My Abusive Relatives Treated Me Like Dirt — Until The Empire’s Strongest Duke Knelt Before Me

Part 1

Ash under the fingernails never truly washes out.

It settles into the cuticles, a permanent marker of a ruined life.

For ten years, I scrubbed the the estate floors until my knuckles bled.

Then, the empire’s most feared commander dropped to his knees in the soot.

Lye soap smells like sour milk and chemical heat.

It doesn’t lather so much as it strips, peeling away grease, dirt, and eventually the top layer of skin.

I kept my hands submerged in the scalding water of the wash basin, eyes fixed on the greasy surface of Brenda’s morning plates.

The water was turning gray.

It was always gray.

I scrubbed a piece of hardened egg yolk off the porcelain with my thumbnail, the nail bending uncomfortably backward.

I didn’t sigh.

Sighing required a surplus of breath I hadn’t possessed since I was twelve.

Ten years ago, my father, a minor baron with a major gambling addiction, had fallen off his horse and broken his neck.

He left me to the mercy of my distant cousins, Brenda’s family.

They hadn’t locked me in a tower or beaten me with whips.

Their cruelty was far more practical.

They had simply handed me a mop, told the servants to stop taking my orders, and let the crushing weight of daily labor erode my identity.

You don’t need to torture a girl to break her.

You just need to make her wake up at four in the morning to haul coal until her spine aches so badly that she forgets how to dream.

I pulled my hands from the water.

They were raw, pink, and rough as untreated timber.

I wiped them on my coarse linen apron, leaving damp patches over my thighs.

The kitchen around me was a cacophony of frantic, sweating bodies.

Cook Patty was screaming at a scullery boy, her face the color of raw beef.

Steam rolled off boiling pots of cabbage and venison stock, coating the stone walls in condensation that smelled faintly of marrow and panic.

Craig was arriving today.

The family estate, the manor, had been in a state of hysterical upheaval for three weeks.

Craig was the military arm of the emperor, a man who had spent the last decade subjugating the northern rebellions.

He was brutally rich, entirely unmarried, and supposedly coming to inspect the regional garrisons.

Brenda, however, saw him purely as a solution to the estate’s rotting roof and mounting debts.

She intended to throw her daughter, Heather, at the duke like a piece of raw meat to a starving wolf.

I didn’t care about the politics.

I only cared that the duke’s arrival meant I had to polish the grand staircase’s silver banisters twice a day because Brenda was paranoid about tarnishing.

Patty barked my name, slamming a bloody wooden mallet onto the chopping block.

She ordered me to get the ash buckets from the hearths and make them spotless before the horns sounded.

I didn’t argue.

I grabbed the two iron pails and walked toward the servants’ stairwell.

The air grew colder the higher I climbed.

The thick smells of the kitchen giving way to the sterile, suffocating scent of lemon oil, beeswax, and dried lavender.

It smelled like a museum, a place where things were preserved but dead.

I reached the main hall.

The marble floor was a checkerboard of black and white, cold enough to seep through the thin soles of my worn leather boots.

I knelt by the massive fireplace, my knees popping loudly in the quiet expanse of the room.

I began to sweep the gray dust into my pan.

The soot plumed, catching in my throat.

I coughed, a dry, harsh, hacking sound, turning my head to spit a speck of black phlegm into my rag.

The heavy oak doors of the manor suddenly groaned inward.

No horns had sounded, no herald had announced him.

The doors just opened, letting in a violent gust of freezing wind that blew half of my collected ash back across the pristine hearth.

I swore softly, a gutter curse I’d learned from the stable boys.

Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed on the marble, spurs clinking.

I didn’t look up.

I was too busy glaring at the ruined ash pile.

I reached out with my brush, frantically trying to herd the dust back into the pan before Brenda could appear and dock my meals for a week.

A shadow fell over me.

A pair of boots stopped inches from my hand.

They were tall, black riding boots caked in fresh, wet mud.

