'Drip. Drip. Drip.'
She had not fully lost consciousness.
That was, perhaps, the cruelest part.
The Queen lay exactly where he had left her — splayed across the damp cave grass, her thick thighs still trembling in weak, involuntary aftershocks, her massive pregnant belly rising and falling in the labored rhythm of someone who had just survived something. Her breasts heaved with each breath, slick and bite-marked, the dark areolas still puckered from cold and rough use. The puddle of her body's humiliating surrender was cooling beneath her hips. Her eyes were barely open — just thin, exhausted slits of consciousness through which the dim, dripping cave moved in and out of focus like a half-remembered dream.
'It's over', some trembling part of her had whispered.
'It's over. You survived. Rest.'
She was wrong.
The golden chain landed across her chest with a soft, 'deliberate' sound.
'Clink.'
Her eyes snapped open.
