Legacy

"These people are monsters," said Mara.

It was Thursday. Mara had been busy the day before, and Dakota didn't really mind. She went for a swim in the lake and frolicked naked on the shore, and then she dried off—mostly—and found one of two libraries within the manor. At no point did anyone tell her to put clothes on, which suited her just fine, but she was a little disappointed. A person could go completely feral in a place like this, with nothing to do and no one to be sure she did it.

"What makes you say that?" said Dakota, mostly out of politeness.

"They think they're being merciful, locking me up here instead of killing me. But this is a prison. It's just a very pretty prison—that's all. You saw the gates, didn't you? The walls? They've got cameras everywhere. No one gets in or out without their say-so."

Dakota had to admit that she hadn't noticed any security measures. It probably would never have occurred to her to try to leave here without permission—nor indeed without orders to do so, if it came right down to it. Then again, Mara had been stuck here for the better part of six months or so, hadn't she? Perhaps, given time, Dakota would start to go a little stir crazy. It was impossible to know without trying. Then again, she was already a little bit stir crazy. No one had given her anything meaningful to do since Monday night.

"Don't you have a job or something?" said Dakota. "Anything. Like... maybe they let you alphabetize the liquor cabinet."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"They like it if we visit the... the infirmary."

"The what?"

"That's where the bad cases go," said Mara. "The ones that are all fucked up. This is a slave sanctuary, basically—like a dog rescue for cunt meat. Didn't they tell you?"

"Where is it?"

The infirmary was less a hospital and more just the nicest wing of the manor, complete with its own garden and a veranda. There were three residents at the moment, one of whom was painting in the garden. She was naked save for a broad-brimmed straw hat. A second looked to be about Dakota's age and was getting the shit kicked out of her—but only virtually. She was playing an online game and losing. Dakota always lost, too; she could sympathize. Mara sat on the couch next to the gamer. The two of them wore identical smocks, but the one playing the game had both legs in casts. Dakota, still naked, kept going.

There was a room at the back, at the far end of the corridor, where light flowed in through open curtains and fell on the lumpen covers of a four-poster bed that hadn't been made in at least several days. Someone was still under them, even though it was nearly ten o'clock in the morning.

"Hello?" she said.

There was no answer.

Dakota closed the door. "Just so you know," she said, "in a minute, I'm going to yank those covers off. If you'd rather I didn't, this is a speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace sort of situation..."

There was still no answer.

"Don't say I didn't warn you..."

The girl in the bed was completely bald. No eyebrows, even; she had eyelashes and that was it. Her pale skin was covered with scars. They looked to have been inflicted with knives and brands. Maybe a soldering iron. They were words, all of them vulgar, most of them scrawled so carelessly that they were difficult to read save the one carved across the front of her chest. That one was still fresh and peeling, still oozing as though someone had been picking at the scabs.

It said WORTHLESS.

The word had been carved into her again and again in layers, the same letters in the same places each time, the marks permanent and hideous. Some layers had been made with a knife. Others, Dakota wasn't sure. But what truly struck her—what made her freeze and stare like this—was that the word was scrawled across the girl's completely flat chest. There was no breast tissue at all. There were no nipples. There was nothing on the girl's chest save the scars of the ham-fisted mastectomy that had ruined her. On some level, Dakota understood that it was wrong to stare. That level was far beyond her at the moment.

Dakota blinked and closed her eyes, tearing her gaze away. She steeled herself, fully expecting a torrent of abuse from the girl in the bed. Admittedly, she probably had it coming. She drew a breath and met the girl's red-rimmed eyes, but nothing. No words. No sound. No movement. The girl breathed like a hunted animal—like a gazelle on National Geographic—tired of running, panting and hoping that death comes quickly, her belly hollowing, her red lips parted.

Nothing.

"Dakota!"

It was Anne, standing at the door.

"Please, she's... Please, come with me."

They went for a walk, leaving the mutilated girl in bed. The gravel path to the docks hurt Dakota's bare feet, but she said nothing about it. Just followed after Anne, two steps behind off her left heel. She wondered if Anne would finally offer her instruction or correction or punishment. Somehow, she knew she would be disappointed. Anne bade Dakota sit next to her on the dock, on the warm wood facing the water. Dakota dipped one toe into the water.

