Warning: It's not particularly graphic, I don't think, but this does deal with rape.

II. SPLINTER

Shivers ran through her – hot and cold at the same time from the damp earth and Richard's open mouth against her flesh. Kahlan threaded her fingers through his hair and arched up into his touch. Her power was building inside her in a tight, dizzying spiral and she let it. It frayed the edges of her mind, or maybe his hands had done that, she did not know or care. Magic thrummed unchecked beneath her skin, but she only pulled him closer, safe in the knowledge that she couldn't hurt him now.

She could not claim his soul.

He belonged to Annabelle. Her hands didn't care and they slid down his shoulders, over taut muscle and smooth skin. But the moan on her lips died away, and she found her voice despite herself. She shouldn't ask. She shouldn't. And then she did.

"Richard?" she gasped. "Richard, what are you thinking about?"

He loomed over her, his fingers curling in her hair. "Pleasing you."

She hesitated, "Because your mistress ordered you to?"

"Yes." He said it so simply even as he dove for her flesh again, his weight settling between her legs. So welcome and yet…

Kahlan swallowed hard. "You really love her, don't you?" she asked, trying to ignore the way her stomach churned. He beamed at the question, and his smile cut her like a knife.

"With all my heart."

She closed her eyes against his words. And then she pushed him from her to sit in the dirt, dead leaves tumbling from her dark hair. Desire drained away and left her cold; the gust of wind that rattled the branches overhead covered her bare arms with gooseflesh.

She could feel her grip on her power become more secure as the coil of magic resettled in its proper place deep inside her. There was a feeling in the back of her throat too close to tears for her liking, and she concentrated on her dress instead, gathering the bodice and clutching it to her breast. She couldn't do this to them. Even if it meant never getting to be one with Richard – that the child she would one day have to bear would be sired by a man she felt nothing for, and who felt everything and nothing at all for her.

Her heart began to hurt with every beat, and she tried not to think about the way he was looking at her now. Or what he would say when he was her Richard again. She stood up, pulling her dress closer still like a shield.

"Where are you going?" He had followed her to his feet, and something in his voice made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

"It's alright," she soothed. "You don't need to…" She bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Love me as your mistress ordered you to? Her cheeks reddened and she stared at the exposed roots of the nearest tree rather than meet his eyes. "You can get dressed, Richard."

"No," he said. "I can't." And then he was between her and the path, kissing her, his mouth hot and demanding against her own. His hands found her waist and urged her back to where they'd made their bed in tumbled leaves and grasses. She broke from his kiss with a shake of her head only to kiss him again a moment later as her mind spun.

"Lie down," he said. He was firm and insistent, and before she knew what was happening, she found herself on the ground once more. But now she felt ever dry leaf itching at her bare skin and all the broken bits of branches biting into her back. He peppered her skin with kisses and was slow to raise his head when she pushed at his shoulder a second time.

"Richard," she said, and somehow her voice sounded smaller than she remembered it being. "Stop. This should be special, if this ever happens. Because we found a way to…" A hot blush burned its way across her face as she trailed off. "Not because you're confessed."

He regarded her a long moment, the warmth leaving his brown eyes. "You want me to displease my mistress."

"No, no," she said in a rush, squirming a little, caught between his body and the ground. "Never. I just think we should stop and go see Zedd and Cara and Anna – your mistress," she amended.

His tooth pendant swung back and forth above her as he shook his head. "You don't like her." He kept going as if piling evidence against her. "You tried to kill my mistress. I know you, Kahlan, and you're trying to trick me. You want me to displease her."

A ripple of fear ran through her. It was an odd sensation; she had never had anything to fear from a solitary man before. She saw how ordinary women walked faster as the sun started to set, how they'd put as much space as they could between themselves and a rowdy tavern with doors that kept spilling out drunken men. But one man alone was no match for her magic and even without it, her daggers were always there. And Richard, dear spirits, she didn't think she had it within her to fear him. She knew no one kinder. Trusted no one more.

But when Richard began to bunch up the fabric of her skirt, she tensed all the same. It struck her how very far they were from the clearing where the others waited, how very alone they now were. She doubted anyone would hear her scream. If she could even bring herself to scream at the touch of the man she loved. She tried to roll him off her instead, but this time he held her down. Though they were nearly matched in height, she did not have his strength. Fighting for her was a light, quick dance, her strength found in being faster than her opponents, more graceful than they could be. Richard's strength was in his sword and the corded muscles of his arms, and she could not move him.

Instinct sent her hand shooting out to grasp the hilt of her dagger before she even realized what she was doing. She was faster than him. Had he been anyone else, his throat would already be slit. But even as she found her grip, she knew it would not help her here. She hesitated far too long, the dagger shaking in her hand. The man looming over her was lost to a world of mindless devotion, staring down at her through the glassy, feverish eyes of the confessed. He would sooner die than fail his mistress. Yet he was still her Richard; she would rather suffer this than spill his blood.

