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Chapter Text

A scream like heavy cloud cover. Thick and inevitable. Jonas didn't know what type of animal made a sound like that. If it had sounded again, he probably would have turned away. He didn't like to meddle where he wasn't wanted. He believed in a spiritual order to the universe and had a healthy respect for the mysterious. He shouldn't have hit anything except elk or rabbit out here. Nothing that would make a sound like that. And he'd been sure he'd missed the flash of strange, yellow fur he'd seen out of the corner of his left eye, gone as soon as it was there. But there was no second yell. Despite himself, he edged towards the thunderous quiet coming from the riverbank fifty yards off. There was something awfully human about that silence. Even dignified. Like the dignity of surrender.

Except there weren't any people in the woods where Jonas hunted. Not for generations. Jonas knew that, almost for sure. He worked for a man who was very concerned with the comings and goings of others. Nobody entered or was born into the Citadel without Adam knowing it, and certainly nobody left without his explicit permission. He would never have allowed anybody but Jonas into these woods, where it was so easy to get lost, on purpose or by accident.

He parted his way through the trees with the heavy lip of his riffle.

Blonde hair and brown blood on white by the muddy river.

"Hello?" tremulously. Was he dead? The hair was splayed out, too long for somebody who lived in civilization. Jonas slipped forward and caught himself with his other foot. He allowed the momentum to bring him forward until the toes of his boots were disguised in the muddy water.

The blood in his ears swirled angry as the mud. It was-- could it be? And nearly as important, was she alive?

Jonas had never seen a woman before. Not in the flesh, and photographs of women were highly restricted due to the Forefathers' understanding that it created discontent among the men. He'd seen drawings of what looked like men with slim, muscular torsos and breasts that had hard angles. Snatches of photos from archived nude magazines where impossibly smooth legs tapered into nothing. Locked away in palace archives, he'd never been able to study those images, not like he was studying the young woman– and what else could she be?– who vibrated slightly against the riverbank.

He knew there were women. Five of them in the Citadel and maybe even more beyond the gates. He'd wondered before if any other communities had experienced what they had—an unexplained error in their Mother that bore five girls in the latter half of the 2nd century. All of the Citadel's women were between the ages of fifty-five and ninety. Their men of science never succeeded in isolating or replicating the problem. From what he'd heard, the women appeared similar to what they knew about prelapsarian females except for their badly mangled reproductive systems. They were all in the range of four or five feet with boy-like features. The Citadel's women were closely cosseted by their guardians, and he'd never expected to see one in the flesh. But this woman... he knelt beside her, uncaring of the cold seeping into his knees and shins.

He didn't know anything about female biology. He didn't know how to test whether she was alive or dead. He remembered vaguely from primary school that they had been very fragile, very vulnerable. That that's why they couldn't survive in their new world. And certainly, that appeared to be true. This girl might have been two feet shorter than his seven-foot stature. Her body could have fit inside his several times over. She was dressed only in a pale strap of fabric, hanging loose on her shoulders, that had been white, dark red and brown now, and browned slippers.

Feeling monstrous and dangerous to the little thing, he grasped a luminously pale wrist, cracked in some mixture of mud and blood. Very gently, but with the same movements as if he was handling a man, he turned her arm over and touched the pulse spot. A flutter. Definitely a flutter. Alive, then. Good. He looked at her. A girl, sweet and little and helpless. Good. He had her now. She was meant for him. He didn't know whether to be concerned by how faint the pulse was, but her heart must be very small to fit in... and his gaze moved to her rib cage. The little slip was somehow loose around the conclave of her sternum, the whole thing hardly wider around than his skull.

"Girl?" He spoke as gently as he could, but truthfully, he was scared out of his mind. This girl was his now, by law, his responsibility, and she could be dying. He'd probably shot her. He'd found a woman and shot her. Or shot a woman and then found her. He should take her to the hospital, but that scared him too. The law only went so far. She was his by rights. He'd found her uncollared and alone. But a young woman like this, anyone would try to take her from him. He would have, if he'd seen a smaller, weaker, less powerful man with her. The fact that he worked for Adam might have protected him and his property in a different circumstance, but now even Adam was a threat. She wasn't safe from any man. Fuck, she might be fertile. He leaned forward to study the empty space between her thighs, where the fabric dipped inwards, wondering how you could tell.

"Girl, can you hear me?" He thought he saw motion behind her eyelids, which were so pale as to actually be translucent, cut through by delicate blue and green veining.

Petting it with the pad of his pinky finger, he encouraged the lid to retract. The softest brown shrunk around her expanding pupil, and he wanted to pull back the fleeting warmth of her iris. He wondered for a second if he should hold her face up to the sunlight to force her pupil to contract, but he cringed as he imagined the harsh mid-day sun on her delicate skin and shifted his body to cover her more fully with his shadow.

"Can you understand me, woman? My name is Jonas. You're mine now. I'm going to take care of you. Let's get you cleaned up."

He touched the river water with his free hand but didn't know how to judge the temperature for her, so instead he removed his shirt and began to dry rub at the grime, leaving behind a ghostly gray. He still didn't know where she'd been injured, but as he revealed more and more of her skin behind the crud, his task became desperate. Obsessed with seeing all of her, with making sure she was okay.

Impatient, he took to touching her all over with his fingers. He finger-combed her long hair, touching her scalp everywhere. Passed her ears through his grip, applied gentle pressure to her forehead, cheeks, chin. Her impossible neck like the stem of a champagne flute worried him horribly. How easy to snap a thing like that. Should he make her wear a brace all the time? And her little fingers too. He gathered them up like a bunch of flower stems, clasped together in one fist. He would never stop worrying about those little things. Stupidly fragile. He hadn't fully grasped why a woman needed a guardian before he began to touch her, but now he was imagining her doing something as simple as walking by herself, and he wanted to shout with fear.

"Where are you hurt, Sunlight?" he asked as he continued tracing her clavicle. Her eyes were open now, searching his with panic, but she still hadn't made a sound. Not since that first otherworldly scream. He tried to imagine her making that sound. It seemed impossible. Something so big and sure from someone so helpless.

Belatedly, he realized his pants were wet where he'd rested her on his lap. Her shoulder. A graze. Something that would have stung him. He thought he might die with self-loathing, helplessness, desperation. Heights of emotion he couldn't remember ever feeling before. Should he clean it? But the water was so dirty. Did he have to choose between the possibility of her becoming infected by water or by mud? Should he take her to the hospital? He didn't have a collar for her. The first man they saw would take her. He'd be killed and she'd be taken. Between his death and hers? From the small flask-- he could have bashed his head into the earth for drinking so deeply earlier in his hunt, could have vomited it back up into her lips-- he poured a dribble onto her wound. It bubbled over with fresh pink blood, and he was fascinated to see the inside of her body. He wished he could rip her open and still have her tomorrow. He turned his shirt inside out, preferring to expose her to the sweat from his back than the grime from the forest, and tied it around her shoulder as tightly as he dared. He pressed the pads of the fingers on that hand and breathed when they inflated pink and plump.

The rest of the water he held to her lips. The panic had faded from her eyes, replaced by confusion, but he just held her and helped her to drink.

"I don't think you understand me, is that right?" Her eyes didn't move from his. "Okay, Sunlight, that's okay. We're just going to find you a collar and get you to my friend, Sa-" he found he didn't want to tell her his name. He loved Sam like he didn't love anybody else, and he didn't think she had any clue what he was saying. Couldn't tell a man's name from any other word, but, "my name is Jonas. Did I tell you that? Jonas. Can you say that?" He spoke unthinkingly as he removed his belt and began to wrap it around her throat, four, five times, it was still too loose. Her eyes widened but she didn't move. Submissive. Tractable. He'd heard that about women too. He swallowed heavily, thinking about how vulnerable that made her. "Jonas. Jonas. Jonas. Jonas." He chanted to her in a smooth, driving rhythm.

"Jonas." Her voice was nothing like the scream. It was high as a boy’s and gossamer thin. He wouldn't have heard her if his face wasn't right next to hers.

"That's right," he said, "Jonas. Jonas. Jonas. Jonas."

Chapter Text

Sam didn't know what he was looking at when he opened his door.

Jonas’s eyes were frantic. He was shirtless, his pants were sagging around his hips, and he was cradling something. He would have thought it was a pile of clothes except for the long blonde hair.

"Let me in," he hissed.

He had wrapped his belt around her neck so many times that leather covered her chin to collar. He liked that, that no skin was visible. Her skin was his, after all. The other end of the belt was wrapped tightly around his wrist and gripped in his fist. He worried about her being choked if she fell or if someone grabbed her, so his other hand snaked up her body and formed a fist around the leather, holding it gingerly away from her windpipe. She was curled up in his jacket. Her knees were tucked into her chest, and her toes poked the hem of the garment outwards. He had her in the circle of his arms, whole body in his torso. Only her face was visible, and even that he had pressed into his neck, turning her out slightly so that she could breathe easily.

Sam only paused for half a second, but when the girl let out a little whimper, Jonas pushed past him.

"Office," Sam said, and began to close the drapes.

Once he had secured his cottage, he stood outside his office door. He heard rustling from in there, and words, he thought, but so soft they were totally indistinguishable. He reached out to open the door as he heard, much louder and clearer this time, "Jonas. Jonas. Jonas."

At the sound of the door opening, Jonas stood in front of the armchair where he'd deposited the girl. He reached his left arm behind himself to touch her.
Jonas and Sam stared at each other. Jonas squared his chest, feeling territorial, feeling like he was trying to intimidate a competitor, although he'd come here, to this man he considered his brother, for help.

Sam stepped into the room and locked the door behind him.

"You need to tell me what's going on, Jonas."

"Jonas," this was breathed like an exhale from the thing behind the man's body. Unsure, shaking, ephemeral as cotton candy.

"Hush, girl. It's okay. It's okay." Jonas couldn't help himself. He scooped the girl up, took her seat, and cuddled her into his lap. She huffed her relief. The new voice had scared her. When it said her new favorite word, which she correctly guessed was her hero's name, she thought he might take her from him. Whatever was going on between the two men, their gruff tones and tense stances, seemed complicated and dark to this girl who had never had a friend to disagree with.

"You have a girl," said Sam.

Jonas tightened his grasp until she whimpered. He immediately released his hold, taking to stroking her reassuringly instead, "Sorry, Sunlight, you're okay. It's okay. Sorry, Sunlight. Are you hurt?" He wanted to remove his jacket from her to check for bruises but didn't want Sam to see more of her. "I'm taking her to the bathroom to clean her up. She's injured. I'll tell you what happened when I get her taken care of. Do you have a first aid kit?"

Sam opened and then closed his mouth. Jonas didn't wait for him.

He had her sitting on the closed toilet seat, his fingers on her zipper, when he heard the knock on the door. Still looking shocked, Sam handed the first aid kit to Jonas, who stood wedged in the doorway, blocking the other man's view.

"How badly is she hurt?"

"I shot her"

"What?"

" I- oh Mother. I was hunting-- you know Adam lets me use those woods North of the palace-- and I saw, it must have been her hair." Sam blanched. "It's just her shoulder. On a man, I would say a flesh wound, but–-"

"She's so small."

"I never knew how–" Jonas put his head in his hand. "What do I do?"

"The hospital?"

"I don't have a collar for her! You saw her. I hardly wanted to take her here!"

"How--"

"I don't know. I– I have no idea. She looks– I've never even seen a fucking woman– I've never seen a woman–but she must be in her sexual prime. What is that for a girl? Nineteen? Twenty?"

"She doesn’t know how old she is?"

"That's the other thing. She's foreign. Doesn't speak a lick of Foundational. Well, except my name."

"I didn't really see her. You think she's that young? Are you sure?"

"Sam, I can't show you."

"I get it. Mother. If I had a woman. Oh, Mother, man."

"I know," said Jonas, and he smiled at the other man like the cat who'd gotten the mouse, "you're fucking jealous." But he quickly sobered when he remembered that the girl was bleeding, that she might die. He grabbed the first aid kit from Sam, who was saying "of course, I am, of course, I'm jealous." Jonas shut the door on him.

"I'm here, Sunlight, I'm here, girl." Jonas was saying as he unzipped his jacket and slid it from her shoulders.

First, he checked her skin where he'd held her too tightly, relieved to find her unmarked, although there were a few bruises on her shins and thighs which concerned him. He filled the bath with water, which felt warm to him, and went to put her in before deciding it might be too hot for her fragile skin. He let out about a third of the tub and filled it with room-temperature water.

"Okay, girl, but we have to be quick. Don't want you catching a cold. But you already were cold. Outside in that little scrap. Shit-- shoot. Don't learn that one, girl." He rambled at her as he let out some more water and replaced it with the original temperature.

He thought that if he talked to her, engaged her, she might eventually learn his language. And even if she couldn't– he wasn't quite sure if women were less intelligent than men– she'd at least seek comfort in his voice. He turned back to put her in the tub and, for the first time, really looked at her naked body. The empty space between her legs. He wanted to lay her down on her back and examine what she had there, but he didn't want to scare her. He knew abstractly that she had a vulva, and something else, he remembered, labum maybe, and there was a hole to pee and a hole for sex and giving birth, and a vagina? He was fascinated by how all that fit in the gap between her thighs. He couldn't see anything there, the way she was sitting, just the nearly hairless swell into the crack where her thighs brushed one another. Even with how little of her genitalia he could see, it was hot, how different it was. He quickly grew hard looking at her. He wondered at what was so strange about her body. Her smallness, yes, her lack of a cock. Her hairlessness also fascinated him. He had a thick patch of pubic hair all over his lower belly, as well as a layer of hair over his whole body. Thick hair on his chest and back, and sparser but still dark and wiry hairs on his forearms and legs. She only had a dusting of blonde hair directly around the crease of her thighs. It was just another way she was vulnerable. She couldn't protect herself from even the dust in the air. He couldn't put her in a situation where mosquitoes might get to her. He was furious she'd been in the woods before. Grateful, but furious. Who had taken care of her before, and why had he left her there? He wanted to kill the other man, even if he was dead already. For having her and for leaving her. He needed to write a will. Anybody might kill him for her, and she’d be theirs by rights.

The weight of his responsibility felt only more immense as he maneuvered the scared and injured girl into the bath. This was maybe the only young woman in the world. Certainly in the Citadel. Mother knows how she got there. She was helpless, extremely vulnerable, couldn't speak the language. Everybody who ever saw her would want her, many would do her harm, and she was his. Plus, he didn't know if she was fertile. If she was, well he could hold the future of his species in his hands, A scientific wonder. He could... he shouldn't even think it. He could have biological children. Oh Mother. But he shouldn’t get his hopes up. She was probably a runaway from a neighboring community, an error in their own Mother. She was probably just as knotted up inside as the others. But still, when he touched the hollow place between her hip bones, well he thought about it.

Once he had her in the tub, he carefully washed the area around her wound so that no dirt dripped in when he unwrapped it. When he unwound his t-shirt from her shoulder, a small trickle of blood wept its way down the length of her arm. She wasn't losing a lot of blood, the bullet had only grazed her, but he would need someone to check her for debris. Give her stitches. He needed a doctor. He washed her gently, marveling at her skin. It was lightly freckled with rich shades of brown and soft. Too soft to keep out much of anything that might hurt her. He picked up her hand and rubbed at the palms which were, if anything, softer than the rest of her skin. He shook his head in awe. It was no wonder a creature like this hadn't survived the great flood. No, she needed to be carefully guarded. Protected and watched. He would keep her alive. He traced a big J on her palm, watching it quiver and pulse slightly. He was careful to keep his nail away. Something that wouldn't pierce his skin might be too sharp for her. He should watch what she touched. Nothing too sharp, or too hot, or too cold... He may need to quit his job to care for her.

He patted her dry, thinking the towel too rough to rub against her body. When he patted her abdomen, she whimpered softly.

“Does that hurt, Sunlight?”

He got down on his knees so he could get a better look. Her skin appeared unmarked, but there could be internal damage. That’s where her reproductive system would be, he realized with alarm. Was it a good or bad sign if it was hurting her? She whimpered again, pressed her thighs together, and pointed at the toilet across the room.

“Oh, you have to go to the toilet? I haven’t been taking good care of you, Sunlight. I’m sorry.” He was intrigued to see how she peed. He stood her in front of the toilet, facing the wall. “Go ahead. Hm, how do the women do this? I suppose these toilets are built for men.”

She turned around and sat down. It was too big for her, and she had to perch on the edge to avoid falling in. He held her upper arms and watched the stream of dark yellow urine with fascination. He couldn’t for the life of him see where it had come from.

He made her drink some water and dressed her in the clean t-shirt that Sam left outside the door. He assumed Sam had meant it for him, but he remained shirtless. He liked how she stared at his chest with an inscrutable expression on her face. He liked her attention on him alone.

The girl had never seen anything like her hero's bare chest. She tried to think of Papa's chest. He was the only man she'd ever known, and she didn't think he'd ever been shirtless in front of her. It surprised her, how broad and hairy it was. How different from her own. She could have been a different species. She knew men and women were different. That she was a woman and most everyone else was a man, but that had remained a slippery, far-off idea for her. There was her, and there was Papa. They were different like any two people were different. She was special and unique, of course, Papa had told her that. That’s why she’d needed to be extra obedient when he told her to hide or be quiet– because many people never would have seen a woman before and might try to take or hurt her. He said that made her very important, and she'd believed that, kind of, but she hadn't understood it. The way Jonas was treating her, the way he looked at her, she was beginning to understand. Because his chest looked like that and hers... She crossed her arms in embarrassment.

He began to coo soft words to her in that strange foreign language of his. She liked the harsh, clicking sounds of the words. Liked how they sounded in his gruff, deep voice. She wanted to hear how she sounded, making those strange, harsh noises, and attempted to repeat the last thing he'd said: "need to look at you, my sweet girl." She sounded a bit warbled but did a good job mimicking his roughly clipped syllables.

He paused, looking shocked, and she worried she'd done something wrong until he scooped her up and rubbed her back, repeating what were obviously words of praise: "My good girl. My sweet girl. My smart girl. My girl."