"Her name is Riley. She belonged to a man called Sturgis. Sir Alan Sturgis. She still hasn't told us everything she went through, but you saw some of it. The mastectomy. The degrading abuse. What you didn't see is that her baldness is permanent, and that the nerves in her clitoris have been completely severed."

Dakota was silent. Annoying Anne was a fun pastime and all, but not now.

"Greta was a skiing accident, and she's just staying here while her mistress attends a conference in Berne," said Anne. "And Leandra survived a car crash that killed her master. Believe it or not, most slaves who come here—most broken slaves—weren't broken by their owners. But Riley was. Riley was, and I just don't know whether we'll be able to help her or not."

Dakota swallowed. "Ma'am? What happens if you—if you cannot?"

"Well, in that case, we'll..." Anne's voice trailed off. She tried to look at Dakota but couldn't; she turned away from Dakota's gaze.

Out on the lake, an eagle skimmed the water. Talons plunged. Something silver and shining wriggled and was carried away.

"Is Sir Alan a member of the Court of Thorns?"

"No, not Sturgis. Even they wouldn't have him."

That afternoon a man came. He introduced himself as just Jackson. Not Sir Jackson or Master Jackson; just Jackson. He found Dakota in the stable; she was currying the horses. When he entered, she moved gently, carefully around the horse so that she could face toward him, but she didn't stop her work. "Good afternoon, Miss St John," he said before introducing himself.

"Good afternoon, Sir."

Her heart fluttered, but she didn't show him that. She didn't show him what it felt like to be called by her mother's name, or to know that he knew who she really was. That she was the daughter of a genuine pain slave. But why had he called her miss, of all things?

"There is something about a beautiful girl in the company of horses," he murmured. "You look as though you were born among them. As if your skin has never known the touch of clothes. It's breathtaking."

Dakota's feet were dirty. The stalls had needed mucking and she had done it—barefoot—because she didn't have any proper shoes to wear. They didn't have shoes like that here. The women weren't meant to do those things; there were servants and employees, and the only job of a woman at the Court of Blooms was to bloom. Or so they seemed to think. Now she smelled of sweat and straw and horses, and if he thought that made her breathtaking, she wasn't about to argue with him, but that was only because she knew it wasn't a slave's place.

"What do you think of this place?"

She paused. She looked into the horse's eyes and frowned, biting her lip. Then she sighed and looked back at her visitor.

"I'd like you to be honest with me," he said. "I don't even want you to call me Sir—I just want the plain, unvarnished truth."

Dakota kissed the horse and set aside the brush before stepping out of the stall. She faced him and dropped to her knees, ignoring the bite of the straw. She lowered her stance until her cunt nearly brushed the ground, and she fixed her eyes on his boots. "Sir," she said, "it is your privilege to suggest that I should speak as your equal. It is my duty to remember that I am not. As for this place... It reminds me a little of Christmas, Sir."

Jackson smiled. "How so?"

"This is the Island of Misfit toys, Sir," said Dakota. "And I am the most misfit toy on the island."

He laughed. "If you could change one thing about this place, what would it be?"

Dakota jerked the bedclothes from Riley's bed. The girl underneath was curled into a ball. The wound on her chest was bloodied, as were the sheets. She blinked unhappily at Dakota in the sudden brightness of the light—it was just about five o'clock in the morning, and sun would not rise for a long while yet.

"Get up," said Dakota. She didn't look at the girl's wound. She stood with arms crossed, foot tapping the floor. Her hair was drawn back in a careful plait, and she had paired a blood-red blouse with her pencil skirt, and rather than going barefoot she wore her heels today—not the ones she had borrowed at Bitter Creek, but the ones Master Lockwood had bought her. They cost as much as a semester's tuition at the community college she might otherwise have been attending today.

The girl stared at her, hesitating. Dakota would have grabbed her by the hair, but she didn't have any. Instead, she waited with a look of mild annoyance on her face, as if she knew perfectly well that the girl would get up but couldn't believe how much time she chose to waste first.

