Free Forbidden by Ted Dekker

heavy silks lined the great stone walls. The bedchamber was richly appointed in every way—from the cedar wardrobe against the far wall, to the floor-length velvet curtains and soft silk carpet. It was also filthy with the smoke of the torches, with the smell of fire and the remains of an undercooked dinner brought in from the adjacent dining room sometime during the night.
    She could smell the meat and blood, acrid in her nostrils.
    There was something else filthy in here, too.
    Portia glanced to her left. There, at her side, sprawled Saric, the finely threaded sheets pushed away from the muscled panes of his chest. Fresh nail marks scored his shoulder.
    Beyond the bed, a woman, whoever she was, lay on the floor with her back to them. Her skin, once no doubt beautifully smooth, was marred now with bruises, black beneath the otherwise pallid skin of her arms and legs.
    Saric and his latest concubine. Saric and his of-late voracious appetites.
    And she—she had writhed in violent throes of her own, screaming for wholly different reasons. Her face hurt. Her entire body hurt. Her heart pounded against her chest and her mind felt as though it might be on fire.
    She reached up and traced the line of a welt against her face. There was blood under her nails.
    She slid from the bed. Neither Saric nor the concubine stirred. She moved across the carpet. Somewhere beyond the heavy velvet curtains—no one had troubled to draw them last night—morning had the audacity to approach the window and peer in at the evidence of a life she no longer recognized.
    She paused before the great mirror in the corner and surveyed her body—the bruises, the welts, the scratches. Confusion racked her mind, fogged her memories. She wasn’t sure what Saric had done to her, but she knew this much: He’d given her something virulent and poisonous, and it was consuming her.
    She examined the mottled darkness of a bruise along her thigh, then vaguely remembered running into something after leaping from the bed, screaming for help. Saric had laughed at her.
    Portia lifted a finger to her chin, following the line of a scratch that would bear the seam of a scab by evening. A new kind of fear more blistering than any sentiment she’d ever felt flushed her face.
    She lashed out at the mirror. The glass yielded to her fist with a shattering crash.
    From behind her: “Good morning, dear.”
    She cried out and spun, startled. Saric slid from the sheets without a glance at the form on the floor. He was lean-hipped and well muscled, built like a bronze statue draped in a loose, black robe. The image of him immediately pulled at her.
    Had he ever been so alluring? Strange warmth flooded her belly. Was this, too, the work of the poison?
    Blood dripped from her fingers onto the carpet. But the pain from the gashes along her knuckles paled next to the wonder of this new desire that rose up within her.
    Saric crossed to her, lifted her wounded hand, and studied it for an instant before bringing her knuckles to his lips.
    She tried to jerk her hand away but he would not let it go. He pulled her against him.
    “I said, Good morning .” He kissed her mouth long and hard, smearing her lips with blood.
    She was nearly out of breath when she managed to pull away. “I want to know what you did to me!”
    “You don’t like it?”
    “I spent a whole night screaming in pain!”
    “That will pass.”
    “You will tell me what it is.”
    He pushed her away from him. “Don’t be tiresome.”
    “Tell me!” she railed, reveling in the sound of her raised voice. The woman on the floor stirred and whimpered.
    The sound struck her as deeply offensive. Sickening. Portia strode across the room, grabbed the drugged woman by the hair, and dragged her toward Saric.
    “Portia,” Saric said in warning.
    She abruptly released the woman’s hair and let her head bang onto the floor. The concubine’s nose was covered with crusted blood, and one of her eyes was blackened. The mere