She pulled back and smiled shyly at him, "my girl."

He giggled, and she did too, then they were both laughing.

"No," he said, conveying his delight with her in his tone, "my man."

"My man," she repeated.

"My owner."

"My owner."

"I belong to Jonas Primus."

He wasn't satisfied with how she said it the first time and had her repeat it until there was no mistaking what she'd said, then he had her say it a few more times.
While she softly repeated, "I belong to Jonas Primus," to herself, practicing contorting her lips into the foreign shapes, Jonas pulled up the sleeve of her t-shirt to look at the gauze he'd wrapped around her wound. He frowned to see pink showing through the layers.

"Look at me," he said, and moved her chin up with his fingers to show her what he meant. "If anybody other than me talks to you, as loudly as you can, over and over again, you say 'I belong to Jonas Primus.'"

"I belong to Jonas Primus."

"That's right. Give me to Jonas Primus."

"Give me to Jonas Primus."

He had her try that one a few more times until he was satisfied.

"Jonas Primus will fucking kill you when he gets here."

"Jonas-" but he quickly put his hand over her mouth when he realized what he'd said.

"Not that one! Sorry, sorry girl. Gotta watch myself around you. Uh-uh. You learn too fast for your own good. Too smart for me, aren't you, girl, you're gonna run circles around me..." he prattled on as he picked her up bridal style and carried her out to the living room where Sam sat perched on the edge of his dark leather couch, straining to appear calm.

He jumped up to vacate the couch, "lay her down. Lay her down. Is she meant to be that pale?" Jonas grimaced.

"I don't think so. I need a doctor for her."

"I could go get you a collar. You could take her to the hospital then, if she can wait that long."

Sam hadn't taken his eyes off her wide, pale face, so she smiled and said, "I belong to Jonas Primus" in greeting.

Jonas laughed heartily, and she joined in. Sam too. Jonas kissed her on the head, "good girl," then her hairline, "good girl, good girl," her forehead, all over her face, "isn't she a good girl?" Then, tilting her chin back with two fingers, her lips. He kissed her deeply, allowed himself to be guided by books and folktales, scripture: a lifetime of fantasies and a deeply buried cultural imagination, like humanity in his mouth, all came together to form a sort of instinct. To touch her, to have her. And she let him, unsure what he was doing or what it meant.
She liked his attention, though, and liked to have his face so close to her own. She rubbed against his scruffy cheek, amused by the way it felt, and he sighed before leaning slightly away from her, "careful, girl, don't hurt your skin." He rubbed a big, thick thumb down her cheek. She thought that felt just as good and leaned into his hand.

Suddenly, Jonas snapped his gaze to Sam. The other man was studying a notebook on his desk, an impassive look on his face. Jonas let out a deep breath that had the girl looking up at him in concern.

"Listen, I'm sorry, Sam," he said. "I know this must be hard. Mother, I– The position I've put you in. And Mother, if I was you. To see me like this with her, that was wrong of me, Brother."

"Mother," the girl said, wondering what this word was that her hero repeated with such evident distress.

"No, girl," said Jonas, "Don't repeat that word. That word's for men, okay?"

She looked at him blankly. He sighed. Of course, she couldn't understand him. He was messing this all up. First, he shot her, now he was cursing in front of her like a Decus while she was still learning the language, and she would, he felt sure now. He meant what he'd said. He'd have to watch the little thing didn't run circles around him. He pressed his nose to her hairline and breathed in, stroking her hair and body. He pulled away and pressed his palm gently but firmly over her mouth, then said "Mother," setting his jaw sternly and shaking his head.
When he moved his hand, she said "good girl?" in a questioning tone, and he laughed and repeated, "good girl," pressing a soft kiss to her lips, then another, "good girl."

"Well, that's a good trick."

"Isn't it? It's a precaution. Fuck– I mean," he covered her ears with his hands, and she giggled. "She's so vulnerable. Anybody could grab her. A traveler. Could take her out of the Citadel. A sick fuck who will hurt her. A lot of men would rape her." His hands pressed down a little further on her ears.

"I'll go get you a collar. A good one with a bio-lock. And a leash. You have to take her to the hospital."

"She could be fertile," Jonas hissed.

"I know." Sam nodded. "Do you know how to tell? Is there a part they have? I know the womb–"

"You can't see the womb, dumbass. A doctor has to examine her." Now that he said it, Jonas didn't like the idea of that. "But I'm not sure I should let anyone else know about her. I can find out if she's fertile the old-fashioned way."

"Her shoulder–"

"Do you think I forgot I fucking shot her?" he snapped, still holding her ears, "Of course, I'll get her a doctor. But not the hospital, where Adam has eyes..."

"You think you’ll keep her hidden from Adam?"

"I'll get a good doctor. One who will keep quiet. We must know someone. I've got connections. You've got connections. We have to know someone. Wasn’t there that traveler last year… yeah, I’m sure he said he was a medical engineer on some other community’s Mother. If he was exiled for something banal, I mean, obviously it’s not ideal, but they don’t have to be legit to be good. You know that. We wouldn’t be able to leave, I guess, but I've got that hunting cabin, way out North, that patch of elk territory. It’s all the way at the outset of Adam's limits for my hunting. The chances he checks up on it… I can set it up for her."

"Did you forget that you work for Adam?"

"I'm quitting."

"You can't quit."

"Of course, I have to quit. She needs watching."

"You'll bring her to work with you."

"It's not safe." Jonas paused. "I don't want Adam to know about her."

"He's going to know about her. You don't think Adam, Adam who knows everything about everyone, is going to ask questions when his First Advisor quits with no notice, moves out of the palace compound, and disappears to the outer limits of the Citadel, actually outside of the Citadel, where you have special permission to go because you're so close to him. Famously trusting, not-controlling, Adam–" Sam didn't like Adam, a secret which he was far too loose with, in Jonas's opinion. He'd nearly gotten himself killed or exiled as an engineer on Adam's population committee. When Adam told him he wanted to end the year with a positive rate of growth despite the devastating crop failure that flew in with April's cold snap, Sam told him he was beginning to believe his own propaganda. Jonas had urged him to quit quietly rather than allow the dangerous feud to continue.

"Mother, enough, I get it."

"You need to learn to censor yourself. You can't cover her ears all the time." Jonas winced and removed his hands, checking her ears for redness and then laying her head in his lap. She snuggled in in appreciation.

"Good girl," she murmured.

"Good girl," he agreed, stroking her head.

"Besides, you can't afford to retire now."

"You don't know."

"Keeping a woman is going to be expensive, Brother." Jonas looked thoughtfully at the curled-up girl with her head on his lap. Stroked a hand down her body.

"I don't see how. Teeny little thing," he squeezed her waist in demonstration, then regretted drawing attention to the fascinating curve of her body. He pulled the shirt straight. "She'll hardly eat as much as a man. She can wear my clothes. Or nothing. She's never going outside anyway. But that's not the point. I can buy her as much stuff as she wants. You remember how Adam pays.”

Sam looked skyward. It was obvious to him that his friend was affecting a confidence he didn’t feel. He saw the way Jonas’s hand had closed into a shaking fist around the loose strands of her hair. The rapid way his eyes shot up and down: Sam, then the girl; Sam, then the girl.

"It's not just that. You need security for her. Somebody will find out. It will get out. Adam. I told you that. A doctor. A traveler passing through that territory. What if she is fertile, and then you have to protect a pregnant woman? What if she has a daughter? Your daughter. A fertile woman and a young girl, way up North, all alone in your cabin."

"Not all alone. With me," but he didn't sound convinced anymore, and his eyes had closed like his head hurt at 'your daughter.'

"You need more than an under-the-table doctor to keep a young woman. She should have a whole medical team watching her. What if she has some medical condition? She couldn't tell us, even if she knew about it."

Jonas mouthed 'fuck' above the girl's head. "Why are you always right?"

He closed his eyes, ran his fingers over the contours of the girl's face– her nose, her eyes; held her chin. He wondered if his hands were too rough for her face, but she seemed to like it, leaning into him.

"Go. Get the most secure collar you can find. And it's just a temporary one. I need one with my name. I don't like that she'll be going out without my name."

"Don't worry. She knows who she belongs to, doesn't she? Who do you belong to, girl?" She blinked at him. Jonas smiled grimly. No, she wasn't that reliable. Couldn't be trusted to take care of herself even in that small way.

"Here," he said. "You have to be patient with her." He tilted her chin towards himself and clearly enunciated "belong."

"Belong."

"Belong," he repeated, slowly, insistently.

"I belong to Jonas Primus."

"Good girl."

"Good girl."

"You're good with her."

"Collar, leash. Can I have Daniel here? If we're going public, I need him to notarize that she’s mine. Maybe I should release an ownership document to the Weekly." The girl sensed that Jonas was growing frantic and mewed in concern. He placed a heavy hand on her face. His thumb curled over the top of her skull, his index and middle finger covered her eyes, his ring finger was over her nose, and his pinky pinned her lips closed. She relaxed immediately.

Chapter Text

By the time Sam got back with the collar, the girl was asleep in his bed. He stood in the open door and looked at the small shape drowning in his t-shirt, looking ridiculous, like a statuette or an idol in his standard bed. She was surrounded by pillows and couch cushions, probably so she didn't roll onto her hurt arm or, Sam thought with a wince, off the bed.

"She's going to be a handful," Sam remarked wistfully when Jonas came up behind him and swung the door further closed, blocking his view of her.

"Already is. She didn't want to sleep without me. Poor thing is scared. Don't blame her. This strange place. The furniture is too damn big for her. I didn't think of that. The damn furniture."

"You shouldn't leave her alone."

"Of course I didn't want to, Sam. I'm not insane. I haven't gone a minute without checking on her. I had to get someone to reach Daniel and figure out a doctor for her. There aren’t very many specialists in female anatomy, even outside of the Citadel. But the surgeon at the Palace Hospital has seen the women before. It will have to do for now. And... and I sent someone to asked Adam to come here."

His note to Adam had been more obsequious than he would usually be able to stomach, but Adam wouldn't want to come here. It would raise all sorts of eyebrows for Adam to travel out here in the evening. The Weekly might even catch wind. Might think it news enough to report on. After all, this week's headline had been a sports story, and last week a story about a lost cat covered two pages. Once this was out, it would be in every issue for weeks, if not months. He didn’t like it, of course. It was a trail that led to his girl. But what could he do? He had to get the doctor here. Once Adam had seen her, he could pull some strings at the hospital. He didn't even like leaving it this long. He lost track of how many times he’d pulled the t-shirt sleeve up from her elbow, stared at the bandage as though he could see into her body, touched her forehead with his fingertips to check for sweat. He shuddered, imagining her fragile body trying to fight off a fever, an infection.

"He is not welcome in my house."

"Sam, come on. He can't hear this secondhand. You know that as well as me. As soon as I take her to the hospital or bring a doctor here, it's out. As soon as Daniel gets here– I trust Daniel, don’t get me wrong– as soon as he’s here, it's out."

“When?”

“Two hours. Notary in one.” 

Sam dropped the bag holding the expensive bio-lock collar.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

"Give me your keys. I'm staying at your cabin until this is all cleared up. Don't go there until you can do it without a tail. I'm taking my work. I’m taking my– I need to pack. You can hijack my house for your press tour."

"Thank you, Sam, really," Jonas began to dig for his keys.

"You owe me. You owe me a massive favor. And I'm doing this for her. For..." Sam closed his eyes.

"If she is, and she has a girl, and she will if she is, we will, maybe one day when you're old, you can have kids too." And they laughed until Sam really lost it, laughing hysterically at the joke which, well, was just possible, until she woke up and whimpered from behind them. They nodded to one another. Sam headed for the front door, and Jonas scooped the girl into his lap, caressing her and cooing to her.

"It's okay, girl. You're going to meet someone very important today, and then you’re going to get fixed up and feel all better. And if you sleep, or if you don't, well that's okay, because whatever happens, I'm going to take care of you. Whatever happens, you're mine." She whimpered and snuggled into him.

"I belong to Jonas Primus," he cooed to her.

"I belong to Jonas Primus."

He kissed her gently on the lips.

"Good girl?" she asked.

"Good girl," he affirmed, and stroked her until she fell asleep in his lap.
…
Daniel stood in the doorway, not sure what he was looking at. Long blonde hair flowing out of the front collar of Jonas’s flannel, which strained over a strange, protruding shape that he supported with his forearm, almost as if his old friend was pregnant like a prelapsarian woman. Jonas had called him urgently. Said he would pay him triple, quadruple his rate, whatever he wanted, but he needed him, immediately, at an unfamiliar address on the outskirts of the Citadel. A boy? He wondered. Some sort of wild boy sprung from his daycare before completion. He’d heard of things like that before. Men attempting to kidnap boys as slaves, for pleasure or for work. He’d heard about one case where a man kidnapped an infant, too young to wean. He had wanted to raise the boy, like some perverse satire of a prelapsarian nuclear family.

Daniel was a stoic man. It’s what Jonas liked about him, why he trusted him. He didn’t try to rush around, doing things before he understood the situation. He sat and waited like a fisherman. Jonas willed the other man to follow his example and walked silently into Sam’s office.

“Jonas, what—”

She stirred from her sleep at that and turned her face towards the unfamiliar voice. She couldn’t turn her head all the way with how severely he had shortened her leash, the other end cuffed to his wrist, but it was enough for Daniel to see the sweet, wide moon of a face with eyes too round and too guileless and too big in too little a face to belong to any man, and it was enough for him to read PROPERTY OF JONAS PRIMUS inked in thick black marker on her forehead. It was enough for him to understand that this was no boy.

“A girl.” He barely whispered.

Jonas nodded curtly and sat behind the heavy wooden desk, turning that face like no human face he’d ever known back into his neck. He began to fumble with papers. He could hear himself breathing. The rustle of fabric as Jonas caressed her.

“Can I see her face again?”

“I need you to document me as her proper owner. It’s urgent. She needs the doctor.”

“Right. Well, that should be no problem. You’ve made that clear.”

“I don’t like to mark her but…”

“She’s so little.”

“And delicate.” Jonas agreed grimly.

“The ink?”

“I patch-tested it. She’s okay, but I’d like to watch it off as soon as possible.”

“Right, well.” He began to write down the story that Jonas told him—stretched the limits of his professionalism to mangle his face into an impassive expression.

Daniel had never done a witness of possession for a person before. It wasn’t unheard of. Men took slaves, by debt or by conquest, especially in other communities. He wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask, “do you have a name for her? I’ve written 'the girl' and provided a description. I suppose it’s not likely she gets confused for someone else.” He let out a hard, sharp laugh, but strangled it before his feelings could surface further.

“You know, I never tried to figure it out. I’ve mostly been concerned about giving her survival skills in Foundational. She’s surprisingly fast.”

“We could have her talk to the Knights. With how many dialects they’ve heard, it’s possible they recognize hers. We could figure out where she’s from.”

“Why would I do that? She’s never leaving here.”

What could Daniel say to that?

Jonas gently angled the girl’s head back from his neck. “Jonas,” he enunciated, and touched his own chest.

“Jonas.” The girl agreed readily. She liked this conversation.

Jonas stood with her still in his shirt and brought her to where Daniel sat and watched them intently.

“Daniel,” Jonas said, a grumpy note in his voice, and placed his free hand on the man’s chest. She stared at him.

“Daniel,” he repeated.

“Jonas,” she protested. Then again, “Jonas, Jonas, Jonas.”

She was beginning to feel frantic. Did he mean to give her to this man? Is that why he told her his name? Is that why the indulgent note in his voice, which gentled the foreign syllables, had withered? Why was this man, Daniel, here? She had liked the first man, even though he scared her at first. He laughed with her, and Jonas seemed to enjoy being around him. Why bring this new man here? A scary thought struck her. Maybe he was showing her to buyers. She knew that women were property. That Papa had been her owner, and when he had sent her away, told her to run, well, it was a terrible thing to be without an owner. She’d learned that the hard way. She had thought Jonas would be her owner, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was just helping her find someone who wanted her. That had to be it. Why they had both written something on those papers. Papa never taught her to read, but she was familiar with the anxious scribbling of the two men. Before Papa had to give away their milk cow, whom she called Cream, he had spent many evenings writing like that. And she knew Jonas and the other man, Daniel, had been talking about her. What if the sale was already done? She thought about the empty stable where Cream used to live, before Papa had taken it apart for firewood. What if she was… Daniel’s?

“Girl? Girl?”

She was subtly shaking in his arms. He could swear her skin had gotten colder. When he looked down and saw her eyes were filled with tears, he swung his back on Daniel. Struck by some instinct, he began to sing a work song from his time as a Knight. It was too rough for her ears, meant to keep a Knight alert through long days of marching and manual labor. When they all sang together, it could shake the earth. He stretched the syllables into low, cooing sounds for her, weaving the chants into a soft melody that he plucked from the air. He stopped long enough to hiss, “she’s scared of you. Wait for me in the kitchen,” then picked up where he left off, rocking her in time with the words.

Except, she still looked panicked when he heard the door close. He unbuttoned his flannel, hoping to adjust his hold on her, and she grew even more frantic. Wide eyes darting around like looking for escape. She wouldn’t find any. His grip on her leash migrated up until he had a hold on her collar.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Sunlight, but you’re not going anywhere without me. What do you need, huh? Let’s think... what set you off? Let me inside that little head of yours...” He tapped her on the forehead with his index finger, and she giggled, a pathetic, wet sound, despite herself. She reached up and touched the same spot.

“Jonas?” She said, unsure. Wanting the comfort of the sound of his name, but scared to take solace in something that would be taken from her. She remembered how hard those nights in the woods had been without her Papa’s voice.

“Yes, Sunlight? How’s that, it’s like we’re having a conversation, isn’t it? You’re pretty much fluent. Such a smart girl. You know who you belong to. You belong to Jonas,” he said and put her hand on his bare chest.

