WARNING: This is a Darkfic. This story contains imprisonment, torture/violence, rape/non-con, despair, psychological abuse, and major character death. If you have a problem reading about any of these subjects and/or if these are triggering for you, for your own sake, please do not read ahead.
Anora returned the following morning, as promised. Alistair was so relieved that she had not abandoned him again that he obeyed her orders to the letter, without comment. Thus began another routine. Anora came each morning with a small amount of food. Alistair was allowed to eat after pleasuring her with his mouth and fingers. Then, after he had eaten, they had sex. After a few days, the shock of being able to touch another person had worn off, and Alistair began to last longer, and even came to enjoy their coupling.
He knew he was supposed to be hating her. He still hated her, in the back of his mind and the depths of his heart. But Anora had quickly – and, Alistair suspected, quite deliberately – become his entire world. Hers was the only face he ever saw, the only voice he ever heard. She was his only source of food and companionship. The bread and meat, the occasional fruit and cheese she brought were not near enough for a grown man Alistair's size, but the clawing starvation had ebbed to a dull, tolerable ache.
Days and weeks turned into months, until Alistair's time in isolation became a foggy haze of memory. His mind was clear again, but it shut out the ordeal. All he knew was that things were better now, with someone to see and talk to. Even if it was Anora. He would do anything not to go back to solitary confinement. So he made himself forget that she had taken away his freedom and his only love, his dignity and his pride. He made himself forget that there was anything before her and small baskets of food and sex. Because he could not bear such loneliness again.
Anora entered the room one morning with her basket of food, as usual. It had been nearly a year – ten months, maybe? – since Alistair left isolation. At her arrival, he immediately went to the edge of the bed and and sat on his heels, waiting patiently for her to undress and lie down.
She set the basket down and approached him, taking off her robe as she did so. "There's a good man," she said with a small smile. Alistair preened with the approval.
She lay down on the bed and spread her legs before him. Alistair positioned himself between her thighs, and began licking her sex, his tongue delving into the folds that quickly became saturated with juices. The taste of her made his mouth water. Though he was not starving, he was quite hungry; yesterday's fare failed to satisfy him as much as usual. The flavor of her arousal was now so inextricably linked with being fed that tasting her made him hungrier, compelling him to bring her to completion all the sooner.
As soon as she climaxed, he looked up at her expectantly with his face still covered with her, waiting for permission to eat. After a moment, she glanced down at him and nodded. He leapt to his feet at her cue and shuffled to the basket. Though he ate much more slowly now than he had in the past, it still took only minutes for him to finish the basket's contents.
"My, hungry, aren't we?" Anora commented with a mild chuckle.
Alistair shrugged. "Shall I wash up now?"
Anora sat up and, to his surprise, shook her head. "No, I am taking my leave."
He blinked. "Already? Why?"
"I no longer require your services, at least in that regard." She pressed a hand to her belly and gave him a triumphant smile. "I am with child."
"You're… w-what? With…?" Alistair gaped at her.
"The midwives think I am nearly two months pregnant now." Anora spoke excitedly, almost to herself. "I have sent for a healer from the Circle who will care for me from now on. She can ensure there are no complications from the taint."
Alistair continued to stare at her, stunned. He remembered that, what seemed like a lifetime ago, he used to dream of becoming a father. He had yearned for a simple life, with a loving wife and a small house filled with the laughter and pattering feet of children. For the first time in months, he remembered that there was a world outside his gilded bedroom of a cage, and a life of freedom he should have been living. Familiar pangs of hopelessness bit at his insides. "Will I… will I be able to see the baby?"
Anora gave a short laugh, a sharp, mirthless thing. "What a ridiculous thing to ask. Of course not. You are not a father, Alistair. You are a donor, nothing more."
"You say 'donor' like I impregnated you willingly."
She smirked. "Didn't you?"
Alistair could say nothing. He wanted her, didn't he? Oh, how he had wanted her. Each day since he had been released from solitude, he rejoiced in her company. He'd begged to be inside her, to plow into her with sweet abandon, to feel something other than his own hands against his flesh. He had laid with her, to chase away the loneliness and despair that always threatened to consume him in her absence. Even now, after remembering that she was using him, he wanted her to stay, and feared what would happen now that she didn't need him for his royal seed. "What's to become of me, then?" he asked quietly after a long pause.
