Guarded by the Hybrid (Kindred Tales)

“Please, my Lord!” I gasped, as tears came to my eyes. “That hurts!”

“It’s meant to bring your glow on. And yet you’re still not glowing. Perhaps I should try something else.” Frowning, he jammed a hand between my legs and—

Isla put down her pen as two large tears splashed onto the page, smearing the ink. Some things were too painful to write.

I should be used to it by now, she thought, feeling sick. It’s been nearly a year and he’s tried to “bring on my glow” countless times.

She tried to make herself numb to her husband’s rough fumblings, tried to take herself away to someplace quiet and peaceful. But it wasn’t always possible to divorce her mind from her body and even if she managed to “go away” when he was trying to bring on her glow, she always came back to the aftermath.

“Why aren’t you glowing yet, you little bitch?” he would scream in her face. “My brother’s wife has already had one child and will be pregnant again any moment now and I’ve yet to even breed you once! Was it a lie? Is the glowing even true?”

“It’s true, my Lord! I swear it’s true! I do not know why I have not yet begun to glow!” Isla would beg, hoping to avoid the worst.

She never could. His hard fists would find her, no matter how she turned and twisted or tried to get away from him. The only places her husband wouldn’t hit her were her belly—for obvious reasons—and her face. Baslik liked to preserve her beauty, so he could show her off at state functions and business dinners. But her pale skin often carried his marks everywhere else.

Later he would come to her, saying how sorry he was and how if only she would glow for him he wouldn’t have to “punish” her anymore. Isla tried to explain that she couldn’t make herself glow—she had tried over and over—anything to stop him beating her. But the sparkling, opalescent glow that a Moonstone goddess is renowned for refused to come to her skin. It made her wonder if there was something wrong with her—if she was somehow defective. After all, by her age, her Nana had already had two sons and a third child on the way.

But then, Nana had loved her husband—she had described him as a “kind and gentle man”—which Lord Baslik Le’rank most certainly was not. Isla missed her Nana every day and cried for her every night—she wished herself back in her old life a hundred, thousand times. Far better to be starving in poverty with one she loved than to be beaten and abused while living in luxury with a man she hated.

And then the worst happened and she received news that her frail, aging Nana simply hadn’t woken up one morning.

The news had broken Isla’s heart and she had wept until it felt as though something inside her would never be right again. But in the sadness, there was one tiny spark of hope. With her Nana gone, she had nothing more to tie her to Baslik Le’rank.

All this time she’d been staying obediently, enduring her husband’s hands on her almost every night and then suffering his temper when his rough handling of her failed to bring on her glow. And the main reason she had stayed was the fact that she feared Le’rank could call breach of contract and take away her Nana’s funds, if Isla ran away from him. Now, that was no longer a possibility. He couldn’t hurt her Nana anymore—Nana was gone.

If he catches me, I can say I was going to her memorial service, Isla thought to herself—her plans for flight were another detail she didn’t trust to her diary. But he’s not going to catch me—I’ll get away from him and then I don’t care what happens to me. Even if I have to work in a House of Ill Repute it will be better than this. Or maybe I can throw myself on the mercy of the Mother Superior at the Order of the Blessed Maidens. After all, I am still a maiden. For all the terrible things my husband has done to me, he has not yet taken me in the way a man takes a wife.

With those thoughts in mind, she packed a small bag with a single change of clothes and such trinkets and jewels as she thought she could sell or trade for travel fare. And then she left in the dead of night, her heart pounding, determined to make a better life for herself than the nightmare she was currently living in…

THREE

From the diary of Lady Isla, wife to Lord Baslik Le’rank of Telmar Two of the Orinthian System:

I did not even make it away from the Le’rank Family Compound. In fact, I barely made it past the palace! A guard spotted me walking down the road that led to the nearest Transport Hub—I should have changed to a darker cloak with a hood, for I fear it was the shimmering of the moonlight in my hair that gave me away.