He laughs. "I think you should sleep now," he says, petting her hair. "Maybe I'll take the opportunity to rape your sweet cunt while you're not awake to feel it."

She moans, slumping dizzily against him as his magic sends her to sleep.

He carries her to his bed and tucks her in. Although he thinks about it, he doesn't rape her. The meeting that he left in a temper is long over by now, but there's still work that needs doing; his empire, unfortunately, won't run itself.

When she wakes in the morning, she's hungry. She can't actually remember the last time that happened without imperially conjured food already in front of her. Maybe all the healing has been messing with her appetite. But she's hungry now, and he hasn't left breakfast for her.

She gets up and has a bath and searches his rooms for something she can eat. When that venture fails, she finds something she can wear to go get something to eat. What they serve in the slave kitchens is not nearly as enjoyable as what the Emperor feeds her, but it's capable of sustaining life.

Unfortunately, when she inventories the available garments, her choice is between borrowing something of the Emperor's and wearing that outrageously beautiful dress that he conjured for her. She does not want to get food on her outrageously beautiful dress, but she'd also rather not ruin any of the Emperor's things.

On the other hand, how often does he even wear clothes rather than just wrapping himself in tangible illusions so he can dismiss them in an instant and avoid the tedium of getting undressed? And how much does he really care about material wealth that he can replace in a moment with conjuration?

He could replace her dress too. But she only has the one dress, whereas he has piles and piles of neglected finery. And he does like it when she does slightly audacious things.

She assembles a wearable outfit from the imperial wardrobe - a blue linen tunic, belted with a matching sash, makes a pretty dress that falls well below her knees. Underwear is probably not necessary, and if she runs into the Emperor out there he'll be so charmed that she didn't wear any.

It's strange, being out there again. It feels like it's been a lifetime since the Emperor dragged her to his rooms, but that long blur of days can't really have been any more than five or ten. Can it? She's lost track of time. She couldn't even swear to how much of her week has gone by.

Well, it's not like it matters that much. The Emperor will probably tell her if she asks, and if he's forgotten too then they can have a good laugh over it.

Acquiring breakfast is as straightforward as she remembers, although there is a new nervousness in the way old acquaintances interact with her. She doesn't trouble them by staying any longer than she has to. A quick meal, and out into the back hallways of the palace again to return to the Emperor's rooms. On the way out, she stuffs a couple of napkin-wrapped pastries into the folds of the broad sash so she won't have to come back for lunch.

When a strong hand clasps her wrist in a crushing grip and yanks her into a dimly lit cross corridor, the first person she thinks of is obviously the Emperor. But the hand feels wrong, and the man smells wrong, and he's not tall enough, and then her eyes focus and she recognizes the man who hates her.

"Are you insane," she says, which is admittedly probably not the ideal opening remark.

"Shut your mouth unless you want my cock in it." He starts dragging her down the hall.

The idea of yelling for help crosses her mind, but who would come to her aid? No slave in this palace would run toward a woman's scream. Maybe logical argument will work. It's at least worth trying.

"I'm the Emperor's favourite. If I tell him you raped me he'll kill you. If you damage me too badly for him to fix, he'll torture you for weeks first."

"Lying slut. I saw you stealing food. You're trying to run, aren't you."

She is speechless for a moment, unable to comprehend how anyone could possibly think she was that stupid. You don't run from the palace. From a lesser household you might actually escape, but the palace keeps a lock of hair from every slave and they will track you down with magic and gut you.

"I'm not stealing food, I'm taking it back to the Emperor's rooms, where I live, so I can eat lunch without making another trip. Let go of me."

He shoves her into a storage room, a cavernous space stacked high with disused furniture. The door thumps closed behind them with an unpromisingly heavy sound. Not the kind of door she might pull open easily and slip through for a quick escape.

"You're lying," he says. "Trying to scare me. And it's not going to work."

"You can't possibly think I'm actually trying to escape, can you?"

"I know that if I kill you, I can say I caught you trying to run and they'll believe me just fine."

