I collapse into the filth of the barn floor the second his weight leaves me. My knees hit the packed earth with a dull thud, and I stay there, curled into a ball of shivering, ruined flesh. The hay is stuck to my damp skin, pricking the raw edges of the brand on my shoulder, but I don’t move to brush it off. I can’t move. My body feels like a house that’s been gutted by fire—blackened, hollow, and still smouldering with the heat of his intrusion.
I watch the blood and the thick, white slick of him drip from my thighs, staining the golden straw beneath me. It’s a map of my own destruction.
“He won’t want me,” I whisper. My voice is a jagged, unrecognisable rasp that barely carries over the sound of the rain drumming on the tin roof. “He won’t want me now.”
I look at the ruby ring on my finger. It’s still there. Still glowing. A beacon for a man who is looking for a girl who no longer exists. Peter didn’t marry this thing lying in the dirt. He didn’t put his mark on a woman who has another man’s seed cooling inside her, who has another man’s brand burned into her collarbone, who felt her own body betray her in the dark.
“Just kill me,” I say to the empty, echoing rafters. A sob racks my chest, making the torn muscles of my corescream in protest. “Viktor! Come back and just fucking finish it. Please.”
I dig my fingernails into the dirt, clawing at the earth as if I could bury myself alive right here. I feel the phantom weight of Viktor’s hands still bruising my hips, the phantom stretch of his cock still splitting me open. I can’t scrub him off. He’s under my skin. He’s in my blood.
Every breath I take tastes like the hay he stuffed into my mouth. Every heartbeat thuds against the brand he gave me.
“Peter,” I choke out, my forehead resting on my own blood-stained wrists. I close my eyes, and all I can see is the look on his face if he found me like this. The disgust. The pity. The realisation that I’m tainted beyond repair. I’m a broken toy. I’m a ruined prize.
The gold chains around my wrists feel heavier than they ever have before—not like jewellery, but like anchors dragging me down into the mud. I’m not a Queen anymore. I’m just a body.
“Please,” I whisper into the shadows, my eyes wide and vacant as I stare at the barn door. “Anyone. Just… just kill me before he sees what I am.”
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s the sound of a life ending while the heart is still beating. I lie there in the straw, a branded, bleeding ghost, waiting for a saviour I’m now too terrified to face.
Wendy
The mirror is a liar.
I stare at the woman reflected in the heavy, gold-leaf vanity, and I don’t recognise the hollowed-out eyes looking back at me. This room is a masterpiece of Italian cruelty—velvet walls the colour of dried blood, marble floors polished until they shine like ice, and the scent of lilies so thick it smells like a funeral. It is a room built for a bird meant to be looked at, never heard.
I am dressed in the outfit Viktor’s servants laid out for me. It is a mockery of my wedding night.
The dress is a slip of black silk, so thin it feels like a second, bruised skin. It hangs from spaghetti straps that dig into the raw, red edges of the brand on my shoulder. The neckline plunges nearly to my navel, exposing the swell of my breasts and the faint, purple finger-marks Viktor left on my ribs. It isn’t a dress; it’s an invitation to be used.
Beneath the silk, I am wearing nothing but a lacethong that cuts into my hips. On my feet, four-inch stilettos with thin, lethal straps that wrap around my ankles like more chains. They force my calves to ache, force my hips to tilt, force me to stand like a prize.
I pick up a heavy, silver-cased lipstick. The colour is “Siren”—a deep, aggressive crimson.
My hands shake as I drag the wax across my mouth. I have to cover the split in my lip, the one where his ring cut me when he hit me in the barn. I apply the red until my mouth looks like a fresh wound. I take a brush and sweep dark, smoky shadow over my lids, trying to hide the fact that the capillaries in my eyes burst from the pressure of his hands around my throat.
I look like a whore. The thought isn’t a scream; it’s a dull, heavy stone sinking in my chest. I look like exactly what he turned me into in the straw.
I lean closer to the glass, my breath fogging the expensive surface. The ruby on my finger catches the light of the chandelier, pulsing—a steady, rhythmic red. It looks stupid now. A child’s toy. A broken promise.
“He’s not coming,” I whisper. My voice is a ghost, a thin vibration that shatters against the marble.
I think of the way Peter used to look at me—like I was the only thing in the world that wasn’t broken. He spent weeks carving his name into my soul, making me need the sound of his voice, the weight of his hands, the safety of his shadow. He made me love him. He made me believe that as long as I wore his gold and his red, the world couldn’t touch me.
He lied.
“You left me,” I whisper to the reflection, a single, hot tear carving a track through the expensive foundation on my cheek. “You made me needyou… and then you let him take it all. You let him erase you.”
I feel the cold, heavy ache between my thighs, the physical reminder of the hours I spent under Viktor’s weight. I feel the brand on my shoulder throbbing, a permanent map of my failure. Peter didn’t save me. He stayed in the smoke while I was dragged into the fire. He let the “good girl” die in the dirt of a stable.
I pick up a bottle of perfume—something heavy and floral—and spray it until the air is suffocating, desperate to drown out the scent of cedar and sweat that I can still taste in the back of my throat.
I hate the woman in the mirror. I hate her for surviving. I hate her for the way her heart still beats for a man who isn’t here.
I stand up, the heels clicking sharply against the marble, a cold, rhythmic sound that echoes through the empty, opulent room. I am a masterpiece of misery, painted in red and black, waiting to be paraded in front of a ghost.
“He won’t even know me,” I choke out, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle a sob. “He won’t even recognise the pieces.”