Very slowly, she took his hand in hers, just managing to spread her fingers around his palm, and brought their joint hands to her own chest. It was the first time she’d ever really tried to communicate something to him. It felt like a huge amount of agency to a thing like her, who knew nothing but being moved around and dealt with as others pleased, had never imagined anything else.

He was surprised she wanted him to touch her breast, which he thought was a sexual part on women. It didn’t seem like she was in that mood. But he would touch any part of her as much as she liked. He traced the shape with his fingers, felt her nipple beneath the cotton, so much like his own and yet so different, then he splayed his hand so just his palm touched her breast, and his fingers curled around her ribcage.

“Jonas?” She asked.

“Jonas,” he touched his own chest with his other hand. This time, she couldn’t keep the tears in. She had basically asked if he owned her, and he’d said no. She dropped her hands.

“Girl? Sunlight? What? What’s going on? You freak out on me when I tell you Daniel’s name and now my own. Got a phobia of names? Didn’t seem to have a problem with Jonas before. Jonas,” he said, “Jonas, Jonas,” growing anxious when she didn’t repeat after him.

“I belong to Jonas Primus,” he tried, desperate, but she was crying too hard now to even understand what he’d said. All sorts of ridiculous things went through his head. Had she forgotten how to speak? Was she going into shock? Could this be a delayed reaction to being shot? He had to get her to the doctor urgently. If she never spoke again, he thought he would desperately miss her sweet, soft voice, like nothing he’d ever heard before.

He took her chin in his fingers: “Jonas,” he demanded, and then he waited. He didn’t like to get stern with her or push her to do things, but it seemed as though she needed it, because after what felt like an eternity, she let out a broken, barely audible: “Jone-us.” In relief, he began to kiss her all over her face and body, chanting his own name as he did so. Each time, she repeated it back with a bit more strength. She wasn’t crying anymore. He gave her a long, deep kiss. His tongue nearly filled her mouth. It licked over each of her teeth, testing and prodding them, then it settled over her own and spilled over her bottom teeth like a fat oyster. She felt pleasantly stuffed. She would have him in every cell of her body if she could. Her hero. Looking at her intensely, his forehead pressed to hers, he said, “I belong to Jonas Primus,” and she repeated him obediently.

He brought her out to the other room and brusquely told Daniel that her name was Sunlight, keeping her face angled away from him the whole time. Daniel did a good job keeping his mirth to himself at the made-up name that was obviously a Foundational word and the smear of black ink on his friend’s forehead.

A sharp knock at the door.

“That’ll be Adam.” He looked at her. “You get the door.”

“What? You’re going to summon Adam somewhere and have a stranger greet him?”

“I can’t bring her around all of those guards. Tell Adam him and two guards can meet me in the office. That he’ll understand as soon as he gets there.”

Daniel shook his head as he got up. Reckless. Stupid. Death wish. And he didn’t have a better idea.

Chapter Text

The girl heard the door open and tried to turn around, but Jonas palmed the back of her head. Two voices, somehow deeper and gruffer, less kind, than the ones she’d heard so far. She tried to wiggle closer to Jonas, who stroked his thumb up and down her cheek. Jonas spoke for a long time. She didn’t recognize any of his words except “girl” and “Sunlight,” but the vibration of his chest against her body calmed her. She cringed again as she imagined losing that small comfort to whoever these two angry men were. A third voice entered the room, higher than the first two, fast and harsh.

“Jonas,” she heard, among the other strange sounds. So, this man knew her hero. She was finding it very hard to think up a reasonable explanation other than that Jonas was selling her like Cream had been sold. When the third voice stopped talking, the room was silent except for the sound of footsteps, back and forth, back and forth.

“Jonas,” she whimpered. She would have begged to stay with him if she knew how, but all she could say was, “I belong to Jonas Primus?” with quiet desperation. What she thought must have been a laugh, although it sounded like something breaking, cracked from behind her, and she pressed her face further into Jonas’s neck, sure she’d done something wrong by speaking out of turn.

But then Jonas was whispering in her ear, just for her, “Good girl. I belong to Jonas Primus. I belong to Jonas Primus. Good girl. I belong to–”

The third man, the man who had spoken the most, interrupted him, and Jonas nodded against the top of her head. Sounding proud, almost, happy for the first time since Daniel had arrived.

“Sunlight,” he leaned back so they looked at each other, and his face was hard. He kissed her softly on her eyes, her cheeks, her lips, said something else, and lifted her off his lap. One hand around her ribs, the other wound in the slack of her leash, he walked her around to the front of the desk. She was being shown. What were her prospective owners looking for? She thought to try to make herself undesirable but didn’t know what they would want from her, so she just wrapped her hands into Jonas’s belt loops and buried her face in his side. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the three men for the first time. She thought the shortest one was the man who had spoken the most. He stood in the middle and was dressed in a heavy white outfit, made of some material that looked hard rather than soft. There was something about him that scared her more than the others. The others had treated her so strangely, so solicitously, had looked at her with such a complexity of emotions that she couldn’t hope to understand. There was a powerful simplicity about this man’s gaze, though. The other two men were bigger, bigger than Jonas even, who was the biggest person she’d ever seen. They were dressed in black, and their faces were shadowed by heavy helmets. She didn’t think she would have been able to tell them apart.

“Well, she’s certainly attached to you,” said Adam.

“She is,” agreed Jonas, turning her further into his body so she couldn’t see the men anymore.

“It might do her psychological harm to separate you.”

“It would,” agreed Jonas, “maybe physical harm too. She already can’t fall asleep without me. I put her down for a nap earlier, and when I tried to leave the room, she cried so much I thought she’d be sick.”

“Women are naturally monogamous creatures,” pondered Adam. Jonas nodded sharply. He had no idea, but certainly she’d never be with another man but him. If Adam tried to take her from him … he didn’t know what he’d do, but he knew Sam kept a pistol in his desk drawer.

“I will summon a doctor for her arm.”

“Nathaniel Primus, at the Palace Hospital. He’s worked with the women.” It sounded like a command, Jonas knew, but Adam nodded and left with the guards at his heels.

As soon as the door closed, he grabbed her around her waist and lifted her into the air.

“Good girl, good girl!”

He laughed, sobering slightly when he saw the note of fear that remained in her face. He had to remind himself how overwhelmed she would be. Hell, he was overwhelmed. He wanted to pull her into his body, to show her that she was his and he would take care of her. It would be easier if the leash was a permanent connection. If she could really become a part of him. He brought her to the couch and tugged slightly on it. He shortened it until his wrist could rest on her shoulder but no further, and then he took her small hand in his and traced it back and forth along the lead.

“I belong to Jonas Primus,” he repeated, as he had her feel it, this vital thing between them that proved she was his. Even Adam had seen it. Eventually, she nodded off like that, her lips still pursed around the difficult syllables.
…

She woke up face down, with her head on Jonas’s lap, his hand on the back of her skull. She couldn’t see past his fingers, but she could hear someone breathing next to her, and then she felt a foreign tugging at her shoulder. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t like anything she’d ever felt before. It was almost as though it wasn’t her own body she was feeling. For a second, she wondered if she was feeling Jonas’s pain– whether they could be that connected. She whimpered, and Jonas began to rub soothing circles into her scalp.

“You can let her up,” Nathaniel said and sat back in his chair. Jonas nodded but didn’t move his hand from her skull. “The blood reading,” he said, “is hard to interpret. Her levels are very strange for a man.”

Jonas looked at the doctor like he was stupid. Why would her blood be anything like a man’s?

“Luckily, we have the Citadel women’s samples to compare to. She’s below any female reading we have on file for a whole slew of stuff. Whoever had her before took crappy care of her. Low on realbumin, albumin, transferrin, lymphocyte, cholesterol, B-12, iron… What has she had to eat since you found her?”

“Fuck. I mean– Just water.” The doctor nodded, and Jonas met his gaze as though he wasn’t suffocating with self-loathing. Feeding her should have been the first thing he did. He didn’t know how long she’d been outside… she couldn’t provide for herself. Fuck.

“She’s malnourished. You’ll have to introduce food slowly. Trial and error to see what doesn’t upset her stomach. Some of the Citadel women have allergies. Two to berries. One can’t even have meats. Feed her meal replacements and slowly test natural foods.”

“Can’t I keep her on the replacements? I don’t want her having a reaction.” Nathaniel took a vial from his bag and then wrote the code for his palace quarters on a scrap of paper. He placed both items on the coffee table behind him.

“With some of these vitamins she’s low on, she’ll need other foods. Adam asked me to take up residency at the palace medical wing. Just feed her little bits at a time in the palace when I’m there. If her skin turns red or she has trouble breathing or… if anything’s wrong after she eats, give her this and summon me. It’s easily treatable.” Jonas imagined her struggling to breathe. He moved his pinky finger beneath her nose, calming himself by the warmth of her exhales.

“Does she need more sleep than a man? More to eat?”

“Less to eat. You’ll see what she can stomach through trial and error.” Jonas didn’t like that. What would error entail? This little thing sick? Vomiting? Could her body handle that? “The other women have about 1,500 calories. She’ll sleep a lot to begin with. Her body needs to recover from the trauma. Eventually, she should be on nine or ten hours. Some of the other women have naps during the day. You’ll figure out what works. She’s more resilient than she looks.” Jonas scoffed at that. He remembered the pitiful way she’d sobbed, the way her whole body had heaved, when he’d tried to leave her alone.

“Can you tell how old she is?”

“Looks to be about twenty to me. We can have a look at her teeth, do a full examination. Get a better idea then.”

Finally, after he’d taken pages of notes on the care of a female, Jonas ran out of questions. He looked at the other man.

“I suppose,” Nathaniel chose his words carefully, “you’ll want to know about her female parts.” Jonas nodded. “Adam said I was to do a thorough examination. I’ve never– when the Citadel women reached puberty, there was a doctor from another community who had some equipment. He knew a lot about women. Everything I know, I learned from him.”

“So, you don’t know how to tell?”

“I didn’t say that. There are some ways. Does she bleed?” Jonas touched the bandage on her shoulder, confused by the question. Nathaniel had seen her blood. Were there some women who didn’t bleed?

Nathaniel shook his head. “Fertile women bleed from their genitals.”

Jonas thought his tone of voice was far too cavalier to be discussing his Sunlight bleeding.

“Is that healthy? I didn’t see any blood. I’ll check.”

He made to lift her into his arms. Nathaniel shook his head.

“Even if she’s not, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s only a week out of the month. I’ll have to take her to med where there will be more equipment. See what I can learn by visually examining her.”

“You’re not examining her there.”

Nathaniel sighed, “I thought you might say that. The other guardians don’t like me seeing their women naked either.”

“Nobody will see my woman naked,” Jonas decided right then.

Nathaniel wasn’t pleased with that, but he only nodded. “Abel is the same way. I can only touch Ruth’s arms, legs, and head,” he laughed, but Jonas didn’t like the idea of this man, who thought Sunlight was resilient, who thought trial and error was an acceptable method for her care, touching any part of her.

“I’ll do for you what I do for him– walk you through the examination from the other side of a curtain, but we still need to go to med.”

“Jonas?” the girl whimpered and tried to wiggle in his hold.

“Hush, girl, hush. Come on, let’s go home. You can sleep on the way there. The examination will be over before you know it, and then we’ll get you settled in my nice, cozy bed–”

“I thought she didn’t speak Foundational.”

Jonas looked at Nathaniel, furious to be interrupted while he was caring for his girl. He wouldn’t explain himself to anyone when it came to her. He would have said something, but she was so attuned to his emotions, to the tone of his voice, it might upset her.

“Do you have any of those replacements?”

Chapter Text

The girl pushed back against Jonas’s hold on her head, eager to look out the window. She’d never seen anything like the sleek, metal cage she was situated in. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw impossible streaks of light and motion, like she was falling down a hole or a well in the wide, open air.

“Come on, girl, you need to drink a little more of this.”

Jonas tilted the bottle in her mouth a bit further back, but she’d stopped it with her tongue. It was white and thick like milk, but the texture was chalky, and the taste was strangely cloying. She didn’t think he would intentionally poison her, but he probably didn’t realize the drink had gone off. She made a negative sound around the bottle.

“Is someone feeling grumpy? You’re grumpy because you’re hungry. You have to drink this, come on. You only took a tiny sip. I don’t want that mean man to put a needle in your arm, do you? That’s what we’ll have to do if you can’t drink.”

He rubbed at her throat, beginning to feel desperate. He knew how he would make a man drink. He would hold his nose. But he didn’t know how much spare oxygen she had in those little lungs of hers, how long she could hold her breath. And the fear of her vomiting had stuck with him since Nathaniel had said trial and error. What if she was allergic to the drink? Nathaniel hadn’t raised that as a possibility, but the man didn’t seem to know much of anything.

He took the bottle away from her lips, and she smiled in approval and snuggled in closer to his body. He sighed. Wrapped around her little finger. He would have to assert himself as her authority if he was going to be able to take care of her, but the girl was tired, he’d just gotten her to settle down after her fright with that terrible doctor, and frankly, he liked how happy she looked. He let her move her head to look out the window and stuck his hand up the bottom of the shirt she wore like a dress, rubbing and counting her ribs. He’d never known whether it was true that women had one more rib than men. He might ask Nathaniel, as long as the man didn’t use it as an excuse to grope his girl. He tightened his grip on her, allowing his fingers to slot into the grooves between her ribs.

When the town car slowed at the grand white gates delineating the palace grounds, her face scrunched up.

“This is your new home, Sunlight. What do you think of that?” She turned to look at him, her face lightening, and then slammed her body against his when one of the guards Adam had sent with them opened his door. He laughed.

“Woah, easy girl,” he ran his hand down her body, then brought his face close to her ear conspiratorially, “to be honest, I don’t think much of it either, Sunlight. Would rather have you at my cabin all to myself. But we’re in a bit of a pickle, you and I, aren’t we?”

The guard looked at him strangely. He picked the girl up and allowed the guards to flank them on four sides. Jonas might have been grateful for Adam’s protection, but more than that, he was suspicious. He suspected that this treatment wasn’t a favor for a friend and advisor. Jonas was a wealthy, well-connected Primus. He could easily have provided his own private security, men in his employ. No, Jonas knew exactly what the presence of these men meant. Adam was not an unkind man. He took care of his own. And only that.

The girl had never been inside a space so big. She didn’t understand how he kept turning this way and that. How they could take a long walk inside like this. The echo of the five men’s footsteps unnerved her. Despite the high ceilings and cavernous white walls, she felt like she was suffocating in a small, dark space. She tried to peek over Jonas’s shoulder but quickly ducked back down when she saw the imposing, dark figure following at his heels.

“She doesn’t like the drink,” Jonas told Nathaniel when they finally arrived in the medical suite. Nathaniel stared back blankly.

“Make her drink it.”

“What if she’s allergic?”

“It’s highly unlikely–”

“Unlikely? And how likely do you think it was that I find an uncollared woman in her sexual prime roaming the woods alone?”

“Just because–”

“I won’t be betting on unlikely,” Jonas said curtly.

“At any rate, I’m here. I can easily treat her if–”

“If what? If she has trouble breathing? If she vomits? She looked like she was going to gag on that thing. I tasted it. It was horrible. I’m going to try her on other foods. You will stand by in case she reacts to them.”

He called for a bowl of porridge and a bowl of clear soup and then situated himself on the exam table so he was slightly reclining with her between his legs.

She didn’t like the sterile, white room. She didn’t know what any of the furniture was for, had never seen anything like the metal single bed with paper sheets that crinkled every time she clung closer to Jonas, or the sinister, beeping contraptions that surrounded them, and she didn’t like that this man was still here. Was this his house? She didn’t think Jonas liked the other man, but he had let him touch her. Her arm did feel much better, but she still wasn’t sure what he’d done to it, why Jonas couldn’t have done it himself. Why would he bring her here? And what kind of man lived in a place like this? Everywhere else she’d been– Papa’s cottage and Sam’s– was small: warm and homey. The furniture was soft and warm. But she thought this room– the man’s bedroom?– must be as big as Papa’s whole cottage. She could get lost in here without ever opening the door. She touched the tether between herself and Jonas for reassurance, and he placed his hand over hers.

“Belong.”

“I belong to Jonas Primus,” she exhaled.

“I don’t see why you’re trying to teach her Foundational. I think it’s sort of cute that she can’t talk. Just mewls and whimpers like a kitty.”

“I don’t want to hear how you would have her.”

“I’m just saying, the Citadel women work themselves up into hysterics trying to understand the men’s talk. It would be for their own good if they couldn’t understand.”

Jonas grabbed the girl’s chin and tilted her face back towards him, the way he usually did when he wanted to teach her a new phrase. She liked this game, and she was relieved to have something to focus on that wasn’t the appraising man and his sinister tools.

“I only listen to Jonas Primus.”

“I only listen to Jonas Primus.”

Jonas liked the lilting way the words first came out, all slurred together into one phrase, but he had her repeat it until each of the syllables was enunciated. By the time she was saying the words clearly, a stunned servant had set a cloche on a retractable table by the bed and made his retreat. She drank the broth readily. He pulled it back from her lips a few times, worried she would choke. By the time she’d finished, her stomach had come back to life and begun to rumble, and she was smiling up at him gratefully.

“Okay, chicken broth,” he smiled back at her, “That’s one thing we can give you.”

The porridge she took more reluctantly, but she was hungry, and with the gentle pressure of his thumb on her bottom lip, opened her mouth for the last spoonful. She was feeling pleasantly heavy and sleepy. She didn’t remember the last time she’d had so much to eat. They’d had to watch what they ate long before Papa sold Cream, and this was the first thing she’d had since he'd told her to run. She snuggled her face into the crease between Jonas’s arm and torso and closed her eyes as he stroked her hair.

“Good girl,” he praised, feeling much better now that she’d eaten.

“Good girl,” she agreed, her already soft voice muffled by his body.

“Well, she’ll need more than that,” Nathaniel tsked, “fruits and vegetables if you want her vitamin levels to improve.”

