Crista cringed and tensed as he pushed it into her. Forming fists, she bite her lower lip hard until reopening a cut that he had slapped open a few days earlier. And there was only one thing to say.... clear, thought meek and mild, broken, "I'm sorry Master Heylel."
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Days turned to weeks and weeks to three months time.
With every passing day, Crista feel deeper under Heylel's influence and lies. That Aiden had picked a bride and eventually that he had married another woman as well. In Crista's head, she could see it all. Aiden, smiling and happy with his perfect, pristine, noble bride with whom he will have perfect, pristine, noble children and have a happy perfect life together. And she would be just some distant memory of the past. A fling in his youth while he sowed his wild oats. One of many she was sure.
Heylel's one lie lead her to paint pictures in her now twisted reality. How Aiden really saw her... the naive virgin ripe for the picking. Once he had her though, the novelty was gone. After all, you could only have a virgin once. How Aiden had come to the party that night to point and laugh.
Being in Heylel's prison was for the best perhaps, for it saved Crista from seeing the things in her head first hand. Making those things a true reality to her.
In the meantime, this was her life and reality now. Daily beatings and used as a sex toy. She was empty inside and Heylel made sure she always would be as well. At first she didn't know what the vile drink he would force down her throat once a week was until he let her know. A special something to make her infertile. No telling how long it would take a full effect on her. Already could have. Could take up to a year. And so he forced it down all the girls throats, just in case. And again, Crista thought it for the best. She'd never want to bring a child into the world if it would be forced to live until Heylel's cruel hand.
At nights sometimes, she would dream about what her life could have been. She dreamed that her father had never died and she lived a life like a real nobel girl and had meet Aiden at some grand ball and fallen in love and married him, an honest and good woman... but then Crista would wake up and it only hurt more and more that it was all fake.
Marie would at times try and talk to her. Telling her that she could never give up hope. That as long as the man she loved was still alive, there would always be hope.
"But how can there be hope," Crista always questioned, "if there was never any love at all?"
"Do you honestly believe that, Crista?"
"I don't know anymore," she confessed through tears. "Aiden once told me, that his love would be with me where ever I was. I felt it, once. But then I saw that paper, announcing his engagement. And master showed me just how easy it is to play love as some cruel game... ever since then, I've felt Aiden's love fade away until now... I can't feel it at all anymore."
"But... do you still love him?"
Crista was silent a long time before she had to nod, "I will love him, even after all that has happened, until I die..." which Crista thought was the only hope left in her life. That she would soon die, for there was no reason left to live.