“I have brought the assassin to justice! This is she! The one who struck at Krush’s choosing ceremony.”
“I’m not an assassin. I'm a housewife!”
The purple alien who must surely be king, judging by the throne he is sitting on, looks at me with a curious and unconvinced gaze. These aliens are absolutely terrifying. Their musculature and their teeth mark them as apex predators.
“Do you have anything in the way of evidence, Tusk?”
The king's inquiry is the first indication that these creatures might be civilized in the sense I understand. Tusk, the monster who took me, did not care for evidence. But the king does. And he has a human with him. A human who is running her fingers through his silky long black hair. They look to have an intimate relationship. That strikes me as strange, but it shouldn’t. I have had intimate relations with the one they call Tusk too. I have felt powerful orgasms more intense than any a human male is capable of giving. The human is casting curious glances at me. She is younger than I am, though her eyes are hard. She has the aura of someone who has led a rough life.
“Is my word not enough, sire?” Tusk is immediately and obviously offended by the king questioning him.
“Justice demands evidence," the purple alien replies. His eyes are very strange. They almost seem like machinery, one silver with a black dot, the other gold. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Am I a pathetic human hostage worthy of his pity? Or am I the monster Tusk insists I am?
“She comes from Earth. She is not an elite, nor is she scum.”
I do not understand his argument.
"That doesn’t make her an assassin." The human woman finally speaks, and it is in my favor.
“Tell us who you are,” the king implores me. He seems kind, or rather, he seems like an absolute beast of a monster who is making the effort to seem kind.
“My name is Margaret,” I say, barely able to meet anybody’s eyes. “I’m a housewife. Nothing more. I don't know why I'm here. I don’t…" I can't finish my sentence for fear.
The king glowers at Tusk. “You have abducted a human. The scythkin will be furious. They believe they own humans, more or less. The last thing we need is an invasion here in Megaris!”
"You believe a human over me!” Tusk is absolutely offended.
"She is wearing an apron with some kind of stew on it. I believe she was cooking when you took her. I do not believe she is an assassin.”
Tusk tries to argue his point further, but the king has made up his mind. He gestures to a silver-skinned, red-haired alien who has been watching these proceedings with more interest than most of the others.
“Take Margaret to the dungeon,” the king says. "Tyvian, she is yours.”
The creature comes toward me and takes hold of me as if I am nothing more than a stray pet. I whimper as his great hands make contact with me, and I hear a gasp from the others as they see the bruises left on my legs from where Mark took out previous frustrations upon me.
“Please don’t imprison me in a dungeon,” I beg. The alien who has me now looks and feels nothing like Tusk. Tusk is rough and harsh and animal. The one they call Tyvian has an obvious empathetic streak. He wraps me up in his arms and carries me off in the most soothing manner I have experienced since I was very small.
“I didn’t do what he’s accusing me of. I just want to go home. I want to go back to my old life. I want Mark…” I trail off, befuddled by my own words. There are some things I don't truly want, and Mark is one of them. Even if it were possible to somehow turn back time and save his life, I wouldn’t. Mark deserved everything that happened to him. His death is the one thing I am grateful to Tusk for.
“It is not a dungeon of the sort you are no doubt imagining,” Tyvian reassures me. “You are going to be looked after. No harm will come to you.”
A little while later…
Tyvian
She screams in her sleep. Her cries are shrill and panicked, accompanied by frantic, unconscious attempts to escape.
I hate that.
The humans I have known are traumatized and hardened by all they have experienced. This one is worse somehow. There must have been an innocence to her before she was taken. Tusk has not only gone out of his way to pick someone as unlikely as possible to blame the assassination on, but he has ruined someone’s life.
Or maybe he has saved it.
The bruises all over her are bruises left by her husband. My dungeon cannot often be considered a place of respite, but today I believe it is.