“She did just fine for tonight,” Jonas said, and brought his face in close to her ear again, “what do you think, my sweet girl, do you think you did a good job for me? Of course you did, my perfect girl. You always do a good job for me. What do you think, Sunlight? I think the Forefathers sent you just for me. My girl.”

“My man,” she muttered, hardly distinguishable, her lips parted and smushed against him in the beginnings of sleep. She remembered this lesson.

“That’s right,” he said, loud enough for Nathaniel to hear now, “that’s right, I’m your man. Your owner.”

“My owner,” she recalled dreamily.

“She needs to sleep now. I’ll bring her back tomorrow to examine her.”

“Adam insisted we do it right away.”

“She’s mine.”

“And Adam explicitly told me–”

“–and you’ll tell him I said no.” Adam would understand that his girl’s needs had to be seen to. Better than this quack, who Jonas liked less every time he opened his mouth.
…
Jonas brushed the girl’s teeth and was tucking her into his bed when the intercom in his room began to ring. The girl had never heard a sound like that. She pried her heavy eyelids open to look at him in confusion.

“Hush, my girl, it’s okay.”

He undid her leash and rubbed gently at her neck, then placed her in the middle of the bed, surrounded with all of the cushions and pillows he could find in the room, then he kissed her on the forehead, wondering at how the skin there could be softer than his lips. He answered the third time Adam called. That wasn’t good.

“Sorry, Father, I was just getting her into bed. She’s unsettled from the day.”

“I’m sure she is. Nathaniel tells me you’re refusing to have her examined?”

“Just for tonight. She needs to rest.”

“Can’t she sleep through it?”

“No, Adam, she’s very sensitive. She’ll be awake and scared.”

“I just don’t understand your reasoning here. Don’t you want to know?”

Jonas paused and considered the strange note of suspicion in Adam’s question. Why wouldn’t he want to know?

“Nathaniel is still up. In fact, he can do it in your quarters. I’ll tell him to come by once she’s asleep. What do you think, fifteen minutes?”

“Of course I want to know, Father,” it was always a good idea to appease Adam with honorifics and ceremony if you were going to attempt to refuse him something, “I’ll bring her to med first thing in the morning, but surely Nathaniel told you Sunlight is unwell. If she doesn’t rest eleven hours, her health could suffer, and I guarantee she won’t be able to sleep through an examination. She woke up from her nap earlier simply at the sound of the door opening.” Jonas cringed as he racked up one white lie after another, but he doubted Adam would have the least interest in verifying details like how long a girl had to sleep, and the insistence of these two men unnerved him. He looked at the clock on the wall: 10:15. “My proposal, for her health, Father, would be to let her sleep until eleven in the morning, then I’ll give her a meal and bring her down to med for an appointment at noon.”

“Well, I’m sure Nathaniel could sedate her.” He cringed hard at the idea of injecting the sleeping little girl on his bed with a drug that made even him feel groggy and ill. Seeing her in his bed, curled up like a snail, a speck in the space that he usually filled with his body, he felt sure that it would kill her.

“With all due respect, Father, that’s a man’s drug. Even if we could get the dosage right, a sedated sleep is not restful. She’s severely malnourished and traumatized. Her body needs time to heal.” There was a long silence.

“Very well. We will examine her at noon tomorrow as you suggest.” We?

“Very good, Father.”

She had fallen asleep to the sound of his voice, and he watched her breathe for a while, pacing back and forth in front of the bed. What trouble such a little thing could cause. He almost wished she wasn’t fertile. Adam wouldn’t be able to sit by and watch another man have his own children. He knew that as well as he knew that he would be pacing his own living quarters right now, growing increasingly furious with Jonas. A thought occurred to him then, and he pressed his ear to the heavy oak door. Sure enough, he could hear the soft rumble of voices: guards.

By three AM, all Jonas knew was that Nathaniel couldn’t think she was fertile. He felt sure now that Adam would insist it was his right as Father to impregnate her. At least he’d already established that nobody but himself would see her, but whether Adam would respect that, he wasn’t sure. At any rate, he didn’t even know what to lie about, how she should or shouldn’t look. He hadn’t even looked himself, but that would change soon. He would have sex with her in the morning before he brought her to med. He recalled that even if she was fertile, there wasn’t a 100% chance of conception, but the possibility of life might be enough to manipulate Adam into second-guessing anything he might do. He was hard at the thought that he would have sex for the first time in just a few hours. He touched his cock and wondered how he would possibly get it inside of her. Surely, she couldn’t fit a hole the size of his dick in the little space between her thighs. But men and women had been doing this for millennia. Her hole would be big enough for a baby. As satisfied as he could be with his half-plan, he stripped to his briefs, set an alarm for nine AM, and reattached her collar. He forewent the leash so it didn’t strangle her in their sleep and clipped her directly to his wrist. It was probably paranoid, but nobody would take her while he was sleeping. On second thought, he unclipped her, slid a chair under the door handle, and reclipped her, moving the pillows so he could curl his body around her, his back to the door.

Chapter Text

When he woke, he was on his back, cradling her head in his hand, his nose deeply buried in her hair. She was pushed into him, both of her legs over his thigh and her arms stretched over his abdomen. Waking up with her like this made it real in a way it hadn’t been before. Up until now, he’d been working on momentum. Of course, the crisis of how to keep her for himself still felt very real, but starting the day with his girl in his bed…he would have this every morning for the rest of his life, he told himself. No matter what he had to do to make it true. He smiled at the warm little body. Nathaniel was right about one thing; she was an awful lot like a kitten. He turned off his alarm–8:58– before it could wake her. He put his lips right up to the shell of her ear, stopping to marvel at the delicate skin and brush it with his lips.

“Kitten,” he whispered, “It’s time to wake up, Sunlight.” She hummed at his voice and snuggled in closer. “Kitten,” he said, louder now, “Sunlight, it’s time to get up.” She blinked up at him, and he made sure his face filled her whole field of vision. He wished she would only ever see him. Maybe he should keep her blindfolded when they left the room.

“Good morning,” he told her, and she beamed at him. “Good morning,” he repeated clearly.

“Good girl?” She asked.

“My clever girl! Good. Good girl. Good morning. Go ahead, try them both. Good…”

“Good girl.”

“Good girl,” he agreed, “good morning, good girl.” She giggled at that, liking the sounds of those words together.

“Good morning, good girl,” she repeated.

“No,” he said, “you tell me, ‘Good morning, Master Jonas.’” She looked at him. “Good morning, Master Jonas,” slow and clear.

“Good morning, Master Jonas.”

“I like that. You’ll call me that, huh? Master Jonas.”

“Master Jonas.”

“Master Jonas. My owner.”

“My man.”

“That’s right, good girl. Smart girl. Try ‘good morning, Master Jonas’ again.” She did, until he was satisfied. “You’ll say that to me every morning for the rest of our lives, huh?” She petted his chest curiously. She could tell he was asking her something, and she wished she could answer. She wanted him to know everything about her. His body was warm and reassuring around her. She didn’t think she wanted to sleep without him again.

“Listen, girl, today we have to do some things you might not like, okay, but they’re important so that I can keep you. You want that, don’t you? You want to stay with me? Yeah, I know you do, girl. I do too. More than you know. First off, we’re going to have sex right now. Do you know what sex is?” He didn’t expect her to answer, but he paused anyway. “No? That’s okay, I’m going to teach you. I’m going to show you.”

He unclipped his wrist from her collar and stripped off her t-shirt. He’d have to find more for her to wear. Hire a tailor most likely. He stripped off his briefs too and stood in front of her naked, hoping to familiarize her with his penis. She was staring at it with big, wide eyes and slightly parted lips.

“This is my penis,” he said, “it’s hard because I’m getting ready to have sex with you, but you don’t have to learn those words. That’s mostly for men to worry about. I’ll take care of our bodies, okay? Good girl.”

He took her hand and brought it to his cock. She touched it curiously. Traced his veins and rested her finger on the head. The touch was so light he could hardly feel it, and he strained towards her, the whisper of pleasure enough to ensorcell him. Finally, he spoke again, “that’s my cock, uh-uh, you’re never gonna say that one, right? You can call it… my manhood. But you don’t have a manhood, do you? Do you know what you have? I don’t, but I’m going to take a good look right now, and you’re going to stay still like a good girl, right?”

“Good girl,” she repeated in a daze, without taking her hand from his dick.

“That’s right, good girl,” he got on the bed and pulled the covers all the way down to her feet. As he was tracing up her legs with his hands, he paused. “Only I touch you like this, only Jonas. How do I get you to understand that? If anyone else touches you like this, you have to scream. Scream like you did the first time I met you.” He paused with his hands hovering on her thighs, wondering at his predicament. She was so naïve, she might think this was normal behavior between men and women once he showed her. Of course, he never intended to let her out of his sight, but he would have liked the security of knowing she would resist, yell out for him, take care of herself in this little way. She was so helpless, she didn’t even know what she should and shouldn’t want.

“Jonas,” he touched his own chest.

“Jonas,” she agreed, breathless and a little confused why he was doing this now, after he had started this exciting new game that made her feel a touchless sort of tingling she’d never felt before.

“Jonas,” he repeated, and placed his hand over her whole vulva and anus. The feeling mounted in her. She felt confused, heavy and buzzing where he touched. Not pain but something as intense and somatic as pain. “Jonas,” he repeated sternly.

“Jonas,” she panted back.

“Good girl.” He took his hand away and touched his chest again, looked down at her.

The girl squirmed towards him, drowning in meanings her addled mind couldn’t piece together. He didn’t move until she said, “Jonas.”

“Good girl.” Then he held her there again. This time she knew what he wanted.

“Jonas!” She gasped.

“Good girl,” but he wasn’t done. He touched her hand to her chest, covered with his own. His thumb rested on her nipple, rubbing it back and forth unthinkingly.

“Sunlight,” he said.

She hadn’t tried this one before, and the word sounded especially foreign to her. Sounds she’d never said before tied up on her tongue, distracted as she was by the rub of his big, callused thumb as it bent the tip of her nipple first this way, then that. But he was patient, and eventually she strangled out, “Sunlight.”

“Good girl.” Then he moved their hands to his cock. He looked at her expectantly, wondering if she would piece it together on her own.

“Sunlight,” she managed.

“Good girl! What a smart girl. Sunlight.”

Then he touched her vulva again, and as soon as he made glancing contact, she gasped out a little, halting, “Jone-us.”

“Good girl, good girl. Only mine, right? Only Jonas. Only Jonas. Jonas, Jonas, Jonas,” he chanted as he began to study her in earnest.

The pink inner labia had bloomed open under his tutelage. He hadn’t seen this part of her before, even when he’d washed her there. He was sure she hadn’t looked cut open like this before. First came concern. Her slick insides seemed to be an organ exposed to his touch. Like her guts spilling out the bottom of her. He thought maybe she’d been mangled even worse than the Citadel women. That Nathaniel would have to sew her closed. But the way she squirmed– he knew that to be arousal. It seemed all backwards. He didn’t see any holes, just this slippery, panting organ. Where was his penis meant to go? Where was a baby meant to come from? He drew his index finger along the slimy seam. Just as he was about to conclude she was all closed up down there, the tip of his finger caught on something, went past where he thought the base of her body should be. Could that be—could he be inside her then? But this was a divot not a hole. He pressed a bit further and she absorbed him as though he was sticking his finger into cake batter rather than a human body. He watched her face carefully for pain, but the same vacant pleasure remained on her face, intensified.

The girl didn’t know what Jonas was doing to her body. She didn’t know anything in that moment. She knew that he’d touched her all over, but this was different somehow. She felt that they were becoming one person. It was the most she’d ever felt, different than anything she’d ever felt, and she still wanted more of it. She didn’t understand what the tight pinch was. It sort of hurt, but nothing like the pain she’d felt yesterday. The pain of the bullet, of her empty stomach, of thinking she was being sold. And when something wiggled inside her, she gave herself to it. Was this having a baby? Was this life inside of her? She gasped at the beauty of that idea. He was saying something, and she was humming along in agreement. Whatever he said. He mastered her totally in that moment. He puppetted her from the inside out. She was grateful for the heavy, pulsing stretching sting from inside her private parts. She didn’t know whether they would ever be separated again after this, but she hoped not. She didn’t know if she could pilot her own body again, after this relief. Vaguely, as his sweaty, scratchy torso pushed hers into a bed softer than she thought possible, she wondered about the logistics of living like this, but mostly she didn’t think at all. Maybe this would kill her, but she was okay with that too. His mouth fell on top of hers, and this time, she pushed her tongue inside his mouth. A show of gratitude; that she’d learned what he taught her. She wiggled further into him, wished he could touch every part of her, her back and her front, the space around her eyeballs. The air on her skin felt cold and hostile. It wasn’t him, his body, and now she knew they could fill one space like this... She rubbed her limbs up and down his torso, up and down, begging him to enter her further. To fill her up to her stomach, her lungs, to fill her arms and legs and come out her nose. “Jonas,” she said, meaning she was “Jonas,” like oh God, like looking at the sky, “Jone-us.”

The friction pulled at her; his breathing began to quicken; his grip on her tipped just this side of painful. She worried he was hurt; she thought he was dying. Maybe they would both go like this. Some sort of death ritual. She wished she had longer to know him, to be him, but she felt at peace with it all. Then she felt his pubic hair, felt his thumb on her cheek, his tongue on her lips. The motion inside of her stopped. She’d never seen this look on his face. His pupils were blown, unwaveringly focused on her own. Normally, he spoke to her endlessly. She was beginning to love the sound of his voice more than anything else in the world, already did, but all she could hear was his deep breathing, slowing to its normal pace but still loud enough to sound like words. Back on Earth, the stinging in her privates was becoming difficult to ignore, and she whimpered slightly. He came back to her then. She saw the exact moment they separated, not physically, but the moment he was Jonas again, and she whimpered again, in loss rather than soreness.
…

The girl was still dazed as he attempted to feed her breakfast, and, frankly, he was too. She sat on his lap, totally dwarfed by his torso, but it still wasn’t close enough for him, not now that he knew what was possible. He wanted to eat her whole. To shrink her down and keep her tucked safely in the pocket of his cheek. The thought of Nathaniel looking at her vulva, now that he’d seen it inflamed and wet, now that he’d seen it swallow his penis against all reason, set him trembling. Some driving, irrational part of himself now felt sure that she would have his baby. From nothing, from an imperceptible divot in her diminutive body, she had opened up for him, had taken him inside herself. What was that but the alchemy of life? He felt that he held the future of humanity in his lap. This helpless little woman who knew all of a dozen words, who feared strangers and being alone, who was at risk from even the food he fed her… or attempted to feed her.

He held the triangle of toast she’d taken a single nibble of back up to her lips, “Come on, Sunlight.”

She whimpered, and he had to hold her skull to keep her from turning her face further into his chest. “Do you want chicken broth instead? That nasty doctor wanted you to try other foods… what do you think? Can you give it a shot? Maybe you need a treat. Yes, that’s it. You need a treat. Let’s go to the kitchen and see if we can’t find some cocoa for you. You’ll like that. Have you ever had chocolate before?”

Up the girl went, onto his shoulders, giggling at her new vantage point, high enough she thought she might float away into space if it weren’t for those cavernous ceilings pressing them back into Earth. He pushed past the guards outside his door, not offering them a single look. He wasn’t interested in who Adam had put here or what they thought of their station, of the young girl who had appeared out of the woods like some sort of sprite or fae. He felt spiritually enlightened, having cum in a woman, this woman, felt far above his small world and this big palace and those bullying men. There was the possibility that even now his child was growing in her, that he had–- what was that old-fashioned word?–- that he had conceived a child.

...

Her hot chocolate was closer to tepid when he finally decided she could try the drink. He held a spoon up to her lips. She looked at him, unsure if the muddy brown, sweet-smelling thing was really safe to eat, but she trusted him. Even if he did want to kill her, to poison her, she thought she would let him do that, so she opened her mouth.

“Good girl,” he said just as the concoction touched her tongue, and just then she thought it was worth it. Those hard days alone in the woods without Jonas, who owned her even then, and without Papa. Would she ever see him again? She didn’t think she could ever go back to living like she had, without this warm, sweet drink Jonas called cocoa. Without Jonas, she meant.

“Cokie?”

He laughed heartily, not at the error, but at the realization that this was the first time she’d tried a word on her own. “Close! Cocoa. What a smart girl. Cocoa.”

“Cocoa.”

“Cocoa, that’s right,” he held the mug up for her, and she drank eagerly. “That’s the secret, huh. You’ll eat, you’ll talk, just need some chocolate to encourage you, is that right? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I think you deserve a little chocolate. Actually, I think you deserve a Hell, I mean– that’s a man’s word, girl, don’t say that one– I think you deserve a lot more than chocolate,” and he kissed her, chasing the sweet chocolate in her mouth. He checked his watch and leaned his face against hers. 11:45. With his free hand, he felt the pistol holstered at his side, too aware it would be totally ineffectual against any wish of Adam’s.

“Come on, my girl. We have to go see that nasty man soon.” He said it loud enough that the guards stationed at the entrance to the dining hall looked his way unbelievingly before quickly snapping their attention away, “Think you can eat any more?” He rubbed her lips, then her stomach. He felt the slightest bulge protruding between her hips. He had to remember she was malnourished. Her body was still adjusting to food. “Okay, that’s okay, we can always have more later. If you want to eat, you just tell me, okay, girl? You just say eat if you want to eat.” He brought a forkful of the eggs he’d ordered for himself up to his lips and said, “eat.” She watched him. He brought it up to her lips. She tried to turn away, but he held her there. Just kept the fork near her mouth and repeated “eat.”

“Eat,” she finally agreed.

As they walked the long way to med, he whispered in her ear, “If anyone but me tries to touch you when we’re there, what are you going to do? You’re going to scream, right? I know you can scream. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? Of course you will, because you’re my good girl. My perfect girl. If you can do that for me, I’ll keep you safe, I promise, but you have to know you’re mine now. Nobody will take you from me. Uh-uh. No way. Say that one for me? No way. No way.”

“No way.”

“No way!”

