Slave Unbound Ch. 23

"No, Mistress." Leita said honestly. "I expect she would have enjoyed watching the whole thing. But, she was..." She stopped herself, realizing that she might be dangerously close to stepping into insulting her owner with her words.

"Was what, Leita?" Sabrina asked, drawling out the words in a syrupy voice, assuming she knew what Leita was about to say. "Demented? Evil? Unhinged?"

"Damaged, Mistress." Leita said with a breath. "She was damaged inside. Embittered by a hard life as a pleasure slave and seduced by the illusion that she'd somehow beaten it and become something greater. But, knowing she would always still be just a slave in her soul." More though, she'd been damaged by Sabrina, but Leita wisely held that part back.

Sabrina's expression softened a little and she took a long minute to consider her slave before replying. "I suppose you are right. She could be a spiteful and petty little slattern, but there were times when I could see little vestiges of someone else she might have been once. Still, as far as I am concerned, she made her choices and she has paid her dues."

She sniffed and looked out the window. "Regardless, you can't unbreak an egg, my dear. What is done is done and she is now dead."

"Is Myrinus?" The question popped out of Leita's mouth before she could stop it. She only narrowly managed to make it sound more born from concern than as an accusation.

"Myrinus?" Sabrina asked, looking at her curiously. "Why would you ask...?" Her face tightened a little. "What lies did Cookie try to sell you? I saw her trying to tell you something yesterday. What was it she said?" Her crystal-grey eyes became deeply suspicious, as well as a little menacing.

Leita's mind scrambled to best frame things, carefully considering just how much she should say and what ideas it had given her. "She said that Myrinus's wounds might have been far worse than you'd said. That he might not be recovering." She felt it best to stay near the truth, but omit such things as Cookie belief that Myrinus had never woken up at all.

Sabrina peered at her a long moment, during which, the carriage, and the wagons following it, passed through the gates to the estate. "What do you believe, Leita? Do you think I have been lying to you? All the times that I've said that he was doing well and healing, do you think that I have been deceiving all of you? Waiting until Cookie's bout to announce that he'd succumb to his injuries so that any possible pity for her fate would be erased?"

Leita felt her stomach sink a little more with every word. It was, exactly, what she thought. However, she doubted it wise to say so. "I...I don't know what to believe, Mistress. Cookie was a very good liar, trained to make people believe what she told them."

Sabrina laughed out loud. "Only when she told them that they were 'the best she ever had', my dear. She was a merely a gilded, and very jaded, whore, Leita, no greater than that. She was never as clever or as perceptive as she imagined."

She sat forward, a serpentine look about her face. "If I can produce him, breathing and well, will you then accept that, perhaps, Cookie was more villain than victim? If she was right and he is dead, well, as I said before, one cannot unbreak the egg once it has been smashed."

Leita could feel her heart thumping hard in her chest. She doubted that Sabrina would be so quick to offer up the idea, or to be so direct about it, if it wasn't true. If Myrinus was alive and well, it would certainly cast much of what Cookie had said in a very different light. "May...may I see him, Mistress?"

Leaning back again, Sabrina's whole demeanor changed, seeming to become absently aloof. "If only to finally put all of this to rest, once and for all. There's no telling how many others Cookie may have spread her little paranoid delusions to. You can attest to everyone else that they will soon have their Element back on the training field."

Leita felt her spirits leaping upward, truly unsure now just what to believe. It certainly made more sense that Sabrina would not sacrifice one of her best gladiators just to incriminate someone that already had sufficient reason to be punished. It suggested that anything Cookie had said might well have been more rooted in her own warped assumptions and desperate needs for validation than in reality.

"Thank you, Mistress." She said. "I will, of course, take any good news of his wellbeing back to the rest of the stable."

To her word, once they had been helped out of the carriage, Sabrina led the small entourage of Leita and guards to the healer's hall. Einrich greeted them as they entered, just arrived himself from escorting the day's gladiators back to home. "Good evening, HouseMistress. The injured have not yet been brought in, I am afraid. I assume you are here because of the wound that Huelin received?"

"No, I trust he is in good enough hands, Healer Einrich." She replied with a respectful gesture. "I am simply granting Leita a moment to speak with Myrinus. A reward for her...showmanship today." She shot the gladiator a sly look. "I assume he is still here?"

"Yes, HouseMistress, but he may be healed enough now to return to the dormitories, actually. If you so wish him to be released, I can have him returned thus."

Sabrina gave a small wave. "I defer to your more expert opinion, darling. When you feel he is ready."

"Very well, HouseMistress." He said with a slight bow of respect. "In that case, I will attend to the freshly wounded and leave you to your business then." He stepped past them to meet the attendants and guards bringing in the gladiators who'd sustained injury that day.

Sabrina dismissed the guards flanking about them to wait outside before taking Leita personally to the bedside of Myrinus. His blue-tinted hair was a tousled mess, but he appeared otherwise vital and well. Though a chain ran from his collar to a ring on the wall, he was otherwise unfettered and absently fiddling with some yarn, making cats cradles. If not for the clean bandages about his torso, he would have otherwise appeared completely healthy, if a bit disheveled.

At the sight of Sabrina, he sat upwards a little straighter, smoothing his hair down unconsciously. "Mistress." He said reverently. He noted Leita with her and gave her a small nod.

"I am told you are soon to be back among the rest of the stable." She told him, her air formal. "I expect you to prioritize getting back into shape after your long stay here."

