Chapter Forty-Seven

Her eyes opened. The broken canopy bed came into view. She blinked weakly and inhaled a shallow breath. Her hand laid at her side, and she felt a familiar hand grasping it. She turned to the side and saw Gabriel sitting by her bed, his brows furrowed in concern.

"Lucie… how are you?"

She sat up on her bed, guided by his arms. He placed a pillow behind her and she rested on it. Life filling her body, she looked at him with questions in her eyes.

"Tell me the truth."

"Ravenspire is not an academy, and you are not a student. Your name is Lucianne Blacken, and you are my wife."

"That I already know."

He looked down, gave a slow exhale.

"Go on," she said.

"I met you a decade ago, right after I had just inherited my father's title. All my family was gone and I was in pain. I decided to head to town to participate in an underground fight to forget my sorrows when I stumbled upon a flower shop. Your flower shop.

"You had the happiest smile I ever saw on a woman, and you were also the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes on. I came into your shop and you picked a flower for me, having no idea that I was your ruler. You were kind to me and over the years, I found myself returning to your shop more and more, until things between us shifted from something platonic to romantic.

"I fell for you and you fell for me too. So I got on one knee and proposed to you. You said yes and that night, I took you to the church to marry you. I couldn't wait to spend the rest of my life with you and I couldn't imagine things going wrong, but they did.

"My advisors weren't happy that I had picked you as my wife. You had no royal blood and they thought I could've found other beautiful women with better connections to marry. But I didn't think so. You felt bad and vowed to them that you would live up to their expectations and perform so well that they would be silenced. They took that as a challenge and began to force lessons on you.

"You were so exhausted taking all those geography, maths, science, language lessons just to be the wife my advisors wanted you to be. I told you that I didn't care about that, but you were firm. They reassessed you later and determined that you were exemplary, save for one aspect. You did not have the etiquette of royalty.

"So they hired an etiquette tutor for you. In hindsight, I should've checked his background more thoroughly. It would've warned me and I could've saved you and prevented everything."

Gabriel lapsed into silence as a tear dropped from his eye to touch the back of her hand, which was also grasping his.

"Then what happened, Gabriel?" Lucianne asked.

"The etiquette tutor came to our mansion and knocked on the door. A servant opened the door for him and it only took one look between the two of you before both of you realised what was going to happen.

"You turned on your heels, racing up the staircase in panic, trying to get away as he chased after you. You reached our bedroom, and tried to close the door behind you, but it was too late. He rushed into the room and threw you on the bed. He raped and abused you all night

"Do you know how much I hate, I hate not being there for you? I was out at town getting some flowers for you, when you had so many in the garden already. By the time I found you, you were half alive. I nursed you back to health but the damage was already done. Far more than your physical injuries were your mental ones. You lost yourself, sinking into the grip of madness.

"You begged for death every day and night, but I was too selfish. I refused to give that to you because I knew you could be happy again. You saw and heard things that weren't there and most of the time, your mind wasn't present. You became deluded into thinking that you were a student coming to Ravenspire to study.

"But you had several moments of clarity. Moments where you were yourself again. I found so many doctors to help you but none worked. I even dabbled in witchcraft to save you and my advisors all left me. Then I found a world-renowned psychiatrist to help me. But things were bleak, and he told me you might never return to normal.

"One night, you were in a stupor following another moment of clarity when I brought the psychiatrist into the room to observe you with me. In the next moment, we saw you tossing about in the bed. Then you tore your clothes from your body and clawed at your breasts. The doctor was suddenly struck by a great idea.

"Why do some people like reading books where non-consent is a huge part of the plot? Why do women fear being raped, but love to read books where the consent given by the girl is dubious, or completely absent? Why, especially when some of these women are victims of rape themselves? Why do victims of rape end up having rape fantasies? Isn't it because they're so broken that they want to force a scenario where the story of their assault ends happily? They want to rewrite history, so they conjure up situations where they lose their power again to an attacker, and create their own endings, where they find happiness instead of the unbelievable hell they have to go through every waking second.

"The doctor suggested that we try an experimental method of therapy. I would take your power from you, but gradually give it back to you. I would tear your life apart, but piece it back together again. I thought he was crazy at first and threatened to have him hung, but you came to and told us that you wanted to try it. You were tired of being so lost, you were willing to try his method. You gave us your approval.

"So I agreed to his method. And to this day, your moments of clarity have become longer and longer ever since I tried that experimental method. You began to embrace your loss of power, and you learnt to love that which you feared so much."

Tears dropped from her eyes. Her mind cleared and memories came back.

"I lose you all the time, Lucie. We meet for the first time more than I can count, and each and every time, you fall for me the same way you fell for me the first day we met. You are the bane of my existence, in the same way as I am yours."

"I love you, Gabriel," she cried.

"Lucie, I love you too."