The Master Who Taught Me to Crave Pain

Saira woke with a start in the marble bed, just as she had the previous times. She had spent two days locked in that room in the palace, wrapped in sheets that were no longer white, and every time she closed her eyes the images returned. Not the physical pain—that she knew, and almost welcomed—but the other thing: the way the old man had debased her during training, until she had been reduced to something smaller than a shadow.

She had only wanted to let out her rage. To strike until she was emptied out. But the old lord was too ancient and too rotten with hatred to understand that a woman can hit with all her might and still be crying for help. He took it for ambition. He answered in kind. And he had plunged her into utter misery.

Now she was alone, with fractured wrists and a mind in tatters, and in her head there was only one name. One name she had not spoken aloud for more than a year.

All the pain you feel, you have to dedicate to me.

He had told her that, long ago, in another life. And though now she was stronger, though she could split mountains with a gesture, she still obeyed that command as if it were the only true thing she had left.

She slowly moved her broken wrists. Tears ran down her temples as she probed her own wounds, smiling through the suffering.

—All my pain is dedicated to you —she whispered to the ceiling—. Every tear, every scream, every torture. It’s because of you and for you.

She rotated her fractured arms, seeking the exact point where it burned most, delighting in it like someone scratching an itch they shouldn’t scratch.

—Damn you. Why did you teach me this?

Her crying turned nervous. She dug her nails into the cuts she had made herself, opened them a little wider, moved her body just where the pain was unbearable.

—Why wouldn’t you come see me? —Her breathing came in ragged bursts—. I need you. I don’t care if they’re hunting us, I don’t care if I die, I don’t care if everything stops. Look: this pain is yours. All of this is yours.

She brought her hands down to her belly and clawed at herself until she bled.

—I don’t want you to ever separate yourself from me again. I’ll find you wherever you are.

***

She slapped herself with her good hand. The blow rang in her skull and for an instant left her clean, without thoughts, floating in that white stillness that only punishment granted her.

—I haven’t looked for you —she reproached herself, her voice broken—. I’ve been bad. I made myself more powerful than you and that’s why you left me alone. Your absence is my punishment. I’ve been bad, haven’t I? Haven’t I?

She hit herself two more times, without restraint, while her other hand slipped beneath the blanket. She could feel the heat, the shameful wetness of her own body answering to something so twisted she didn’t even dare name it.

—Bad girl. Slut. You don’t even know how to keep your master by your side.

She slid a finger inside herself. She could barely feel it. She shook her head, frustrated.

—That doesn’t hurt —she said, speaking to herself as if he were the one correcting her—. Stupid goddess. He doesn’t like it that way.

She shoved four fingers in at once, with cruelty, with no delicacy at all. The moan that escaped her was more panic than pleasure.

—That’s better. It has to hurt. For him. For you. —Her crying turned hysterical—. You want her to suffer. You want me to hurt. My pain is your pleasure.

She pulled out her hand, clenched her fist, and went very still, trembling. Her shattered wrist clouded her judgment. Even so, she sat up, got on all fours on the rumpled bed, and let her forehead fall against the mattress.

—I’m your property —she murmured, and her voice broke on the last syllable.

She collapsed face down. Her body could take no more. And then, in the delirium, she spoke the name of the only person who understood her, the friend who days earlier had begged her to go find him.

—Damn Marén and her talk. Dren… Dren, come, hurt me, please, I need it. Pain makes me feel loved. It makes me feel loved. It makes me feel loved.

With brutal effort, still face down, she slid her hand beneath the torn nightgown and rubbed herself furiously, already crying, completely lost to madness.

***

—Where did your strength go, little masochistic princess?

The voice came from a corner where a second earlier there had been no one. Saira jerked her head around and saw him: leaning against the obsidian wall, arms crossed, watching her the way one watches an injured animal.

—Dren… is that you? —Hope trembled in her throat.

—You lost your faculties the moment you became what you are. —He took a silent step forward—. You didn’t even notice I was here.

—How long have you…?

—I got here before you, miserable slut.

She didn’t know what to say. Shame and relief tangled together in a stifled cry that he cut short with a hard slap to the mouth, then watched her with the coldness of a judge.

—Look at you —he said—. You’re broken and filthy. You don’t even smell like you used to. You’re not even worthy anymore.

Saira cried silently, her face tense.

—Forgive me —she whispered.

—At least one of my lessons was good for something. You’d better keep obeying me.

She nodded against the mattress.

—What do you want from me this time, my lord Dren?

—To check whether you were still the same as always. But I can see you’re not. Damn corrupted child.

—I was stupid. —The words came tumbling out—. I should never have left. We should have stayed together, the two of us, I wish none of this had…

He silenced her with a slap. He grabbed her broken wrist and held it before her face.

