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Trying not to think too much about it, I take off my dress with quick, mechanical motions, more afraid of someone walking in and catching me naked than I am of standing here in the gown, barefoot and nervous. I fold the dress, laying it neatly on a stool before swallowing thickly.

Clamping down on the urge to run out of this room–this Palace, this whole goddamn island–I reach beneath the gown and pull down my panties, hiding them beneath the dress.

Medical accommodations are good, I tell myself. That means there’s a doctor. Someone objective, whose only job is to make sure I’m okay. That’s what doctors do, isn’t it? They take an oath?

Not that it meant very much to my last gynecologist.

I’m cautiously peeking into a metal storage cabinet when the door swings open, making me jump. The sight of Lex striding through, not even bothering to meet my eyes, makes my pulse quicken.

“Get on the table.” Lex’s voice is quiet but no less commanding as he pushes up his dark sleeves, revealing pale, wiry forearms.

“Is there–I mean, where’s the doctor?” I ask, tightly hugging my middle.

Turning on the faucet, he begins methodically scrubbing his hands, staring unemotionally at the motion his palms are making. “I interned at Henderson’s clinic last year,” he responds, ripping a sheet of paper towels from a dispenser on the wall.

It hits me like a sack of bricks.

There’s no sleek, gentle doctor coming into this room.

Justhim.

My eyes track him as he opens a cabinet above the sink, pulling out a pair of latex gloves. He moves about the space like someone practiced, familiar with the instruments as he begins placing things on a rolling tray. A white tube. Some swabs. Gauze.

A speculum.

My thighs meet, squeezing as I ask, “What’s this about?” The bleeding has stopped, but the pain sure hasn’t, and if he thinks that thing is going inside me a mere day after what that torture device and his brother did to my vagina, then Lex Ashby is a goddamn lunatic.

The dismay settles into an inevitable doom as I watch him pull on the gloves, the latex snapping. “Get on the table,” he repeats.

He hasn’t met my gaze since stepping into the room, and the part of me that’s thrumming with alarm is thinking it’d probably be worse if he did. That’s the only thing that gives me the resolve necessary to lift myself onto the table, reclining so stiffly that I might as well be a plank of pine.

“I have a gyno,” I try, voice reedy and weak as I tug my gown down over my center. “I’ve already had my annual.”

He doesn’t respond, and as he crosses the room, approaching me with those cold, empty eyes, I grow stiffer and stiffer, bracing for his touch when he stops at the table, plucking my wrists from my middle. He barely glances at the cuts on my wrists, red and raw, before extending my arms at my side, flat against the table.

Stupid.

That’s what I am for not understanding. For being confused. For letting him stalk around the table with those laser-like eyes, arranging me with all the spiritless interest of someone posing a mannequin, and not seeing what comes next.

When the straps around my middle meet, a metal buckle clicking loudly into place, my stomach plummets. “Wait!” I gasp, pushing upward. I might be in a well-lit medical room, but my mind is back in that throne room, remembering the scent of the roses, the eyes of the men, the pressure of their hands as they held me down.

The cordy tendons in Lex’s forearms bulge as he gives the strap a hard yank. Coolly, he orders, “Don’t struggle,” and his amber eyes probe me. There’s nothing else to call it. He looks more interested in the jump of my throat than the sound it makes. “I need you to be still. There’s no room for error.”

“Error?” I ask, pulse racing. “What are you going to do?”

Instead of answering, he rolls the stool to the end of the table and sits right on my folded dress, placing his phone on the metal tray. Giving it a tap, he adjusts his gloves, reciting in a monotone voice, “January 7th, Verity Sinclaire, annotations for Father. Put your feet up.” The last part, I recognize, is meant for me.

Squirming against the binds, I try again, “I’ve already had–”

He releases a small sigh before reaching out to seize my ankle, forcing my leg into the stirrup. As I suspected, there’s a bind on it too, his muscles tightening as he secures my thigh first, then my ankle. I don’t bother fighting with my other foot, letting him place it into the contraption with cursory movements.

Once it’s done, I feel like a bug. An insect. Something for him to dissect as he spins a lever, spreading the stirrups painfully wide. The humiliation wars with the paralysis of fear. My first instinct is to glue my knees together, but it’s impossible, my muscles straining futilely against the binds. There’s no hiding, no covering myself as he pushes my gown up to my hips, exposing me with an obscene sort of indifference.

The lamp he clicks on, pointed right at the apex of my thighs, just makes it worse.

“Now, we can begin,” he says, voice smooth and sober.

I want to look away, to fix my eyes to the ceiling and pretend I’m somewhere else, but for some reason, I can’t seem to tear my gaze away from the angles of his face. He doesn’t touch me at first. He just looks at it–my vagina–with a detached sort of analysis. There’s a spark in his eyes, though–a spark of life I hadn’t seen this morning or last night.