Kahlan let go without a fight when he hooked a hand around her wrist and jerked it away from the blade. She could see in his eyes the change that had taken place in his mind; she had become a threat to his mistress's orders. She felt only a numb sort of surprise when he pinned both her arms above her head, holding them and his weight up with one hand, his fingers biting into her flesh and pressing her to the ground.

He pushed her skirt higher, and she tried to think. Confessed men could be tricked by a person clever enough. She could confuse him, make him believe what Annabelle said wasn't what she really wanted, if she could just think of something to say. But her mind stayed blank. Time rushed past her and stretched endlessly on at the same time. It left her dizzy, and all she could follow was the hand sliding up her thigh, the calluses from his sword rasping over her bare skin. He was not rough with her, even confessed there was some small element of the Richard she knew still there, but his motions were determined and unrelenting. It took a lifetime and yet no time at all to get her skirts up.

"Richard, please," she said desperately as he reached down with the hand that wasn't restraining hers, unlacing the front of his pants, freeing himself. "It's me." It was all her mind could string together.

He stopped and studied her face. For the span of one breath she dared to hope that somehow, despite confession, he still cared for her in his heart. But then he spoke, "I don't want to hurt you, but my mistress has ordered I give you a child." All the dead Confessors laughed at her inside her head as he pushed into her without preamble as if it really was that simple. The Mother Confessor was a fool. To a confessed man, it was always that simple. Pain seared through her and she stifled a cry, and then he was moving above her with the same, steady determination that had lifted her skirts.

Richard still held her wrists, and the feel of them caught and bound turned her breathing ragged. Panic swelled in her breast at the old memories of the rope her father had tied around her wrists every night. She remembered how it felt to sleep with her hands bound above her head, unable to even hug Dennee as she lay weeping beside her. It had been a long time since she'd felt so powerless.

"Wait," she cried. "Richard, my hands!" The words tumbled from her lips frantic and high-pitched like the rope-tied child she'd once been, and he stilled inside of her. "My hands. Let go of them." When he only stared at her, she let out a small, whimpered sound. "Please. You know why."

He considered her words a moment. "You won't try to stop me again?"

Kahlan shook her head, and the dried leaves rustled beneath her, dead and defeated. "No," she said quietly. "I won't."

A moment later, he'd let go and her hands tingled. She let them fall to her sides, moving them gingerly, her wrists sore from bearing so much of his weight. He began again as soon as he'd released her, the pain still sharp and bitter between her legs. Kahlan knew every hair and crease on his face, considered each precious fleck of gold in his brown eyes as familiar as her own name, and she tried to think on those things instead. The man she loved was lost somewhere inside him. But when she forced herself to sling an arm around his neck and pull him closer, more for his sake than hers, tears spilled from her eyes and kept coming until he was through.

xxx

Birds twittered overhead, and the hazy, golden light dappling the forest floor should have been peaceful, but it took Kahlan three tries to do up the laces on her Confessor's dress. Richard scuffed his feet as he waited, obvious in his impatience to return to his mistress now that his task was done.

The walk back to the clearing took even longer than she remembered, and they made the journey in silence. She wasn't sure what she would do if he started praising Annabelle now, and so Kahlan let several paces fall between them and put herself to work pulling all she felt from her face. She tucked it away behind the ache in her chest, leaving her expression quiet and impassive.

At last, the trees began to thin and she heard familiar voices. Richard bounded ahead of her into the clearing just as Zedd looked up from his seat on a fallen log. "Ah, the two lovebirds have returned!" he declared around a mouthful of bread.

Annabelle hurried to her, hand in hand with Flinn. "How was it?" she gushed in a loud whisper as if they were sisters. As if she could be anything at all like Dennee. "Was it everything you ever imagined it would be?"

Kahlan closed her eyes a moment. She had planned the long trek back how easily she would walk into camp and answer their questions without giving away her pain, but she found she could not speak. When she finally summoned her voice, it came scraped over broken glass.

"Change him back. Now."

Zedd gave her a puzzled look, but when she made no move to elaborate, he nodded his head towards the waiting quillion. "Well, of course, dear one. We can't keep him like this."

Flinn and Richard both cried out in protest when Annabelle knelt before the vibrant, purple crystal, but Kahlan barely heard them, and Cara kept them at her side, under the reach of her Agiels. The quillion glowed, and the air crackled with the familiar feel of Confessor's magic. It charged through the clearing like wildfire, yet felt dull against her skin.

She knew the exact moment when Annabelle's powers were drained and her hold on Richard broken; she watched as his eyes swung from his mistress straight to her, adoration morphing into shock and confusion. No one else seemed as certain. Zedd hurried forward to study the crystal, needing to verify with words what she had known from a single look.

Only she and Richard stood unmoving. She felt very strange, as if she stood on the opposite side of a great chasm from everyone else, hearing only echoes of life. She forced herself to meet Richard's eyes again. He still stared at her, now with a look of open horror slashed across his face. A sob began to build in her throat that she knew she would not be able to suppress, and so Kahlan did the only thing she could think of.

She turned and slipped away into the safety of the woods.