In truth, it almost feels like a relief that she’s finally speaking the words out loud. This here is progress. This here, I can manipulate. I can twist to suit my needs.
“What did they do?” I ask.
She looks up, her eyes wide with fear, but there’s something else in them too; a dawning, horrified understanding. She swallows hard, and shakes her head again, a tiny, involuntary gulp accompanying the motion. “I, I can’t even speak it,” she whispers, her voice trembling so violently it’s almost incoherent. “It’s, it’s…”
I see the sheer terror in her eyes, the unwillingness to articulate the horror. “Grace,” I say, my voice dropping lower, trying to convey a different kind of strength, a grounding presence. “You have to tell me. What did they do?”
She shakes her head frantically, curling tighter, pulling her knees up to her chest, hugging herself as if trying to disappear. “No,” she whimpers. “I can’t. It’s too much. It’s…”
My hand instinctively rises, the gesture forming itself before my conscious thought. I want to soothe her, to stroke her hair, to tell her it’s okay. That I’m here, that I won’t let them hurt her again. But my fingers hover in the air, suspended just above the pillow beside her head. The last thing I need is for her to associate my touch with the violation she’s already suffered.
No, that comes later. Right now she needs to see me as a source of comfort. Her only source, her only friend.
She jerks. It’s a violent, flailing movement, like a bird suddenly seized by a predator. Her eyes fly open, wide with sudden, shocking awareness, and she recoils as if I’ve reached for her. The sobbing cuts off abruptly, replaced by a high-pitched, terrified scream that tears through the room. “DON’T TOUCH ME.” she shrieks, the sound echoing with raw agony. “DON’T TOUCH ME. YOU… YOU DIDN’T STOP THEM. YOU… you’re the reason.”
The hurt in her eyes is mixed with the fear, but underneath it I see the raw, unprocessed grief and anger. She’s blaming herself, blamingme.
“Grace,” I begin, my voice hoarse. “Listen to me. You’re wrong.”
“No, you are.” she cries, throwing her hands up in a gesture of despair. “You let them take her, you let them take both of them. You drank with them, feasted with them, celebrated while we were locked in those cages. Did you stand there and watch as Magnus murdered my father, as they carved his heart out?”
I blink back, as a vision of that moment plays out. Of how Magnus raised that still beating organ and tore a chunk out with his bare teeth.
Titus had it coming.
So did Elaine.
I warned her, I warned them both, and they wouldn’t listen. Titus would never listen, he always had a chip on his shoulder, always wanted more than what life and God had given him. Their arrogance and their pursuit of power got them killed.
And Grace is going to pay a far bigger price than either of them will.
“I begged her.” I say calmly. “I went to your mother, I begged her, and I offered help to get you both out. She refused me. She refused to leave your father.”
“Why should she have?” Grace screams. “You were meant to make him Chapter Lord, not Magnus. It’s you that created all of this.”
I let her anger and her rage hit me, and a part of me is surprised at how much she understands of the situation. I thought her parents kept her ignorant of the more sordid details, but apparently not.
God, it’s going to be such a beautiful thing to take all this anger, all this fury, and to strip her of it entirely. I’m going to make her my bitch in every sense of the word.
My cock stirs enough that I have to swallow the thought, force it back down, make myself think of inconsequential, unsexy things.
Now is not the time. Touching her now, giving any hint of what I truly want would ruin everything.
They say good things come to those who wait. Well, patience is a game I can play. Especially when I know the time spent waiting is being put to good use.
I look at her, at the trembling, terrified shape huddled on her bed. She has no idea how right she really is. She has no idea that I really did sign her father’s death warrant the minute I chose Magnus over him. Nor will she. At least, not until she’s so far under my spell, so far under my control that it won’t matter. I’ll have her so enchanted by me, I could lay her on top of her father’s rotting corpse and fuck her on it, and she’d still not flinch away from my touch.
“Grace,” I say, allowing enough emotion into my voice to be convincing. “I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I never wanted you to be caught up in this. I begged Elaine to take you away, to give you a chance, but she wouldn’t. I tried to help, Grace. I really tried.”
Her eyes are locked on mine, filled with a mixture of disbelief and lingering pain. She doesn’t believe me. How can she? Everything I’ve ever done, everything I am screams of failure and complicity in her eyes, because she doesn’t understand the complexities of our world.
She doesn’t understand all the sacrifices, the hard work, everything I have done to ensure the Brethren itself can even continue on.
“I know it doesn’t change what happened,” I continue, my voice dropping to a near whisper, trying to convey the gravity without the harshness. “And Iknow I can’t take back the past. But Grace, Icanhelp you now. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, but I need you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” she scoffs, the sound bitter. “When you’re the reason I’m even here? When you’re the one who… who…”
“Who what, Grace?” I ask softly, patiently. “Tell me.”
