THE PRINCESS & THE SLAVE: Part Six

For your viewing delight, another excerpt from my new book Talons of the Hawk. 

If you click on the picture to the right you'll be able to read most of another story too on the Amazon preview - to see if it's worth getting. 

Short answer = it is.

For the rest of the day, Princess Saffie ordered Raul to fetch and carry for her. She ordered him to fan her with the ostrich feather fan. Everything she commanded, he obeyed, for he had no other choice and after all, he was only her slave. He had to do her bidding.

The new princess found his willingness to follow orders delightful and took great pleasure in giving him endless belittling tasks. The big lumbering slave grew wet with sweat as he toiled in the sun, wishing he had never even seen the hawk statuette.

“Would you like to hear something amusing slave?” asked the princess.

“Yes your highness; if it pleases you,” replied Raul.

“Have you noticed that I don’t feel sick anymore?”

He looked at her, perplexed.

“I simply told the statue I did not wish to feel that way anymore.” She laughed. “Do you see? You need never have swapped places with me in the first place!”

The princess laughed and laughed and laughed and Raul’s face coloured purple in frustration and trapped rage. He saw the truth of it and cursed his own foolishness. It was that one rash command that had doomed him to this life.

“I see your anger Raul,” said the princess, quieting. “Don’t think that I don’t.” She folded her arms. “But it isn’t becoming of a slave.” She picked up the hawk once again. “Would that this slave man Raul loves his life and loves to be a slave. Would that he wants nothing more but to serve me, his princess.”

And as she said this, Raul felt his anger dissipate to be replaced by the almost urgent need to please this beautiful lady. It mattered not that she had stolen his life. He was much happier as a slave than he had ever been as a princess. All he wanted to do was serve her as best he could until the end of his days.

And the one-time princess did just that. He did her bidding to the letter, bowing submissively at each command, toadying up to her in the hope of some sign of kindness or gratitude but willing to follow her commands nonetheless.

For the rest of that day he worked ceaselessly and overnight he was locked back up in the slave cage below decks amid the filth. This time he didn’t resent this captivity. He expected and accepted it. It was only his due as a slave. He was lucky to be able to pass this close to royalty. Sleeping in the filth surrounded by other slaves as low as he was the best he could hope for from now on.

The next day he slaved again for the new Princess Saffie. The following day he slaved for her, answering her every whim. The next day he slaved again. But finally toward the end of yet another day, Princess Saffie called to the huge bald slave man and summoned him before her.

“It gives me great pleasure,” she said, “to see the once mighty princess reduced to being a pathetic slave man.”

“Whatever pleases you pleases me your highness,” replied Raul clumsily.

“And that is really the problem,” she said. “Because you take altogether too much pleasure from being a slave now when you should be suffering as you made others suffer.”

Raul hung his head in shame, hating to have displeased his mistress.

“What of the people whose lives you have ruined?” went on the princess. “What of the girl and her family, turned to swine and then lost amongst the real pigs? Why should you live a life you love while those others’ lives are despoiled?”

“If it pleases your highness,” said Raul. “I will happily be punished in any way you see fit.”

The princess smirked. “In any way I see fit?”

Raul nodded hesitantly, feeling sudden fear.

“Very well,” said the princess, taking up the hawk once more. “First of all, I would have it that you speak your mind again at last. It would please me for your true feelings about being a slave to return.”

The magic did its work and those true emotions crashed back into Raul’s heart with a physical agony. No longer did he love his life as a slave. He hated it! He was meant to be the princess himself and she had made him slave dawn until dusk day after day, bowing in servility.

“How could you do this to me?” he spat.

“I do as I will,” she replied, “for you still know that you are my slave do you not?”

“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am your slave.”

“And what is your name slave?”

“My name is Raul.”

Even now he was trapped in that identity he had so foolishly taken.

“Well I would have it now that you had no name,” said the princess, and instantly all sense of identity went from the big man’s mind. He knew he was a slave and he knew he used to be the princess but he no longer had any knowledge of being named.

“Why do you do this to me?” he asked. “Why take my name from me?”

“Well it’s obvious isn’t it?” she said coyly. “Whoever heard of a pig with a name?”

“No,” whispered the slave. “No, please. You can’t. I’m begging you.”

“Like the servant girl begged when you transformed her and her family?”

All blood was gone from his face. He desperately wished to rush at her and take the hawk; stop her from doing this; but he had no right to act in such a way to his mistress. He was only her slave. If she chose to do this to him then it was her right.

“Please your highness,” he stammered. “Let me serve you in any way you wish but do not do this to me.”

“It’s done,” she said and grasped the hawk in both hands. “It is my wish that this servant man become a common bloated sow in form and in deed.”

 



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