The slave's feet began to move.

"This room is a wreck," growled Dakota. "Get those sheets off the bed. This behavior is unacceptable—people have to wash that! This morning, you are going to wash that."

Like going downhill, the slave began to move faster. Her hands seemed to remember how to obey. She stripped the cases from the pillows, pulled the sheets from the mattress, made a pile on the floor as Dakota listed the other things she noticed in the room. Whether they were the girl's fault or not didn't really matter: the books on the shelf weren't sitting upright as they should, and there was dust on the lampshade by the window, and there were used tissues left on the floor by the nightstand.

"Make a list of everything you have failed to upkeep properly," Dakota instructed her. "At the end of the day, you will be punished for each item on the list."

The slave's voice was a dry, cracked whisper, perhaps because she hadn't spoken in too long, or maybe because there had been some damage to her throat: "Yes, Mistress."

Dakota reeled at that word. Thankfully, the slave wasn't watching. The most difficult thing, as it turned out, wasn't standing there and giving orders—it was resisting the impulse to help.

"Now, straight to the laundry," sniffed Dakota, as though she were offended by the mess. She wasn't exactly exaggerating, of course. "You do know how to use soap, don't you? Good. When you finish, you will join me in the bathroom. At once! No delays."

The whisper cracked again: "Yes, Mistress."

Dakota breathed a sigh of relief when the slave was out of sight. She would check the laundry later; for now, she returned to her bedroom—sweetly pink, with gauzy curtains and a literal dollhouse in the corner—to undress. She could justify being nude again, if only because washing a slave was liable to get her good and wet. Her relief, as the pencil skirt hit the floor and her hands flew down the buttons of her blouse, was almost frightening. She wondered how she had never felt this kind of distress when Master Lockwood ordered her to dress. And then, with a bow of her head to the memory of all He had taught her, she donned her mask again. Mistress. What a word.

"Wash me first," she said, standing wet and glistening in the bath. "Show me that you remember how."

Riley's small, pale hands were gentle but quick. The soap was luxurious: far finer than anything she'd ever had at home. The slave's touch was not that of any careless, utilitarian process: it was a caress; a massage. The soap was not meant to cleanse, but to elevate and illuminate. Dakota shuddered, realized she was blushing as she averted her gaze. Riley didn't notice. She continued with slow patience, as though this were the most important thing she had to do today. Dakota wondered whether she had ever done anything with that degree of care and reverence. It humbled her. She blinked away tears and was glad for her wet hair.

"Now you," she whispered when the slave had finished.

The slave's movements became utilitarian, careless. Stung by the sight, Dakota caught her hands. She tried to emulate that same degree of adoring devotion. If only Riley could see herself as others did, the word on her chest would say something very different.

"Do it correctly," said Dakota, struggling to keep her voice cold and even. "This body is a temple. In it, you worship me. Respect it, slave, as you respect me."

Riley paused. Her hands shook and she bowed her head. Dakota held them a little while longer, and then she let her own hands move—without soap—over Riley's body, over the curves and the scars, over her graceful hips and lean thighs.

"How else could I entrust myself to your care?" whispered Dakota.

"Yes, Mistress." The slave didn't look at her anymore. Dakota guessed that she was crying—she did not remark upon it.

After the bath, Dakota dressed the wound on Riley's chest. The dressing wasn't much. It would have to be changed in a few hours—after the rest of the chores she had in mind were completed. It only needed to prevent infection in the meantime. Riley did not complain. She kept her head erect and her eyes lowered, never quite looking at Dakota's face. Maybe this was what Riley needed, but it might have cost Dakota a friend.

They started with the stables. Dakota found Riley a pair of shoes to wear, although Riley took them off almost at once. Dakota wore shorts and a tank top, purely for the purpose of wearing anything at all, as a contrast with Riley's nudity; she was miserable in the heat, inside the barn. At least the tank top gave her something to wipe her sweat on. Afterward, Dakota showed Riley how to curry the horses. She was terrified of them at first. By the end, she was hugging them.