She backs away slightly, glancing around in search of escape routes. There aren't any, unless she climbs a stack of furniture and breaks one of those high windows, but she's not sure she trusts the furniture to hold her weight. Or the windows to be sufficiently breakable.

"Seriously, don't do this," she says. "The Emperor will kill you."

"I know exactly what the Emperor thinks of his girls," he says. "You're not the first we've had. You're not special."

...yeah she's not going to convince him, is she. She shudders. "What do you want?"

He laughs. "Just a little fun. You'll like it. And if you're very very good, I won't kill you when I'm done."

She glances around again. Up the pile of tables and out the window is not a sure enough thing to bet her life on. Trying to duck past him, haul that door open, and run would be even less effective. She is manifestly incapable of convincing him he's going to die for this.

"...okay," she says softly.

He grins, advancing on her. She stands still and lowers her eyes. He puts a hand up her skirt, smirking when he feels her bare crotch, smirking wider when he feels how wet she is.

"Slut," he says. "I'm going to get you pregnant and the Emperor's going to rip you apart."

She shudders. The Emperor isn't going to kill her, but it's not in her interest for this man to know that, and she can very clearly imagine what it would be like if it happened. Very, very clearly.

"Please - please don't," she says tremblingly, more because she expects him to be gratified by her fear than because she expects him to listen.

"I was going to tell you to take off your clothes but I guess I don't have to," he says, pulling apart the knot on her sash-belt and shoving her skirt up. Sash and pastries fall to the floor. "Get on that table and spread your legs."

She does as she's told, whimpering softly. When the Emperor kills this man for raping her without permission, it's going to make being gang-raped by the gladiators a much more pleasant prospect. Which is a bad thing, because if it becomes insufficiently punishing then the Emperor will just have to find something worse to do to her, and she has every confidence that he'll succeed.

The table is a big solid rough-hewn wooden thing with a white sheet thrown haphazardly over its uneven surface to keep the dust off. She lies back and lets herself shiver with fear. The man who hates her stands between her spread thighs and shoves his fingers in her cunt.

"Please don't," she whispers, flinching.

"That's not what a good slut says." He twists his fingers inside her, pushes them deeper. "You remember what kind of slut you are, don't you?"

"I'm—" She sobs. "I'm, I'm a filthy slut who loves to be raped."

"Good." He withdraws his hand and opens the front of his trousers. "Now beg for what you really want."

"I, I want you to rape me, I want your cock inside me, I want you to fuck me hard, please, please fuck me—"

The worst part is that she's not even lying. After the game she's been playing with the Emperor for the last few days, she's desperate enough that her cunt aches with need at the thought.

He laughs, as though he can discern her unwilling sincerity, and gives her what she's begging for. Hard, fast, brutal, violent. She moans helplessly. He pounds his cock into her cunt like he's trying to split her in two. His hands leave deep bruises on her hips and thighs; his sticky fingers smear her with her own wetness. It hurts and she feels awful and violated and there's a part of her that wishes he'd brought ten friends so they could all fuck her senseless.

It's so satisfying to finally have someone's cock filling her cunt, even if it's not the exact person she wanted, even if it's the last person she wanted. So satisfying to be raped, humiliated, taken by force, used against her will. In less than a minute she's writhing with pleasure, moaning and sobbing as he laughs and fucks her harder.

Lost in unwanted pleasure, her grasp of time slips, falters, fails; she couldn't begin to guess how long it's been when he finally spends himself inside her. She slumps exhaustedly on the table and tries to catch her breath.

"Maybe if I turn you in for running I'll get to keep you as a reward," he says. "Chain you up in the barracks so we can all take a turn at you whenever we want. You might even live longer with us than you would with the Emperor. If you remember to be a good slut and not talk back."

She whimpers quietly. He laughs.

"Close your eyes and don't move," he says. She closes her eyes and doesn't move. And listens closely. If she hears him leave the room she's getting up and climbing out that window.

He doesn't leave the room. He makes some unidentifiable rustling noises, as though looking for something among the stacked furniture, and then comes back.

"Tell me how you like to be fucked," he says.

He's going to shove something unpleasant in her, isn't he. But degradation is better than death.

