Attia needed Keiro's gentle touches that night. He knew it had something to do with the older man they'd seen in the courtyard, that he'd pulled up some of her worse memories, but he didn't press her for any information. Instead, he let his hands travel up and down her body softly, his kisses doing the same. He didn't dominate her for any power in the moment, nor did he let his own passions dictate the mood of the moment. It was just sweet, gentle, and slow, all the things Attia never had until after they'd escaped.
The next morning, Attia was curled up with a pillow the way she usually was with him, giving him the best chance to slip out of bed without her noticing. Her face was peaceful, indicating her sleep wasn't wracked with nightmares, something that would've encouraged him to stay until she woke. So he slipped into yesterdays' clothes quickly and quietly before he went to the door and opened it to slip out of the room. Mason was present with the other three guards, but Keiro indicated for him to be quiet and to stay there as two of the other guards accompanied Keiro down the hall.
He went down the stairs, then scanned all the doors on the first floor until he found the Records Room. The two guards followed him into the room and to the back where an information desk was set up.
"Your Grace," the man behind the desk greeted as he lowered his head momentarily to Keiro. "How can I help you?"
"This is all the records of the Prison?"
"Of Incarceron, yes," the man answered with a nod. Keiro rolled his eyes at the distinction, but said nothing about it. Of course, it didn't much look like a prison anymore. "Was there something in particular you were looking for?"
"Do I have your discretion?" Keiro replied, eyebrow raised. The man cleared his throat as he nodded and motioned to the side where a door was labeled as a private office. He walked around the desk and produced a key from his pocket to unlock it and let Keiro in. The man and one guard followed him in, while the other guard stood outside the door.
"What would you like to see?" he asked after shutting the door behind them. Keiro had quickly made himself at home by sitting in the large chair behind the desk and playing with the lamp on the corner of the desk. He wondered if there really was electricity like there was on the Outside, or if Incarceron controlled all such things like it used to.
"Attia's records," Keiro finally answered as he shifted is gaze up to the man and retrieved his fingers from the switch on the base of the table lamp.
"I'll have to go into the restricted section to retrieve them, so it'll take a few minutes," the man answered. "Those, in addition to yours and the King's aren't available to the public, you see." Keiro only nodded, as though he'd already known that, but he was glad somebody had thought of that. He certainly wouldn't have. "Would you like me to pull the other restricted files that contain the High Duchess as well?"
"Yes," Keiro answered, as though he'd known such files had existed all along. The man nodded before he left the office and shut the door behind him. It was a few more minutes before he returned with eight large folders in his arms. He set them on the desk in front of Keiro and asked if there was anything else. After Keiro shook his head, the man left, and Keiro looked up at the guard before motioning for him to leave as well. When he was alone in the room, Keiro looked at the names on the cover of each folder, finding Attia's located among them. Ronan's and Kyra's were there as well, but he pushed them off to the side.
He decided to look through Attia's first, well aware that when she found out he'd have to pay for the intrusion. It wasn't so much a question of whether or not he could keep it from her, just how long he'd be able to keep it from her before she inevitably found out. The first few pages of her folder were uneventful so he started skipping pages until an image caught his attention. He stared down at the moving image as a young girl, perhaps eight or nine, with another girl who was a few years younger.
Keiro knew immediately the younger of the two was Kyra, the sister Attia named their daughter for. It was striking how alike his daughter and Attia's sister were. Keiro had always assumed Kyra was like Attia, but as he watched the two young girls interact with each other, he realized Kyra really was more like her namesake than her mother. Attia was still hard-faced, even as a child, and wholly determined to reach into a locked box with her tiny hands to retrieve some valuables inside. In the background, a much younger version of Ronan was distracting the owner of the box, with little Kyra looking out from the side to warn Attia if the man was coming back to his belongings. The scene was amusing to Keiro, who shouldn't have expected anything else, but was surprised all the same. Kyra was cute and defiantly sweet given her situation of false imprisonment, where as Attia was all the things she was today.