Next came the hard work. They hauled boats out of the water to scrape their hulls, to give them a good cleaning so that they'd be ready for the winter. Dakota had no idea whether this was necessary; maybe the lake would remain open and navigable year round. That wasn't the point. The point was that the work was difficult, and that it could be carried out in the shade, where Riley's pale skin wouldn't blister. Riley showed the same care with the boats as she had with Dakota's body, and with the horses, and with her own after her correction. The last thing Dakota had planned for the day was to go into the woods beyond the garden and pick up dead branches.

That was her last chore because she had no idea how long the others might take, and because she knew that picking up sticks was a thing that could be done for as long or for as little as she liked. It was backbreaking work—not because it was difficult, but because it simply was. Take a step, bend over, stand up. Take two more steps, bend over... Riley never complained and rarely spoke, save once to ask whether she could carry Dakota's bundle of sticks as well. Dakota permitted it, but only because she couldn't think how best to decline.

At the edge of the wood, they came to a wall of high, gray stone. It was topped with an iron railing, with sharp spikes at the peak. Dakota tried to see that wall through Mara's eyes and couldn't. All she could see was the boundary that protected her from the awful world beyond it.

"That will be all for today," said Dakota. "Tonight at supper you will show me your wound—show me that it has been properly dressed. You do know how to care for it, yes?"

"Yes, Mistress," said that scratching whisper. "Hear and obey!"

That evening after supper, Dakota was in the library again. She had her blanket with her—one of the few things she truly enjoyed from out of her bedroom. It was pink and fuzzy and covered with printed unicorns and rainbows, but it was so very cozy. And she liked unicorns, even if she would never say it aloud. She always brought the blanket with her to the library because she didn't like to use the furniture. It was difficult to sit when no one had given her the pleasure, and so she lay beneath the lamp by the window, in front of the wingback chair and its aged, strong-scented leather, beneath the glowing moon. In her hands tonight was a copy of Black Beauty, but she wasn't reading it.

She was touching herself.

That was half the reason for the blanket. It had always been a problem for her, but lately—oh, God, lately!—she produced a veritable torrent of hot, white cream whenever she fingered herself. Even if she only dared to grind her mound and clit—her slimy little cunt slug—against something, whether it be the arm of a chair, the corner of a table, or just the heel of her hand, the result was both immediate and abundant. She always felt on the edge of impossible need, at the brink of some urge that she could neither understand nor resist. Maybe it was because she had stopped allowing herself to cum. Maybe it was just this world and the way she had been steeped in it. Tonight, though, it was more than that.

Tonight, it was everything she had seen today. It was Riley's bald head, and her soft eyes unprotected against the sweat that dripped into them. It was the scars written on her body: a litany of service, of absolute submission, of being made and remade and remade into a new shape chosen by her master each day. It was horrible to see, yes, and yet—

"Good evening, Dakota."

Dakota froze. Sweat glowed on her skin, and her breath caught in her throat. She shut the book as if she'd been caught reading something shamefully pornographic, and she left it lying on the blanket as she scrambled into a kneeling position, facing the one who'd addressed her. Her fingers were cool, wet, covered in her sludge; she ignored them, crossing her wrists at the small of her back and keenly aware that her lips were swollen and drooling, her clit throbbing and visibly twitching at the top of her gash. She controlled her desperate breathing, sounding deceptively calm as she spoke.

"Good evening, Sir."

"That's one of my favorite books," he said as he came to sit in that leather chair. She turned again to face him. "It's very different now, isn't it."

"Yes, Sir," she whispered. "A completely different book."

"I wish you hadn't stopped," he said. "Please, continue, just as you were. Do you bring yourself to completion, usually? I know a good many like you who don't."

Dakota began moving at once to obey his instructions, and then his question gave her a moment's pause. She lifted her eyes to him, took an instant to pull him into her mind, to calibrate him. He wore a long beard, bushy, well-kempt but voluminous. His hair was short by comparison, stiffly sculpted and black and gray in perfect proportion. After her conversation with Jackson, she needed no explanation to guess what he was—it didn't matter that he provided her with only his name.

"Call me Mr. Hardin," he said.

