Angel page 4... adult content warning Graphic

“You have been delinquent in paying your debt to us, simple Amy,” the Matron causally reprimanded her. “You’ll need to start to pay more a month. We can’t be delinquent or it’s off to prison with you. Bad, stupid girls like you, die in prison, Amy.”

            “Yes, Matron,” Amy complied. She didn’t remember missing a payment. She was faithful every month but her Matron was never wrong and saying so would get her lashed.

            More a month was going to be hard. Angelina was distracted but would figure it out. She would think about it later, right now she had other concerns. Being delayed by the Matron, like this, always left her exposed. Angelina could normal blend at these parties and keep them out of the torment that came from being so exposed. She glanced at Dietrich dancing with the eldest sister but glancing back at her. She couldn’t think about him anymore tonight, she had other problems more pressing than him.

            Amy was finally given permission to leave by the Matron. She resisted the urge to bolt, to fly at the fastest speed possible. Such behavior would only get her called back and lectured more. Amy walked fast. A final glance at the new man and she was back on course. There was so much for the others to do, and all she had to do was …

            Pain shot through Amy’s wrist as an arm reached out of a darkened doorway. She jerked to a stop as a figure in an unlit side room pulled her towards it. In the last moment before being drawn into the room Angelina came forward and glanced desperately towards where she last saw Dietrich, but the eldest sister had danced him out of sight.

            Amy began to panic and Angelina’s attention turned back to the situation at hand. It was Nathaniel. Angelina held Amy close to steady her young sister as she began to tremble and silently cry. Once Nathaniel had them there was no escape, for if she ran he would catch her later and beat her worse before he raped her.

            Angelina fully replaced Amy when Nathaniel pulled them into the room. Angelina didn’t let Nathaniel do this to Amy if she could prevent it. As he forced her down he pushed her face hard into a chair so that she was bend and muffled. Angelina turned Amy away from this violence to endure yet another of Nathaniel’s violations of her body alone.

            “I needed a tasty treat,” he said loudly in her ear from behind her, “before my meal tonight.”

            Angelina felt numb and barely listened and she heard the buckle from his loosened belt strike against the wood of the chair. She felt his hands throwing her skirt aside. Angelina could only hope he would be quick as she pulled slightly away from her body so she didn’t have to feel everything he did so vividly, though she could still feel his hard phallus rip into her. She remained calm, accepting the torment, knowing that if she struggled it would only last longer and the pain would be more intense. She hadn’t struggled since a few weeks after this unending nightmare began.

            Nathaniel thrust roughly into her, pounding at her while he grabbed her long braid to secure her. He would take longer here, unlike when he attacked in the middle of the night, forcing her in the bed she had at the Sisters’ house in the city. She knew he would probably be at her again tonight after the party, then going to continue his delights in the pub in the city. When he was drunk and swaying he was harsher but quicker, collapsing on her into a passed-out heap when he released.

            Nathaniel relieved himself inside her, groaned a satisfied sigh and shoved her to the floor, where she laid and waited for him to leave so she could make her way out of the manor. 

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            “A what?” Amy said turning to follow the fast walking man along the side of the crowd. “He sure does walk fast. Why is he in such a hurry? Is this how fast they walk in the East?”

            “He’s on a mission,” Angelina said having no choice but go with Amy. Sharing a body had its problems, but Angelina couldn’t stop looking at the man. “Dietrich.” She said the man’s actual name only to Amy in their mind, as she had been speaking the whole of the time. Angelina didn’t like to talk out loud or to even make her presence known to the outside world.

            The two girls made it all the way to the gathered family, just before the Margrave, to stand in the back, to stand out of the way where they were suppose to stand. The Matron of the family introduced each of her own children, one son and three daughters, who bore striking resemblances to her except for the youngest girl who only had a slight resemblance. The Matron did not look old enough to have mature children like these, her dark wig and ample cosmetics expertly hiding her gray, wrinkles and blemishes.

            Once all the family had been introduced Amy was mentioned like less than a second thought. “And this plain-looking girl here, whom we have so charitably taken in, is Amy,” the Matron said and gave a slight gesture to Amy but didn’t even bother to glance at her.

            Angelina didn’t know why Dietrich was back. He was supposed to dead, yet it didn’t surprise her at all that no one here remembered or recognized him. They didn’t normal see people. With the introductions over Angelina could see that Dietrich was watching her now.

            The clustered group of the Family broke apart, drifting off to enjoy the party and one of the three daughters of the Matron took Dietrich by the arm and began to flirt with him. It turned Angelina’s stomach to think of Dietrich as one of the sisters’ new pets.

            “It’s too bad,” Amy whispered only to Angelina. “Maybe he won’t like them and go home. Is the East better than here?”

            “Anywhere is better than here,” Angelina said, watching him go. But there was no time to think about that now; they had to get back, to get back to work. They needed the money. 

