The same wood flooring runs throughout the room, but there is a large antique patterned rug covering most of it. The walls are a deep, dark pink and black damask wallpaper, the black swirling pattern on the pink base looks like it might be textured. Something that as a child I would scratch my nails through, picking off the raised pieces in rich houses I was sent to like a little rebellion. Rich housewives feel a certain way about theirfancy decor. I’ve had more slaps across the face for destroying wallpaper than I ever had hot dinners in those places.
Strangely, though, I like it in here, it doesn’t make me feel destructive like it would have triggered in me as a small girl. With the warm lighting, the oversized, comfortable looking, dark grey sofas, the worn vintage rug beneath, it just sort of feels like home.
The whole space feels like it was designed just for me.
I lift my feet out of my shoes before I take a tentative step onto the carpet, craning my head back to stare up at the ridiculously high ceilings. Wooden structures and beams carved into curls and swirls, and squinting hard, I think I can make out-
“Spiders,” Billy says quietly, appearing beside me, drawing my eye, my head still craned back. “They always make me think of you.”
My eyes burn with the sudden fill of tears, and I can’t look at him, turning my gaze back to the ceiling. A lump forming in my throat as I stare up at the delicately crafted spider carvings. They seem so real, like mahogany creatures ready to crawl to life.
“All of this space makes me think of you,” he whispers then, my shoulder brushing his bicep as he leans closer. “I’ve been waiting for you for a really long time, Nellie.”
A tear streaks down the side of my face, rushing over my temple and into my hairline with the way my neck is arched, it’s quick enough for him not to notice, for me to pretend not to feel it. But Billy Blackwell sees everything. Especially when it comes to me.
“The Obsidian is an underworld organisation,” he states calmly, shocking me into straightening my head on my shoulders, peering up at him, his own head still tilted back, up towards the ceiling, a mimicry of how my own just was, but his eyes are rolled down onto mine. Those bright, ice-chip blues boring into me. “We are led by one god,” the way he says thewordgod,so casually, like it’s normal to call anyone that in a serious context. “Father Black,Milus,is our ruler, and we follow him in everything we do. We kill for him, we die for him, we breed for him.”
I feel my own breath catch, that word sending a vibration of fear rattling through my bones.Breed.Like I’m nothing more than a womb. That’s what I agreed to in Italy. Thatritualwe performed, ourPairing,everything we went through.
‘Now we need to consummate, to breed.’
That phrase rolls around inside my skull, and fear crawls its way up my spine like the carved wooden spiders really have come to life.
“We are a community,” Billy stresses, but there’s horror on my face that I know he can see, in the flush of my cheeks, in the parting of my lips, the dryness of my tongue. “A family.”
Every wound on my body from the last however many hours suddenly aches, “I only bled for you,” I find myself confessing. “Only foryou, Billy.”Because you are my god, my love, my monster in the light as well as in the dark.“I don’t want to be part of a fuckingcult.”
I’m not sure where the venom in my voice comes from, but I spit the words like they are rotten on my tongue. I’ve been in institutes led by religious rulers most of my life. I didn’t escape those just to run straight to another.
For a moment, a mere second of time, everything is still, silent. And then his hand is wrapping around my neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. He yanks me into him, our fronts colliding, my toes only just brushing the carpet where he holds me up by my throat.
“Watch your fucking mouth, Little Lamb,” he snarls over my mouth, my hands curled around his forearm as he drags me up higher, cracking my neck. “Blasphemy is punishable byso. Many. Things.”
My nails gouge into his skin, the slice in my palm burning as the freshly knitted skin reopens, and he feels it at the same time I do, my blood dribbling down his arm.
“You need to trust me,” he stresses, his eyes softening from the momentary anger, his hold on my neck relaxing, slowly lowering me back to my feet, but he doesn’t let go, doesn’t release me, keeping his fingers curled around my throat. “The only way I can have you,keepyou, is like this.”
Billy’s other hand lifts, gliding over the top of my head, smoothing back my hair, cupping the back of my skull. He looks into my eyes, my hands still curling around his forearm, but barely, my grip nothing more than a touch, just my skin on his.
“Don’t you want to stay with me, Little Lamb?” he swallows as he asks, his throat rolling, Adam’s apple prominent, his eyes flickering over my own, searching.
It’s faux nervousness.
All of it to coerce me into doing what he wants.
I am so submissive to him, in all ways. It’s just easier, sometimes, to have someone else tell you what to do, take control. And I do trust Billy, even if I shouldn’t.
My love for him overrules everything else.
Always has.
“I want to stay with you,” I tell him honestly, focussing on his eyes and not the rough stroke of his thumb along my jaw.
“But?” he questions soothingly, holding my gaze, his voice almost a purr. “Tell me, Nellie, let me reassure you that everything is going to be okay.”
It feels so sincere, his words, but they’re also desperate.
Desperate because he wants to keep me, which I believe, we may have been separated for years, but I do know that much to be true. And desperate because he doesn’t want to scare me. Because whatever thiscult, The Obsidian, really is, whether it’sfamily or a community or whatever else he tells me it is, I’m already in.
