Page 16 of Blood Vows
But she wasn’t here now, and instead, I was left with him. Which came with the terrifying thought that maybe, just maybe, he could understand what she had always tried to make me believe.
That I was worthy of being loved after all.
Stacey had wanted to make herself qualified so that I would have someone to talk to. Someone who could help me make sense of the chaos that had shaped me. Sometimes, I wondered if her focus on fixing me had been her way of avoiding fixing herself.
A way to deal with her own grief of losing her parents. It was something she had buried under layers of compassion, as if healing others might heal her too. On some subconscious level, maybe she thought that if she could help me face my ghosts, then she could silence her own.
It was noble.
And it broke my heart a little.
But who was I to judge? How could I tell her to face her past when I’d spent years avoiding mine? We were both running, hers just looked more productive. Call it unhealthy, call it denial, call it whatever clinical term fit best. We both knew what we were doing. Pretending the pain wasn’t there never made it disappear, but it did make it quieter.
And I knew the truth, even when I refused to say it aloud. I knew that what happened to me wasn’t my fault. That the way I was treated growing up hadn’t been something I deserved. I knew I was not the villain of my own story, even if sometimes, I still felt like I was.
Even when it came to my dog, Peter.
That single, terrible memory would never leave me. The one I had buried so deep that even Stacey didn’t know the full truth. I knew now that what had happened had been the action of a frightened child, one drowning in grief and pain. A child who had been taught that love could hurt and that silence was survival.
But I would never forget what Vasileios had said to me that night.
How I could not be blamed. The way he’d spoken it, low and certain, as if daring me to believe it. It had been the first time anyone had ever told me that out loud.
Not even Stacey had managed to reach that part of me. She’d tried…God, she’d tried…but she’d only ever seen the edges, the hints of what I’d carried.
He had seen the whole thing.
And he hadn’t flinched.
Even if his motives were twisted. Even if he had said it while trying to break me, to use me, it had still meant something. Because in that moment, he had wanted me to understand. He’dwanted me to face it. To stop blaming the terrified little girl I had been for the monsters that had shaped her.
I had sealed that part of my life away years ago. Locked it in a steel vault in my mind, thrown away the key. But he had forced it open. He had dragged it into the light, and I’d hated him for it.
Until now.
Because this morning, for the first time in years, I felt lighter. Like the weight had been quietly lifted by the most unlikely of hands.
My tormentor.
My captor.
The man whose shadows had once terrified me.
And yet last night, those same shadows hadn’t felt like monsters at all. They had felt… protective.
When I saw them in my dream, twisting and reaching for me, I had been scared, yes, but that was until I understood their motives better. I’d felt as though they were fighting to reach me, to shield me. As if they had been trying to pull me out of the darkness, not deeper into it. It was so much clearer to me now.
It made me wonder, were they really his curse, or were they his heart, the part of him that couldn’t speak the truth aloud? It felt as if they were an extension of him. His power. His pain. His unspoken apology. And that thought terrified me more than any nightmare ever could.
Because if that was true, then what did it mean that they had tried to protect me? I thought about the way he had looked at me before leaving my room last night. The softness in his voice when he’d said I could call him Vas. A name only his family had ever used.
And I couldn’t help but think that maybe it meant something.
Maybe it was a sign.
I remembered Victor in the restaurant, before I knew what he truly was, telling me about how his mother was no longerwith them. He’d said it so simply, only hinting at it, as if grief were something he had learned to wear rather than feel. But had that been the cause? The fracture that split them apart? The first drop of poison that had grown into all this hatred?
The thought lingered as I dressed, the morning light filtering through the curtains. For the first time, I saw parts of the house from the outside properly, its vast walls bathed in a muted grey glow.
