Josephine swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry. "I... I was at the market, Thomas. Delivering a customer's order."
Her voice was barely a squeak, always shrinking to nothing under his tone.
Thomas pushed himself slowly from the table, the chair scraping loudly against the wooden floor. He turned, and Josephine instinctively flinched, her eyes darting to the floorboards.
"Are you okay, my love? You seem a bit pale.." he spoke in a tone of voice fill with affection. Almost intoxicating to Josephine ears, bringing back a familiar sensation.
His hand caress her cheek gently, his thumb brushing a stray tear from her eye. The tenderness was a sharp contrast to the coldness of moments ago, a shift she knew all too well. It was this Jekyll and Hyde nature that kept her tethered, always hoping for the her loving Thomas to return. For a terrifying, fleeting second, she almost believed it, almost leaned into the warmth.
Then, his gaze, though still soft, dropped to her left wrist. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She hadn't managed to pull her sleeve down completely. A sliver of purple, almost camouflaged against her pale skin, was just visible.
His fingers, which had been so gentle, tightened imperceptibly on her chin, tilting her face up. His eyes, the same eyes that had just held such concern, now held a glint of something else—a possessiveness that sent a chill through her.
"What's this, my dear?" he murmured, his voice still low, but the honeyed edge was gone. His thumb moved, not to soothe, but to deliberately brush against the faint discoloration on her wrist, a casual, almost accidental contact that made her whole body tense.
Josephine felt a cold dread spread through her. The phantom ache in her wrist intensified. She tried to pull away, but his grip on her chin was surprisingly firm.
"A... marking of your love for me, Thomas," she stammered, her voice catching.
His expression turned blank as he gazes down at her. As if every emotion he shown before were an illusion.
"You made sure no one saw them, correct?" A flat tone slithering into Josephine ears, crawling inside her, violating internally.
She swallowed back down the nausea trying to rush out. "N-No..."
Josephine felt her tongue change to lead, it wasn't eggshells she was walking on. The ground beneath her feet turned into a gaping black hole. While she stood upon a square foot of space above it.
A gentle touch against her cheeks returning as a cloth was being tied around her mouth. Thomas tightened it securely, she allowed him to do as he pleases. Finding it easier than resisting, not wanting to upset her sensitive husband.
"Let's skip supper my love, I have to head in a little earlier for work." Whispering next to her ear as he trail light kisses against Josephine neck. Unbuttoning her dress, letting it land on the hard wooden floors.
With her dress gone, Josephine's body was exposed to the chill in the air and the cold, unyielding scrutiny of her husband. Thomas stepped back, surveying her for a moment with a flat, appraising stare. There was no lust in his eyes, only the same cold, calculating possessiveness that had been there since he touched the bruise on her wrist.
He walked over to a heavy wooden chest in the corner of the room, the one she was never allowed to touch unless told otherwise. With a key he kept on a chain around his neck, he unlocked it, the rusty screech of the metal hinges echoing in the silent room. Inside, tucked away beneath his guard's uniform, was a set of iron shackles. They were the same kind she had seen him polish for hours, the same ones prisoners wore in the city's grim holding cells.
"It took awhile to sneak this out of work, my dear," he murmured, his voice a low, placid hum. "Honestly, that Sir Gregory is a real stickler to allow shackles once belonging to executed prisoners. Just gathering rust in a dusty corner."
He came back to her, the heavy metal clinking ominously in his hands. Josephine's eyes widened, but she could not scream. He took her trembling wrists and, with a few practiced, efficient movements, fastened the iron cuffs around them.
The cold metal bit into her bruised skin, the weight of them a horrifying, undeniable reality. He stood back again, looking at her as if she were a piece of property he was securing. The satisfaction in his eyes was sickeningly complete.
"No more needing to use ropes while satisfying me in bed." Coming closer, his hands gripped her hips. As Thomas undid his trousers, Josephine's mind, already detached and fragmented, plunged further into her mind.
The gentle touch he'd used before was a memory, replaced by the brutal reality of his hands on her hips, his body a heavy weight.
Her ears, however, were not deaf. They picked up every small, horrifying sound: the faint rasp of his trousers, the low, satisfied grunt as he began, the clink of the metal cuffs against each other with every thrust.
The act was swift and brutal. Silent acceptance of grief and rage was swallowed by the gag in her mouth.
She stared blankly at the dark wooden ceiling, her mind desperately trying to flee to a happier memory... a time, or even a moment that wasn't like this..
Sensation of his pelvis smacking into her own, grew stronger. "Ah.. ah.. ahhh!" His moans filled the room loudly as he chased his release. Not caring about Josephine satisfaction nor whether her lower body was dry since he entered her.
When it was over, Thomas simply pulled away, droplets lacking out, staining their bed sheets, leaving her body flushed and aching. He buttoned his trousers, adjusted his belt, and then, with a final, chillingly indifferent look, walked to the door.
Josephine simply lay there, staring at the dark ceiling. The tears had stopped, but her body still trembled with a deep, internal cold.
She pushed herself up, a groan escaping her as the metal cuffs bit into her wrists. The shackles were heavy, a constant, physical reminder of her new normal. With painstaking slowness, she stumbled off the bed, the cold floor a shock to her bare feet. Using the key Thomas left for her shackles, unlocking it as the sound of it hitting the floor, akin to rattling against a cage.
Dragging her feet, she made her way to the small basin of water near their wash stand. Pulling off the cloth that was tied around her mouth, cover in saliva. Setting it into a basket for dirty clothes.
Her body ached, but the need to be clean was far stronger than the pain. She used the rough, cold water to scrub her skin, trying to erase the memory of his touch. It was futile. Physical stains could be washed away, but the deeper wounds remained.
"...Thomas..." calling out to a memory of her former husband.. a man that was her older brother best friend. A man that her parents saw would achieve a good life. A boy that once pat her head and called her beautiful with leaves in her hair...
"Was it me? Did I change? Why... why did you become like this?" she whimpered, the unanswered questions echoing.
She then aggressively scrubbed the red-purple bruises on her wrist, left by both ropes and shackles, until her skin was raw and nearly bleeding. A desperate attempt to erase the evidence of his cruelty, but it was nothing more than self-inflicted wounds on top of her own.
Drenched in misery, Josephine returned to the room and shakily put on the same dress Thomas had took off her body. The fabric, still holding the faint scent of stale ale and pipe smoke, felt like a shroud. She moved with a silent, heavy step to a small chest in the corner—her personal belongings.
Inside, tucked beneath neatly folded garments, was a simple charcoal drawing: a portrait of her and her family. Her mother's kind smile, her father's knowing eyes, and her older brother's strong, protective arm around her. They were all gone now, victims of a tragedy that began the day her brother corpse was found after a heavy rainfall.
She sank to the floor, the sketch clutched tightly against her chest, and finally allowed herself to sob. It wasn't the frantic, terrified sobbing from before, but a deep, guttural cry born of pure grief.
"Why?" she whispered into the silence of the room. "Why couldn't I have gone with you?"
She wanted them to be here. Wished for her brother's strong hand to hold her together, wished for her mother's gentle words to soothe her, wished for her father's wisdom to guide her.
Their absence was a void, and Thomas had filled that void with his cruelty. The dress, the bruises, the portrait—everything in the room seemed to scream at her. Her tears flowed not just for the violation, but for the shattered, impossible life she once had.
With a bit of strength left in her. Returning to their marital bed, pulling off the bedsheets, evidence to what had transpire. Placing down clean ones, hugging her family portrait. Quietly drifting off to sleep, she hoped they will appear in her dreams.
Please Goddess, I want my husband to be his old self again...