To The Princess Bound by Sara King Page A

at her feet.  After a moment, his gaze seemed to clear and he blinked.  “I’d say you’ve probably got asthma or heart problems due to the chunky energy around your heart-rama, and I can’t tell without getting inside, but not all of it seems to be fresh.  Some of it is much older.”  He gestured at her torso with his chin.  “I’d say you get ulcers a lot from the feelings of helplessness that got balled up in your liver rama.  Your periods are probably either very sporadic and unpredictable or incredibly heavy and painful, due to the heavy residual fear that’s stagnated there.  Your core rama is completely closed—no real surprise, there—so you probably experience repeated yeast and bladder infections.  Your legs might not circulate well in cold weather, and the joints of your ankles are currently hurting you—I’m guessing because you were probably chained by your ankles, and your subconscious mind felt that they betrayed you—the normal gi-flow there is completely disrupted.  Oh, and because of that, your feet are probably cold.  All the time.  You probably get things like plantar’s warts and fungal infections.”
    Everything had been so right-on that it made Victory freeze.  She had heart palpitations and trouble breathing at night.  When she ate more than a handful of food at a time, she started getting ulcers.  Her periods were heavy—very heavy—and painful, leaving her entire abdomen wracked with cramps for days on end.  She blushed at his dead accuracy concerning the workings of her internal plumbing, then grimaced and looked down at her ankles.
    As always, they were throbbing.  Most of the time, she completely forgot about the ache; she’d been dealing with it so long that she had learned to ignore it.  When her attention was returned to it, however, it came back in full force, as if to get back at her for forgetting it was there.
    “The ankles would be easiest for me to help,” Dragomir said, watching her.  “But I’d have to have my hands free.” 
    Victory blinked.  “Why?”
    He gave her a sheepish grin.  “A master can manipulate and dissolve old gi with just the power of his mind, but I find I work better with a crutch.”
    “Your hands?”  Now that he had mentioned it, her ankles were throbbing like someone had cut them off at the widest point.  The doctors had prescribed arthritis medications and pain relievers, but none of it had helped.
    He wiggled his fingers behind him pointedly.  “There’s a smaller rama in the palms of the hands, though they’re not so much a gathering center, as a conduit.”
    “I’m not freeing your hands,” Victory said.  “Do you think I’m stupid?”
    Dragomir stared at her for a long moment, then sighed and clunked the back of his head against the mahogany headboard once more. 
    But now that Victory was thinking about them, the sharp throbbing in her ankles were excruciating.  She lowered herself to the floor to get the weight off of them.  It worked, but only for a moment.  She winced, trying to put her mind elsewhere.
    “I could help,” Dragomir said, still staring at the ceiling across the room from his feet.
    Victory glanced at her ankles, then at the huge slave seated naked in her bed.  Her joints hurt, but when she looked at the man’s huge hands, she knew he could hurt much, much more.  “If I release your hands,” she finally demanded, “what would stop you from wringing my neck?”
    “Well, the four Praetorian Guard standing watch outside your room, for one,” he said.  “If I kill you, I’m dead.  That simple.”  He glanced at her, his blue eyes sincere.  “Look, Princess.  I told you once already, but I’ll say it again.  If I was gonna kill you, I would’ve done it already, in some way that was not traceable back to me.  The line of gi running to your heart, maybe.  You’re so afraid of men you had a heart attack…  Or the lines following the veins in your brain.  A little