They hauled me in and brought me back to stand, trembling before my husband.
“So, you would run away from me without even giving me a son and heir first!” Baslik snapped at me, his narrow face red with fury.
“Please, my Lord,” I gasped, bowing my head. “Forgive me—I only wished to go to my Nana’s memorial service!”
“Little liar,” he snapped, glaring at me. “You were running away. Well, I won’t have it!” He seized me by the wrist and began to squeeze.
“Please!” I gasped, sinking to the ground as I felt the small bones in my wrist grind together.
“I’ll teach you what it means to be a good wife if it kills me!” he snarled as he squeezed even harder.
Something broke in me then and I glared up at him.
“How can I be a good wife when you are not a good husband? What good husband tortures his wife every night, pawing at her body like a slimy beast and then beating her as you beat and abuse me?”
Baslik’s eyes widened and then narrowed.
“A ‘slimy beast’ am I?” he demanded.
“Yes, you are!” I shouted at him, my emotions completely overcoming me. I should not have said it, but the words came to my lips and I could not stop them as they poured out of me—as almost a year of horror and anger and terror and pain came rushing to the surface. And once I started, it seemed I could not stop.
“How do you expect to bring on my glow when I find your very touch repellent?” I demanded. “My Nana told me that the Moonstone glow could not be brought to my skin except by the loving touch of a man who cared for me—who watched over and protected me. While you, my Lord, do nothing but maul and abuse me! Of course I cannot glow for you!”
It was then that he broke my wrist.
I felt the bones in my arm snap like dry twigs and suddenly my fingers went numb. They are numb and tingling still—thank goodness it was my left wrist that he broke, since I am right-handed or I would be unable to pour my feelings onto these pages now.
I shrieked in pain and the world went gray around me. I remember falling—fainting—and the room spinning and spinning, making me feel sick to my stomach. Baslik might have wished to do even more damage but I threw up then, heaving the contents of my stomach onto his priceless designer shoes. He exclaimed in disgust and jumped back from me, dropping my arm in the process.
The bones grinding together as my arm fell made me shriek again and then everything went completely black as my mind and body both rebelled against consciousness.
When I woke, Baslik’s personal physician was tending to my wrist and Baslik himself was standing over me. My mouth tasted horrible and my wrist ached like a rotten tooth, but at least it wasn’t screaming at me anymore. I tried to focus on my husband’s face—a survival instinct I had learned early in our marriage. If I could accurately gauge his mood, sometimes I could avoid a beating.
“I know what to do with you now, my little mouse,” he said to me, giving me a grin I didn’t like at all. “I know how to make you glow.”
I had heard these words before—many times. I cringed away from him, wondering what new and horrible technique he had devised to bring on my readiness to breed.
His face hardened as he watched my instinctive reaction.
“No, no, my dear,” he said, smiling at me—a smile that didn’t reach his eyes—which were as hard as the glittering diamond he wore at his throat. “I do not mean to touch you myself again—not until you are already glowing and ready to be bred, anyway. But if you will not react to my touch, perhaps you will react to another’s.”
“What…what are you talking about?” I asked weakly, unable to keep the fear out of my voice.
“Never you mind—you’ll find out soon enough,” he told me. “We’ll have you glowing before you know it. In time for our first anniversary, I hope.”
A year, I thought dismally. A whole year I’ve been trapped in this hellish excuse for a marriage.
“And to commemorate it,” Baslik went on, “We shall take a little trip to Fenushia Alpha where they have a special breeding ceremony—a Festival of Fertility, if you will—each year. There I shall take you for the first time, my dear, and breed my son and heir into your belly at last.”
“Fenushia Alpha?” I croaked, my voice hoarse with screaming. “But I thought…thought we could not leave the planet. You said you had enemies…”
It was one reason he had given for not taking me on a more elaborate honeymoon and forbidding me to visit my Nana. He told me that his family had powerful adversaries—rival families who dealt in the same business the Le’ranks did. People who would be happy to see him killed if he dared to venture away from the family compound too often.