ally heard about the ordeals in the palace and Danika's pending execution from Uyah, who ran to her house on the morning of the next day to inform her. She had been devastated hearing it; she'd cried all the way to the palace, but there was no way to see the king because he refused to see any visitor—even Chad.
So Sally had gone to her princess's dungeon. At the sight of her, Danika had teared up instantly—not to mention Sally. They'd cried together, clinging to each other through the bars that separated the cell from the outside. Danika told her everything that happened, and Sally couldn't stop crying when she saw how complicated the situation was. How would her princess get saved from this?
She'd stayed with Danika all day, reading to her and telling her stories of her married life just to take her mind away from her situation. And when Sally went home in the evening to her husband, she begged him to find a way to speak with the king.
Chad had tried and tried for a couple of days, but the king wouldn't allow visitors. Only his mistress was in and out of his chambers from time to time. She always came out looking like she fought a battle and lost. She comes out limping. The extent of his pain must be unimaginable for him to hurt the people he once cared for—like Vetta—and cut off contact with every single person he cared for—even Baski.
He never summoned Baski once—not even to make him herbs for a headache or for sleep. And when she'd tried to visit, the king refused to let her in. So she'd buried her effort into doing her best to come up with a way to exonerate Danika—to make a strong case she'd take to the king.
The rumors of his horrible moods and his strange deeds circulated the kingdom.
He had fired a maid for forgetting to get him drinking water with his food, and when the girl tried to plead to him, he'd thrown her out.
A woman was caught and whipped for committing adultery.
In court, there was a case about a man who stole in the market. The king hadn’t given an opportunity for the man to defend himself or give reasons why he did what he did, as the king would do before. Instead, he ordered the guards to amputate the man's hand as an example to others never to steal again.
Baski sighed, shaking her head at the memories. It scared her the way things were looking for the king. That the incident would have succeeded in breaking him when King Cone was never able to succeed. When slavery punishments and tortures never succeeded in breaking him.
Even if Danika was miraculously exonerated from being executed, would the king ever trust again?
The past couple of days were hectic. As Vetta brushed her hair on the third day, she fumed. She hadn’t the opportunity to leave the palace and go over to Monah, the healer’s place, and her bleeding hadn’t stopped. The aches in her belly hadn’t stopped either.
With Danika in the dungeon, Vetta was uncertain about leaving without chaperones, lest the king finds out about it and punish her more harshly. He’d kept her on house arrest for it before, but this time around—with the mood he was in—he might treat her harsher.
The last two days, the king summoned her repeatedly, and he had taken his sexual pleasures from her body. In fact, she was the only visitor he had had to his chambers these past few days. It should have made her happy—it was what she had always wanted—but it didn’t. His summon filled her heart with dread.
Her hair well-brushed, Vetta got up from the chair. She was almost limping; her muscles were so sore and achy. She hadn’t been that bruised from sexual activities since slavery.
The king was being so hard on her, so rough. He also brought back the kinky sardonic sexual plays that King Cone subjected him to for over ten years. He never used any of them before, not after their slavery. It was animalistic. More pain than pleasure. King Cone’s dark kinks.
King Lucien had dropped them immediately once he had his free will, his freedom. But for the past two days, that new man that took over the king engaged in those kinks.
“Be careful what you wish for.” His words to her on that first night she lured him to her bed rang in her ears, causing shivers down her spine.
The flashes of memories came. He’d tie her up and spanked her butt with a whip. Then he fucked her body so brutally without foreplay she was left screaming. He took her ass more often than he took her womanhood, and he was a big man. No matter how much she prepped herself for it, it ended up being an excruciatingly painful experience.
Be careful what you wish for.
Last night, he tied her up, gagged her mouth, and took her body for hours long. By the time he was done, her voice had gone hoarse from screaming into the gag, her eyes red from crying. When he pulled away from her and began putting on his clothes, it was the first time he really looked at her in the past few days. Sympathy and guilt clouded his visions, and for a moment, she’d seen the King Lucien she knew again in him.
He’d walked towards her and kissed her wet cheek lingeringly. “I apologize to you for all these, Vetta. You do not deserve this at all.” The apology only teared her up the more because she knew it had not been easy for him. He’d palmed his head. “I was thinking it’s high time I get a second mistress.”
“What?” It shocked Vetta so much she wiped her eyes clean just to make sure it was not an illusion.
He got up and continued putting on his clothes. “It’s a thought I’m considering. You’re only but one woman, and I have...needs.”
Over her dead body would she let another woman have him! She hadn’t battled tooth and nail to get rid of Danika, only to battle a new concubine. He was still hurting about the incident with Danika. With time, he would change.
“I can take care of your needs; I’m already taking care of them. You don’t need a-another mistress,” she stuttered out, the idea throwing her off guard. She never expected it.
“I think I’m damaging you, Vetta. It’s the most reasonable thing to do.”
“No! I’m fine. You know how much I enjoy being with you,” she reassured him, hiding her pain very well.
“Vetta---”
“Can’t you c-curb your needs? You are giving in to your mind’s twisted demands about being a monster. Danika’s father made that man. You are not that man,” she breathed sadly.
He’d flinched slightly at the mention of her name, then walked out of the bedroom.
Vetta sighed at the memory as she sat on her bed, waiting for the maids to run her a bath. She’d gone to Baski for the past two days to get herbs and be treated after every bed session with the king. Baski always took pity on her whenever she saw her body. Her herbs helped reduce the aches in her body and healed her rectum.
Baski had noticed her bleedings—which hadn’t stopped—but Vetta made sure to convince her that they came from her moments with the king.
All in all, those past few days were not so good at all. It was nothing like how she expected the days after her victory. She’d expected to be wearing an eternal smile on her face because she got her man back, but instead, she’d been crying. She didn’t get the king back; she got a different man.
“When the plan comes to your head, ignore it. Do not do it. You will hurt queen. You will hurt prince. You will hurt his father. And you will get hurt. You get away this time around, and you get hurt the next.”
Goosebumps worked their way down Vetta’s spine at the vivid reminder of those creepy words that wouldn’t seize ringing in her head for the past few days.
Those words have become so true.
Her only happiness was that Danika would be executed at the square tomorrow. That was her only consolation.