Radomir thrust open the door to his wife’s room. The rusty hinges squealed at such rough treatment, the warped wood of the door bending beneath his forceful hand.

He was greeted by a brief look of surprise from Varda, then it rapidly tightened into a defensive glare as she saw the dark, look on his face. Her hair was arranged differently, smoothly sweeping back from her high brow and hanging in dark curls around her shoulders. It made a difference from her usual severe braid that pulled her hair high and tugged at her scalp. As he gazed at the harsh set of her mouth and the proud tilt of her chin he was reminded that a clever hairstyle did not make a woman beautiful and her least of all.

Valeriya didn’t even look at him, staring blankly at the wall.

He saw that he had interrupted Varda helping his wife into her nightgown after Hepsie had examined her. Valeryia’s pale skin glowed silver in the candlelight, her dank, greasy hair hanging limply down her clammy back. His gaze trailed down over the soft humps of her breasts. He could see now that, though her shoulders were frail and wasted her breasts swelled, round and firm. He followed their curves down to the top of her belly. When standing beside Varda with her flat, trim stomach the gentle swell of his wife’s was extremely obvious. He wondered that he had not noticed before, but then he had never expected her capable of such a betrayal. He found himself wondering why. There had not been a single person that he loved who had not betrayed in some way in the end. Not a single one.

And now his wife, his lawful, wedded wife had lain with some man like any cheap, dockside trollop. He wondered if she had liked it, had she moaned and thrashed when he ran his hands over those swollen breasts, cried out in pleasure as he entered her. Had she taken him between those plump, luscious lips of hers as she had never done for him. Had it been only once or had it been many times when Radomir had left his beside vigil to sleep or shit. And yet she had been cool to the attentions he paid her. It was too much to bear. His heart was twisting inside him, roasting like a hog on the spit, the cruel flames licking at his tortured body.

“You splay-legged slut!”, he whispered hoarsely.

Now she turned her head slowly to look at him with tired eyes. One hand unconsciously moved up to rest lightly on the curve of her belly. So she knew.

“What has the she done to deserve these harsh words My Lord?”, Varda demanded coldly.

The fire flared, fuelled by the grating sound of her voice, “That little strumpet has bedded another man and now she carries his simpering whelp”.

Varda stared in shock at Valeriya, her mouth falling softly open. He saw a flicker of emotion pass over her face, a slight tightening of her jaw, her shapely brows flitting into a confused frown, eyes glancing at the gentle curve of Valeriya’s belly and then she composed her face into a look of fixed incredulity. But he had seen the guilty look in her eyes no matter how quickly she had purged it from them. So she had a part in this too.

He was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to make Valeriya his own again, reclaim the territory that had been besmirched by another man. He would show her who she belonged to no matter how much she wept or begged for him to stop. He wanted to shove himself between her clenched thighs, to sink his teeth into the soft flesh of her breast, to rake his fingernails down her back until it was bloody. He wanted to hurt her like she had hurt him and he knew no other way.

He lunged forward pouncing on the frail form of his wife and wrapping his arms tightly around her unresisting body. He glared fiercely at Varda.

“Get out. I wish to be alone with my wife”, he growled.

He yanked Valeriya’s face up by the chin and looked into the clear grey of her eyes. They stared back at him blankly with no hint of the defiance that used to dwell there. They glittered in the candlelight, like twin pools sunk deep into the limestone bedrock. His own eyes were grey like the churning sea in the moments before the storm broke pummelling at the cliffs with its force. While the towering rock could withstand many years of wave after wave breaking over the curving landforms, it would eventually crumble leaving nothing but sand, bleached bone-white in the sun.

He looked at the smooth, pale features of his wife’s face for some emotion, some feeling but he may as well have gazed at the flecks of sand looking for some hint of the coastline’s former grandeur.

“Have you no shame you damned hussy!”, he snarled at her, shaking her by the shoulders, desperate to illlicit some sort of response from her limp body.

She yielded none.

“Who was it you open-lipped whore! Whose seed are you growing in there! I’ll run the adulterous bastard through with my sword!”, he shook her hard, her limp head snapping back and forth, like trees whipping this way and that in the howling wind.

“Leave her alone you big brute!”, he heard Varda’s waspish voice shrieking in his ears and felt her strong fingers wrapping around his arm and pulling him to the side.

The fury that welled up inside him knew no bounds and it exploded from his mouth in an thunderous roar. He grasped a great fistful of her thick, black hair pulling her to the floor. She knelt before him, struggling against his hulking body. He slapped her so hard his hand was stinging. That would teach the meddling bitch.

“You like it down there, on your knees slut”, he growled, slapping her again, “you’re no good for anything else”.

He glanced at his wife to see if she would grant him some response now. Valeriya merely watched, her eyes dull, her body drooping.

He yanked Varda to her feet by the air and as she stumbled towards him trying to regain her balance his fist cracked out like lightning. He felt the satisfying crunch of the fine bones of her nose beneath his pummelling fist and blood splattered on his tunic.

She groaned in pain, bringing a trembling hand up to her face to wipe away the blood.

“Your husband should have done that long ago but your husband is weak as piss”, he snarled, “You can inform him he may thank me later for saving him from your shrewish tongue”.

He raised his fist again, expecting her to cower from it and flee the room. But she did not, his clenched fist wavering as she slowly raised her face. He could see that he had broken her nose, it was slightly bent with blood streaming freely down her face.

“You shouldn’t have done that Radomir”, she swallowed, choking on the blood that was running down the back of her throat.

He stared at her, the gleam of defiance in her dark, green eyes, the hatred in her voice.

One eye was beginning to swell shut as the blood trickled steadily from her nose. Her mouth was twisted into an ugly sneer.

“I do not belong to you”, she hissed, “you have damaged another man’s property and for that you will surely pay”.

The door swung open and Hepsie limped in.

She grimaced as she saw the blood running down Varda’s face and onto her dress and Radomir’s half-clenched, twitching fist.

“Oh my dear, oh Lord sakes… Yer Ladyship. The baby?”, she cried, wringing her hands.

He glanced at his wife, her back against the wall, eyes blankly fixed at the wall behind him. She was gently stroking her belly, her white hands flitting back and forth.

“Not hers yew bloody fool!”, she snapped at him, following his gaze. She wrapped her arms around Varda’s rigid body.

The words were any icy trickle of rain down his spine, cooling his boiling blood and pooling acid in the pit of his stomach.

“What do you mean?”, he whispered, the last breath of wind before the downpour.

“The Lady Inbar is with child”, she hissed, turning back to Varda.

“Oh God, not again”, he choked, reaching a shaking hand towards the woman he had just injured, “I… I did not know”.

“Don’t matter if yew knew or not, it’s bein damn wrong to hit a woman tis”, Hepise lashed back at him, “Yew should be bein’ downright ashamed of yerself yew great brute”.

Her words rang true and a flood of shame and misery drenched his insides as the swollen black clouds of his rage disgorged. It did not matter if the storm subsided now. The menacing black clouds would still hang on his horizon, gradually filling until it burst forth again in a torrential gale of fury. He could never change who he was, no matter how hard he tried.

“I’m so sorry”, he murmured and then fled.

Cade, Inbar, Moraghdu