gagged and bound and tossed carelessly on the bed.
“I won’t blindfold you,” Melwas says kindly, in one of his lightning-mood shifts. “I’ll turn off the lights so you can see the stars through the window. They are quite lovely in the mountains.” And he runs a hand up my stomach to palm my breast. “I hope to be back tonight. But if not, we shall continue tomorrow.”
And then he and the men leave me alone, locked in from the outside, and I finally let myself cry.