"I like to be fucked hard," she says, quiet and hesitant and flinching at every sound he makes. "I like - I like to be raped. I like it to hurt. I—"

He slaps her inner thigh. "Spread your legs, slut."

She obeys, whimpering. He gropes her cunt, then shoves something in, exactly as predicted. Big, hard, wooden, with corners and round parts - a piece of broken furniture, maybe? The leg of a discarded table? She thinks about splinters and a fearful shudder runs through her.

"Say it again."

"I - I like to be raped, I like to be fucked hard, I like it to hurt, I'm, I'm a filthy slut—"

He fucks her with the table leg. It hurts a lot more than his cock. She's pretty sure she's bleeding. It's nowhere near as bad as what the Emperor does to her on a daily basis, but it's still enough to make her want to cry.

"Beg for it," says the man who hates her.

"Please," she moans, spreading her legs wider. "Please, yes, fuck me hard, rape me, hurt me, I love it, I want it, please—"

So of course he fucks her harder, shoving his chosen implement of mediocre torture deep into her cunt. She deliberately focuses on the pain and violation, lets real fear colour her voice and real tears run down her face. If she doesn't suffer satisfyingly enough, he might just kill her and have done with it.

A few minutes of raping her viciously with a table leg is apparently all he needed to get hard again, because soon he yanks it out and replaces it with his cock. She whimpers.

"Beg," he orders.

"Please fuck me, please rape me, please hurt me, please use me," she sobs.

He gives her what he made her ask for. Brutal, violent rape, just the way she likes it. And, much as she'd rather not, she does like it. She doesn't drown in pleasure the way she did before, but she finds release again and again, shuddering on the table, clenching around his cock, weeping with humiliation.

At last, he finishes. He stands there a moment longer, breathing heavily, and then pulls out.

"If you struggle, I'll fucking kill you," he says.

She tenses. He raped her with a table leg and now he's warning her not to struggle? What is he about to do to her?

"Eyes closed, slut." She flinches, and stops trying to peek.

First he ties a length of rope around her right wrist, and pulls her arm out straight and ties it down. She remains warily bewildered.

Then he straightens her other arm, pulling it above her head. He holds her hand flat against the table, palm-up, and—nails it there.

She doesn't struggle. She bites her lip and holds very still, even when he hits her with the hammer. Twice. Even when he tugs on her wrist to check how well her hand is anchored by the nail through her palm, and a flash of hot agony makes her cry out in pain and surprise.

"There, that'll hold you. Now, I'm going to go get my friends so we can bring you to the overseer and say we caught a runaway. It won't take long. If I come back and find you've been trying to get free, well, I'm allowed to kill runaways."

Somehow she stops herself from pointing out that he's probably not supposed to kill runaways by raping them to death.

As a parting gift, he shoves the table leg up her ass and leaves it there.

The door opens. The door closes. If she strains her ears, she can just barely hear retreating footsteps.

If she tries to run and he catches her he will certainly kill her, probably in some slow unpleasant way involving rape and torture.

If she stays put like a good slut, she's sure he'll have his friends gang-rape her, and then... well, if he thinks he's got a shot at being allowed to keep her, he might take her to his overseer. Or, if he doesn't, he might stick with his plan of getting her pregnant so the Emperor kills her for it. But there's nothing actually stopping him from getting impatient and deciding to kill her himself. And once he's got his friends to hold her down for him, her chances of escape are utterly hopeless.

The Emperor might notice her absence at any time and come looking for her, but she can't count on that.

She grimaces slightly. Yeah, the best thing for her to do is get out of here and go back to the Emperor's rooms. And if she's going to do that, the faster the better. No time to waste on minimizing pain.

So she grits her teeth and yanks her left hand up off the nail.

It hurts, but when she looks, the hole through her hand is not nearly as bad as the one the Emperor made with blunt illusory steel. She can't even see all the way through it. She unties the rope around her other wrist, with her teeth and a small amount of painful help from her injured hand, and pulls the table leg out of her ass with a brief wince at the pain, and glances between the door and the window - there's not that much chance that he'll catch her in the corridors, but much more of one if she uses the door than the window - so window it is. She climbs, carrying the table leg in case she needs to break the window with it.

