Their Wife

Sixteen

The manor was quiet, the halls dark. Lamps lining the walls lit our way, turning on when we passed, and off when we were gone. The ticking of a clock echoed off the walls.

"Sit," he instructed, flicking on the lights as we entered the kitchen. "Are you hungry?"

"No," I answered at the same time my stomach grumbled. I was hungry, but I had no appetite to eat.

He just looked at me as I sat down and shook his head before grabbing a loaf of bread and supplies from the large fridge. Setting them down on the table between us, he starting cutting slices of the bread.

"Any specific preferences I should know about?"

I just shook my head. I knew it would be pointless to argue with him that I didn't want anything.

I watched as he made a chicken and cheese sandwich with lettuce and some green sauce. I didn't expect that someone like him, who lived in the laps of luxury, would ever bother making me a sandwich, especially not after how he had been treating me. If anything I expected him to wake up one of the chefs and make them do it at the very least.

His long tattooed fingers placed the lettuce on the sandwich. They looked like they would be great for playing the piano. His sinewy, inked arms were visible in the white t-shirt that stretched over his broad shoulders and defined chest. He was tall, like they all were, at around 6'3. My eyes trailed up his body and neck. His jaw was defined and his checks slightly concaved, making his cheekbones stand out further. His lips were pink and his nose was straight and sharp. His long dark lashes cast shadows over his lavender eyes that had flecks of sliver and his cheeks. His lashes and eyebrows were dark, a sharp contrast to the white hair on his head. I could see the pointed ends of his ears through the short strands that reached them. As his head moved I could catch glints of sliver in the snowy strands that matched the metal pieces that decorated the cartilage of his ears.

He slid the plate with the finished sandwich towards me. "Eat," he commanded before starting to clean up.

I looked at the sandwich blankly, making no move to follow his order. 

Maybe I was in shock. Everything felt... numb.

"Why didn't you fight back?"

I looked up to find Zev watching me closely.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I did at first, but it was pointless."

He eyed me in contemplation."Why don't you fight back against us? What game are you playing?"

I scoffed. The numbness I felt made me immune to the fear his eyes induced. "Why? So you can make my life even harder? I'm not playing any games. I'm just trying to survive being your wife without making my life worse. "

He narrowed his eyes, skeptical, and crossed his arms. "What were you even doing there at such a late hour?"

"I could ask you the same thing, tinker bell."

Confusion flashed in his eyes at the nickname, but he quickly returned to his icy state. His eyes bore down on me, demanding an answer.

I sighed. "Because some people decided to make my life harder and make it so I had to work till the late hours of the night. Plus, I can only bathe privately in a bathing pool shared by men at night when everyone is asleep." I picked up a small piece of chicken and put it in my mouth. "So, why were you up and circling around the servant's bath?"

He scowled at me. "I wasn't circling around the bath. I couldn't sleep so I was walking around. Heard some annoying screams so I went to check it out." He leaned against the table behind him. "Shouldn't you be more grateful?"