V3Ch82-Breaking a Paladin Part 2

Samara walked alone for the next several days.

The men had taken her horse away, and they led it, riderless, alongside their own. It was just a small taste of the punishment to come, she knew. Right now, she was merely reduced from the status of an important somebody who deserved a horse to a random infantrywoman, albeit one wearing shackles. There would be far greater shame than a mere fall in status. Shame in spades.

No one even tried to approach her except the men who kept her under their observation, and she felt both her isolation and her shift in status keenly.

The men didn’t let her remove her shackles. Not to relieve herself, not even to sleep. They also didn’t give her any privacy for those bodily functions.

“You have forfeited the right to be trusted,” said one. “You came into our country a guest, and you have broken the law after just a couple of months of being here.”

There was a little part of her that wanted to push back.

I came to save you from the Defiant Necromancer.

But that voice was very small and very quiet, and she knew it was no excuse for her actual actions. Yes, she had come to help. That had nothing to do with her agreeing to break her sister out of whatever political confinement Asha had earned for herself.

Even if the two things had been related, it wasn’t as if the Kingdom truly needed her specifically. There was a whole squad of Divine Trust members there now.

Samara stayed up the first night, simply not sleeping. She was a paladin. She had superhuman endurance. She was afraid, aware that the dream lover might come to her in the night. If she started moaning or pleasuring herself in her sleep, that would be the cherry on top of her humiliation - and perhaps it would be taken as an invitation by one of the men who held her in bondage. That was the most disturbing thought, that they would hurt her beyond holding her captive. She could fight, yes, but how many could she fight?

She had thought about asking for her holy symbol back. But she didn’t know if the man who’d ripped it away from her had kept it or simply stomped it into the dirt. It was silver, so he had probably kept it, but he still wasn’t likely to give it back. These people had spit on her and denounced her. They weren’t about to show consideration if she said something like, I need my holy symbol or I might have strange dreams.

Instead, she sucked up her discomfort and simply went without sleep. She had heard someone say they were only days away from Fort Hadrian. She recalled other talk that suggested the General thought the battle would be there or close to there. She could make it that long, at least, and perhaps the men would return her holy symbol so that she might be more powerful in battle.

On the third night, she began to feel the kind of fatigue that is only cured by sleep. Her stamina recovery rate had fallen by almost half.

She finally broke down and spoke to her lead captor.

“Um, Sir Mathias—” He was no knight, but the men seemed to take offense when she spoke to them without any special deference in her mannerisms—“could I please have my holy symbol back?”

He glared down at her from horseback.

“What do you want with the symbol of our Goddess, criminal?” he asked, practically spitting the words.

“I pray to the Goddess every night before I sleep,” she said. “She forgives me my trespasses against her, and she gives me peaceful dreams.”

“You don’t deserve them,” Mathias replied coldly. “Do you know, you murdered my brother? Or you helped. I’ll never know for certain which of you liars did it.”

So that was it. That was why he hated her so intensely.

Samara became very quiet, lay down on her side, and tried to make herself as small as she could, but once again, she didn’t sleep that night. She didn’t ask for her symbol back again.

The days turned into a monotony. Walking tormented, half-conscious, seemingly half dead.

Relying only on her superhuman paladin stamina, she stayed awake for five days straight before she started to experience hallucinations.

She heard voices telling her a litany of heartbreaking things.

“You’re unworthy.”

“Unclean.”

“The Goddess trusted you.”

“Criminal.”

“Murderer.”

After a day or two of this - the days had begun to blur - Samara couldn’t help herself. She started to talk back to the accusing voices.

“I’m not a murderer,” she muttered defensively in response to one of these hallucinations. “Someone else did it…”

Asha, it was Asha, right? But I don’t know if that man was the only one who died…

It was Samara’s bad luck that she spoke those words within hearing of one of her guards.

“Oh, you deny your guilt now?” he asked in a nasty tone. “You waited quite a while. Thinking about your defensive strategy? You should know, for you and yours, I don’t believe there will be a trial. Not a true one, at least. The Grand Duke will ensure that the truth is pulled from you… by any means necessary. Hot pincers, then parading you before the court with all your armor stripped away, in clothing more befitting a fallen woman…”

The words drilled deep into her mind, every syllable irritating like a burr on her brain, until something snapped.

Without even knowing she was doing it, Samara swung at the man.

Even in her terrible mental state, her physical strength remained formidable. She felt his jaw crumple under her fist, and he went down in a heap, unmoving.

The others were on her in an instant. She went down from a single shove, her shackled feet preventing her from catching her balance. Then the kicks started landing, on her stomach, her neck, between her legs.

She crumpled into a ball as best she could, but she felt her consciousness flickering as she lay there. A little part of her lit up at the thought that now she would die.