"Yes, Master Hardin."

She sank her fingers into herself once more, her mouth dry as her lips parted, hot breath rushing out of her. She wondered whether Master Hardin had inflicted scars upon a girl. Left his mark on someone. Taken the silken-soft youth and beauty of a girl's back and left her with lines that told the world what she had endured, what she would endure, for those she served.

"Master Lockwood warned me that you weren't stupid," he muttered, half-concealing a wry smile.

"The slave is flattered, Master."

She expelled a breath with fire in it and her stomach hardened, rigid and defined beneath her tanned skin. She saw herself through his eyes, explored her body, the taut sinew, the shape wrought by ascetic discipline and Spartan rigor. The lamplight played over her, casting shadows over the muscle that tensed and rippled beneath the surface. In that moment, was she beautiful in his eyes? Was she ridiculous? His expression was far too measured for her to guess.

"Tell me what you were thinking about when I came in."

There was no sound other than the belt. The whoosh in the air; the loud crack of the buckle and the bruising impact against flesh. There was never any sound beyond that, except sometimes the dry gasp, the crackling explosion of breath past the slave's lips. Riley's soft eyes met hers, pleaded with her. Dakota saw them and answered them with the belt.

Riley squatted on a stool, on a massive vibrator that Dakota had found in her toy box. It split and stretched the girl's lips savagely, vibrated so hard it sounded like a jackhammer against the wooden stool. It couldn't have felt good; the sensation would be far too intense. For Riley, maybe it was just right: intense enough to be felt as the memory of things she might have felt before. But there would be no pleasure in it. Pleasure wasn't the point.

If pleasure had been Dakota's object, Riley would have been bound. She'd have been shackled in comfortable suspension cuffs, her feet planted on the ground, perhaps opened a little with a spreader bar. Instead she squatted on the stool, her every muscle activated to keep that dreadful position. Her toes were red with the pressure, her thighs trembling, her back surely aching. Dakota made it worse by hammering the girl's inner thighs with the belt buckle. It left U-shaped bruises and paralyzed muscle in its wake, each blow making it harder to hold still.

"I can't believe you're doing this," said Dakota between strokes. "That looks very difficult. Very uncomfortable. What kind of pleasure-addicted whore would subject herself to this just to take a fist-sized vibrator into her disgusting hole?"

Riley's answer was broken and gasping. Some of the words were hard to understand. "Me, Mistress—this cunt... Loves it!" At least that's what it sounded like.

"But I haven't given you permission to cum."

Riley shook her head. Sweat fell as she moved. "No! No, G—no, Mistress."

"I'd rather you didn't. Pleasure isn't for things like you. Is it, cunt."

"No, Mistress. Never."

"But you want me to cum, don't you, fuckhole."

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Yes, Mistress, yes!"

"Even though you'll buy my joy with your misery."

The sound that came out of her might have been yes or it might have been a prayer or it might have been a long and terrible sob. Dakota knew, though, that she couldn't give Riley a choice. It didn't really matter what she said. Truth was all in the doing.

The belt rang out again. The sound of brass against bone filled the air. Riley no longer wore the bandage that she had so painstakingly applied for Dakota's approval: her mutilated chest was bare, her scars revealed to the world, both new and old alike. The sound that came out of her, when the belt struck against her sternum, would almost certainly have been a scream had Riley's throat been able to make the sound. If she had been any lesser a slave, it might have been followed by a request for mercy—even a safeword. Dakota knew better, though. She hadn't even asked about a safeword. Riley would have been disgusted by it if she had.

More blows followed. A mist of sweat sprayed the air from each brutal impact, joined later by bright flecks of blood as the wounds opened anew. Not the old scars—the mastectomy. That word. WORTHLESS. Her master's final farewell. It ran red down Riley's heaving belly, being rewritten one blow at a time, and Riley looked up at Dakota with a kind of empty, selfless love that chilled her to the bone and set her on fire all at once: the martyr's joy was in those eyes. It was like looking into a dark mirror.