The mud dripped onto the white marble.

My vision tunneled.

I had just spent three hours on my hands and knees washing this floor with a bristle brush.

Slowly, deliberately, my gaze trailed up from the mud-spattered leather, past dark woolen trousers, a heavy riding coat smelling strongly of wet horse and ozone, up to a face that looked like it had been carved from granite by someone who lacked patience.

Craig did not look like a romantic hero.

He looked exhausted.

He had a faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow, making his expression perpetually severe.

His dark hair was windblown and plastered to his forehead.

His eyes, a pale, startling gray, looked down at me.

He didn’t speak.

He seemed to be assessing me as an obstacle.

I told him he was tracking mud on the stone.

My voice was scratchy from the soot.

Not a whisper, not a tremble, an accusation.

The duke’s eyes narrowed slightly, imperceptibly.

The heavy silence stretched.

Any other servant would have pressed their forehead to the floor.

I remained on my knees, sitting back on my heels, holding my filthy brush like a weapon, smelling of lye and cabbage, staring him down with the absolute fearlessness of a woman who literally had nothing left to lose but her broom.

Craig looked at the mud dripping from his boot.

He looked at the clean floor ahead of him.

Then, without a word, he shifted his weight, took a wide step around my small frame, and walked toward the grand staircase, leaving a trail of dirt that conspicuously avoided my freshly swept hearth.

I stared after him, my jaw tight.

I didn’t feel a flutter in my stomach.

I felt a deep, profound irritation.

I muttered to the empty hall that I would have to mop again.

The dining room was a furnace.

Three dozen tallow candles burned fiercely in the iron chandeliers, dripping hot wax onto the linen below.

The air was thick enough to chew, saturated with the smell of roasted pheasant, heavy claret wine, and the cloying musky perfume Brenda had doused Heather in.

I stood in the shadows near the servants’ entrance, a heavy silver pitcher digging into my calloused palm.

My back ached with a dull, throbbing rhythm.

I had been on my feet for nineteen hours.

The cheap canvas corset Brenda forced the serving girls to wear for appearances dug its rigid whalebone into my lower ribs with every shallow breath I took.

At the head of the long oak table sat Craig.

He looked even larger sitting down, his broad shoulders dwarfing the delicate high-backed chair.

He had changed into a dark velvet doublet, but he wore it like armor, stiff and unyielding.

He wasn’t drinking the wine.

He was methodically dissecting his pheasant, chewing with the joyless efficiency of a soldier consuming rations.

Heather sat to his right, wearing a gown of emerald silk that practically spilled over the arms of her chair.

She was talking endlessly, her high-pitched laugh cutting through the heavy air like a glass shard.

She rambled about how dreadful the northern winters must be, leaning so far forward her cleavage was practically resting in the gravy boat.

Craig didn’t look up from his plate.

He replied that the cold keeps the rot away.

His voice was a low, resonant baritone, entirely devoid of conversational warmth.

It was the voice of a man giving an order to the executioner.

Heather blinked, her smile faltering for a fraction of a second before she recovered with another trilling laugh.

Brenda hissed at me from the corner of her mouth, demanding wine for the table.

I moved silently to the head of the table.

I stepped between Heather and Craig.

The silver pitcher weighed at least ten pounds.

My right wrist, strained from scrubbing the stones earlier, trembled slightly as I hoisted it.

I poured the dark red wine into Heather’s crystal goblet.

Heather, annoyed that the duke was looking at the tablecloth instead of her silk dress, abruptly threw her hands up in an exaggerated gesture.

She declared she would bring warmth to the north herself, her elbow striking my forearm hard.

My exhausted muscles gave out.

The heavy silver pitcher tipped.

A splash of crimson wine arced through the air.

It missed the duke entirely, but it caught the edge of Heather’s emerald sleeve and splashed violently across the pristine white tablecloth.

Silence slammed into the room.

The clinking of silverware stopped.