“No way!” She mimicked his tone, raising her voice until it peaked into an echo and startled her.

“Scared of your own voice. What am I going to do with you, huh girl?” But his tone was smiling and indulgent enough to coax a giggle out of her.

Chapter Text

Nathaniel was waiting for them at the desk with affected patience when they entered med. A sheet bifurcated the room, and Jonas ducked them under it. As he was situating her on the table, Nathaniel pushed his way in behind them. Jonas turned, shielding the girl from the other man’s view.

“I’ll do a general exam, and then give you some privacy for–”

“No, I’ll do the whole thing.” His left hand drifted down to cup her pubis under the clean t-shirt he’d dressed her in, and she wondered whether they would do what they’d done that morning. For some reason, she didn’t think she wanted this other man to see that, but maybe it was some sort of proof of ownership. She liked that idea and pushed into the hand, validating its claim. His hand loosened, then patted her there reassuringly. “You won’t touch any part of her.”

Just then the door swung open from across the curtain. “Nate?”

“Over here, Father, the three of us are over here. Just about to start the exam.”

Jonas was aware that he was no longer in control of the room.  Everything in him wanted to pick her up and get her out of there. If these men tried to take her, they might succeed. He had to close the distance between them. He sat on the cot in front of her and encouraged her to wrap her arms and legs around his torso. She moved where he put her so easily. He was beginning to think of her arms and legs as his just as much as his own limbs. He reinforced the joint where her wrists clasped around his neck with the hand holding her leash and stroked up and down her leg with the other. Adam watched them from the part in the curtain curiously.

“She’s anxious around strangers, Father. This would be much easier on her if the two of you listened in from the other side of the curtain, as Nathaniel and I agreed on yesterday.”

“She would do well to acclimate to others.”

“No, Adam.” Nathaniel breathed in sharply from beside Adam. “Respectfully, Father, from my experience with her…she needs to learn to rely on me. As you said, women are monogamous creatures. If she doesn’t know who her owner is– trust me implicitly that is, to take care of her myself– she’ll never feel secure.”

“Nathaniel? What do you think about this? Is privacy essential for a woman’s health?”

“Why don’t we give it a try with us in here and see how she reacts?”

“Trial and error.”

“What was that, Jonas?”

“I just don’t think that trial and error is a good method for Sunlight’s care. Not when error could mean…” the demise of our species, he’d meant to say, but he found that he didn’t want to remind the other men of the stakes of their conversation, “well, it could mean anything.”

“Lie the girl down, Jonas.” Jonas followed Adam’s gaze to his own right hand, which had formed a white-knuckled fist around her collar. He forced himself to relax his grasp on her. When he attempted to stand up from the cot, though, she clung to him.

“She doesn’t want to.”

“Just put her down. Is that little girl overpowering you, Jonas?” Nathaniel laughed unctuously at the other man’s joke.

As Jonas attempted to unwind the girl’s limbs from around his torso, it became clear to him that she really didn’t want to let go. Not that Jonas was trying very hard. When he broke the clasp of her hands around his neck, her feet, which couldn’t lock onto each other around the breadth of his waist, turned into his sides. He reached down to loosen her legs and laughed at what he saw there. She had hooked her toes into his belt loops.

“Look at this,” Jonas said. “She’s grabbing onto my belt loops with her little toes. That’s it. I’m not moving her, gentlemen. She could hurt herself. She could break her little toes. She could bash her head into the wall. She could–”

“She really does like you, Jonas.” Adam moved closer to study the pink little digits that oozed between the denim and leather. When he was close enough to touch her, she clasped her fingers back around Jonas’s neck and slunk further behind him. “To be honest, I didn’t know they could form preferences like this. Everything I’d heard about women was that they were extremely biddable.”

“Biddable to one man.”  Adam reached out to touch her toes with his index finger. She let out a creaking, gasping sound and wrenched her foot back, taking Jonas with her. “Easy, easy girl.”

“Jonas,” she said desperately, “Jonas, Jonas, Jonas.”

Adam looked stunned. He backed all the way up to the curtain. “Alright,” he said. “It appears we’re doing this her way.”

While Adam and Nathaniel got settled behind the curtain, Jonas huddled the girl into a little ball in his arms. He rocked her back and forth and spoke softly at her ear, so close his lips brushed her skin, so quietly that he wasn’t sure if he was whispering or just mouthing the words.

“My perfect girl. You saved us, you know that? Did you know you’re a master manipulator? Huh? I should keep an eye on you. You’ll have my job. Okay, my turn. Jonas’s turn to take care of us.” He gave her ear one final lick before bringing his face out from the curtain of her hair. “I had sex with her this morning,” he announced, “I took her virginity.” This last part, he knew, was a risk. She’d bled when he took her, just a little bit, and he recalled that this happened when a woman had sex for the first time. He’d checked her vulva carefully after he'd cum and swiped her with his fingers to examine the residue at breakfast, wanting to see if she was bleeding like Nathaniel had said. But there was no more blood, just a clear, sticky mucus that tasted like sea salt. He wasn’t 100% sure that the Citadel women had bled when they lost their virginities, but he thought they had. There was a long pause.

“Did she bleed?”

“Yes. I told you I had her virginity.” Jonas wished he could see Nathaniel’s face. He thought he heard a whisper or an intake of breath. “Does that mean something? It was just a streak and stopped quickly. Should I be worried? I thought that was normal.” It was easy for him to tap into the baseline panic that undergirded his whole world since he’d found her. He felt like a Decus who’d stumbled across a rare, invaluable artifact. To keep in his shitty, dangerous apartment or under his pillow in a dormitory. What could he do with such a thing?

“Easy, Jonas. It’s normal. If she’s stopped bleeding, there’s no cause for concern.”

“Did the other women bleed?” Another pause.

“Yes.”

“Could you tell by looking at them?”

“We’ll know more after the pelvic exam.”

“Yes, but could you tell?”

“Did you notice anything unusual about her?”

“Unusual? Yeah, she didn’t have a di–a manhood.”

“A manhood?” Nathaniel choked out a laugh, and he thought he heard Adam make an amused sound too.

“Yes, it’s what I’m having her call it. She’s learning the language. Don’t curse in front of her.”

“You’re worse than the other guardians.”

Jonas looked at the girl in his lap. The other guardians didn’t have what he had.

 “No, they looked normal from the outside.” It was Adam who spoke. “Our late Father wrote about it. He thought they had been blessed by the Forefathers. He thought this was a new start for humanity. That’s why he named the first woman Rainbow. God’s covenant with man. You named her Sunlight, didn’t you? Fits. No, our late Father thought humanity was saved for fourteen years. Until a doctor came, a traveler. He had heard some old wisdom about women. He claimed to have knowledge of prelapsarian women passed down from his ancestors–how does he put it? An unbroken thread to Adam and Eve.” Nathaniel laughed at that, then abruptly cut himself off. “He thought it was strange that they never bled. They should have already had their puberties by then, apparently. They were able to test them somehow. I’m not sure. Nathaniel, you’ll know the medical details better than me.”

“Yes, well. Dirk didn’t take very good notes. He always had foreign ways. A spiritualist. Not that I’m not. I mean, of course this is all due to the grace of our Parents, working through yourself, Father, but that man was not a Foundationalist. And, well, medicine is a science, so it just requires a level of rigor…” Jonas smirked as the man deflated.

“You told me you’d be able to tell if the girl was fertile,” Adam said.

“If I could just get a good look… I’ll need to try some things. Run some tests.”

“We agreed that you would not get a good look,” said Jonas.

“You, I mean, if Jonas– We will figure it out, Father.”

“And even if we don’t, we’ll find out the old-fashioned way, right Nathaniel?

“Right, we’ll know if she bleeds.”

“Or if she begins to show my child.”

“We will know before that,” said Adam.

…

An hour later, Jonas had poked and prodded the girl head-to-toe. He’d weighed and measured her, taken her heart rate, her blood pressure, rebandaged her wound. His favorite part was just touching her. Touching her all over, in her mouth, up her nose, between her butt cheeks. He knew everything about the outside of her body now, and the parts of her insides within his reach too. He would know if anything changed. If she began to put on weight or if her abdomen swelled. He reported on everything truthfully, even between her legs. He was relieved by Nathaniel’s ignorance and the fact that the other women looked normal on the outside. He had put his finger up her vagina and confirmed that he didn’t feel any bumps or strange protrusions. He wouldn’t describe what she felt like. “Just like she should,” he insisted when Nathaniel asked, much to the doctor’s frustration. He couldn’t believe Nathaniel had thought he would let anyone else touch her like this.

“Hey,” he said as Nathaniel took the curtain down. “Do women actually have one less rib than men?”

“I’m not sure. Take her shirt off. Let’s count.”

“Are you insane? Adam, if I kill your new on-call doctor, you know why.” When Adam just laughed and left the room, Nathaniel turned red up to his ears. “You’re gonna get what’s coming to you, talking to Father like that.”

 Jonas led the girl into the hallway, keeping her at his left side, away from Nathaniel. He hated to expose her to such base politicking. She should be sheltered from things like that. Not at the center of it all.

The girl was feeling unsettled by Jonas’s silence and tense body language.

“I belong to Jonas Primus,” she said.

He looked down at her. “That's right," he said. "Good girl.”

“Good girl,” she repeated, anxious.

“I mean it. You are a good girl. You were so good in there. Clinging– staying still for your exam. You were so good for your exam. Let’s get you back to my room, huh? Are you tired?”

“Mr. Jonas?” The guard who had been trailing them closed the distance. The girl whimpered just before Jonas could whisk her up into his arms and push her face into his neck. He backed a couple steps away from the guard, shooting him a glare, and spoke softly to her, rocking with his lips pressed to the top of her head. He didn’t look back up until she relaxed against him.

“Don’t approach me when I’m with her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give warning before. Ask permission.”

“I understand. I’m sorry, sir.”

“What is it, then?”

“Well, sir. It’s just that I heard you saying you were returning to your quarters and Father had asked, he said you were to be escorted to your office, sir.”

“Fine. We’ll go to Adam’s office, then.”

“Sir?”

“I need to speak with Adam. He will see me.”

“Yes, sir.”

…

The girl collapsed her weight against Jonas when they entered Adam’s office, and both men looked down at her in concern. Jonas lifted her into his arms bridal style, cradling her head in the crease of his armpit. “What’s wrong, Sunlight? What’s going on?” She was tired. She wanted to be alone with Jonas, and she didn’t like this other man, Adam. Jonas was always tense around him, and he’d touched her before. She didn’t know why it was so disturbing to her that a man other than Jonas would touch her. She guessed it made her feel unowned. Like when she’d been in the woods by herself.

“Tired? I think so. That’s what I came here to talk to you about, Adam. As you can see, she’s exhausted and needs close watching. She would have just fallen down on her feet just like that if I hadn’t caught her. She can’t be unsupervised.”

“Of course not.”

“Right, so, I know you want me to return to work–”

“There was another explosion while we were examining her.” Jonas covered her exposed ear, pressing the other into his chest, but he found he didn’t feel like cursing, didn’t feel emotionally heightened at all. He’d had actual nightmares the night before last, blood and confusion and tumbles of people, men grabbing him and shouting his name while he couldn't move from the ground, spun and fell interminably into the earth. It was something he could only remember experiencing in the fuzzy mess of his daycare days. But now that another explosion had happened, he only cared about getting his girl to nap. It was quaint.

“Where?”

“Eden Market.” Jonas hissed. That was a prominent neighborhood. Mostly Secunda lived there, some Tertium and even some Prima. It was about as socially exclusive an area as you could find without breaching the palace gates. The Prima and Secunda in Adam’s retinue as well as other important men lived on the property in detached houses. Is that what this was building up to? Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have her here. “Just keep her in your office.”

"Any casualties?" 

"Two Secunda. Nobody important. An old man and the other one did data entry or something."

“It’s not good to have her on my lap all day. She needs stimulation. She’s more intelligent than she seems. I was going to read to her, she’ll sleep that way, and she needs plenty of rest to recover from the trauma of the gunshot wound. I won’t be able to–”

“Jonas. My Son. Calm down. Of course, I wouldn’t ask you to leave her unsupervised or keep her on your lap all day. I asked John to figure something out for her so you can work without worrying. Go look.”

…

Jonas sat on the ground in front of his desk with the girl between his legs. He had to admit, it was a nice idea. His desk was a large antique with a heavy oak body on three sides. Adam’s aide had made the space into a sort of padded room for her. It was long enough for her to lie down in, and tall enough that she could sit on her butt. The ceiling and walls of the space were padded, and bedding covered the floor. Inside were pillows and a blanket. He could add some things to keep her entertained. A lantern so she wouldn’t be in the dark. What would she like to do? How did she keep herself busy? He felt like he did in his Knight days, when they had just made contact with a new community. This superficial knowledge of her body and mannerisms that didn’t speak to a deeper understanding. There was still so much he didn’t know about her.

“What do you think?” He asked her seriously. “If you don’t like it, we won’t stay. We’ll go back to my room like this morning. Is that what you want?”

She looked curiously at the padded area. She wanted to go further into the space, which looked dark, warm, and soft, but she didn’t want to move away from Jonas.

“Go on, girl. It’s okay. Look.” He unclipped her leash from around his wrist, making her whimper, and locked it around his ankle. “There you go. Now you can rest in there…” he lay her down, settled the pillow under her head, and tucked the blanket around her body. She murmured softly and clung to his hand. He placed her hand around his ankle instead, helped her wrap her fingers around the other end of her leash, “… you can rest in there, and I can sit up here and do some work. What do you think, girl?”

He pulled in his chair and sat down. “You okay down there? You can breathe okay?”

His voice drifted to her like through water, deep and distorted. She was grateful for the sound of it. She clung tighter to her leash and wiggled around so her whole body was on his feet, wrapped around his ankles. He laughed and pushed back his chair. He crouched down again, and she lifted her face up to him, squinting at the light that streamed into the space.

“Aw, I’m sorry, kitten. I just need to make sure you’re alright down here. Looks like you’re nice and cozy. If you’re going to be cuddling with my feet like that, I have to take my shoes off, okay? They’re too hard for you to be sleeping with. And shoelaces. No shoelaces for you… if I ever find you shoes.”  He extracted his feet out from under her, easing her body to the ground. “Shh, girl. Just for a second. Just for a second.” He quickly settled her back on his feet. He liked the weight of her there. Warm and comforting. Liked to be able to feel her breathe.

The girl settled again, reached her hand up his pant leg and rubbed up and down. He relaxed further into the space, stuck his legs out so she could curl against the back wall of the desk and still touch him. She dozed off like that, wedged between the front of his desk and his feet.

She woke to the sound of multiple voices talking over each other. Her Jonas’s voice cut through them sharply, and the others became quieter and more subdued. His foot stroked up and down her abdomen soothingly. She closed her eyes but couldn’t get back to sleep. She wondered how long it had been. She wasn’t hungry, but she had a hard time feeling hunger. She remembered she should, how she used to when she could expect to be fed regularly. When her Papa still had enough food for them. She didn’t know what had happened that he wouldn’t come home with meat and grain anymore. She knew he wanted to, that it worried him a lot to have to cut back her meals. But she didn’t know why he couldn’t. Maybe there wasn’t enough food for everyone. But why did Jonas and the other men have so much? Why did they have these strange things she’d never heard of before, like cocoa. It seemed like they could make anything they wanted appear before them.

“Cocoa,” she said, testing the sleepy, groggy sound of her voice. She heard Jonas’s laugh float down from above her. He began to speak fast and louder than before then. She sat up and took Jonas’s feet in her lap. The other men were talking. She peeled off his socks and looked at his feet. They were so large. And hairy. She giggled at that. Who knew feet could be hairy? Had Papa’s feet been hairy? She was having a hard time remembering. She touched his toes.  His pinky toe was as long as her middle finger and three or four times as wide. She leaned down and touched her lips to the tip of his big toe. He’d done that to her fingers before. Kissed the tips of them. She ran her lips all along his toes. He’d put her fingers in his mouth before too. She tried that, closed her lips around his big toe just as she heard a door shut.

“Girl, girl, girl, girl. Sunlight. What are you doing, Sunlight?” He gently extracted his foot from her mouth, wincing as he thought about what his toenail could do to the soft skin on her lips and inside her mouth. “I’ll have to cut my nails, I guess. Cut and file. Come here, girl.” He pushed back his chair and reached under his desk to pull her up into his lap. She burrowed her face in his chest away from the bright office light. He reached down for the blanket and drew that up around her, blocking the light from her face. “You’re hungry, huh? So hungry you're eating my toes? I'm terrible to you. How should I make up for it? Cocoa? You were asking for cocoa?”

“Cocoa!” The girl peeked up at him eagerly from inside her cocoon. He chuckled.

“Cocoa? Yeah, cocoa. We’ll get you cocoa. And a real meal, which you’ll eat, if you want your cocoa.”

“Cocoa! Cocoa, cocoa.” She liked the simple sounds of the word and the way it had been woven into his own speech. She really felt like she was talking back and forth with him. And she wanted more cocoa.

“Cocoa. That was naughty, you know? Saying that in front of those men. Knowing I have a girl in the abstract is one thing. Hearing your sweet little voice. Nothing like that. Uh-uh.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Uh-uh. That voice belongs to me. Those men might do anything to get you, you let them hear that. Uh-uh.”

“Uh-uh.”

“A girl with a voice like yours begging her master for a treat.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Uh-uh. Uh-uh is right. Naughty girl. If I were them, I would have killed me for you. Without even seeing you. They might still. Anyone might. Anyone in his right mind would. What do you want for lunch then, girl? What am I going to feed you? Cocoa, right?

“Cocoa.”

“Cocoa and… should I let you have chicken broth? You should try new foods, but I hate the thought of you reacting to something. Your body’s been through so much recently, and then if you got sick? And had to see that nasty, bitter old man again. Uh-uh.”

“Uh-uh.”

“What about a savory porridge. You should be able to have vegetables, huh? Porridge made with chicken broth and veggies. Mmmm.”

“Mmmmmmmmm.” She droned on and on absently.

