One day she will rule, but first she must be broken.
Locked away in her tower, Princess Aya spent years hiding from the truth as her people suffered terribly under her uncle's tyrannical reign. Now she will pay the shameful price for her silence...
Awakened by the cries of the oppressed, Kazriel will not rest until things are made right. But putting Aya on the throne is only the beginning. Before he allows her to rule, the princess must be stripped bare and mastered so thoroughly she will never forget how it feels to be powerless.
Naked, bound, and at his mercy, she will scream and beg as her helpless, quivering body is put on display and tormented with pain and pleasure, then claimed so publicly she may never stop blushing. She is not just going to be humbled, punished, and ravaged. She is going to be broken.
Locked away in her tower, Princess Aya spent years hiding from the truth as her people suffered terribly under her uncle's tyrannical reign. Now she will pay the shameful price for her silence...
Awakened by the cries of the oppressed, Kazriel will not rest until things are made right. But putting Aya on the throne is only the beginning. Before he allows her to rule, the princess must be stripped bare and mastered so thoroughly she will never forget how it feels to be powerless.
Naked, bound, and at his mercy, she will scream and beg as her helpless, quivering body is put on display and tormented with pain and pleasure, then claimed so publicly she may never stop blushing. She is not just going to be humbled, punished, and ravaged. She is going to be broken.
Publisher's Note: Broken Princess includes spankings and sexual scenes. If such material offends you, please don't buy this book.
Prologue
GUILTY
The word tolled from a thousand throats like a bell. It resonated through Aya’s tender frame, her silky soft skin turning to a myriad of bumps of fear as the energy of those voices passed over and through her.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling fingers clasping at the fine silk of her gown. Those who denounced her wore scraps of cloth and threadbare cloaks of wool, but their voices were clear, and they rang with truth.
GUILTY
The word was intoned with a collective gravity which chilled the princess to her core. They did not shriek the words. They barely shouted them. She would rather have faced a screaming mob than this civilian intensity which sunk into her bones and made her wish she could curl up on herself and simply disappear.
“I didn’t know!” She tried to argue, her soft voice carried away by the wind. “I couldn’t have known…”
GUILTY
Three times the pronouncement rang out from the mouths of the people. Her fate was sealed. The word shot into her heart and made it pound with abject fear. She could not be guilty. A princess could never be guilty, not ever. A princess was above the law.
The gaze of the peasants was shameful enough, but it was the least of her concerns. She felt a much more powerful stare on her. Celestial green eyes swept over her and it was as if she was entirely naked though she remained clothed. The people were common, but he was not. He was more than royal. He was the one creature in all the world who could be said to rule over a princess. More than a king.
She looked into the eyes of Kazriel and met a gaze which was not meant to be incarnate. He did not merely see the surface of her. He saw everything. Every thought. Every hope. Every desire. Her mind rebelled at finding itself prematurely laid bare. Perhaps after death she might have found herself judged, but there had never been any indication that a wayward princess like pretty Aya might find herself called to answer before the guardian of justice.
“I didn’t know…”
Her voice was as soft as her excuse was weak.
“You knew.”
His voice was deep, and not unkind. He spoke with the voice of the world, with the grinding of stones and the growing of trees. His voice was not merely sound, it was a resonance which touched every part of her and made her tremble with the guilt she had long denied and now could not.
“I had no choice…”
Again she tried to argue her way out of what was to come. She could not have known what the guardian had in store for her, but she sensed that it would be enough to make amends - and there were so very many amends to be made. She cowered in fear of the consequences as much as at the great beast of a god who stood before her, taller, broader, stronger, perfectly masculine in the carved planes of his body, human ideal made flesh.
He reached out. She flinched away. His touch would not bring comfort. She knew what she deserved. She knew what he would do to her. She knew that the fine garments protecting her from the eyes surrounding her would not remain intact much longer. She knew shame awaited, a shame she might never recover from.
But this was not her fault. She had only been trying to do what everyone else was trying to do: survive.
Perhaps she had been doing it differently from those who now stood in collective judgement of her, but that was an accident of birth. She had no more chosen to be a princess than any of the commoners around her had decided to be peasants. Why didn’t this creature who held her prisoner understand that?
She had begged for this chance to plead her case to the people, so certain that they would pardon her. But there was no pardon on their lips, and there was no mercy in their gazes. She would take the punishment. All of it. And they would be witness to it, from the scribes who would write this into the history books, to the common men who would tell the story to their sons so it may be told to all sons thereafter.
Princess Aya swallowed the lump in her throat and faced her destiny.
“Very well,” she murmured, a touch more rebellion than was wise entering her tone. “Do your worst.”
A soft chuckle escaped Kazriel. “My worst? Princess, you would not survive a fraction of my worst.”
She clamped her lips together and did not reply, but her look said everything. She had survived more than he could imagine, and she could take more than the guardian could inflict. It was a curse even he could not lift.
It was beginning.
Harsh ropes wrapped around her wrists and drew them high above her head, making her body stretch before the crowds. They would see through the sheer of her robe. They would make out the curve of her body, the lines of her most intimate places.
She heard the sound of hundreds of people looking at her, an intense, focused silence which made her every hair prickle at attention.
He stepped closer, his shadow falling over her. He was so tall, powerful beyond compare. She reacted to him on a visceral level. He called to more than her flesh. He called to her soul.
“Guilty,” he said, his hand running up the inside of her thighs, his fingers moments away from making contact with the virginal core of her.
“Do you repent, princess?”
Aya turned her eyes on him. She was so small in comparison. So weak. Her brown gaze was of earth, unlike his eyes which were iridescent with power. She could have said so many things in that moment. She could have apologized. She could have begged for forgiveness. She could have declared herself reformed. Instead, she took refuge in the haughtiness of her station and stared down the deity she had been worshipping since she was forced into the world by birth.
“I repent nothing.”
It's just as well Loki Renard became an author because other career paths proved disastrous. She was once thrown out of someone's house for trying to sell them citrus based cleaning product, and her brief brush with corporate life ended when she wrote profiles for her fellow employees likening them to various feral animals then attempted to negotiate the idea of not coming into the office and getting paid anyway. Perhaps if she'd had the dedication to slug herself in the face a la Fight Club, things might have turned out differently.
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