Heather shot out of her chair, her face contorting from a sweet smile into a mask of pure ugly rage.

She called me a stupid clumsy wretch.

Before I could step back, before I could even brace myself, Heather’s hand lashed out.

The slap echoed sharply off the high ceilings.

It was a solid hit.

Heather wore heavy gold rings and one of them caught me right on the cheekbone.

My head snapped to the side.

A blinding flash of white light popped behind my eyes, followed instantly by a hot radiating sting.

I didn’t fall.

I staggered a half step, my heavy boots planting firmly on the floorboards.

I didn’t drop the pitcher.

My white-knuckled grip held it against my stomach.

Slowly, I turned my face back.

I didn’t cry.

The instinct for tears had dried up years ago.

Instead, a metallic taste flooded my mouth.

I ran my tongue over my inner cheek, feeling the torn flesh.

A thin trickle of blood welled up from a cut just beneath my eye where the ring had bitten into the skin.

I looked at Heather, my expression entirely dead.

There was no hurt in my eyes, only a cold, calculating understanding of the violence I was subjected to, and the knowledge that reacting would only mean starvation tomorrow.

Brenda ordered me to clean it up and get out of their sight, her voice like cracking ice.

I knelt.

I reached for the soaked linen napkin to dab at the spilled wine, my movements mechanical, detached.

My cut thumb from a broken glass earlier that morning throbbed in time with my cheek.

A hand suddenly clamped around my wrist.

I flinched, a sharp intake of breath hissing through my teeth.

I looked up.

Craig was out of his chair.

He had moved with a terrifying silence.

He was crouching beside me, his large, rough hand encircling my thin, bruised wrist.

Up close, he smelled of leather, soap, and something metallic, like unsheathed iron.

His pale gray eyes were locked onto the cut on my cheek, tracing the thin line of blood that was slowly dripping down to my jaw.

I whispered for him to let go, the words slipping out before my survival instinct could stop them.

Craig didn’t release me.

He turned his head slowly, looking up at Heather.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

He told Heather to sit down.

He didn’t yell.

The quietness of his voice made it infinitely more dangerous.

Heather swallowed hard, the color draining from her face.

She sank back into her chair, her silk skirts rustling nervously.

Craig reached into his breast pocket with his free hand and pulled out a plain, square handkerchief.

He pressed it toward my face.

I jerked my head back, batting his hand away.

My rough, raw fingers swiped against his clean knuckles.

I hissed at him not to touch me, my voice low, venomous.

I didn’t want his pity.

I didn’t want the duke playing a benevolent god in front of his audience.

His interference wouldn’t save me.

It would only make Brenda punish me worse once his carriage rolled away.

I hated the way he looked at me, not with lust, but with a sudden, sharp recognition that made my skin crawl.

I snatched my wrist out of his grip, grabbed the dripping napkin, and stood up abruptly.

The room spun for a fraction of a second, black spots dancing in my peripheral vision.

I ignored them, clutching the soiled cloth to my chest, and turned my back on the most powerful man in the empire.

I walked quickly toward the kitchen doors, the sound of my heavy boots thudding against the floorboards, leaving the suffocating silence of the dining room behind me.

The rain began at midnight.

It wasn’t a gentle shower.

It was a punishing, freezing deluge that turned the estate grounds into a treacherous swamp of freezing mud.

I was in the rear courtyard.

Brenda, true to form, had delivered my punishment quietly through the head housekeeper.

I was to scrub the cobblestones outside the kitchen doors until the grease from the slaughtering blocks was entirely gone, in a torrential downpour in late autumn.

I knelt in the sludge, a bucket of freezing, soapy water beside me.

I wasn’t wearing a cloak, only my thin canvas dress and the heavy apron, which was now soaked through and clinging to my shivering frame like a second skin.

My teeth were chattering so violently, I thought my jaw might crack.

The cut on my cheek throbbed with a hot, localized fever, a sharp contrast to the ice water running down my spine.

I scrubbed.

