I lay in my defiled bed, shaking and utterly spent. My head was spinning in confusion as I was beginning to sober. The room was hooded in darkness again and the tipsy feeling of his venom was fading away. It gave space for dread and realization. It was over. I was now one of the women that I had pitied from far away, believing somehow that it would never hit me personally. Well so much for that.
I thought I could already feel a pulling sensation in my womb, that was packed full of his seed, but I was probably imagining things.
I heard his hoarse voice saying something in Veril next to me.
"What?" I asked, my voice not sounding like my own, not sure if he was even talking to me or if I even cared.
In one gracefully fluid movement he was above me again, his arms caging me in. I looked up at him, too exhausted to try to fight him off. And there was another reason: I had thought that the venom had faded out of me, but at his sight my heart started to flutter again. Or was it not the venom? I wasn't sure anymore, he was so magnificent. His eyes had returned to their original golden color and I marveled at the elegant features of his face, his green skin, his pointy ears. He was so completely inhuman. Like a being out of a fairy tale -- like a fairy out of a tale. Until today I had never been this close to a Veril -- well to be honest I had never been this close to any man until now.
He gently cupped my chin with his hand.
"I should have taken you the first time I saw you," he said, looking deep into my eyes.
What did he mean by that? Had he been stalking me? I didn't know what to reply, I was too depleted, too scared, too confused.
"I will mark you now," he went on.
"Okay," I managed to answer, I didn't want to cry in front of him again but I already felt the water starting to well in my eyes.
The Veril marked each woman they had taken with a small glowing circle on their right cheek bone. This way everyone could see that the child the woman was carrying was of Veril descend. This meant that she was banned from all types of birth control or means of terminating her pregnancy. Any doctor or pharmacist who went against this law would face severe punishment. The mark was the last touch that sealed my new fate as a fallen woman.
"Make it look pretty," I said, trying to sound nonchalant and to distract myself from bursting out into tears.
He chuckled as he closed his eyes in concentration. He opened his left hand spreading his fingers wide.
Despite my fear I was suddenly watching him in complete fascination: I was about to see real magic up close for the first time in my life.
He slowly joined the tips of his fingers together, as if he was pulling something delicate out of the air. Then he separated his fingers little bit again, and I inhaled in awe: Little strings of blue light were dancing between his fingertips, as if he had plucked the magic from the void. For a moment I completely forgot about my miserable situation, I felt a childlike fascination: Mesmerized and excited by all the wonders that this world held, which I had not yet discovered.
"That is so cool!" I breathed out.
He smiled showing his pointy teeth, blue reflections of light were dancing over his face, "Turn your head to the side."
If I had been the same person I was just half an hour ago I would probably have protested. But I knew now that I couldn't fight him. I had of course already known that before, but there was a difference between understanding something in theory and actually physically experiencing it with your body. I had felt his inhuman strength, as he had made me submit to him against my will and I had not been able to do anything against him.
So I simply did what he told me to do and turned my head.
In the corner of my eye, I could see the glow of his magic when he pressed one finger against my cheekbone right below my temple. I shivered as his skin made contact with mine -- why did he still feel so good? I sensed a slight prickle followed by a sharp sting where his finger touched me, then it was over.
"Ow!" I exclaimed. "That hurt!"
"Poor little human. One would think that you are used to a little sting by now," he teased me, a cruel smile on the corners of his mouth. "I think, I should fuck you a couple times more to get you accustomed to being stung, if you react like this."
He let go of me and fixed me with an intense and puzzling gaze that made me nervous.
"Ch'ish," he hissed -- was that a curse? "I am getting hard again just thinking about how good you looked when I pumped you full of my venom."
I was getting nervous, I had expected him to leave at this point, but it seemed like he had other plans. The Treaty permitted him to keep me for one night -- from dusk to dawn. Did that mean that he was not done with me, yet?
I sat up my legs shaking from the strain they had endured when they were wrapped around him, and touched the mark on my cheekbone -- it didn't really hurt but I could definitely feel a presence, like a faint humming sensation when my fingers ran over it.
Trying to change the direction our conversation was heading to I said, "So I'm marked now, I guess that means I am no longer a respectable woman."
tried to joke but I could not hide the bitterness I felt.
"You are marked now," he answered. "So that everybody can see that you belong to me, that I took you and that you are carrying my child."
He placed his long index finger on my cheekbone. The mark seemed to buzz at his touch as if it recognized his creator.
"The mark is also for your protection."
"Oh, bullshit. The mark is for the protection of the Veril fetus, not of me," I shook my head in disbelieve.
"Is that not the same thing, considering that the child is inside of you? Does what helps you not help the child as well?" he asked, placing his hand on my lower belly.
His touch send a distracting tingle through me which I tried to ignore -- was there any part of my body that did not react to him?
"And in what way does this mark protect me, exactly?"
"Do you not know that?" he asked a disbelieving look on his face.
"We wanted to make sure that the women carrying our children would not have to pay for any medical treatment or medicine and will always have to be treated with preference at the hospital. Also, if you wish so, your government has agreed to give you free housing and food supplies for the time that you bear the mark."
That was actually news to me. How come I had not known that? My guess was that this information had not been publicized very much by the German authorities since nobody wanted to give desperate women the idea that sleeping with the enemy would actually pay off. But also this whole situation was very new, the capitulation had just been a little bit more than five months ago and all of it still seemed like an unreal kind of nightmare.
"Does that mean that the mark will eventually go away?" I asked.
"It will fade away in twelve moons. At that time the pregnancy should have come to term and your body should have recovered," he replied.
'So I can be bred again,' I thought. 'It fades away when they can use us again.'
I was hoping to keep this somewhat normal conversation with him going for as long as possible, since I didn't know what perversions he might come up with instead. The Treaty allowed him one night with me until the sun rose in the morning, and he did not seem to be thinking about leaving.
He grinned, his eyes sparkling: "So, if you wish to live with free rent and food for the rest of your life, just let me know, I am more than happy to keep breeding you again and again!"
I did not reply.
'I am going to have this fairy warrior's child,' the thought was still unfathomable for me.