—The past isn’t changed, you know that. You deserve this for being selfish. For turning your back on me.

—It wasn’t me —she protested, choking—. They don’t want us together. You know that, right?

—I think you underestimate me.

—I don’t. I swear I don’t.

—I watched you many times during your retreat. All that year you could have sensed me. But you have no instinct left. Nothing remains of the bitch I trained.

—I must try harder —she said, and she meant it.

***

Dren squeezed her wrist harder and harder while taking her by the throat with his other hand.

—You work so hard on climbing that you don’t look at the ground beneath your feet —he said—. You’ve lost your foundations. You are powerful, yes, but incapable of feeling anything that’s a handspan from your nose.

Saira writhed in pain and, without meaning to, moaned at the feel of his touch again. It was the only thing she had wanted for years. With her free hand she covered his, the one choking her, and instead of trying to break free she pressed inward, helping him strangle her harder, looking at him with a mixture of defiance and complete surrender.

He loosened his grip. Then he let her go abruptly.

—You don’t get to decide —he said—. I never gave you that right.

With enormous effort, Saira managed to sit up on her knees. She pressed her forehead to the stone floor.

—My lord —she recited—, it would be an undeserved honor if you made me feel as I did before. I beg you. My master, my mentor. I cannot do any more in this state. I implore you to make me suffer, to make me live again as I did when I was still a mere mortal. I beg you to impose yourself upon me.

Dren looked at her for a moment with something like approval. Then, just like that, he vanished from her field of vision. She stayed there, tense, not understanding where he had gone, until she felt a foot strike the nape of her neck and send her face-first to the floor again.

The foot came down on her head, pinning her in place. Saira tried to turn her face to look at him. He spat on her. Confusion and humiliation pierced her like a current.

He bent over her back, gathered both of her wrists in one hand, and held them against her spine.

—Remember this well —he whispered in her ear—. Your wettest dreams can become your nights of terror if you keep going like this. And don’t blame me if I’m rougher from now on. You’re not as fragile as before anymore. I know it.

Saira cried with emotion and pain as she felt him lift her torn nightgown to her navel. He spat on her again, this time on her buttocks, and landed a blow that made her cry out in gratitude.

—Do you remember when you used to tell yourself a finger wasn’t enough? —he asked mockingly, driving one in from behind.

She could only clench involuntarily, biting her lip. He seized her by the hair and slammed her face into the floor again and again until the stone was stained red and Saira’s body finally went slack, defeated.

—Just one? —Dren whispered—. That doesn’t hurt, stupid goddess. He wouldn’t like it, would he? It has to hurt. Let’s try four.

Half-conscious, she begged him to stop. He laughed and stepped away for a moment, showing himself whole before her clouded eyes.

—Lubricate yourself —he said—. You’ll thank me.

With barely any ability to move, Saira obeyed with sick happiness, until she was ready for him. Dren stood up and kicked her into the wall. She fell face down, staining the white nightgown with blood, which he finished tearing away in one pull, leaving her whole back bare.

She could no longer see clearly. She knew she might pass out at any moment. So he acted quickly and thrust into her at once; the pain, searing and above all humiliating, seemed to bring her back to life. He took her injured arm, twisted it behind her back, stretching it cruelly while he drove into her without the slightest mercy.

—Today you’re nothing but a broken toy —he repeated—. Used one last time before the trash.

He said it so many times that Saira’s wrist ended up bent up to her nape. She no longer felt anything but that twisted arm and the immense pain splitting her open from within, taking from her the little that still remained intact, if anything of it remained at all.

***

When he pulled out, he wiped himself on the shreds of the nightgown without even looking at her. Saira, her voice ruined, asked him to finish as he had the last time, to soothe her thirst that way, that nothing mattered anymore, that she only wanted to see him satisfied with his good student. In answer, Dren grabbed her by the throat, lifted her, let her go, and drove his fist into her stomach. Saira doubled over onto her knees and vomited blood at his feet.

—I think I’m going to faint if we keep going —she gasped.

—Do it —he said—. You’ve served your purpose. There’s no need for you to stay conscious. Your work is done.

—But… aren’t you going to finish?

—You don’t decide that, slut. Besides —he tilted his head, listening to something she couldn’t hear—, someone is coming this way. And I shouldn’t be here.

Saira didn’t understand. Then she felt the air in the room thicken, time itself reversing around her. The cracks in the wall closed. The white nightgown was whole again on her body. The blood disappeared from the obsidian floor.

When she caught her breath, she was once more alone in the marble bed, badly wounded but healed of her deepest injuries, unable to understand how he had been able to do that. Only a faint trace of his scent remained in the air, and inside her the certainty that, for one single night, she had felt loved again.