He ordered them food while she went “mmmmm” against his chest. He smiled, straining to hear the servant over her vibrations. He could imagine her being quite a distraction once she spoke Foundational, chattering away. In some ways that would be easier. She’d be able to understand what he was telling her to do. But he liked her helpless like this. Liked that he was the only one who really understood her. He planted a kiss on the top of her head.

“Mmmmm. Mmm better mean you’ll eat everything you’re given. That’s what mmm means. You’ve been telling me you’ll eat everything I give you over and over again. I appreciate it, kitten, but I knew that already. You know how I know that? Because you do everything I tell you to. Because you’re mine. Isn’t that right, my girl? My good girl.”

He looked over her head at the note on his desk. Coordinates, and some dense lines of numbers and letters he didn't understand, in handwriting he knew.

Chapter Text

Dinner. To insist on dinner the night after he brought a girl home with him. Even if it were just curiosity, it bothered Jonas to parade her around like that. And besides it wasn’t. Adam was a stubbornly incurious man.

Jonas knew Adam. He wouldn’t have liked the way she reacted to him in med. He played it off, but a thing like that would have hurt his pride. Was it terrible that he wanted her scared of him? Scared of everyone except Jonas. She had trusted him so quickly. It had taken, what, one interaction? One sip of water? For her to let him pick her up and do what he wanted with her without protest. And that was after he’d shot her. That was wrong. He never won her over; she trusted him instantly. She’d had no conception that she wouldn’t trust him. She didn’t think at that level at all, had no thoughts of protecting herself. Would she trust anybody else like that? Of course she would. She was totally vulnerable.

It was becoming clear to him that this dinner was a step onto a long road that ended in his Sunlight pregnant with another man’s child.

The girl sat perched on the edge of the bed, watching him pace back and forth, back and forth. He crossed to her and pressed his palm decisively to the place where he thought her womb was.

“You will grow my children here, Sunlight. You know that, right? We’re just going for dinner, Sunlight, then back here. It’s all okay. I have it under control. You just hold onto me,” as he said it, his own hands tightened, unbidden, around her collar and t-shirt. He pulled her off the bed and into his lap. “Then I’ll take you away from all this. You’d like that. Just Sunlight and Jonas.”

“Jonas,” she agreed.

“That’s right, Jonas. Jonas, Jonas. Jonas will figure it out. You don’t need to worry about anything except Jonas. Jonas, Jonas, Jonas. I ought to keep you blindfolded. I bet you’d like that. You like the dark. Is that why you liked being under my desk?  This is probably overwhelming, huh? My poor girl. Too many people? Lots of scary men. It’s not a very nice place for you, is it? After this, I can take you to the cabin. I need to talk to Sam anyway. But maybe not. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get away from work after– you don’t need to know about that. Don’t need to worry about that. Just hold onto me. Just hold onto Jonas. What do you need to see for, anyway? Except to see me. Adam will love this. She needs to be blindfolded Father, for her health.”

The girl giggled. The ironical scrunch of his voice was enough to break the cocoon of words that Jonas had been weaving around her. He’d been speaking to her so seriously: not just in cooing, nonsense sounds, but in expressive, long sentences with questions and ideas. It sounded like how a man might speak with another man. She giggled again. She must be pretty important for him to talk to her that way.

“What was that, girl? You think that’s funny? You don’t think I’ll do it, do you? I was joking, but what am I supposed to do with you, Sunlight. Just let you trust every man who walks into your line of sight? You know I’m serious, don’t you. You see right through me. So, what’s funny then, girl? Don’t think Adam will go for it? No faith in my abilities as an orator! You don’t think I can sell it? Father, her eyelids are weak. She needs to rest them. Father, women never evolved the parasympathetic blink. If I don’t keep her eyes closed, they’ll dry out! She’s intimidated by you, Father. That’s a good one. Haven’t you heard that women are naturally spiritual creatures. Your connection to our Parents is too powerful for her. Your reproductive energies conflict– fuck– I mean–”

He fell back on the floor, taking her with him. She laughed again. It was more than a giggle this time; it was a full, body-shaking laugh. That other-worldly, gossamer voice of hers was clear under her huffing breaths, louder and more expressive than he’d ever heard her. He couldn’t help but laugh with her. They shared their hysterics until the overhead light blurred in his vision, and he realized that his laugh had transmogrified into a sob.

She propped herself up on his chest and looked down at him, watching his chest stutter underneath her palms.

“It’s okay, Sunlight, I’m okay,” he started to soothe in a broken voice.

Except, she didn’t appear frightened or disturbed, only quizzical. She pulled herself further up on his chest until her hair curtained both of their faces. They breathed each other’s breath: warm, sweet, and moist. She poked her tongue out and prodded at the wet prickle of his cheek. He felt so calm, so focused on the tickle of her, that it was strange to recall he had just been crying the hardest, he thought, he’d ever cried in his life.

“Thank you, Mother,” he said, his mouth at her neck. His voice croaked but didn’t shake. “I am blessed. I am blessed. Oh, thank you.”

…

“I’m glad you invited me to dinner, Adam. I would like to catch up with you about a few things.”

“Sit down, Jonas, for Mother’s sake, is that a tie? Have you blindfolded the poor girl?” The poor girl in question sat on the ledge of Jonas’s forearm. She leaned into his body and leafed her fingers through his hair contentedly.

“She’s overwhelmed, Adam. Wherever she came from had a lot less excitement than the Citadel Palace.”

“She will adjust with time.”

“This amount of stress is too much for her body. She’s had a very long day. She’s so… so little. She needs time to recover from all this stimulation. She was pale and shaking when I brought her back to my quarters to change for dinner. Change from one t-shirt to another, that is. I’ll need to have some clothes made in her size.” He affectionately plucked at the collar of his gym t-shirt where it hung halfway down her spine. “What was it that women wear? Do you have a tailor I can use?” He had a vague picture in his mind of a robe or toga-like garment. He wanted her bundled up and warm, but he also wanted easy access to her body. Maybe he’d add tether points.

“I’m sure he’d be delighted to have that job. The man’s an inveterate gossip. Will she need her own table setting?”

Of course, she wouldn't. She wouldn’t be able to feed herself blindfolded. Anyway, he liked the idea of sharing. No, not sharing, which implied a compromise between two people. Why would she have her own setting? She was his. She was him. They were two parts of the same individual. They ate the same food because they took up the same space, the way his dick fit in her body, or her body fit in his torso.

“No, no need.”

“I suppose not with her trussed up like that.”

“Adam, she–”

“I’m just teasing you, Jonas. You’re obsessed.”

“You have no idea.”

Jonas was having a hard time focusing on Adam, who was mid-complaint. Some rumors had been reported near Eden Market.

“–as though I wanted this to happen.”

There was more than one overheard comment, apparently. He should have been more proactive. Dispatched guards to the wealthy neighborhoods. He must have known this was coming. Adam’s voice raised a pitch.

Jonas nodded at Adam as he attempted to wrangle Sunlight. She felt so secure in the darkness with only the feeling of his body all around her that she had forgotten where they were. She wiggled around in his lap and rubbed herself against him. He put one hand on the back of her head, protecting her from bonking into the chair’s tall arms and another around her thighs to stop her squirming. Finally, he lifted her up and deposited her on the chair, pinning her thighs between his own and wrapping an arm around her chest.

Sunlight settled against him. She disliked the unforgiving feeling of the wooden chair, and she missed Jonas’s lap. Sitting like this, she couldn’t bury her head in his body to block out the staccato, nasally sound of the other man’s voice. He’d been talking for a long, long time. When would it be her Jonas’s turn to talk? She wanted him to interrupt this… what was his name? Adam, and talk to her. Say the nice things they said. Their phrases. As she waited, she swung her legs and toyed with the impossibly smooth fabric of Jonas’s pants.

Then, rich, deep smells flooded the room. Things she couldn’t place. Meat, but many other things, too. She twitched as though to reach up and take off her blindfold, but she quickly stilled her hands in her lap. She knew Jonas had put it on her for a reason, and he would take it off of her himself when he wanted to.

A finger was at her mouth, pushing past her lips and against the wall of her teeth. She opened to let it in. It pressed down gently against her tongue, and she opened her mouth. The finger withdrew, but before she could close her mouth, it was back. Two fingers, and a pinch of something crisp and salty and decadent.

When she finished that bit, she opened her mouth for more. Jonas smiled. His girl didn’t have the most refined palate. Her favorite foods were chicken broth, cocoa, and fries. He’d have to diversify her diet, but he was happy to see her eat at all. Nathaniel had said it wasn’t healthy to be able to see her ribs, spine, and hip bones. Her delicate body didn’t have anything more to give. He didn’t know how she didn’t collapse under her own weight. He wished he could reach into her chest and beat her heart for her or hook her up to him so he could breathe for her.

“Fry,” Jonas said.

Slightly embarrassed to have been asking for something he didn’t want her to have, Sunlight closed her mouth. He pet her head and repeated the word.

“Fry,” she copied in one short, quick trill.  

“Good girl,” he soothed, and put another piece in her mouth.

“You’re really training her like a puppy!”

“I’m not training her. I’m teaching her. She needs to know basic things, like how to ask for food.”

“I belong to Jonas Primus.”

Sunlight flinched. She didn’t like to hear their phrase in Adam’s voice. Maybe it was silly, but she thought of that like a promise they made to each other. Something they said to each other as reassurance: as though to reaffirm that he owned her and she belonged to him.

“Like I said, I’m teaching her.”

He fed her another piece of fry. “Fry,” she said, without prompting. He patted her on the head and watched Adam’s cold gaze take in the gesture. For once, he didn’t say whatever it was he was thinking.

“I think you should speak to the Weekly tomorrow morning. Make it clear how hard I’m working on this. That nobody can hide forever, not in the Citadel.”

“In the meantime,” Jonas added, “people should stay inside as much as possible. What’s the best way to stop unsavory talk?”

“Hm?”

“Keep people from talking. But you should really do it yourself, Adam. People need to see their leader is unwavering, strong, you know, on top of things.”

“You want me to go cry for Sol? What the fuck do I pay you for?”

“Telling you what to say. Rubbing pepper under your eyes if you need it.”

“No way.”

“Adam.” He slightly inclined his head toward the girl in his lap.

“What? She won’t know a reporter from anyone else. Or did you need a sitter for your puppy?”

“Father. There won’t be a single question about the attack if I talk to Solomon Tertius with a girl in my lap.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.”

“Father–”

“Bring her or don’t, Jonas, but don’t manage me. Calling me Father at the dinner table, seriously, Jonas. I know when someone’s trying to lick my ass.”

“You’re right, Adam. I’m sorry. I’m just– Mother, I found her yesterday.” Jonas let out a shaky breath. “I’m freaking out. I don’t know how to care for a girl. I mean, I put a fucking blindfold on her.”

“I think the blindfold can go.”

“So, you’re right, Adam. I’m distracted. I need some time to figure her out. I know the timing is bad, I just think if I took her away from all this, to the hunting cabin you let me keep. If I spent some time really studying her… say… a week?”

“The last attack was just over a week ago.”

“So, yes, I know. Maybe I can do some work. Maybe I can…”

“Jonas.”

“Sorry. Sorry, Adam.” Jonas put his face in Sunlight’s hair and breathed deeply. “Let’s enjoy our dinner. We can talk business with espresso.”

He cut off a piece of steak small enough that he could hardly pinch it between his fingers without losing track of it. He’d never given her a food this hard to chew before.  

“Ready for some protein, Sunlight? Let’s build you some muscles.”

He poked her bicep with his index finger. She giggled, and he took the opportunity to press her mouth open and give her the bite of steak. Her face froze and then scrunched up adorably. Uh-oh. Seemed she liked this even less than porridge. She swallowed and then shot him a confused, disgruntled look. Jonas laughed.

“Aw, I’m sorry, Sunlight. Alright, no more steak for you. How dare I feed you something with nutritional value, right? Mean Jonas.”

“You’re nowhere near firm enough with her. She needs discipline.”

 Jonas said nothing. He wouldn’t make the mistake of being that demonstrative in front of Adam again.

“What? The girl’s skin and bones.”

“She is.”

Jonas fed her another French fry.

“She’s obviously been neglected,” he said after a long silence.

“I haven’t even thought about figuring out where she’s from. We’ll have to know. If someone’s breeding girls…”

“You’re thinking there could be more?”

Jonas and Adam listlessly theorized until they were both sated and Sunlight turned her head when he put more food at her lips.

An octavus man in the black tie Adam preferred for his servants brought out espresso and slices of tiramisu. She’d have room for a treat. His sweet girl had a sweet tooth. He forked up a sliver of it for her, holding the fork to her lips. She beamed when she tasted it, tilting her head back at him. He kissed her forehead. When the servant had gone, Adam spoke sharply:

“You’ll talk to Sol at eight tomorrow morning.”

Adam was going to say more, but he drew silent when Sunlight let out a pathetic little choking sound.

 Jonas snatched her up.

“No. No. No. No. Call for Nathaniel.”

He tapped gently on her back, terrified of hurting her fragile ribs. He thought he could snap one with his pinky finger. If they broke, they could pierce her lungs. But if she couldn’t breathe… fuck, fuck fuck. Suddenly, he remembered the vial Nathaniel had given him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He pulled the small bottle from where he’d stored it in his chest pocket, breaking the seal. When she tasted it, her face twisted up in disgust.

“Jonas.”

He put his finger in her mouth to press her tongue out of the way.

“Jonas, she seems fine.”

Nathaniel rushed in then.

“Don’t give her that.”

“What?” Jonas pulled it away from her, half empty.

“It’s an emetic,” he panted.

He took hold of her jaw. Jonas’s hand floated around his, eager to pull him away.

The girl tried to shy back from the unfamiliar hand on her face, but the movement seemed to dislodge something in her. She gave a soft whine and then vomited her dinner on Nathaniel's hand.

Chapter Text

Red light seared through her eyelids.

“Jonas,” she croaked, making hardly any sound.

“I’m here. Jonas is here. Shh. Don’t talk. Keep your eyes closed.”

Sunlight opened her eyes. Jonas was right in her face, leaning over her. That was good. She closed her eyes again. She felt like she was floating into gray fuzz. If she focused on her body, it felt sore and feverish, but it was easy to stop feeling it entirely. Jonas was saying something to her. That was a relief. As long as she could hear his voice. His hands were on her arms and chest and face and legs, all at the same time, touching her, stroking her. Moving up and down and up and down.

“Good girl?” She let out, hoarse and pitiful.

“Good girl,” said Jonas. “Good girl. Good girl. My good girl.” His voice was all wrong. Harsh and loud like how he talked to other men, not to her.  

Nathaniel said something then, and Jonas swung around towards him. He kept his palm resting lightly on her sternum where he could feel the rise and fall of her chest and the beating of her heart.

Jonas was speaking in a rapid, angry voice. What had happened? Why had Jonas blindfolded her and then fed her that terrible vinegary drink that made her throw up? And why was he angry? She shifted and heard something crinkle. For the first time she processed their surroundings: Nathaniel’s room.

“Good girl?” She said again, without meaning to.

Her voice wouldn’t have been audible, except Jonas felt the vibrations of her speech under his palm.

“Good girl,” he said. “Good girl. Good girl.” This time he spoke softly, but his eyes weren’t on hers. They darted around without lingering, hitting her and Nathaniel and the paper that was being fed out of one of the strange beeping objects.

He sat at the head of the cot and shifted her body into his lap. His grip was so loose she could have melted out of his hands like dough.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that was a man’s dose.” Jonas kept his voice low and soft. He stroked her brow with his pinky finger but pulled it away when she shivered. “What if I’d given her the whole thing? She could have died. She’s far too weak to be vomiting at all. I didn’t even know it was an emetic. You just said to give it to her if anything’s wrong after she eats.”

“I thought you’d know I meant in an emergency.”

“It was an emergency!” Jonas hissed and then closed his eyes. He kissed Sunlight on the forehead, then the lips. She was cold and clammy

 “Shh,” he said. “Shh, it’s alright. I should have you arrested. I should have you executed for attempted murder.” He kept his eyes on Sunlight and his voice in a soft coo.

“Jonas. Don’t be absurd. Are you going to have me arrested or are you going to let me check her over. Your little girl has lost all her food. She’s terrified and ill. She needs medical attention; don’t let your pride get in the way of that.”

“Go on then.”

Jonas let him take her pulse and blood– she didn’t seem to notice the prick, never stopped looking at Jonas with wide, lost eyes– but when Nathaniel reached for the collar of her shirt, he held out his hand for the stethoscope.

Before he left, Nathaniel placed another vial on the desk. Jonas stared at him.

“It’s up to you,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want it?” He took it.

Jonas carried the girl through the corridors in a daze. He knew he should be reassuring her, talking to her. She would be scared.

“It’s okay.” He said in a low, flat tone. She buried her face in his neck.

Jonas hadn’t known he was capable of such fury? Panic? An emotionality so blind that he couldn’t distinguish more details. Like a light so bright it could only be white. He prided himself on being a reasonable, level-headed man. But how could he– not when… She wasn’t even safe sitting on his lap. She was this fragile, unstable coincidence. If the universe had its way, she would never have existed. He was fighting against centuries of entropy to keep her. Against the gradual inevitability of human extinction. She was an error, an aberration, and all the forces of the universe were set out to correct it.  Her diminutive form was pressed up against the force of history… with him at her back. He sighed. God wanted her dead. Nature wanted her dead. Nathaniel wanted her dead.

He tried to focus on the warmth of her little, huffing breaths against his neck. She was breathing. And if she stopped? What could he do? He felt the balloon of panic that occupied his chest now expand a bit further.

He stopped short just before he would have walked into the big picture window at the end of his hallway. He looked down at his foot, kicked it lightly against the wall, confused. He must have walked right past his quarters, and he would have walked directly into the window with her body pressed to his chest, the full momentum of his 300 pounds of force pushing her through glass. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t qualified for this. He sunk to the ground, bracing his body around her. She should be in an airtight, padded room: straitjacketed, blindfolded, cocooned up where nothing could touch her.