            Amy turned to leave but an icy chill went through her as the Matron called her. She swiftly and quietly moved over to the Matron, curtseyed low and stayed that way, never looking the Matron in the face. The Matron not only had an authoritative voice but her eyes were a hazel color that quite often changed, a fact which terrified Amy.

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            Amy moved from the window to circle back around to the food. Amy was very good at moving around in the background, having been everyplace but not being seen. She was trying to eat as much as she could without being noticed. Amy especially liked the small, soft breads. Not only did they taste good but were easy to hide, both on her and from others seeing her get them. If the Family caught her eating she would be publicly scolded now and lashed later after being made to repay the cost of the stolen food. But Angelina made her eat anyway, made sure it wasn’t just bread and made sure she avoided anything that would make her ill. Amy always found meats and greens stashed in the pouch hidden beneath the bodice. The food from such a party would last them for days before having to worry about finding food again.

            “Eat this,” Angelina told Amy as she slipped a piece of food directly into Amy’s mouth. Amy didn’t resist. They only ate breads while at the gatherings, so that no one could smell any trace of food on their breath. Angelina took care of her even though she was only a simple, stupid thing.

She talked softly to Angelina about different aspects of the party and Angelina was making Amy giggle about them. They wandered to the entrance of the room, hoping to leave soon; they really had work to do, but they couldn’t leave until this new man in town had been introduced to the nobility by the Family. Amy had to stay until then so she, too, could be introduced as a ward of this family.

            “Maybe he came to his senses,” Angelina told Amy.

            “Maybe he’s lost,” Amy whispered back, watching the entrance.

            “Lost his mind, maybe,” Angelina quipped back and Amy softly giggled again as Angelina kept a watchful eye to the room.

            The herald came forth to make an announcement and they hoped it was this new man. “Margrave Bennu of the Eastern Realm,” the herald called out.

            “That’s odd,” Angelina mentioned. “There are no Margraves in the East.”

            “Maybe the herald heard him wrong,” Amy suggested, not wanting to think badly of anyone. She waited for Angelina’s reply and gazed at the man. She thought him handsome with shoulder length dark hair and a short beard that followed his jaw line. His skin was darker than the people around here but not as dark as she expected. “Angelina, is his skin dark enough to be a Margrave? Angelina?”

Angelina watched the new man walking in and Angelina froze. “It’s a ghost,” she told Amy. He was supposed to be dead, this Margrave. Angelina knew he was no Eastern Lord, he was a native to this very city. He was a man that her thoughts turned to nearly every day. This was the man she herself had killed and now he was back, risen from the dead like the name Bennu suggested, for bennu was the legendry phoenix of the East. Angelina was stunned. 

Angel

            Faintly in the distance she heard the church bell ring, a noise which more often than not gave Amy a twinge of despair, not hope. It was of no surprise that the noise of the Family's gathering obscured the church bell--almost everything else in this city was obscured and overshadowed by the Family's endeavors. Tina, for instance, should have been well on her way down to the docks, but instead was stuck here. Amy wasn’t sure where Tina was, but only Angelina was here right beside her. The two had been inseparable all this night.

            Amy glanced out a window to see the darkness settle upon the town. She hoped to spy the approaching carriage and the evening would begin to move to its end instead of the continuing, restless waiting. As the glass darkened her own reflection appeared. She was pleased with her presentable plain-ness. She was pretty enough to neither stand out above the opulence nor seem a miss-fitting, base creature amongst the cruelly beautiful. First off, her face was nicely rounded, not long. Second, her nose was also nicely rounded and not so sharply pointed, like her “relatives”.

            Amy glanced from the reflection back to the mass of bodies, squinting to make the details blur and the hard edges and tense faces melt. Each one of them feared the faux-pas that loomed in the desperate pauses.

            It was too late. The guest of honor had not arrived, not sent word, and everyone else felt like fodder for the gnashing teeth of the Family's fury. Amy felt sorry for them but Angelina felt nothing.

            Amy glanced back to her lone reflection. She felt too tall for her age, but she wasn’t gawky by any means. Her hair was in a tight, thick braid and even though she couldn't see in the reflection the rich, light and dark brown color, she knew it was there. She knew a few of things that others didn't see, like the silky scarf she had underneath her dress that tickled her when she walked a certain way.

But Angelina knew a lot, almost everything as far as Amy could tell. She knew how to braid hair and how to send Amy away to safety at the right time and how to stand up to bullies. Angelina also knew adult things that Amy didn’t, like the fact that the vast array of exotic food that was presented to the guests had come at the cost of servants being only given half their normal food for the week gone by and the week to come, and the fact that the excuse given them about the extravagant cost was a lie, for the procurer of the goods had never and would never leave the grounds to spend his salary. Angelina knew lots of things Amy didn’t.