Dakota threw her onto the bed. Her blood smeared the clean sheets as Dakota forced her down, smashed her face against the mattress and pinned her. She was far stronger than Riley, and not only because she was taller. "You want me to cum?" she snarled. "You really want it?"

Riley nodded. Every breath became a voiceless cry now. She was ghostly silent as Dakota placed the end of a double-headed dildo against the girl's asshole. She spat on it, not because she thought it would help any, but because there was always something about being spat upon. Riley shivered. Dakota struck her and growled, "Be still!"

She picked up the vibrator. Put her knee on the bed. Put the other end of that dildo—fuck, it was way too thick—into herself. She didn't need any lubricant. She tried hard not to make any sound as it entered, but she whimpered anyway. Riley looked up at her, fright in those soft eyes: the one thing she couldn't take tonight was the idea that Dakota might be hurt. Dakota concealed the pain of that massive penetration by lashing out at her again, grabbing her neck and forcing her face into the mattress.

"I'll let you know when you can breathe, you piece of shit!"

Dakota lay the vibrator beside them. It buzzed, heedless of what they were doing. She'd need that for later. Now she needed the knife.

The knife.

The blade was short. Shining. Sharp as a razor. She'd already cut herself on it once. Had to be careful. Very careful. She bent over Riley, hips floating, pushing in and out slowly. The steel caressed, smooth like silk—so sharp, so perfect, so impossibly deadly. She traced old scars here and there.

"What should I write?" she whispered, pretending to masturbate herself on the dildo—in reality just applying pressure with her thighs. "Shit. S-H-I-T. Would you like me to write shit? Would you be my shit?"

"Yes, Goddess," the girl panted, forgetting herself. "Mistress. Please let me be your shit."

Dakota wasn't any of those things. But she stilled her hand, and with the utmost care she began to carve an S into the girl's back, between her shoulders, just below her neck.

Another voiceless scream.

And then the letter T.

She wondered if Riley could read what was written on her skin. If anyone could, it was her. She'd had more than enough practice.

R.

Riley looked at her. The slave looked at her with knowing eyes and was silent. Her lip trembled and she bit it. Sweat burned her cuts—Dakota knew how that felt, but from soccer, not from this—and the surprise faded from her eyes. Dakota wasn't sure what remained. Acceptance? Happiness? Something deeper? It might have been something beyond the pain—beyond a masochist's broken chemistry. She wondered if she had the same thing deep within herself.

O.

N.

G.

Riley was crying. Weeping, open and silent.

Dakota held that awful vibrator between them, pushed it against the shaft of that double-headed cock, and even with Riley's body to dampen it the sensation was almost too much. Even the terrible slut she'd become, leaving slug trails and white cream wherever she went, she couldn't cum from this. Not until she bent over Riley's body, kissed her, felt fresh blood against her skin and bit into her. Not until she imagined those letters carved into her own chest. WORTHLESS.

Then she climaxed. It just happened. Like getting hit with a baseball bat. She didn't know how long she'd denied herself—months? She thought it was going to break her fucking toes: all her weight was on the dildo and on Riley and the bed, and she made sounds that didn't make any sense, and she was glad for Riley's shoulder to bite down on. She might have tasted a little blood.

Then she could breathe. She could almost move again. She knew what would come next, because it always did: a second front would pass over her, batter her again. She never had just one. But this time, she knew it was coming. She knew what she wanted to do, to share this with Riley. She relaxed a little and as the contractions came she sprayed, a gushing squirt—two, then three, and then a fourth—that covered them both and soaked the sheets and filled the air with her scent. Riley shuddered and made a sound almost like a moan.

Her fingers didn't want to work anymore. She shut off the vibrator somehow and let it hit the floor. The dildo became Riley's problem. She fell onto the bed and curled up and spread out and panted, gasping a command. "Clean me," she breathed. Riley didn't hesitate. Then, when the slave had finished, she tried to crawl onto the floor at the foot of the bed, and Dakota grabbed her by the arm with bruising force. There were no words between them anymore. Just breathing. Just sweat-clad limbs and smears of sticky blood and wet sheets and tangled bodies.

Riley slept in Dakota's arms, her newly-scarred back against Dakota's chest.