He should have left. He should and turned and left after that, but he didn't. He just waited. It only took a few minutes for my breathing to calm and my shakes to halt, but I didn't - couldn't - think of resisting again; not then. I kept my eyes on him the whole time, and the only remorse I saw was soon overpowered by something else; something I didn't recognise in his eyes. But it didn't matter how he felt about it - he had done it, and it had worked.
So I followed him. My throat was knotted and I was silent, my pulse was racing and I was stiff; but I still followed. None of it was his doing, I just fell into line. Of course, the next place he went was the most harmless, but I did notice the increase in guards around us. At least that scene this morning hadn't been a public event. I just pushed my own meal away, knowing that I couldn't stomach anything after that.
He had never ever used that before. Not on me, or around me, or near any of the other girls. I'd had no idea that he could do anything like that.
The whole thing was just terrifying.
Then again, some of what I had already been through was terrifying too. I mean, the first time I tried to run away, I was scared, I didn't know if it would work. Then when I woke up back here, I was even more worried because I didn't know how it had happened. If I backed down every time something scared me, where would I be right now? Well, not so much where, but who? A little fear shouldn't be able to change me so completely.
I looked at Calix. He was speaking to someone again. Instead of being back in his room - his office - we were in the hall. I'd never understood the need for it, but as far as I could tell, he spoke with people he knew upstairs and the people he didn't in here. It was clear from the way the person responded and answered him that he was terrified, and I could see that Calix relished in that feeling. Just having someone below him, cowering; that he liked, I could tell. It wasn't that he was cruel - and it sounded that way - it was just that he needed his power. It was something he'd never lived without, and I doubted if he could live without any authority to his name.
He finished his conversation and then turned away, ready to leave.
Neglecting everything that he'd sparked inside me this morning - forgetting the fear and the upset I should feel when I looked at him - I stared at him as he turned away. He expected me to follow, something he wouldn't have dared to assume on any occasion before. So he could do more than I thought - big deal. I was still me, and me didn't normally put up with this. Why should that change because of a few measly shadows?
"Ashlyn," he said when I didn't move. He didn't glance back, expecting my hesitation to be caused by nothing more than a distraction; he said my name as a reminder, nothing more. He expected me to snap out of it and follow him, just as willingly as everyone else did. Well - who wants to be part of everyone anyway?
Even so, I was too much of a coward to face his eyes when he looked back.
"Ashlyn," he repeated, slightly more insistent this time. My body didn't have the natural look that it normally did, but obviously something was different to the submission I had been in before. He turned back.
I stayed silent, and, being the wimp that I was at that moment, kept my gaze trained towards the window. I could almost sense the tension building when I didn't move, and I knew that that sense should pull some kind of reaction from me, but I didn't alter my posture in any way as I waited.
"Ashlyn - come on," he said, for a last and final time today. He appraised me for a second. "Or is there something you want to say?"
I would have looked back to him; usually I would have wanted to see his reaction when I said something as daring as I did now. Admittedly, to be daring to me it would have to get a lot worse, but it was still bolder than what I should say to him. I knew what he was expecting me to say, and that he thought that if I didn't say it I would just follow him further.
