Cassandra’s face lit up, and she immediately got up as well.
“Really?”
Kairen nodded. He was a bit unhappy, but he didn’t add anything after that, confirming Cassandra’s hopes.
“Thank you, My Lord.”
“Kairen.”
She suddenly stopped moving, speechless. The Prince turned to her, walking in her direction again, and put his arms around her. Cassandra couldn’t react, still taken back by what she thought he meant.
“M...My lord?”
“Kairen. No more My Lord or My Prince. Call me by my name when we are alone.”
Cassandra turned red then white immediately, completely shook. Oh, could she call him by his first name? He was an Imperial Prince, not even his own siblings were all allowed to call him simply by his name! Yet, he wanted her, a mere concubine and slave, to call him that! That felt even more intimate than anything they had done before!
“I…I can’t possibly…just…”
“Kairen. Say it.”
She shook her head, torn between confusion and surprise. She didn’t even understand that strange feeling of fear in her stomach, like it was something deeply forbidden. Cassandra felt like the sky would open and kill her on the spot if she dared to say his name. She had always been the one with a deep, solid vision of the walls between them; between an Imperial Prince and a slave. She shouldn’t even have been able to look him in the eye, or stand in his presence, if things had been normal between them!
But Kairen kept ignoring everything his own Empire had established as normal. He took a slave as his concubine, let her express her thoughts and desires, respected her choices, and now, he even wanted her to use his first name!
“Cassandra.”
“I…I can’t!”
She was almost more scared of that than anything else. As if the Imperial Guards would come in at any moment and kill her if she dared to cross that line. It was like the most unthinkable thing for a slave to call her master by his first name! She was so overwhelmed, her hands were shaking.
She kept shaking her head.
“I can’t do that, I can’t. It’s not… You’re my master.”
“I don’t care.”
“I care! I’m not… You can’t have me call you that, like I’m an equal to you. I’m not!”
That’s what she had been told for the last ten years. She was a slave, a nobody who stood at the bottom of society. She didn’t deserve comfort, warmth, nothing. She was treated worse than livestock, like a shadow who lived to do her chores and suffer in silence.
She had almost forgotten that, in the bliss she had experienced with the Prince.
Kairen had made her forget what it meant to be a slave. But Cassandra couldn’t completely forget, and now, it was all coming back to her. She felt her throat become sore, and her eyes teary, from just remembering. Before, she could endure it, because it was normal for her, because she was used to ignoring her own pain. She had learned to close her eyes, let her body become numb and endure it.
However, things changed when she was allowed comfort again. Kairen had given her all that, so much and so fast that she had barely taken the time to adapt. The warm blankets, the tasty food, the gentleness. It had replaced the cold ground, scraps, and pain, so fast. But it was still there, like a scary voice, a monster lurking at the back of her mind. Like the scars on her skin, the collar on her neck. It was heavy and painful.
Kairen, seeing her distress, silently embraced her in his arms, waiting for Cassandra to calm down. He couldn’t understand what she had gone through, but he saw what it did to her. She had never panicked like that before.
“Fine… I’ll wait.”
With those words, like she had been given a bit of rest, Cassandra nodded and calmed down in a few minutes. Meanwhile, Kairen was glaring at her collar. That damn thing had to come off, and soon!
Chapter5
The Prince’s words from that morning still followed Cassandra’s steps as she made her way across the camp. Evin followed her, but both were silent. At times, she wondered if she was just living in a dream. In her dream, everything would suddenly end when she opened her eyes and found herself sleeping in a cold cell of the Emperor’s Arena again, or back in Lyria’s slave room. However, the cold on her cheeks was real, and so was the snow under her footsteps. Cassandra didn’t want to think too much about it. She missed having a friend to talk to, and Evin probably wasn’t a good replacement.
It had been only two days since she came to the Camp, but she felt the lack of another feminine presence. Cassandra often thought of the other girls from the Castle, wondering how they were doing, if their life had gotten better without the Governor there. She didn’t really dare to ask the Prince when they would be going back. He had already made an extra trip to bring her here.