Male voices exchanged words from a thousand miles away, unrecognizable. Was that Black Hailgrim?

Then a hand yanked her onto her feet. Her tongue probed at her swollen lip, and then something shoved itself into her mouth. She swallowed a mouthful of fresh water, opened her eyes, blinked twice.

A shadowy figure seemed to appear, blurred, and then disappeared. She blinked again, and the world became clearer once more. She had almost lost consciousness there.

Oh, I don’t see Hailgrim after all, Samara thought. It was just enemies all around her, glowering.

Looking her in the eyes was the leader of her captors, Mathias.

“You have to live to face justice, bitch,” he said in a nasty tone. “You won’t get off that easily.”

Oh. Of course that’s why. You can’t let me die and miss the show.

The water tasted suddenly bitter, but she swallowed more of it anyway. Getting plenty of fluids was good for healing, and the moment of madness - the moment when she had actually wished for her own death - had well and truly passed.

After that, they shackled both her wrists and ankles, so she couldn’t take another good swing at one of them if she wanted to. The men muttered things about having her stripped and flogged in front of the soldiers, but fortunately, it didn’t go past muttering.

The day after that one, Samara could barely walk without falling over.

So, that night, reluctantly, she finally allowed herself to collapse into sleep.

She was only slightly surprised when the dream lover came to her.

The man she had dreamt about for months until the last few weeks gave her a reprieve.

Was it truly a reprieve if she’d missed him?

Now Tybalt stood before her in the dream landscape, a simple desert setting not unlike the place where she had just fallen asleep. The main difference was that this place was stuck in a perpetual twilight, in the midst of sunset.

“It’s you again,” Samara said, uncertain whether she was happy or anxious at seeing him. The lust boiled up in her again, unasked for, but that wasn’t an answer to whether she actually wanted to commit the sins she knew they were about to. Having the yearning to do something was not the same as truly, consciously seeking it out.

Still, she started unlacing her pants almost automatically.

“I’ve been watching you,” he replied.

She felt warm at those words. Warm and confused.

“Who are you? What are you?” she asked.

“Do you care about the answers right now? Aren’t you a prisoner?”

She sensed he was about to tempt her in some way, and a part of her wanted to hold back, resist him as she once had. But the next words forced themselves out.

“No. Yes. I… I missed you.”

“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me. You banished me from your side. After all those sweet nights. My feelings were hurt.”

“Please don’t be that way… master.”

She was as clearheaded as she’d ever been in a dream with him, despite the seething lust rising inside her, despite the days without sleep. She knew he was manipulating her. But she didn’t care. She wanted his kind of comfort badly just then, and the habit of submission was already ingrained.

“Don’t leave me right now,” she continued. She could hear the mixture of fear and arousal in her own voice. She hoped it came across. It was something she knew he would enjoy.

“Tell me what’s happened,” he said.

I thought you were watching. Don’t you know everything already, demonic lover?

“I’ve been watching you,” Tybalt said. “And I also looked into your heart to know how you felt, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear how things are in your own words.”

So Samara explained. She didn’t just tell him the simple facts of what happened. She confided in him, unburdened herself of everything she had been thinking and feeling, and told him everything that had been troubling her.

“I’ve been so anxious…”

He said little, just nodding and occasionally prompting her to give more information. She wanted him to touch her, to rub her shoulders or pet her head or embrace her or fill her with the heat and hardness of him until she forgot all her troubles.

But Tybalt listened well. It felt like he was sympathetic. When it was done, she was relieved.

She looked up at the man.

“Tybalt?” That was what he’d said his name was in previous dreams. These experiences were somewhat fuzzy, wispy things, but that name, coupled with those intense green eyes, had left an impression on her consciousness.

He looked deep into her eyes, then nodded for her to say what she wanted to say.

“What are you thinking?” Samara asked. She realized she had no way of anticipating what this man - or demon - might truly have in mind at that moment.

He had always been trying to break her away from her Goddess, make her his possession, she could see that clearly now, after weeks of relative clarity. But now she seemed to be losing almost every tie that bound her - to the paladin order, to the laws of the land, to her sister, to her friends - and losing her tie to the Goddess felt almost inevitable.

Why are you still bothering? Weren’t you just here to tempt me astray?

That was what demons did.

Maybe he had already gotten what he wanted. Maybe he was here to enjoy her one final time, bask in his triumph, and throw her away.

But his next words swept away that idea in an instant.

“I don’t want them to kill you, Samara,” Tybalt said in a quiet, serious tone. “I’ve become attached to you. I can take you away from this place. If you ask me to, I will come into your camp, the camp of my enemies, and risk my own safety to take you away. You can belong to me instead of them… instead of Astara. Yes. Your Goddess has failed you. I can save you… and remake you.”

Samara’s heart seemed to stop at his words.