"Of course, my Mistress." He responded obediently, though his eyes glittered with relief at the news that he was soon to be back on his feet again.

Sabrina then turned to look at Leita. "Awfully good spirits for a corpse, wouldn't you say, my dear?"

Leita couldn't help but smile, despite the sarcasm, simply happy to see her blue-lipped friend alive and vital-looking. The paranoia that Cookie had sown in her suddenly seemed much less plausible and more the dramatic rantings of a desperate woman. Leita knew better than to take it as a sign to fully trust her owner, but it did indeed make Cookie look less like someone who was being set up.

"He does, Mistress. Thank you." She said. "It will be good to have all of our Elements back with us."

Sabrina returned her smile and nodded. "I am sure it shall, though I remind you that I have forbade you from laying with anyone else without my permission, remember."

"If I may, Mistress." Myrinus interjected. "I were merely helping Leita obey Cookie's orders to her." He fidgeted a little as she turned towards him with a stern look for interrupting.

"None the less, Leita is currently off-limits, unless I specifically summon you to my room together." She paused, as if considering that idea a little bit, but quickly moved on. "Speaking of Cookie, I should let you know that she has 'suffered a loss' in the arena. I'm afraid she turned out to be poor gladiator material."

Leita noted the look of deep satisfaction on the southern reaches man's face at this news. It was obvious that he did indeed regard Cookie as the person who'd had him stabbed, even if Cookie had denied that accusation. While she had found herself believing Cookie's claim to have had nothing to do with it, Myrinus's reaction seemed very at odds with that. By his look, he definitely saw her as the perpetrator.

"Guess she should not've messed in a real gladiator's doings, ah?" He replied, a grim smile on those azure lips. "What were decided of her accomplice?"

Leita perked up a little at this. Was he meaning the Baroness?

"The decision was made to have him remanded to the execution matches." Sabrina said with a grim smile of her own. "And I convinced them to allow you the right to have the first crack at him, if you like."

A hard gleam came to Myrinus's eye, his expression becoming lupine and hungry. "Thank you, Mistress. I would deeply like a chance to carry out justice myself."

"Then get yourself prepared once you are released. I will have the match arranged as soon as you think you are able." She said officiously.

"I am already ready, Mistress." He assured her, his accent adding a dark cast to his words. "Even a week on my stern, I could carve a weasel like him apart."

"Noted, but we'll see if your confidence matches your vigor soon enough." She gave him a dismissive gesture. He nodded obediently to her and settled back into his cot.

Turning back to Leita, Sabrina fixed her with a magnanimous look. "Well? Does that help balm your misplaced pity?"

Leita returned her gaze, inhaling and standing a little straighter. "Yes, Mistress." She lied in a confident voice. "And I am ready to help my Mistress recover from the loss of her concubine, if she wishes it of me." She added with a note of mischief that she did not feel.

"Excellent." The HouseMistress cooed, an amorous expression filling her face. "Then I think it is time to go unwind from the day at the Arena, my darling." She turned and began leading Leita out of the healing chambers. Leita followed along in her wake, but not before giving one last glance towards the mariner of the southern reaches, who was looking very vindicated and very eager to get more vengeance on someone else in the arena.

She still couldn't shake the instinct that, even though Myrinus clearly believed it to be true, that Cookie had not lied when she said it was not her who'd set the attack. And whomever it was that he'd called her accomplice was certainly not the Baroness. But then, who had he meant? There was obviously more going on than she could clearly see, yet.

She decided that it would be best to wait until she could get those details from Myrinus himself, in private. She sensed that it would be to her better interest to put the still-swirling thoughts and emotions regarding these events away for now. Playing the part of her Mistress's lusty toy was what she needed to focus on for now. Untangling things would come later, when she could properly sort through all the confusing intrigue.

For now, she needed to set herself to the task of being pleasurable company to her Mistress, a task that she normally found more than a bit of pleasure in. For all her arrogance and quirks, Sabrina was a very skilled and generous lover. And Leita found little difficulty in summoning genuine ardor when they were entangled together in her Mistress's sheets. Strange bedfellows, but not unpleasant.

Perhaps though, it was less Sabrina herself that inflamed Leita's own passions in those hours, but that, during those lusty periods, she felt not like a slave, but a fierce woman. Sabrina's trust that Leita would not harm her had now been repeated proven and it had become standard that their lovemaking was made without the presence of any guards. During those times, Leita was also allowed the 'gift' of calling Sabrina by her name, not 'Mistress'.

A detail that had certainly altered Leita's own perception of her even outside the bedroom. She no longer saw their relationship to one another as only just 'owner' and 'slave' anymore. Leita was gaining a kind of foothold with her that she would never even considered trying to obtain with the Baroness. Far from an equal, but no longer just a simple possession anymore.

She was wise enough to know that Sabrina still held all the real power, but Leita was no longer powerless or afraid. She was no longer the same timid girl who'd quailed at the idea of being in the Baroness's gaze. She was a gladiator of the Grand Arena. Someday, she would teach that difference to the Baroness and she believed that Sabrina would be the person who helped her reach that day.

The Baroness was laying traps for a gladiator of House Firebridge and, if Sabrina meant what she said about an attack on one its gladiators was an attack on the House itself, that made her their mutual enemy. Leita still did not trust Sabrina fully, but she felt sure that she could trust her understanding of the kind of person her Mistress was. She was a person who had no pity for those she saw as an enemy.

Leita just had to make sure she never registered as one them.