Princess Rahl: The Heir to the Throne, Chapter 15

[hrhrionastar]

Title: Discipline (Ch. 15 of The Heir to the Throne)
Pairing: Darken/Kahlan, background Darken/Cara, Richard/Kahlan
Length: 884
Rating: T
Warning! This chapter contains references to torture/Mord'Sith issues
Spoilers: Reckoning, mostly, but eventually there'll be a few references to things we learn later.
Summary: Reckoning AU: what if Darken and Kahlan's baby was a girl?

 

Discipline

Darken felt the magic recede, now that he had found Nila. He strode forward to Cindi, and struck her so viciously that she crumpled to the floor.

“Lord Rahl!” she gasped.

Darken hauled her upright by her braid, and transferred the agiel at her waist to a sheath at his. He yanked the other one out of her hand and clutched it, feeling the anger drum through his blood, enhancing the weapon’s efficacy. Strong emotion in the Lord Rahl was always echoed by his Mord’Sith; despite knowing he was displeased with her, Cindi’s eyes glittered with a strange triumph.

Darken was breathing hard, but he deliberately looked away from her. He hadn’t come down here to the Mord’Sith’s People’s Palace Headquarters for Cindi.

Kahlan was unchaining Nila, the little girl already slumping against her, eyes blurry with exhaustion. Darken stared into his daughter’s eyes, so like his own, and reached for the bond their Rahl blood formed between them.

He breathed a sigh of relief. She was all right—bruised, hurt, but nothing so serious she wouldn’t recover.

“Father?” Nila asked softly. Then her eyes seemed to focus properly on his, and she exclaimed, struggling to support herself, “Ruxsendra! You have to save her!”

Kahlan’s eyes met Darken’s over Nila’s dark head, and Darken read the disapproval therein. Now that he thought about it, Ruxsendra was the name of one of the new girls being trained to be Mord’Sith. He remembered it because she was Cara’s niece.

“Don’t worry,” he told Nila, “I’ll take care of her.” Indeed; no one could ever replace Cara, of course, but all the same, Darken thought he might oversee Ruxsendra’s training himself.

Question answered, Nila slumped against Kahlan, who raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

Darken waited until they were gone before turning back to Cindi.

She met him look for look, he would give her that.

“You…” he said venomously. “have disobeyed me.”

“Never, my Lord,” she said at once. “I didn’t touch your heir.”

Darken admitted to an absent-minded relief that Nicholas was safe, and that his orders were regarded at least that far, but all his anger and suppressed fear would find an outlet somewhere. How had she dared—! His bond with his daughter, made closer now by his efforts, spoke to him of Nila’s brave defiance, and his blood sang with an answering righteous fury.

He threw Cindi to the floor and stuck his head out the door. “Dahlia!” he bellowed. “Get in here!”

Dahlia, trailed by two subordinates, Jeanna and Hayley, entered the room, raising her eyebrows at Cindi on the floor.

Darken said coolly, “Chain her,” and waited while Dahlia and Hayley put Cindi in the same chains Nila had hung from. As the last lock clicked into place, and Jeanna flung aside Cindi’s leathers, he added softly, “First Mistress Dahlia.”

Dahlia’s pale skin flushed with pride, and Cindi gasped in real horror. Darken smirked, the hard edges of his temper already scraping against Cindi’s nerve endings.

He would make her regret this…his name was not known and feared throughout not only all United D’Hara, but the rest of the known world, for nothing.

 

 

Kahlan carried Nila all the way to her room, unwilling to let her daughter out of her sight. Once there, she sent Alice to fetch the Healer, the same one who had helped deliver her daughter eight years ago.

Nila had fallen into a troubled sleep by the time the Healer arrived; Kahlan waited anxiously for a report, hurt and a little worried that Darken hadn’t come with her. Did Nila’s suffering mean so little to him?

The Healer hovered with hands outstretched over Nila, and said, “She should stay in bed for several days. Rest and good food will complete her physical recovery; I cannot speak as to her mental state.”

“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked fearfully.

The Healer shrugged. “The training of the Mord’Sith is not only physical, Lady Rahl. I apprehend that was where Lady Nila was for the last several days.”

The gossipy interest the Healer displayed in her daughter’s suffering made Kahlan frown; she dismissed the Healer, and stayed by Nila’s bedside, thinking.

It was true that what Denna had done to Richard had been more than simply physical; Kahlan still cringed when she remembered how close he had come to becoming Denna’s mindless slave, willing to kill Kahlan for his Mistress.

But surely the Mord’Sith wouldn’t do that to their own? What was the point of such an elite fighting force if none of them could think for themselves?

Kahlan frowned over it, and only left her daughter’s bedside that evening, when Alice, after fetching Kahlan’s dinner, volunteered to watch over her.

Still preoccupied with her fears (what if the Mord’Sith had corrupted Nila, turning her into one of them? Was that even possible, when Nila was a Confessor? And why hadn’t she used her power?) Kahlan walked abstractedly, paying little attention to where her steps led her.

When she came to the room she now unofficially shared with Darken, she realized she’d been headed there all along. Too tired to reproach herself, she sank down on the blankets, curled in a ball, and let sleep claim her—hoping her nightmares would not be filled with her daughter’s screams.

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