Victor stilled, his eyes shifting quickly from confusion, to anger, to guilt. “Oh, yes. Sage, you… you haven’t had anything to eat, have you?”
How easy for him to forget when he’d gorged himself on me for hours.
He put the drink and pills on the nightstand, then sat down on the bed, taking out his phone and texting someone about getting me some food, I hoped.
Unfortunately, I fell asleep before any arrived.
* * *
I woke up the next afternoon, feeling like I’d just run a marathon. Not that I would necessarily know what that actually felt like, since my heart condition had exempted me from P.E. all through school.
Victor slept soundly beside me, his arm draped across my abdomen. What was it about seeing him like this, his face softened, a strand of his wine-red hair falling over his cheek, that was so endearing? He looked much younger than his thirty-seven years, innocent and sweet. Not like the monster I knew him to be.
His brow suddenly furrowed, and he murmured something before his hold on me tightened, and he pulled me in closer.
Even monsters needed security blankets, it seemed.
I looked up at the Sanguis Vita and sandwich sitting on the nightstand, both equally unappetizing after sitting out for hours. Carefully extracting myself from his grip, I got up on shaky legs, my chest screaming in pain. I grabbed my pills, swallowing them dry, and then made my way to the bathroom.
The bright light that snapped to life made me wince, a headache pounding from beneath my temples.
Courage gathered, I looked up to see myself in the mirror, suspecting a gasp of horror, but none came. This visage—pallid skin, dark circles under my eyes, and bruising along the bite marks on my neck, had become so normal it no longer surprised me. If anything, watching myself slowly come back to life in the precious days I’d had of freedom had been much more alarming.
I turned the faucet on, cupping water into my parched mouth with trembling hands. If there was one silver lining in all of this, it was that this new path Victor was taking us on would likely kill me much faster. In the penthouse, just the two of us, all of his concentration was on me. And while he sometimes went a little overboard, he could usually stop himself once he realized what he was doing.
But now, he had an audience to perform for, and any action that could be be construed as weakness was to be avoided. He’d play with me like a little doll to pose on his lap, ignoring my limits and taking his fill until one day he finally drank too much, and my heart—his mate’s heart—would give out.
I wondered if it would be possible to pass a message on to Ronan some way. To let him know he would be in my thoughtsuntil the very end, and that I hoped he would one day find some semblance of joy in his life.
After taking a quick shower and washing the dried blood from my neck, I tiptoed back into the bedroom, hoping my wakefulness wouldn’t bring Victor from his sleep, hungry for the other thing I provided him.
Even if I’d never liked him much from the beginning, I couldn’t deny the way my body used to respond to him, the way he could draw an orgasm from me as easily as he could my blood.
Now though, there wasn’t any comfort or escape in his touch. Even closing my eyes and trying to imagine him as Ronan did nothing for me.
Luckily, Victor was well sated from the previous evening, and he didn’t even seem to notice I had gotten up.
Relishing this little bit of freedom, I nearly jumped for joy when I found the door to his room unlocked.
Escape was impossible, but at least he had a TV.
I muted it and turned on the subtitles, ignoring the hunger gnawing me from the inside out as I flipped through the channels, soaking in every image, every word like it would sustain me all the same.
He had channels from all over Lundaria, naturally—like he would deny himself anything. Noctis’s stations were full of infomercials and reruns of films older than I was during the day, but for the rest of us Magiks, this was the time for pulpy soap operas. My grandma’s familiar, a small possum named Gladys, would watch these with me after school when I was a kid and my parents were still at work.
I settled on one from Fenmoor,As the Moon Wanes. A classic.
The pup isn’t yours, Darien. Vorrak knows it, and so do I.
I sucked in a startled gasp—reality TV wished it was as dramatic as this.
She was just about to reveal which pack member was the father of her son when the door creaked open.
I whipped my head around, fear coursing through my veins. But it was just Accalia with Alaric in her arms. He was fussing, and Accalia looked somewhat frazzled, especially to see me there.
“You startled me,” she half-whispered,
I forced myself to look at her face, and not the baby she cradled to her chest. “Same. Couldn’t sleep?”