Anora shrugged. "It matters little to me. I will leave that to the discretion of the guards, I think."
Alistair shook his head and grabbed the hem of her sleeve. "No. No, please. They'll rape and torture me, Anora. Or worse, they'll lock me up all alone again!" Panic gripped him. "I can't go back to that, Anora! Please! Let me go. I promise you'll never hear from me again. Or kill me, if you'd prefer. Please, please just kill me!"
She wrenched her sleeve out of his hand. "You presume too much, Alistair. I still have use for you. You must be kept alive and close by in the likely event that someone will question my child's royal blood."
"Please, no! No more of this, Anora, please!"
Anora ignored him and rapped on the door. "Guards, I will take my leave now. Do with him what you will."
Alistair lunged toward her in desperation. Whether he intended to attack her or clutch at her to stay, he was not certain. But a guard stepped through the open door and blocked him from reaching her. "Anora!" he called again, but she did not answer him. His cries were instead greeted with a club to the back of his head, and the tunneling darkness that followed.
o.O.o
It was much as he had feared. When he awoke, he was back in his dungeon cell. Part of him hoped for torture, as it would mean that he would at least hear the voices of the guards jeering at him. But the days again passed without any human contact, save for the lone guard who changed his buckets and brought him food.
Alistair resumed pacing the length of his tiny cell and counting the times he saw the guard. There was little else he could do to pass the interminable hours alone. For the first time in nearly a year, he thought of Tangi, and considered talking to her again. But overwhelming shame filled him at how easily he had been cowed into submission, made a pet for Anora's pleasure. And though she had long since passed away, Alistair felt that this, above all, had been the ultimate in betrayals to his Tangerine. He felt unworthy to speak to her. Instead, he tried to recall his templar training, in hopes the mental clarity might stave off the loneliness and hysteria that he knew could consume him at any moment.
Once again, the days blended together into one long stream. There was little to distinguish one day from another, aside from some minor differences here and there. The time he heard a line of guards marching in a distant hall. Screams, louder than usual, echoing from a nearby chamber. The day he felt a strange, yet familiar sensation tingling in his spine.
The meditation turned out to help greatly, allowing his mind to remain focused for longer than it had during his previous solitude. Though the longing for another person's voice and touch were still ever-present, the intensity of that longing had dampened somewhat. Yet, as the long weeks surely bled into months, his ability to ignore his loneliness waned. His mind wandered to half-remembered conversations with people he had nearly forgotten. His six months with the Grey Wardens before Ostagar, and the brotherhood he shared with them. Arguments with Morrigan and drinking contests with Oghren. Easy chatter with Leliana and Wynne. Yet still, after all this time, thoughts of his beloved were met with Tangi's horror-stricken face.
It was becoming more difficult to pace his cell. The months of starvation were taking its toll on his body, rendering him weaker than a newborn kitten. However, he forced himself to maintain the activity, though in shorter spurts, to make sure his muscles did not atrophy from disuse.
Not for the first time, Alistair found himself amazed at the human will to live. It would be so much easier to stop eating, to allow himself to waste away into an eventual, blissful oblivion. But every time the guard came with the lump of bread and meat, he devoured it on the spot, unable to waste the food that would quell the hunger within him. Something in him wanted to live, but why? There was nothing left for him. No one coming to his rescue, nor anyone who even knew he was still alive. And though his hatred for Anora had been fully renewed, he now knew that his previous dream of killing her with his own hands was impossible as well. He could barely walk the three paces across his tiny cell – what hope did he have of mustering enough strength to attack her and succeed? There was nothing, except this monotonous existence, and yet something kept him eating and drinking and huddling for warmth to survive.
He cursed that part of him. Maker's breath, he wanted to die.
A/N: The story diverges from here. You are currently reading the Dark Version, which continues in the following chapter. If you would like to continue reading with the Light Version, you can find it here: s/8826089/12/The-Value-of-Royal-Blood-Light-Version. Links will also be posted at the beginning of the next chapter for your convenience.