There are only a couple of moments where she is briefly afraid the whole stack will come crashing down with her in the middle. When she reaches the window, it turns out to be openable from the inside, so she tosses the broken table leg back down onto the floor and climbs out, pushing it shut behind her.

She's halfway up an east-facing wall, too far to safely drop to the ground below. A narrow ledge extends sideways from the lip of the window. She follows it. It's an easy climb, even with one hand damaged.

The ledge takes her around the curve of the wall until she reaches a covered walkway she recognizes. Well, 'reaches'; she's looking down a ten-foot drop to the edge of its roof. Still, ten feet isn't too bad. Unless she lands really badly, she'll be able to make it the rest of the way to the Emperor's rooms.

She lowers herself until she's dangling by her good hand from the ledge, which reduces the length of the drop significantly, and then she lets go. The roof tiles leave harsh scrapes on her legs, but she swings down easily from the roof onto the walkway itself. There's another slave hurrying along it; he glances at her, sees her scraped legs and bleeding hand and general state of disarray, and hurries faster. She strides confidently in the direction of the Emperor's rooms.

When she gets there, it doesn't look like he's been back since she left.

Well.

She has a bath, takes off her borrowed tunic, and curls up in her bed to attempt a nap.

But instead of napping she finds herself wrapping her arms around her stomach and hugging herself and shaking slightly. She could have died. She could have died and the Emperor wouldn't have known in time to save her. He probably would've tortured her murderer to death, but that still wouldn't have done her any good.

This is stupid. She's been gang-raped, tortured, fucked in ways she wouldn't have survived without imperial healing, and this, this is what upsets her enough to make her curl up in bed and cry? She presses her face against a pillow to stifle her sobs.

It's another hour before the Emperor returns.

She sits up when she hears the outer door open, and so is looking right at him when he enters her room.

He smiles at her; then he sees her tearstained face and slightly mangled hand, and the smile changes to a frown. "What happened here?" he asks, crossing the room to scoop up her hand and kiss the bloody wound.

She smiles wryly up at him. "You didn't leave me breakfast, so I went out to find it myself. My friend from the barracks saw me bringing back some food and decided I must be trying to run away, so he dragged me into a storeroom and raped me. I tried to explain that I emphatically do not belong to him, but he wasn't inclined to listen."

He sits down on her bed and pulls her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. The trailing sleeves of his overrobe are very soft.

"You are very emphatically mine," he murmurs into her hair; and he squeezes her hand, then heals it.

"Yes, well, apparently you usually don't care much what happens to your bed-slaves." She snuggles into his lap. "Anyway, he nailed my hand to a table and told me not to move while he went to fetch his friends, so of course I ripped myself free and climbed out the window as soon as he was out of earshot."

The Emperor laughs and kisses the top of her head. "My treasure. Mmm. And how would you like him to be punished for this?"

...she considers. She wasn't expecting him to consult her.

"Well - if you kill him, or scare him too badly, then being gang-raped by your gladiators won't be nearly as threatening, and you might have to find some other way to punish me. But if you don't scare him badly enough, he might try again, and - I want to be able to walk around your palace without fearing for my life. In fact, I'd rather not ever fear for my life except at your hand." She hugs his arm.

"Very logical." He nuzzles the top of her head. "I promise you, I can find another way to punish you that's just as effective."

"Yes," she says dryly, "that's what I'm afraid of."

He pets her hair. "And I don't really need to punish you, do I. Except for our little games. You want to obey me."

"Yes, my lord," she agrees. "I do like our little games, though. Even though—" she bites her lip and looks away.

"Hmm?" he asks, gently cupping her face in his hand to turn it back toward him.

"...when he fucked me... it felt so good, my lord," she whispers, closing her eyes. "I didn't - I didn't want him to make me feel that way. And he knew it, and that's why he did. And I wouldn't have enjoyed it half so much if I hadn't been in the middle of this game of ours."