Deciding, he had enough information on that, Keiro skipped the next few pages, slowing his skipping when he noticed Kyra had disappeared completely from Attia's folder. He watched as she was betted on and paid for, shackled and dragged behind some older man who ordered her around. She was useful as a girl, he noticed. She was small, quiet, and unthreatening. She could slip into places and get out before anyone even noticed her. Her little hands could reach into any crook or nanny and retrieve whatever valuables were hidden there. She could pick locks faster than grown men three times her age. She made her owner's investment in her worth it ten times over, easily, but Keiro knew she'd become less valuable as a thief the older—and more developed—she became.
Sure enough, within the next few pages, the little thief had transformed into the woman Keiro knew now. Her face lost its baby fat, her body changed, growing in her chest, narrowing in her waist, and then the attention she got at all the bargains and sales was of an entirely different nature. Surprisingly Keiro kept his temper under control as he watched the first man who bought her use her for the purpose he'd bought her for. It was undoubtedly her first time Keiro was watching glimpses of. She certainly looked to be in enough pain for that, though of course the man wasn't exactly all that concerned for her. Though the records were silent, Keiro could swear he could hear the glass-shattering scream coming from her throat the way it rippled when her lips parted. He man had started slam her around, and Keiro flipped the page before he could watch too much of it.
He tried to skim through all the men until he found the janitor, but it seemed impossible not to stop and stare at all the things that'd been done to her before he knew her. It was no wonder she so desperately needed him to be gentle and loving whenever her memories felt too real. He suddenly understood that deep rooted need of hers to feel cared for and cared about.
A couple purchases later, Keiro found a much younger version of the janitor in Attia's records. He had an evil glint in his eyes when he handed over the gold to pay for her. Attia's eyes were hard and cold, devoid of any emotions at all, as she held the man's gaze. She was determined not to be broken, but Keiro had a very serious fear within him that her determination would be no competition for the man's sheer evilness.
Within the next few entries, Keiro's fear had gotten worse. That particular man had treated her worse than any of the others before, something he hadn't even though possible. He'd used weapons against her, and used her long hair to drag her across the floor in his temper tantrums. He was obviously the reason Attia had gotten so good at handling her knives. The man left them littered all over the place and she so liked to throw them dangerously close to his sleeping form. She never injured him though, and Keiro knew why. Despite the fact that he tossed her around, threatened her, raped her, he also fed her. She wasn't self-sufficient, at least not yet. She was barely sixteen or seventeen based on her appearance. Of course, Keiro could've been underestimating since she was so small due to malnutrition.
He watched a few more entries of her time with him and they were progressively worse. For the first time in the record, since the scene of her father leaving, Keiro saw Attia cry. It appeared to be the middle of the night, her captor fast asleep after having raped her again. It seemed so sadistic of the Prison to record her then. Record her so broken and vulnerable and armed yet defenseless all at the same time. Her fire of determination was so close to being blown out when Keiro saw a woman enter into her life in the next entry.
She was part of the Civicry. That much Keiro could tell. She'd taken Attia out of that position and fed her and clothed her and housed her in the cells of the Civicry. She was happy. A momentary and very fleeting time of happiness when she slept alone and ate well, or at least better than before. Then Keiro watched people he knew, people he recognized raid the group of cells. Attia cut her hair and marked her face, terrified to return to the life she'd just escaped. And Keiro found he didn't blame her for half a second when they slapped the dog collar around her neck and made her crawl on her hands and knees. Eating off of the floor with the looming threat of poison was hundreds of times better than the life she had until that point. It wasn't a life with the Civicry, but it wasn't a life as somebody's person sex toy either, and that seemed to be all Attia had hoped for.
