guards.
“Take a seat,” he said. Klea, tired and in a borrowed tunic that didn’t really fit her, sat opposite him.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Useful as you are, we can’t keep you here indefinitely. I’ll have to let you go sometime.”
Klea raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
“Twelve,” he said. “You’ll do twelve tasks, and then I’ll release you back to your husband. I think that’s fair.”
Her husband. Klea hadn’t thought about Lykos in weeks, even though he’d been in a coma the last time she’d seen him. Her doing. All her worries, all her fears about her future as a housewife and mother resurfaced. Now, after all this monster-fucking, she knew more than ever that she didn’t want to go back and pretend to enjoy his company and bear his children.
“You’ve done four,” he went on.
Klea frowned and counted. The lion, the hydra, the deer, the boar, the stables, and now the birds. “I’ve done six,” she said.
“You got help with the hydra and the stables,” the king said. “Those don’t count.”
Klea opened her mouth to argue, and then shut it. The less she’d done already, the longer she’d get to stick around, and the more adventures she could go on. “All right,” she said.
The king nodded and stood. Klea always forgot how tall he was until he did.
“Six more to go,” he said. “I do hope you’ll tell me the stories of your adventures someday. I’m sure they’re quite fascinating.”
“Maybe someday,” she said, and the king walked out.
Klea got in bed but couldn’t get to sleep. She hadn’t thought about Lykos, her husband, at all until just now. She hoped he was okay, sure, but the last month or so had been the best time of her life, going on adventures and having sex with with more people and in more ways than she’d thought possible. Before, when she got married, she’d thought there was no way she could resign herself to a life being the mistress of some household somewhere, popping out children and doing whatever her husband said. Now she knew she couldn’t.
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