Why were they sitting on the floor? Sunlight leaned her head back to look at Jonas. She couldn’t see anything on his face. It was like looking at a photorealistic portrait. It was Jonas, but he wasn’t in there. They sat like that for a long time: her face tucked into his neck and his chin on her head.

After a long while, she said, “I belong to Jonas Primus.”

She heard the click of his mouth as if to respond, but footsteps from the other end of the long, stone corridor silenced him. Most of the floors in this place were made of a white stone that, on the rare occasion he let her walk, sent cold aches up her shins. It made the sounds of men walking multiply like armies.

Jonas palmed the back of her head, pressing her face further into his neck. As the footsteps amplified, she began to feel the aching of her body. The air was painful against her exposed skin.

The sounds of the footsteps ceased and someone spoke. His voice was low and quiet. She felt the electricity of Jonas’s stubble against her hair as he shook his head. Then he spoke, briefly, dully, and the footsteps started up again.

He turned her head so she was looking out into a forest. She was startled for a second, thinking they had somehow ended up outside, before she realized it was a window: huge and spotless and uninterrupted by muntins. It seemed physically impossible, but that didn’t scare her anymore. She’d accepted that she lived in a magical world now. It would be alright as long as Jonas was there to guide her. The trees were a different story. It was dark outside, but she could see the gnarls of the closest oaks and pines, illuminated by the hallway’s light, reaching out to swallow her up, rip her out of Jonas’s arms. And beyond that, just an incomplete dark like so many shades of spilled ink. Was this the forest where Jonas had found her? Was it the forest where Papa had lived? How was it that what was most familiar to her was most unsettling. She’d touched trees just like this. Slept among their roots. She’d woken up to the rising sun with twigs in her hair and lines of ants crawling on her skin. She might have turned her head away out of a childish sense that what she couldn’t see wouldn’t get her, but she felt so drained that even that small intervention into this reality– directing her eyes away from where Jonas had pointed them– seemed impossible. If he would just talk to her, she was sure she would be alright, but the silence was so full she thought they’d live like that forever.

…

She sat on Jonas’s lap, chest to his chest, while he spoke to the air. This was one of the most perplexing things she’d encountered in this strange, magical place. It really sounded like someone else was in the room. She imagined tunnels running through the walls, her Jonas’s voice carried like water through the pump of a well. She wanted to chase it, to run across the building so she could be there to hear it when it arrived in whatever room it was headed towards. Instead, she put her hand on the front of his throat and felt it there.

“No,” Jonas was saying. “No, no, no.” He opened his mouth again, hoping something diplomatic would come out: “No.”  

“Maybe we’d better talk in the morning.”

“Adam. I don’t know what to say. Father, I mean. Adam. Fuck. I mean. Adam, there’s just no way I’m taking her to that meeting tomorrow. I’d quit first. I’m sorry to say it. I wish… anything. But I can’t. I will not.” He was fucking things up beyond repair. He should not be talking to Adam in this state. He felt like someone had taken an ice cream scooper to the inside of his brain.

“I’m coming to your quarters.”

“N–” the intercom clicked off. “God fucking damn it. Nevermind. Sorry. Don’t mind me, Sunlight.” She perked up at that, acutely aware that he hadn’t really talked to her since she woke up in Nathaniel’s room. “Don’t mind me, just losing my mind.”

He took her into the bedroom and wrapped her up tight in a quilt. It wasn’t soft enough for her skin, but it would have to do for now. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, and her eyes were covered. Only her nose and mouth were exposed. He paced around, holding her against his chest. He ordered her chicken broth and cocoa. Her third cocoa of the day. He’d give her diabetes if he wasn’t careful. But she was just so good. So sweet. And she had to eat something. Mother, how many calories had she lost?

“Cocoa?” He said to her, “Does my good girl need some cocoa as a treat for being so good? Good girl.”

“Good girl,” she exhaled with relief.

Two sharp knocks at the door.

“Okay,” he whispered to her. “We’re okay.”

He held his bundle in one hand and opened the door with the other.

Jonas was good at reading Adam’s face. It was a skill he’d practiced. This, he had no clue. He stood there, his eyes practically bulging out of his head, saying nothing. When did this man say nothing? Fucking eerie.

“Come in, Adam.”

Jonas sat on a loveseat. She was short enough to stretch out her legs all the way with her head on his lap. He turned her around, so her face was towards his torso. Then, he leaned in and whispered to her, “Shh. Close your eyes, Sunlight. Try to rest.” With a butterfly-light touch, he used the pads of his pinky fingers to draw down her eyelids.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “That I spoke to you that way. I didn’t mean it. You have to understand–”

“You’ll take the stupid meeting then?”

“Adam…”

“So you did mean it.”

“I didn’t mean–”

“You didn’t mean to be so honest with me? Is that it?” Adam was yelling, then.

Sunlight whimpered and wiggled closer to Jonas, who pressed his palm to the part of the blanket-bundle where her ear should be.

“Father, please. I understand you’re angry, but Sunlight is exhausted and ill. More stress is… look, let’s talk about this as friends, alright? As Father and Son. We’re under a lot of stress. The girl. The bombings. The… disobedience. But we’re on the same team with all of it. We need to work it out together, alright? I see that now, Adam. Have a drink with me?”

Adam looked at him with a cold, hard expression on his face for a long moment. Jonas was sure he didn’t believe all of what he’d said. He thought he might call him on it, but he just said, “alright. A drink.”

He took the liquor Jonas poured him: a dark, bitter drink they made out of oak. He shook his head, “the next time I see you, you’ll have her mummified!”

“Now that’s an idea,” he said, although even now he missed the feeling of her arms and legs. When he got Adam out of here, he’d lick up her calves and thighs. Maybe he could… Could he? Lick her vulva? He would.

Sunlight began to relax as Jonas spoke to Adam in a low, calm tone. He’d fixed it. Whatever the problem was, he fixed it. She closed her eyes. Her Jonas was so smart. So important.

…

When Sunlight woke up, it was because Jonas was securing her to his chest in a sort of sling made out of the quilt she’d been wrapped in. She blinked up at him in confusion.

“Shh. It’s okay. We’re going on a trip. Isn’t that exciting? And it will just be Jonas and Sunlight. Jonas and Sunlight… And Sam. But Sam won’t bother us. Sam will help us. I think. I told you Jonas would fix it. What did I do? Fix it. Sort of. Slow and steady. Slow and steady wins the race. You ever hear that one? About the tortoise and the hare? I’ll tell you about it someday. Tell you lots of stories.”

His prattle settled her from her disorientation, and she relaxed against his chest. She began to feel hot and realized he’d bundled her up in a long pea coat. It wrapped one and a half times around her body, and the hem tucked under her feet. She wiggled her toes. He’d put socks on her. They were loose around her and came up to her thighs. He pulled a wool hat on her then; it fell well over her eyes. She snuggled into him. She didn’t know why he did it, but she did feel comfortable when he covered her eyes like this. It blocked out the whole world except him.

“We’re gonna ride a horse. You’re not going to be scared of horses are you? Have you ever seen a horse? You’re not going to be scared because I have you. Not scared of anything in my arms.” He thought about her choking and vomiting in his lap and closed his eyes.

Sunlight was a bit nervous around the horse, but she liked animals. He lifted up the front of the hat to show her. It reminded her a little of Cream. She gave Jonas a tremulous smile.

“Good girl,” he said, “You’re so brave.”

He took her hand and placed it on the flank of the animal.

“Horse,” he said. She squeaked it back to him. He broke into a wide smile. “My brave girl.”

He stalled, tugging at her leash. He hoped the sling would keep her secured to him, but it was just a rough knot. In the event it failed and she fell, the leash might choke her.  He bid a servant to fetch him a length of rope from the barn and tied a loop around both of their waists. There, now the leash was only an issue in the result of two failures. Still… He undid it.

It was only a few minutes before the girl began to really enjoy the ride. The wind on her face was thrilling. She’d longed to be outside and now he’d managed to bring her back to the forest while keeping her safe from it, above it. They flew through stretches of woods that she thought might have taken her a whole day to walk. There really was no end to what her Jonas could do. She stared up at him in awe.

“And I’m aware that I didn’t feed you, girl. Trust me. And that you fell asleep before I could get anything into you last night. And who knows how much food you lost… Sunlight. Oh Sunlight. Who knew it would be so difficult to keep a little thing like you fed. My beautiful orchid. My precious, beautiful, nearly extinct, highly coveted orchid. Which is why I haven’t fed you yet, by the way. As soon as Adam relented, I was getting you out of there. You’re lucky I let you sleep as long as you did. Not enough. Still not enough. Think you can hold on another few hours for breakfast? I want to be further away before we stop. Such a good girl.”

Sunlight managed to fall back asleep to the gentle rocking of her body along with the motion of the horse.

She woke up as he dismounted. He tied up the horse and then undid her rope and sling. He lay the quilt on a piece of soft grass and sat her there.

“Stay there, huh? I’ll get breakfast.”

She lay on her back and watched the last pink flush of dawn fade from the sky until he was on her. He was like a great beast on its all fours above her, his forearms around her head and his thighs around her hips. The sky was gone and all she could see was his eyes, which were far bluer than the sky had been. Clearer too. More beautiful, she thought, as he kissed her. Then he began to unwrap her coat.

“It’s too cold to be doing this,” he sighed. “When we get home,” he said, as he bundled her up, “I have so much to learn about your body.” He kissed her when she frowned. “Aw, my girl misses my touch? Me too.”

He fed her chicken broth and cocoa from thermoses. He’d figured it wasn’t fair she didn’t get to have her favorite treats just because she’d fallen asleep like he told her to. She’d had plenty of new foods for the time being, anyway. He didn’t know what he’d do if what had happened last night happened out here. Chicken broth and cocoa would do just fine for now. He helped her pee and then sat her on the blanket.

“Stay here and wait for me.”

She watched the trees as he untied the horse. There was something there. A flash of motion. Then it stilled. Incarnated into a pale form. It was a man. She opened her mouth to call for Jonas, but she saw his face first. Papa!

Chapter Text

“Papa,” she whispered. Her eyes ricocheted between him and Jonas sure she was dreaming one of them, scared she was dreaming both of them. “Jonas, Papa,” she said louder.

“Just a second, Sunlight. What are you saying? Papa? Don’t think I taught you that one.” He didn’t look up from the stubborn knot he was loosening.

She stood up, but the overlong pea coat tripped her, and she stumbled back to the grass. Her Papa was moving closer to her now. He was wearing clean, new clothes: a heavy black jacket and jeans: the type of stuff they’d never had before.

“Sunlight!” Jonas yelled, and then she was scooped up over his shoulder. The blood rushed to her head. “Stay where you are!”

“Jonas, Papa!” Sunlight repeated.

Jonas didn’t respond. He had his left arm wrapped around her thighs; his right pointed his pistol at the stranger. The man was older, maybe seventy, with lank salt and pepper hair that fell all the way to his chin and a long, unkempt beard. His skin was gaunt and sallow: underfed. He had, or had once had, an intelligent spark in his dark eyes but it was dulled by a cloud cover of exhaustion. The man put his hands up and said something in a language Jonas had never heard. It was a lilting, slurred language: nothing like Foundational.

“Come out of the trees,” said Jonas.

“I won’t hurt her,” said the man. “I won’t hurt Chavah.” Where had he heard that accent?

“Come out of the trees with your hands up.”

“My Foundational is very bad.”

“Here!” Snapped Jonas, gesturing to the grass between them. The stranger scurried forward, keeping his hands up. When the man was in front of him, he slid Sunlight down his body. She spun towards the stranger.

“Papa!” She said pointing at the man. Her eyes were big with threatening tears. Jonas looked between the two of them, then drew her leash from his pocket and clipped her to his wrist, only lowering the gun momentarily to work the clasp.

“You know her? Why are you here?”

“My girl,” said the man, pointing at Sunlight.

“My girl!” Jonas snapped. He pulled Sunlight behind him and out of the stranger’s line of sight.

“Your girl. Your girl… my small girl. My Chavah.”

“Your small girl? You have a different girl? Or… Chavah?” She peeked her head around his body.

“Chavah!” She touched her own chest. “Papa,” she tried again, pointing at her Papa.

“Ah. I should shoot you,” mused Jonas, “for the state I found her in. Alone in the woods, uncollared, malnourished, dehydrated, bruised. You call that yours?”

 “Sorry,” said the man, “my Foundational–”

“Your Foundational is very bad, yes. Why did you leave her? She could have died! Dead. Do you understand me? Murderer.” He jabbed his gun in the man’s direction.

“Jonas,” whimpered Sunlight. Jonas let out a breath.

“Alright. Alright. Turn out your pockets. Empty your bag.” Jonas mimed what he wanted, and the man complied.  He had a small pistol, which Jonas took, water, a packed lunch, a set of keys, and a notepad and stack of letters in a foreign script. “Why are you here?” 

The man spoke in his language. It’s alright, little Chavah. Has this man been taking care of you?

“Hey! Who said you could talk to her?” At Jonas’s exclamation, the horse, which had been frightened and edging closer to the trees since Jonas had left it, whinnied and took off in the direction of the Citadel. The stranger looked down submissively.

“I won’t hurt Chavah. I help Chavah.”

“Chavah is mine.”

“Yes. Chavah is yours.” Jonas looked in the direction the horse had gone. He might need this man’s help after all.

“Alright. Sunlight, you can talk to your Papa now. But one day you won’t be able to keep secrets from me, understand? What is the language called?” The man looked at him quizzically. “What language? Not Foundational, but…”

“Elahnian.” He would learn Elahnian. There shouldn’t be anything in Sunlight’s head he didn’t know. It would be a special language for just the two of them. Maybe she didn’t need Foundational after all.

Answer me, little Chavah.

Sunlight peeked up at Jonas, who nodded and stroked back her hair, in a state of disarray from when he’d held her upside down.

Yes, Papa. I think… I mean, I thought he owned me now. I didn’t know where you were…

It’s alright, Chavah. That’s right. He’s good to you? Better than I was?

Jonas is good to me. You were good to me. But he has so much food… I don’t know where it comes from, Papa, he doesn’t have a cow or anything, and he lives in a house the size of the whole world where all the beds are as soft as air and big enough to hold a dozen men and… Papa, are you going to cry?

I’m sorry, Chavah. It’s just… when I sent you away, the only thing I could do was pray to God that someone like Jonas would find you. I never thought I could know for sure. I never thought I would– I apologize for upsetting you, Chavah. Yes, you’re right. You belong to Jonas now.

Can’t… couldn’t I belong to both of you?

No, Chavah. You belong to Jonas. You need to obey him.

Okay, Papa. I… I love Jonas.

Jonas was reaching his limit. Oh, he could listen to her speak forever. Her voice was like an emotional pulse on her– a constant input of information. She’s okay. She’s happy. She’s breathing. She’s alive. And that voice. To hear it actually speak: to communicate. This girl was from a different reality. An alien being speaking an alien language with an alien tongue, and she belonged to him.

But he couldn’t stand the fact that there was something about her he didn’t know. A whole lot he didn’t know actually. She was talking about him. His name wove its way into her sweet little song and reminded him that what she was saying meant something. And this other man knew what it was. He could be poisoning her against him. Confusing her. Scaring her. He knew everything about her, and Jonas knew nothing. 

“What’s she saying?”

“She is yours. She knows.”

“Of course she does.”

Have you been praying, Chavah?

No, Papa.

“Enough,” said Jonas. “Are you alone? Is there anyone who can translate for us?”

“Alone,” the man confirmed. “But… Alone.” Jonas waited. The man shook his head. “Secret.”

“Jonas Primus of the Citadel.” He held out his hand. The man walked forward and took it. Sunlight could have reached out and touched her Papa. She didn’t know if that was allowed. She tightened her fist in Jonas’s jacket.

“Paz.”

“Of?” Paz shook his head. “What community? Where do you belong?”

“Traveler.”

“You raised Sunlight in exile? Sunlight?” He pointed at her.

“Traveler.”

 How had she survived that? Exile was all but a death sentence for a grown man. There was no way that his Sunlight could have survived the extreme, volatile temperatures, the roving gangs, the mutated animals… every year the Knights found dozens of men dead in the elements. The week before he found his Sunlight, he’d found a fractured femur bone in that same stream. And what community would exile a girl?

“Why?”

“Chavah. To save Chavah.”

“Save her from what?” Paz shook his head. More than his Foundational permitted or another secret? “Fine. Why are you here?”

“Secret.”

“Have you been watching her? Follow?”

“No. I saw Chavah. Wow. Never think Chavah will be here. I saw she is okay, with a man. I think thank you, God.”

“She’s safe with me. I take good care of her.”

 “Eat together?” asked Paz.

The three of them sat on the quilt. Paz unwrapped a piece of yellowed paper from around his sandwich. He tore off a corner for Sunlight, who started to reach for it and then retreated back into Jonas’s lap, waiting for permission.

“Does she have allergies? Is there anything she can’t eat? That makes her sick?”

“No, it doesn’t make her sick. Safe for Chavah.”

“What’s not safe? Which foods makes her sick?”

“Very much spicy, sour, bitter.” Paz shrugged. “We had very little. Maybe other foods.”

“How do you know this is safe then?” Jonas gestured to the sandwich.

“This? Safe for Chavah. Bread… wheat, water…” he searched his vocabulary for a moment and then opened the sandwich to show Jonas. A thin shmear of butter and some sort of sliced, cured meat. “I make it. I know.”

Jonas took it from him.

“Do you want to try this, Sunlight? Eat? Eat more?” He tore off a little piece of meat and put it in her mouth. “Mmmm?”

She didn’t much like the taste, but the meat was familiar– something Papa might have brought her before things got really bad– and she liked the bread and butter. Jonas gave her less of that though. When they’d finished, she reclined against Jonas’s chest and listened to the men talk. It was disorienting to hear Papa speak Jonas’s tongue. Did that mean he’d known about this world? If he’d known about the magic that Jonas practiced, why had they lived as they had? What if she had met Jonas sooner? He would have taken care of her and Papa. He'd take care of them now. Jonas finger-combed through her hair as she wondered at the complex relations of men. It made her head spin to think that Papa and Jonas lived in the same world after all. All this time, she’d believed she’d stepped into a different reality. She looked up and realized Papa was gazing at her, and he once again looked like he might cry.

