Hello Summer

Summer Sunset by @MaraReitsma

It had almost been a year since Khia had seen Kordahn last, taken from her village just before they were to be bound together, bonded for life. She had found herself locked away in a dingy old mansion, set high up in the hills, far away from all those who could hear her cries.

They had stripped away everything she had owned, everything she had ever held dear, cutting her long red hair to look like a boy, dirtying the color to dull its shine. She had been dressed in a gown too tight around her chest, she found herself falling to the ground, shaken awake, and hauled over the back of a horse.

From her home in the isles, to the dock of the old city, she was taken away from everything she had known, and sold to the highest bidder. Her new Lord had paid quite a pretty penny, adding extra if they would doll her up and set her sitting in his carriage. She was to be driven like a prize all the way to his estate, along all the country roads, through every small village, to where she resided now. It had been one year since that summer night when she had almost claimed her lover, been bonded to him, mated to him, but the raids had stopped all of that, and her people had let her go as if they had many daughters to spare.

She was a high born daughter of her people, and yet they had not cared, a treaty signed instead of their demand for her return, and she found herself living as a servant now in a whole new world, her native language replaced by that of the local population. She was now one of them, to an extent.

Khia was not a slave, but she was held prisoner in this mountain refuge, far from the rocky shores of her native isles. There was no escape, though there was nowhere to go, Khia longed for the freedom to just, get away.

Summer was coming, and with it, the sinful nights that her people embraced, how was she to withstand the intense urges here? With no one to covet her in her times of great need? These others would not know what was wrong with her, they would find her ill, possessed, a sinful demon touched by the devil himself. Or perhaps they would use her for their own intense needs, defiling her in ways that nightmares were made of. She had heard stories of both, of what had happened when you were taken, why you should always stay to the northern side of the isles, but then, she had. It was the raiders who pilfered the town, carting her and the others off while the men were hunting, she hadn't even gotten to say goodbye to her Kordahn...

"Khia?...Come here child!" Her Lord called out to her, "Come closer child..."

But Khia was no longer a child. She was Twenty and one, and amongst her people she would have been mated, bedded, and bearing a child by now, she was sure of it. Instead she was here, high up in this mountain estate, guarded by men as ruthless as those who had taken her from her home. She had learned to speak like them, walk and dress like them, dance, eat, sing, paint, sculpt, she had even taken part in a meeting or two, seated right beside her lord, though none ever set eyes on her. That was forbidden. Not even her Lord would touch her in that way, he'd never looked at her with lust, nor allow any other to do so.

"Yes my Lord..." She replied, coming to sit in his lap like a child. He had many servants, taken from the city as she had been, but Khia was special it seemed, she was different. She thought it was because she was to tutor the children that would grace the household with joy in the future, that she was being trained for her role to come.

"Have you learned much my child?" Her Lord asked, and she hurried to kiss his cheek.

"Yes my Lord." She replied again, waiting for his next question.

Her lessons had been over for the day, her tutor, a man who tormented her, even in her sleep, had gone home to the village below. If only she were free...

"And have you enjoyed your time here?" He inquired.

"Yes my Lord."

"I am glad to hear it... But as glad as I am...I am saddened that it has come to this..."