Before I could look away, he caught my chin between his long, powerful fingers. The skin of his hand was smooth but firm, radiating a heat that felt like a brand against my jaw. He forced my head up, tilting it back until the muscles in my neck strained, making me plunge my eyes into the cold, grey depths of his.
"I came to beg for your mercy, Your Grace," I said.
My voice was thin and shaking, a fragile thread of sound in the vast, shadowed office. I hated how weak I sounded, how my breath hitched in my throat despite my efforts to hold it steady.
"Please, I am asking you to withdraw your complaint. My father is dying in that cell. The dampness will kill him before the sun rises. My brother is innocent, he is only fourteen years old... he has no place among criminals. And Arthur... they do not deserve prison. I beg you."
He watched me in a heavy, agonizing silence. His grey eyes searched every inch of my face, analyzing the path of my tears and the frantic trembling of my lips. He was looking for a crack, a secret, trying to read the very depths of my soul. His gaze felt like a violation, an unbearable intrusion into the parts of myself I tried to keep hidden. Suddenly, he let go of my chin and stepped back abruptly. The sudden loss of his touch left me with a sensation of freezing emptiness, the air in the room turning several degrees colder.
"And why should I grant you such a favor, Lydia?" he asked.
His voice had shifted, turning cold and sharp as a razor. He walked back toward the window, the moonlight catching the silver thread in his waistcoat.
"Your family robbed me. They used my trust to steal property that belongs to my house, with the help of your pathetic fiancé. They stained my name in this village. They must face the consequences of their greed to the very end."
He spat the word "fiancé" with such violent contempt, such a raw tone of hidden rage, that I flinched as if he had struck me.
"I beg you!" I cried out, the hot tears flowing again, stinging the split in my lip. "I will do anything you want. I will give you everything I have. But please, set them free! They would never have done this on their own, there must be an explanation, a mistake..."
He stopped and turned toward me with a mocking smile, a sneer that held no trace of kindness. He seemed to savor my distress, tasting my fall from grace like a vintage wine he had been aging for this exact moment.
"Anything I want, Lydia?" he repeated.
His voice was thick with meanings that made a cold shiver run down my spine. "Are you even capable of measuring the weight of what you just said? Are you sure of yourself, little gardener?"
I nodded in a state of pure, unadulterated despair. At that moment, with the image of my father coughing blood on a stone floor in my mind, I would have sold my soul to the devil himself.
"Yes. I will spend all my free time working in your Duchy. I will tend your gardens until my hands are raw. I will clean your stables, I will do the most degrading tasks in the kitchens without a word of complaint and without asking for a single coin! And I will give you the savings I have... I have a few gold pieces put aside for my dowry..."
A laugh, melodic but filled with an unbearable arrogance, broke the silence of the office. The sound echoed off the high ceiling, mocking my poverty. The Duke shook his head, sitting nonchalantly on his leather sofa, his wine glass held loosely in his hand.
"My dear, do you truly think I lack staff? I have hundreds of people fighting to serve in this palace. I have a fortune that rivals the royal family. Do you really believe your few pieces of copper and your gardening work interest a man like me?"
"Then what do you want from me? I am nothing and I can offer you nothing else but my labor..."
His lips stretched into a predatory smile, the kind a wolf gives a lamb. He set his glass on the side table with a deliberate click and stared at me with an intensity that made the air feel thick and hard to swallow.
"Exactly. You are nothing and no one," he said, his voice echoing with a quiet, terrifying cruelty. "That is why you interest me. We only truly own what belongs to no one else."
"Then what do you expect from me?"
"I want you to be mine," he finally said.
The admission fell like a death sentence. It wasn't a request; it was a claim. His gaze pierced my soul, demanding much more than my work or my meager money. He was claiming my entire being, my thoughts, my body, my future. I stepped back suddenly, my hands flying to my chest as if I could protect my heart from the sheer force of his will.
"I... I can't..." I whispered, my voice failing me.
"You can't..." he repeated, standing up again.
His massive silhouette dominated the room, casting a huge, distorted shadow on the walls that seemed to swallow the light of the candles.
"I am engaged. I am going to be married! Arthur is waiting for me... he loves me..."
"In that case, there is no agreement between us. You are free to leave."
He moved closer, his presence becoming suffocating. His eyes burned with a dark desire, a need for possession that made my blood run cold in my veins.
"Unless..." he murmured, his raspy voice turning as soft as poisoned velvet. "Unless you are ready to give up your fiancé. Choose, Lydia."
He came closer still, so near that I could hear the thumping of a heart. I couldn't tell if it was his or mine drumming in my ears, a frantic rhythm of panic.
"Choose: your fiancé, or your family. The freedom of a man who will eventually forget you in a cell, or the life of your father and the future of your brother."
I felt my heart tighten in my chest until it physically hurt. It felt as though a hand were squeezing my lungs. How could he ask me to make such a choice? Arthur was my light, my hope, the only person who had ever promised me a home and gentleness. But my family... my father who had given me everything despite our poverty, who had worked until his bones ached just to put bread on the table. I couldn't leave them to rot in those damp cells. I couldn't be the reason they died in the dark.
"I... I don't know what to do," I said, my face soaked with tears that felt like acid. "I am lost."
He looked at me one last time with that mocking, satisfied smile, seeing that the trap had closed perfectly around my neck.
"Time is running out, Lydia," he said coldly. "Your father might not survive the night without his medicine. You must make a decision. Now."
He stepped back and walked out of the room with a calm, steady pace, the sound of his boots fading into the hallway. He left me alone in the heavy silence of the office. I stood there like a puppet whose strings had been cut, unable to move, unable to even breathe. I was trapped. I looked at the open door where the Duke had disappeared into the shadows of the palace. I knew he wasn't joking. He was a man who broke things to see how they worked. He was ready to do anything to break me and rebuild me in his own image. And I knew, deep in my gut, that I was ready to do anything to save the ones I loved.
I took a deep breath, trying to steady the shaking in my hands, but it was no use. I looked for an exit, a miracle, a way to save my father without tearing out Arthur's heart and throwing it in the dirt. But the castle was silent. My tears fell without a sound, betraying my agony. I felt torn, every fiber of my body pulled in two opposite directions until I felt I would snap in half.
I remembered Arthur's kisses, the way his hand felt in mine, our dreams of a small house with a garden of our own. How could I betray him? But the image of my father, pale and gasping for air on the dirty straw of the prison floor, pushed everything else away. I was caught in a devil's bargain, where I had to sacrifice one part of myself to save the other. The Duke was a monster, but he was my only salvation. I was alone facing an impossible choice, alone before the abyss opening under my feet.