The stiff bristles of the brush scraped against the wet stone.

It was a useless task.

The rain was washing the soap away faster than I could apply it.

It was purely an exercise in breaking me.

My vision was blurring.

A deep, bone-rattling ache had settled into my chest.

I was sick.

I had felt the fever creeping in behind my eyes since the afternoon, a heavy, dull heat that made my thoughts sluggish and fragmented.

I stopped scrubbing for a moment, letting the brush rest on the stones.

I stared at my hands.

The knuckles were split, bleeding sluggishly, the blood washing away instantly in the rain.

I thought about lying down, just curling up on the wet stones and letting the cold take me.

It would be quiet.

I wouldn’t have to carry the ash buckets tomorrow.

A heavy splash broke through the monotonous roar of the rain.

I didn’t turn around.

I assumed it was a stable hand, or maybe one of the guards seeking shelter.

I picked up my brush and dug it back into the grooves of the cobblestone, my movements stiff, mechanical.

A deep, resonant voice asked if I was trying to kill myself, or just annoy him by dying on his boots.

My breath hitched.

I slowly turned my head.

Craig stood three feet away.

He wore no hat, his dark hair plastered flat to his skull, the rain running in rivers down his stern face.

He had a heavy wool greatcoat thrown over his shoulders, but it was already darkening with the wet.

In the gloom, his pale eyes seemed to glow with a strange, furious intensity.

I told him to go away, my voice barely a croak drowned out by the storm.

Craig stepped forward, his boots sinking deep into the muck.

He reached down, grabbing me by the upper arm.

His grip was entirely ungentle, firm, calloused, and startlingly hot against my freezing skin.

He hauled me upward.

My legs were entirely numb.

As he pulled me up, my knees buckled.

I slammed into his chest, my wet face pressing against the rough wool of his coat.

It smelled of wet sheep, expensive tobacco, and him.

I panicked.

Ten years of surviving told me that powerful men touching you in the dark meant danger.

I shoved him hard.

My hands hit his chest, finding no give in the hard muscle beneath the coat.

I snarled at him not to touch me, thrashing wildly.

I swung my arm, the heavy wooden scrub brush still clutched in my fist.

The edge of the wood clipped his jaw.

A streak of filthy, soapy water smeared across his face.

He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t raise a hand to strike me.

He just tightened his grip on my arms, holding me steady as I fought him like a feral cat.

He commanded me to stop.

I gasped for him to let me go, my breath coming in ragged, painful wheezes.

I kicked his shin with my heavy boot.

I told him he was ruining everything and that Brenda would kill me.

My voice cracked, turning into a wretched, wet cough that tore at my throat.

I sagged against him, the fight draining out of me instantly, replaced by an overwhelming, suffocating exhaustion.

My legs simply ceased to function.

Craig caught my weight.

He didn’t try to drag me back to my feet.

When he looked at me, really looked at me, he saw the fever burning brightly in the sunken hollows of my eyes.

He saw the violent trembling of my frail shoulders.

He saw the utter, devastating hopelessness that had momentarily cracked through my armor of rage.

He realized then that trying to pull me up into my world was useless.

I didn’t trust his world.

His world had enslaved me.

So, he stepped into mine.

Slowly, without loosening his grip on my shoulders, Craig, the duke of the northern reaches, commander of the royal armies, bent his knees.

The heavy, pristine wool of his coat dragged through the mud.

The filthy water soaked into his tailored trousers.

He knelt.

He lowered his massive frame until his knees were planted firmly in the freezing sludge, bringing him exactly to eye level with me as I slumped on the ground.

I stared at him, my chest heaving, the rain washing the blood from my cheek.

My mind could not process the image in front of me.

Men like him did not kneel in the dirt.

Craig didn’t look at the mud covering his clothes.

He looked only at me.

His expression was no longer severe.

It was stripped bare, revealing a raw, terrifying sincerity.

“I am not going to let them kill you,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated over the sound of the rain.