She drifted back into the welcoming arms of sleep, feeling herself surrounded in silk. When she awoke from a pleasant dream an hour later, she was shocked to find herself restrained in a bed that was not hers and not the inn's. The looming face was over her own once again, and arms as strong as iron bars held her down. Her eyelids fluttered with recognition, and she cried out softly.

“Sebastianus? Where did my husband go?”

He smiled at her gently, patronizingly, as he prevented her from movement or escape. She felt his erection against her naked thigh. Shocked and appalled, she brought her left knee up fast, ramming his testicles swiftly. He screamed in pain, doubling over with a howl as she stumbled out of the bed.

She ran towards the arched stone door, her mouth forming an “O” of surprise as she realized that she was in the high turret of an ocean side castle. Her head snapped back as he grabbed her by the hair. His arm closed in around her middle and she was caught. She thrashed and screamed as he wrestled her back towards the bed.

She felt sharp animal teeth pierce her above her shoulder. The poison from the teeth radiated from her shoulder and paralyzed her limbs. The unpleasant oily chill of fever overtook her body, and she watched in horror as Sebastian carried her to his bed on his shoulder like a sack of flour. She wondered abjectly whether he intended to rape her before she was dead.

The white haze of poison clouded her eyes. She could not feel her own body. He lowered his neck before her, and she noticed a bizarre urge to bite him rising from her mind like an itch. She would rend him limb from limb like a fiend if only she could move.

His arm entered the round window of the white haze of her vision, his wrist spouting blood in currents, dripping on the stone floor. He pressed the bloody wrist into her mouth and she though she could not feel it or control it, she knew she was being made to swallow.
She fell into another slumber, one which was more like a blackout. When she awoke, she felt sick, her mouth still salty with blood.

The room was dark and dusty. She bolted awake in the large bed awash in a sea of silks, furs, and surrounded by red curtains. She parted the curtains to find him standing there.
She mewed weakly, “Sebastian? What have you done? Where is Gianfrancesco? Did you kill him?”

He crossed his arms.
“Nothing so base.”

She propped herself up on the massive oaken post of the bed, feeling the paralysis tingle her legs as it left them ever so slowly. She looked into his eyes, truly noticing their gray color for the first time.

“You may not leave.” He said, uncrossing his arms.

Her stomach growled, and she clutched at it in reaction, haphazardly observing that the gown had been changed to silk and that she had been thoroughly bathed.
“You will have to eat soon,” he said cryptically.

He sat down beside her and stroked her hair.

“You no longer belong to Gianfrancesco. You are my wife now and you belong to me.”

She brought her knees up to her chest, and rocked back and forth like a small child. He put his arms around her in a circular embrace. Her anger parlayed with her confusion, as she realized that the new marriage was about as optional as the first one and an unnamable hunger was growing inside her like a weed.