Beauty could scarcely guess what this meant. Leon massaged the oil into her sore calves and the tender flesh behind her knees. She felt drowsy. The sensation was growing ever more delicious, and she resisted it slightly, unwilling to let that craving between her legs torment her. Leon’s fingers were strong, almost a little too strong, and they moved to her thighs which the Prince had reddened with his strap as much as her calves and buttocks. She shifted slightly against the soft, firm bedding. Her thoughts slowly cleared.

“Then I might be sent home,” she asked, but it had no meaning for her.

“Yes, but you must never mention it, and certainly never ask for it. You are the property of your Prince. You are his slave entirely.”

“Yes ...” she whispered.

“And to beg to be released would be a terrible thing,” Leon continued. “However in time you will be sent home. There are different agreements for different slaves. Do you see that Princess there?”

In a great hollow in the wall, on a shelf-like bed, lay a dark-haired girl whom Beauty had noticed. She had olive skin, richer in tone than that of Prince Alexi who was also dark, and her hair was so long it lay in rippling strands over her buttocks. She slept with her face to the room, her mouth slightly open on the flat pillow.

“Now, she is Princess Eugenia,” said Leon, “and she must be returned in two years by agreement. Her time is almost up and she is broken-hearted. She wants to remain on the condition that her continued slavery will save two slaves from having to come here. Her Kingdom might agree to these terms to keep back two other Princesses.”

“You mean she wants to stay?”

“O yes,” Leon said. “She is mad for Lord William, the Queen’s eldest cousin, and can’t bear the thought of being sent home. But there are others who are ever rebellious.”

“Who are they?” Beauty asked, but before he could answer, she added quickly, though trying to sound indifferent, “Is Prince Alexi one of those who is rebellious?”

She could feel Leon’s hand moving towards her buttocks, and now suddenly all those welts and sore places were brought to life as his fingers touched them. The oil burned slightly as Leon added droplets of it generously, and then those strong fingers commenced to work the flesh, with no regard for its redness. Beauty winced, but even this pain had its pleasure. She felt her buttocks shaped by his hands, lifted, separated, and then smoothed again. She blushed to think that it was Leon doing this who had been talking to her in such a civilized manner, and when his voice went on, she felt a new variant of agitation. “There is no end to it,” she thought, “the ways of being humiliated.”