Papa? Are you alright?

Yes, little Chavah. Don’t worry about me. He stood up.

Wait, Papa! You’re not… do you have to leave already?

I will return. Stay here and behave for Master Jonas.

He looked at her for another moment and then gathered up his belongings and walked back into the woods.

…

Paz rode into the clearing to the sound of giggling. Jonas had the girl up on his shoulders and was walking circles around the perimeter, rambling his best guesses at fairytales he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard. He stopped mid-sentence:

“–but the second pig was also very stupid, so– Paz.”

“Beautiful. Very many days since I hear her laugh.” He dismounted and handed the reins to Jonas. “When…?” He gestured between the two of them.

“Sunday. Two days.” Paz looked a little sick. He held up his hand, then put down two fingers.

“Five,” he said.

“Five? You left her five days ago?” Paz nodded. “Then she was alone in the woods for three days?”

As the silence stretched on, Sunlight began to feel concerned. She pet the top of Jonas’s head.

“Still safer,” Paz said finally. “I think not very likely you find her– you, man to keep her safe– not very likely.” He held up his ten fingers and then put nine down. “Jonas.” He put that finger down, and the other nine up. “Nobody. Still better.”

“You thought there was a 90% chance she would die of exposure, be mauled by an animal or, worse, a man?” He started to simplify, “you thought–” but evidently Paz understood the gist.

“Maybe...” He folded his index finger in half and held it up. “Still safer.”

“How?”

Paz shook his head. “Too much… always run from men. Never… very close. They got very close.”

“Who are these men? Where did she come from?” Jonas had tried to ask this question several times already and received only Paz’s frustrating, signature head shake. This time he sucked his teeth. He appeared deep in thought. “Is she your daughter?”

“Daughter?” Of course, Paz never would have had occasion to hear this word before. Then his face lit up. “Knights! You call them knights.”

“Knights were looking for her?”

“Knights come for her. She has to run. Not safe.”

“Still? Now?”

“She’s yours now. Safe. More safe. I can’t. I… traveler.”

“… and travelers can’t own property.” Still, a battalion of knights could easily overpower him. If they were in the woods hunting her, he needed to get her out of here. “Is she fertile?” He brought her down from his shoulders and ran a hand from her stomach to the tops of her thighs, covered by the coat. He brought his hand out, as though her stomach was growing. Paz made an equivocal sound.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe one day. She… we don’t find out. They want women but don’t. I took her before they find out.”

“Does she bleed? Puberty?” Paz displayed his empty hands in a gesture of incomprehension. Mother, these are the last Foundational words a traveler might come across. He touched where his coat fell over her thighs and wiggled his fingers like falling blood.

“Pee? She pees like–”

“No. Blood, like…” he briefly considered cutting himself to make the point, but he didn’t think Paz would understand that either. “Never mind. I will learn Elahnian and then you will tell me everything you know about her. These knights– are they in these woods? Knights are where?”

Paz chuckled. “Everything will be very easy if I know this, eh? Easy life for me; easy life for you; easy life for Chavah. No fun,” and a latent glimmer– one that Jonas thought spoke to Sunlight’s imperilment– came back into his eye. Yes, it was a good thing that this man no longer had custody of a girl.

“In that case, I need to get her out of here. You can say goodbye to her, reassure her you’re alright, then it’s past time we leave. Thank you again for the horse, Paz.”

Paz shook his head. “For Chavah.” The two men shook hands.

It is time for you to continue on with Jonas, Chavah. You’ll behave for him.

But Papa–

Chavah.

Yes, Papa. I promise I will behave, but will I never see you again, please, Papa. There was a sob in her voice.

“What did you say to her? I told you to reassure her. Why is she crying? Shh, it’s alright. Come here, Sunlight.” Jonas pressed her into his abdomen.

Alright, little Chavah. I will show your master how to find me.

Paz walked past them to a far corner of the clearing. He moved a few feet into the forest, got down on his knees, and began to dig with his hands amongst the roots of a large oak tree. Jonas loomed over him, Sunlight in his arms. It only took Paz a minute to locate an oxidizing copper cylinder the size of his hand. He slid back the top layer, shaking loose clumps of dirt, and revealed a slot like the mouth of a mailbox. He turned it on its side and showed Jonas the modified bio-lock keeping it closed.

“Alright?” asked Paz.

“Alright,” agreed Jonas.

Chapter Text

Jonas rode up to his cabin through the muddy brown of a set sun. A frigid rain had started up soon after they left the clearing. Paz’s horse and Sunlight’s body were miraculous hearths against the cold. He had buttoned her into his coat over the one she was already wrapped in, her head scrunched up beneath his ribs. He compulsively rubbed his bundle like a sore stomach.

Seeing her Papa alive and healthier than he’d looked when she left him had lifted a shadow from Sunlight that neither she nor Jonas had realized was there. She’d spent the first hour of the journey chatting away to him, pointing to things for him to identify.

When the temperature dropped, Jonas had pushed her head under his coat. She would pop up, he would scold her, she would pop up. When he noticed her nose had turned an effulgent pink, he rested a heavy hand on her skull, keeping her down until she settled.

“Baby bird,” she said dreamily into his chest, recalling a particularly exciting find.

“Uh huh, baby bird. I’ve got a baby bird of my own, don’t I?”

“Horse?” She said, peeking her head up when he dismounted.

“He’ll be alright.” He tied him to a stand of trees that fenced in the cabin from the forest’s denser foliage. “We’ll bring him something to eat after I get you warm and ready for bed, alright? Get back down now, naughty girl.” He urged her back into his coat.

A prickle at the back of his neck had him drawing his gun before he turned around, just in time to see Sam lower his own weapon.

“I didn’t think Adam would let you leave so soon.” Jonas shook his head.

“Bastard wants her.”

“Is that Jonas Primus calling his holy Father a bastard? I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Fuck off, Sam. Heat up some water for her.” Sam held out a hand before Jonas could enter the cabin.

“There are others here.”

“What? Who?”

“Friends. I’ll explain everything when they leave, alright. There’s a lot you don’t understand.”

“Yeah, I’m well aware there’s a lot I don’t understand. You’ve been keeping a lot from me. You have a lot to tell me.” Sam nodded at that.

“I think I do.”

“Whatever, later. I need to get her warm. When can you get them out of here?”

“Not until the morning.”

“What? Sam–”

“It’s not smart to leave now. You take her to the bedroom. They’ll stay out of your way. I promise.”

“How many is they?”

“Three men.”

“Mother, Sam.”

“Don’t care about cursing in front of her anymore?”

“Just let me in.”

A wall of body odour greeted him at the door. They were sitting on his floor before the fire, hunched over a large map. They looked haggard, dirty, and underfed. Not Citadel men, certainly, travelers most likely. Sam came in behind him.

“Gentlemen, this is our friend Jonas. I mentioned him to you. This is his cabin, which he is kindly lending us for the night. Jonas is here on… important business,” he nodded to the bundle around his waist, which all of the men were staring at with unmitigated curiosity. “Please stay out of his way.”

Jonas gave the men a single, cursory nod and turned back to Sam.

“Hot water for a bath, please, and food. Something bland and simple. Oats should do.”

…

He had her tucked under the covers and was leaning over to kiss her when there was a knock at the door.

“Jonas, my friend David is here to help me carry the tub.”

Jonas looked around for somewhere to hide the girl, but the room was minimally furnished. Besides, he didn’t want to take her out of the bed. Her hair was wet, plastered to her skull, and she’d been shaking subtly when he unwrapped her. He drew the blanket up to her chin and reattached her leash.

“Alright, come on in.”

David stopped short in the doorway, trapped in a set of guileless brown eyes.

“David? Not a word to the other men, understand?”

“Jonas, they know.”

“What?”

“Later.”

“Not later. You don’t decide things like that. Not when it comes to her.”

“You have to trust me right now.” Jonas stared at him. “It’s… there were extenuating circumstances.”

Jonas felt a terrible, suffocating sense of impotence rise in his throat.

“I left a horse outside.”

“I took care of him.”

David was still staring at the girl.

“I belong to Jonas Primus,” she provided. David’s mouth opened, then closed.

“Good girl. What a good girl. You can leave now.”

Sam looked at him, something in his face that wasn’t quite an apology, but an entreaty for understanding. Don’t be like this. Jonas hardened his expression, and the men left.

He exhaled onto Sunlight’s face and closed his eyes. He didn’t like that there were other men here or that they knew about the priceless treasure underneath the same roof as them. It was a temptation that no man– certainly not one as destitute and hopeless as these men appeared– could be expected to ignore, but he felt miles safer here than in the Palace. These men were just men, and men could be killed.  

“Come on, Sunlight. Bath time.”

The water was too deep for her to sit upright and keep her face above water, so he sat in the tub and put her on his lap. The warm water melted her onto his body until she was a languid, jelly-fish-like thing: sticky, flush, and heavy. He scrubbed her torso, then kissed her, then again, and again. She giggled, her head lolled back against him, and she reached for his face, pulling him towards her. She smacked her lips.

“You want another kiss? Kiss?”

“Kiss,” she breathed.

He kissed her deeply. When he pulled away, the skin around her mouth was rubbed pink.  He touched his finger to it.

“So delicate. Naughty Jonas, huh? Naughty Jonas.”

“Naughty Jonas!”

“Hmm. I don’t think you get to call me naughty.”

“Naughty Jonas!”

“Naughty Jonas? Uh-uh. Naughty Sunlight.”  

“Naughty Sunlight!”

“Well, I don’t like that either. Sunlight’s being such a very good girl for me. With the week you’ve had, I thank God you’re so good. You found me, and now you’re being so patient with me as I figure out how to take care of you. Good girl. Good Sunlight.”

“Good Su– kiss?”

Jonas threw back his head and laughed, then obliged her softly. He lifted her out of the tub and stood her on his feet.

“Hold onto me while I dry you, baby bird.”

“Baby bird,” she smiled.

He put her hands on his hips and patted her dry as best he could: his delicate pats weren’t exactly effectual.

“Jonas kiss?” He kissed her softly, teasingly. She chased him with her lips, but he stood up straight, out of her reach. Her lips landed on his chest, and she looked up at him bashfully, trying to gauge whether he was unhappy with her. He grasped her around the waist and brought her, legs dangling, to the bed.

He kissed her toes first, licking and nibbling them until she giggled and squirmed. “Jonas!” in a hyphenated squeak. He gave one last slobbering kiss to her soft toes. They were so tiny. Why was he letting her walk anywhere without shoes on? Had he let her walk through the Palace barefoot? Mother. He licked and stroked his way down the smooth arch of her foot. It was like touching freshly floured dough. He could press his thumb right through her skin if he wanted.

“No more walking,” he said into her ankle. He nibbled and licked his way up her calves, taking his time to lick and suck and rub everywhere on her skin. When he got to her thighs, she started wiggling again.

“Jonas,” she pressed closer to him.

“Uh uh uh. Stay on the pillow and let me touch you. It’s very important you let me touch you however I please. Your body belongs to me, Sunlight.” He ran a hand down her torso. “I need to have complete access to you to take care of you. You never move away from where I put you. Do you understand me? That’s dangerous. Naughty girl.”

His teeth and beard scraped along her inner thighs, and then he was there: her sex. His mouth was wet and squirmy like a slug. Her breath drew short and fast. A pressure like a heavy bladder magnetized her to him, overriding what she had surmised was a rebuke to stay still, and then his tongue caught on something that drove a painful spike of pleasure through her sex.

“Jonas!” She squealed.

He pulled away and looked down at her curiously as she squirmed.

“Kiss?” He asked.

“Jonas, kiss!” she agreed, feeling an inexplicable urgency.

“It’s true then?” He held her lips apart with his fingers and looked at the panting, engorged tag of flesh. He touched it with his index finger, and her whole body contracted. He kissed it, pulled back to look at her, then gave it a long, flat lick. She seized against him, her thighs boneless and squirming around his jaw. Very gently, he pressed his teeth to it, nipped at as much of the skin as he could find. She was secreting that same salty mucus. Lots of it. Enough to make her organ like a wet, living oyster plucked from the sea. He pressed his lips to her hole and inserted his tongue, sucking and drinking from her deeply: a nectar that only he knew how to produce. A drink designed for him alone on this Earth. He fed her, and she fed him.

And then something she could only compare to being shot– in its intensity, its all-consuming physicality– broke through her rib cage. It had all the traits of pain, but it wasn’t painful. It was… it was… what was it? A new feeling just for Jonas that set her heart thundering through her bones. There was just her breathing, her heartbeat, flashes of the ceiling, her own voice, “Jonas!” and then the storm broke. She’d never experienced contentment as an active emotion, as something that consumed her just as fully as the fear of dark nights in the woods had, or the relief at seeing her Papa.

Jonas was kissing her face, her neck, speaking to her. She lay there and felt him, her whole world the tickle of beard hair on her clavicle, and then he was inside of her again. But it wasn’t like the last time. There was no pain, just a ghost of that new feeling. Like a piece of fruit next to the decadent sweet Jonas had given her just before whatever it was that happened that night had happened. It was always Jonas: the purveyor of these alien feelings. The world in a man.

…

A pressure in her bladder woke her. She tried to roll over, but quickly found that the warm, heavy hand pinning the back of her neck to Jonas’s chest was locked there. The room was pitch black–darker inside than it ever got outside. She had no idea how soon the morning would come. She squirmed, feeling something wet and sticky on her thighs. From last night? She reached her hand down and groaned at what she found there, pressing her face further into Jonas.

“Sunlight? Are you okay? What’s wrong, baby bird?” He ran a hand down her body, pausing when he felt how wet her thighs were. “This isn’t from last night, is it baby? Did you pee? Hush, it’s okay.” He got down on his knees between her legs. It was so hard to see in the dark, just a glint of something. There would be a book of matches somewhere here…

Red. Brown. Blood. His first reaction, as it tended to be these days, was panic.  He was running her slippery labia through his fingers, searching for where his teeth must have nicked her, before it hit him. Blood. She was bleeding from her genitals. He looked closer. There was no wound. The blood was coming from inside her. He pinched out the match and collapsed his head on her pubis in relief, breathing in copper.

The relief that he hadn’t hurt her held him for a long time before realization hit him a second time. Blood.  

“My children,” he said to neither Sunlight nor himself. He touched it, let it stretch between his fingers. “God has blessed me with the raw material of life. A third chance for humanity. Thank you for your mercy. Thank you.” He kissed her between her legs, tasting her blood. It was more viscous than blood should be, containing, he supposed, the animating substance of their species: the thing that resided in his soul and made him alive, tied man to God like no other animal.  “You have gifted me the blood of man. Oh Mother, I accept. I will take her. I will rebuild humanity with her. I accept, Mother.”

“Jonas?”

She started when he looked up at her, seeing a monster. It was dark, but she could just make out the glint of her blood on his face, the flash of his stained teeth, enlarged pupils focused with unwavering intent on her face. He scrambled up the bed to her face– a creature on its all fours over her body– then he was stroking her hair and shushing her, and he was Jonas again.

“Jonas, kiss?”

She frowned at the taste of her own blood, remembering herself, then she pointed to her bladder.

“You’re bleeding, Sunlight. It’s okay. It’s natural, huh?”

But he didn’t move her. She whimpered in renewed awareness of her body. She really had to pee. What had he called it before?

“Pa.”

“You want your Papa? Remember you belong to Jonas now. Jonas will help you. It’s okay.”

He touched her stomach, and the slight weight of his hand there had her squirming. Realization dawned on his face.

“Alright, Sunlight, girl. We have to go outside. We’ll be fast. Fast, fast, fast. Right? It’s still raining. Don’t want you out in that nasty rain. Hm. Maybe I should have you pee in a bowl or something. I suppose I should be extra careful of you when you’re bleeding. I’m sure that takes–”

“Jonas!”

“Okay, okay, okay. Bowl it is.”

He hoisted her into his arms, unwilling to leave her alone in a house with other men even for a moment.  

“Shh, Sunlight. We have to be quiet.” He covered her mouth with his free hand. As quietly as he could, he retrieved a pot for her and brought her back into the bedroom. The blood on his face might be difficult to explain.

He held her above the pot. She stared at him.

“Go on, Sunlight. Pee.”

“Pee?”

“Pee. It’s alright, baby bird. You can go.” He pressed against her bladder with just the tips of his fingers, humming softly under his breath, and she let go. “Good girl. Good girl, Sunlight. Time to get you cleaned up. Hmm. I wish I knew anything about anything about women. I should stop the bleeding. How do I stop the bleeding? Does it stop? Nathaniel said a week. Does that mean you bleed for a week non-stop? That can’t be right. You can’t lose that much blood. This is a lot of blood.”

As he spoke, he lit a lamp and dipped a t-shirt in the cold water left over from last night’s bath. He cleaned himself first, warming the cloth against his face and between his hands. Then he cleaned her. As he cleaned, more and more blood dribbled out of her vagina. She really wasn’t going to stop. A sick feeling grew in his stomach. He didn’t intend to tell anyone about her bleeding, but that would mean he had no way of knowing if something was wrong. He wrapped another t-shirt between her legs and around her waist, then brought her back to bed.

He felt like he’d hardly blinked before his door was slamming open. Sunlight gasped and shoved herself into the space between his arm and torso. He brought the blanket up to her chin and pressed her further into his body.

“It’s alright. It’s alright. Shh. It’s okay, Sunlight.”

“I’m sorry. I…” Sam was pale as death, his eyes wild on the two of them.

“You what?”

“I saw bloody footprints between here and the kitchen. I thought something happened… what did happen?”

“Mother. I haven’t. Given up on not cursing in front of her, that is. I just seem to be losing control of myself a lot lately. Close the door.”