“Oh, Danika. I think you might still be pregnant even after the collar shock!” Tears prickled Baski's eyes. “Your baby might still be hanging in there!”
“It d-does not matter.” Danika's voice came out hoarsely. “We are still going to die on the fourth day anyway.”
“By the gods! Your child!” Baski got up and hurried out of the dungeon. She rushed to her bedroom and lifted her herbs bag to her shoulders. Then she picked out fresh towels, a bowl of fresh water, and the new herb roots she had collected the day before. Finally, she turned and ran back to the dungeon.
Danika hadn't moved an inch from the ground she laid. Baski walked closer to her. “Your child is a strong fighter, Danika. I gave up, knowing how bad the collar shock was, but this baby might still be in there. It's been hours; you should have lost so much blood but look at you.” Her voice was filled with awe.
“It doesn't matter, Baski.”
“It does! Oh, have a little faith, Danika.” Baski sat down and pushed Danika until she rolled around to face her.
Danika's eyes were red and swollen, her face like a person who's been crying for long. “It has nothing to do...with f-faith, Baski. You saw the king, right?”
“I saw him. How couldn't I? He shattered before my very eyes.”
Danika's eyes slid tightly shut as if the knowledge hurt like hell. Maybe it did.
Silence descended as Baski mixed a little herb inside the water. She raised Danika’s underclothes, baring her body to her. Then she began cleaning her up.
“Do you know the only thought that kept going through my head today?” Baski began as she rubbed the towel down Danika’s inner thighs.
Danika remained silent, her eyes still tightly closed together.
“That very day I asked about your pregnancy. That day you cleared my doubts about this baby—even before I could understand my daughter’s words. I remember accusing you of having another lover.”
“I remember that too.” Danika’s voice was laced with bitterness.
“You looked me in the eyes and told me how degrading it was for you to take on another lover when you belonged to the king. The insult you felt because I would ask something like that. I saw the passion in your eyes. The intensity. I saw the royal blood in y-you.” Baski’s voice cracked in the end.
Tears slipped from behind Danika’s closed eyes down to the ground.
“What happened, Danika? What went wrong?” Baski asked, at last, her eyes filled with sadness as fresh blood dripped from Danika’s body.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Baski,” Danika whispered miserably. “The truth is so unbelievable. So far-fetched.”
“Try me. Try and talk to me, Danika. I want to understand. I need to understand.”
Danika’s heart was so heavy; the weight of it battled the pains from other parts of her body. She would be executed in four days. She had nothing to lose.
“I went to the backyard to take my clothes. Karandy dragged me from behind with a knife pressing at my side. He manhandled me to the storeroom and tried to r-rape me. I fought him, and he drugged me.” She sniffled jerkily. “I don’t remember anything else from there. All I know is I woke to see you and the king standing over me, with Karandy’s head separated from his body.”
Baski took a huge breath of relief. Her heart lightened at her words. “I knew it! I just knew that you could never have cheated on the king like that. You could have never treated him like that!”
Her eyes opened, and she leaned up and looked at Baski with shock in her eyes. “You believe me?”
“Of course I do. I never really doubted you. I just needed an explanation, and now I got one. I feel very relieved!”
Tears of gratitude and relief slipped from Danika’s eyes. She lowered her head again and closed her eyes. “Thank you for believing in me.”
Baski closed her hand around the young woman’s thigh in a reassuring squeeze. “We will get through this, Danika. Together. I will do everything I can to---”
“I don’t think there is anything that can be done.” She paused and swallowed. “I c-can’t stop seeing the king’s face in the storeroom. That coldness. He trusted me. He thinks I betrayed him...in so many ways.” More tears left her eyes as she continued hoarsely. “He has never used the collar on me. Not even once. In fact, I think he stopped seeing the collar. He stopped seeing me as a slave. His slave. And then, today…”
Baski knew she had to tell her. There was no need to hide the truth from anybody. “You know that King Cone roasted the king’s manly parts, right?” She continued when Danika nodded. “It killed off most of his nerve endings and made him unable to be gentle during copulation. Being rough is the only way he can feel anything at all. It...it also made him sterile,” she finished in a soft voice.
A full minute passed before Danika opened her eyes and stared at Baski with eyes filled with confusion. “That cannot be true. I am carrying his ch-child. I was,” she added, pain in her eyes.
“Yes. But the king thinks he cannot make a woman carry his seed. We all thought that. Me and the five healers all over the twelve kingdoms that diagnosed him.”
So many things were starting to make sense to Danika all at once. “Oh, heavens. That was why you stopped giving me herbs that prevent a baby.”
Baski nodded. “I never intentionally tried to endanger your life by making you get pregnant for your master. I knew of his condition and thought it would be a waste of herbs. It might harm you to take needless herbs. I never knew.”
“That was why you accused me of having another lover that day,” she deducted.
Baski put the water away and began grinding new herbs. “Yes. It was so hard to believe.”
Danika’s eyes closed in defeat and more pain. She lowered her head back to the ground. “No wonder you were most hesitant to go to the king about my condition. His condition... He thinks he can’t father a child. Even without what he saw today, he would have thought I had another lover. He would have executed me anyway.”
“We don’t know for sure, and we will never be able to find out any more. He already knows you’re pregnant.”
“And he doesn’t believe. And he has sentenced me to d-death for my betrayal,” she said, pained.
“He doesn’t know better. We will make him--”
“No. We won’t make him anything, Baski,” Danika interrupted softly. “The truth is, I don’t think I want to be exonerated. I---”
“What are you saying!? Don’t you ever say something like that again!” Baski scolded her.
“Karandy, he...” She swallowed tightly. “I passed out. I’m scared that he really did r-rape me. That he succeeded in putting his hand on me. Just the thought of it fills me with dread. I feel so disgusted, so repulsed with myself, Baski. I don’t think I can live with this.”
“Oh, Danika...”
She began crying, unable to hold it in again any longer. “I don’t think I can survive with this knowledge, Baski. I don’t think I want to survive. My own skin feels like dirt.” She shook her head miserably.