"When you tell me to do something, I do it, my lord."

"I can see that." He pets her hair and feeds her another conjured fruit slice.

She leans on him with a contented smile.

After breakfast, he rapes her mouth and spills his seed down her throat and then leaves.

She curls up in his bed and bites a clenched fist, trying to keep control of herself. She doesn't feel like someone with astonishing resolve. She feels like a desperate slut who can't get enough of her beautiful rapist's beautiful cock.

Eventually, after many deep breaths, she uncurls her cramped hands and gets out of bed and goes and takes a bath, moving very deliberately. When she is all clean, she goes to her desk and draws. Abstract swirls; the view of the desert from the eastern towers; a dragon with the Emperor's beautiful eyes.

Around midafternoon, the Emperor stalks into the room and pulls her from her chair, scattering pens and inks across the desk.

She yelps.

He carries her over his shoulder to the empty room, where he conjures a beautiful black marble floor and throws her down onto it.

"Spread your legs and close your eyes," he says.

"Yes, my lord."

"And shut up."

She feels a jolt of real fear at that. It's one thing if he wants to work out his anger with a little rape and torture and prefers her for the purpose, but if he doesn't want her to talk... she's very afraid that she might not be his most treasured possession right now.

"You're going to suffer for me today," he breathes. Loops of cold steel snake around her limbs, pulling her legs farther apart, hoisting her up off the floor. He shoves his cock in her ass and rapes her so violently that her hips shatter after only a few thrusts.

She bites her tongue to stifle a scream.

He finishes quickly, but doesn't stop there. As his cock leaves her ass, tendrils of rough stone swarm to replace it. Bone grinds on bone as the illusion's savage thrusts jar her broken hips.

She squeezes her eyes shut and sobs with pain as quietly as possible. Being held in the air like this is disorienting enough, and the pain distracting enough, that she's no longer sure she could confidently identify which way is up. But oh, she doesn't mind a bit. Terrified, violated, brutalized, and she still wishes she could beg for more.

The Emperor snarls. The stone tendrils meld into a single thick stone rod, pounding viciously into her ravaged ass. The coiling metal snakes that hold her legs apart pull harder, straining her shattered hips to further ruin.

The pain is incredible. She cries helplessly.

Gradually, he calms down. The hard rough stone slows, then withdraws. The metal shifts to cradle her body in a way that would be comfortable if she weren't such a glorious mess; and then he heals her, and pets her hair.

Niamira shivers, leaning into his hand. He hasn't told her to speak, so she doesn't.

He kisses her forehead.

A thin tendril of steel, barely a finger's width, slides into her cunt.

She gasps. It takes all her self-control not to beg.

It moves slowly, cold and hard and not nearly big enough to satisfy her; and then, just as slowly, it presses against the mouth of her womb.

She shudders. Small as it is, it's still much too big for that. Icy waves of agony radiate through her body as it forces its way in.

And when it's firmly lodged there, it starts to grow. Metal fills her womb, inflating her belly in an agonizing mockery of pregnancy.

With her eyes still closed, she can't see it, but she can feel the pressure and she has a good imagination.

First ordering her to shut up, and now this... she genuinely thinks she might be about to die. He could kill her like this, right now, make her overburdened womb swell and swell until it bursts. It would be messy and painful and exactly the sort of thing he likes.

She bites her tongue bloody and doesn't say a word.