He shut the folder then, deciding he'd seen more than he should have. He felt like he'd pried into a part of her life she kept locked away for good reason. She rarely said anything about her sister, but Attia had hardly even known her anyway. She'd let her father into her life, since he seemed to be the nicest person in her entire life on the Inside, and that was saying something considering the way he'd abandoned her. Keiro realized he'd forgotten that fact over all the years they'd spent vacationing with him and his wife. Ronan wasn't so terrible anymore, Keiro knew, and was even a good grandfather to their children, but he had abandoned his daughters all those years ago. How Attia could live with that, Keiro wasn't sure, but he sure as hell wouldn't ask her when she'd finally put it all that behind her.
He stacked up the folders and carried them out of the office, dropping them heavily on the informational desk before he retreated from the Records Room without so much as acknowledging anybody else at all. As he left the room, Finn and Claudia were coming towards him, so he paused and waited for them to reach him. Finn came up to his side and Keiro turned his head towards him as they continued walking without missing a step. Claudia had backed away from the two, her feelings of exclusion bubbling up again.
"Do I have to ask what you were doing in there?" Finn asked quietly so only Keiro could hear.
"Probably not."
"Did you like what you found?"
"Well, when his dead body falls out of a coat closet, maybe you'll get your answer," Keiro answered bitterly.
"I assume she said nothing to you about it."
"Of course not. She doesn't like to talk about it."
"How long will you make it before she finds out you went snooping through her past?" Finn questioned as he motioned to a corner, signaling Keiro to turn when they reached it. Keiro realized Finn was leading him to the dining hall, but didn't think much on it.
"I don't know. Couple days, I guess."
"Really?" Finn laughed as he stepped away from Keiro, his voice becoming louder. Claudia could hear them now, but she doubted they'd say anything else of importance. "I was thinking hours."
Keiro rolled his eyes but said nothing. He'd eyes Attia and Mason seated at one of the circular tables with trays in front of them, so he'd gone in that direction while Finn and Claudia went to dine with King Logan and Queen Abigail at one of the large tables. Attia's eyes shot up to Keiro when he appeared between her and Mason and pulled out the chair. "Where were you?" she asked and he turned to her and shrugged.
"Just walking," he answered with a flash of a smile. He would've leaned in to kiss her, but thought that might raise suspicions, so instead he reached for half eaten bowl of cereal and shoveled a spoonful into his mouth. In the back of his mind, he could imagine the janitor—a man who's name Keiro hadn't even thought to find out—pulling on Attia's hair, his fingers wrapped tightly around her throat. Keiro chocked on a bite of cereal when his mind had brought to forefront of his vision an image of Attia's helpless body pinned beneath het janitor's much larger frame as she clawed his back desperate for escape until she went limp beneath him.
"Are you alright?" Mason asked as he eyed Keiro curiously.
"Yes," Keiro answered quickly as he finished Mason's water and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, rather than use a napkin like the civilized noble he could be. Attia and Mason exchanged a glance that wasn't lost on Keiro, he was just too preoccupied scanning all the faces of the people in the room searching for anyone who might've popped up in Attia's past.
"Are you finished with breakfast?" Claudia asked as she approached the table, pulling Keiro's attention up to her.
"Yeah, we are," Attia answered, her eyes narrowed critically at Keiro. She rolled her eyes and nodded as she looked up at Claudia. "Are we leaving now?"
"Going for a tour around the area," she explained, though she doubted Attia or Keiro cared. "Finn wanted to know if you were feeling up to it," she added, her gaze only on Attia even though she had Keiro's attention as well. Attia rose an eyebrow, knowing Finn remembered her near breakdown in the courtyard last night.
"Yes," Attia answered as she cleared her throat. "We are."
Claudia only nodded at the answer and turned back around to walk between her two guards and head towards where Finn was keeping King Logan and Queen Abigail company.
"Are you sure?" Keiro asked without turning his eyes off of Finn and their royal company.
"Of course," Attia answered sharply, sounding offended that he'd questioned her judgment. Keiro held her gaze as he nodded in agreement and started to rise from his seat.