Well. I've always been a slow learner. Ask my father.
"On your knees."
He crosses the room in twi strides and his fist connects with my face before I can brace for it. The bedpost slips out of my grip and I stumble sideways, catch myself on the vanity, send something glass crashing to the floor where it shatters into pieces I'll probably end up kneeling in, then cleaning up my own blood.
"Knees."
I'm still standing. Don't know why, don't know what I think I'm proving to a man who could snap my neck without breaking a sweat.
The second hit catches my temple.
I go down—knees first, then hands, the carpet soft against my palms in a way that feels obscene. Gold thread and silk.
"Better." His boot connects with my ribs.
The air leaves my body all at once and I curl sideways, can't help it, arms wrapping around my stomach while something in my chest screams wrong wrong wrong. Another kick lands in the same spot and something comes out of my mouth that isn't a word, just noise, and it seems a trickle of blood wanted to make an appearance too.
"You speak out of turn."
Kick.
"You embarrass Coin."
Kick.
"You stand when I tell you to kneel."
The next one is harder, and something shifts in my ribs—gives in a way that makes my vision go white and my whole body seize up around the wrongness of it.
I can't breathe. The air won't come no matter how hard I try, my lungs refusing to expand, and I'm gasping against the carpet while panic claws up my throat because I can't—I can't—
His boot catches my stomach and I retch, nothing coming up but the motion tears through me anyway. I'm shaking now, full-body tremors I can't control, and some distant part of my brain is screaming at me to just stop, just kneel, just apologize and give him what he wants—
My arms won't uncurl. My legs won't move. My body has decided it's done taking instructions.
Funny. So has the rest of me.
He kicks me again. And again. I stop counting because the numbers don't matter. Nothing matters except outlasting him. Survive until he gets bored, gets tired, gets called away to something more important than one stubborn girl who doesn't know when to fold.
This is how I die. On silk carpet in a god's estate, too stupid to kneel.
There are worse epitaphs.
The floor shakes.
I feel it through my cheek, through my palms still pressed against carpet that's wet now—blood, mine, obviously.
Kairis pauses mid-swing.
"What—"
Another impact, closer this time. The walls crack and dust falls from the ceiling, drifting down slow through the light. His boot slams into my stomach again and I curl tighter, can't keep track of anything anymore—just the pain and the floor shaking and his voice somewhere above me saying something I can't parse through the ringing in my ears.
Shouting in the corridor now. Running footsteps. Something crashes hard enough to send tremors through the floor and Kairis swears, kicks me again—my back this time, something giving with a wet pop that makes me want to scream except I don't have the air for it.
The door explodes inward.
Not opens. Explodes—wood splintering, hinges screaming, the frame cracking in half. Someone is standing in the wreckage. Someone with white eyes and a blade in his hand, and I'm looking up from the floor through blood and tears and none of this makes sense.
