Page 8 of House of Darkness
Chapter 5
ESTRELLA
My chained arms shook under the weight of the gilded serving tray, making the crystal wyne glasses and their gruesome contents tremble. I refused to look down to ensure nothing spilled. Despite the tears welling in my eyes, I wouldn’t take them off Matei. Not after my last punishment for breaking form, which had been a switch across the knuckles—just light enough not to cut the skin.
Those toxic eyes stared back at me, waiting for me to slip. I could see the hint of pleasure in his gaze because he knew I would. Matei was an incredibly patient man, all he had to do was wait long enough. For the past two weeks, those same eyes had haunted my every moment of light, while the rest of my time was spent in oppressive darkness. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Two years ago, Count Edward returned one of your cousins. Did you know that, acolyte?”
I blinked back tears and forced the quiver in my lip to still. “No, sir.”
He hummed thoughtfully, then placed his meaty hand on the center of the tray. I couldn’t stop the yelp that tore from my throat as my muscles lit up like the crack of a whip. I had no idea how longI’d held the tray, but apparently my failure was taking too long. “She couldn’t produce an heir, so she was useless to him.”
I knew where this story was going—the same place as the last one, and the one before. She was tortured until the sweet claws of death finally brought her home. But it didn’t matter; Matei would savor each word, relishing the taste as they left his mouth.
“We started with the whip, but she was a screamer. So I took away her ability to scream.” His lips parted in a savage smile that glinted in the dim candlelight.
He pressed down on the tray until I couldn’t bear the searing pain any longer. It, along with the glasses, fell from my hands in a shower of red that pooled over my already filthy nightgown. Shards of crystal exploded on the floor, leaving small cuts across my bare feet. I yelped at the pain, especially as the tray smacked into my toes hard enough to bruise.
“Pathetic,” he barked. He stepped away from the mess, his suit somehow still pristine, then threw me a dingy rag from the entry table. “Clean that up.”
I tried to catch it, but the rag slipped through my trembling fingers and dropped into the puddle with a splash.
“Yes, sir,” I whimpered, wincing at the crack in my voice as I knelt to the floor. I carefully picked up the shards, letting my knees hit the sticky fluid, fighting the urge to gag as my fingers dipped into the blood to retrieve the rag. It was too small to accomplish anything but smearing the blood around, but that was the point—he wanted me to endure it.
“It was only a week before we silenced her completely,” Matei finished with a rough laugh. I closed my eyes, but it did nothing to shake the horrors. A minor slip, a wrong expression at a party, and I’d find myself back in his clutches, his restraints lifted to break mecompletely.
Rapid footsteps sounded on the stairwell, and I dared to look up just enough to see Nicolae’s silhouette in the doorway. He was panting, clutching the wall to steady himself.
“The tsar is here.”
Matei glanced at his son, then spun to me, his eyes wild and frenzied, injecting me with sheer terror. Before I could react, he crossed the space between us and yanked me to my feet by my filthy nightgown.
“Stand up,” he barked.
I scrambled to obey, wincing as my raw wrists twisted against my cuffs and my feet slipped in the wyne. Matei scrutinized me, fear glinting in his eyes. The retaliation from the night I’d tried to escape still marked my cheek with a greenish bruise. It comforted me slightly to think that maybe, just maybe, he would suffer for the pain he had caused me, if only this once.
“Get the servants ready,” he ordered over his shoulder. Nicolae nodded and disappeared up the stairs.
“Listen to me, acolyte. If you embarrass me or this family before our tsar, it won’t only be whips that hurt you. I will enjoy breaking you down until you remember nothing but pain. From this day forward, you better be on your best behavior. Do you understand?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but apparently it wasn’t quick enough for him. He raised his hand as if to strike me, making me flinch back against the chains. “Do you understand!”
“Yes, sir!” I gasped as quickly as I could.
“Good.” Matei lowered his fist to my chains and removed them, replacing the metal’s cold sting with his grip. He began shoving me up the stairwell. I blinked, struggling to adjust to the sudden brightness before being dragged into a room across the hall. An army of servantsawaited me.
The servants led me to the bathing chamber, where they dunked me into lukewarm water. The relentless scrubbing of weeks of grime and suffering was almost too much to bear, but I stayed silent. The women surrounding me were my cousins, deemed too ugly to be sold, though to me, they were beautiful. They didn’t want to be here any more than I did.
Sitting in front of the mirror, I saw my dead eyes, overshadowed only by the nasty green bruise on my cheek. The girls worked diligently to hide the welt under layers of carefully placed makeup. My wrists, a lost cause, were covered with thick bangles that stung as they shifted along my skin. I could hardly breathe past the corset of my immodest, bright red gown. The traditional garment of delivery day, meant to symbolize the blood my new master would desire. Designed to make me look edible.
My collar was polished as well, the symbol of my chastity. It was meant to prevent a vampire from biting through the thick metal, as if that was a real deterrent. The gold gleamed in the candlelight.
The door opened, and Solaris appeared in the mirror’s reflection. She was remarkable, her curls pinned into tight ringlets, a simple red slip cascading down her curves. Her tear-brimmed evergreen eyes met mine in the mirror. Ignoring the girls around us, she rushed to my side and wrapped her arms around me.
Her tight embrace was a welcome shock to my senses. I squeezed back and allowed myself to sink into her touch, despite the onlookers.
“Don’t worry, I’ll probably be back before you know it.” I laughed brokenly.
