"I saved you," he hisses. "I gave you a life. A home. Protection. And you have the audacity to question me? To undermine me in my own house?"
"I'm sor?—"
"Shut the fuck up."
Every instinct screams at me to stop. To back down. To swallow whatever defiance just slipped out and return to the safety of silence.
But it's already too late.
Ewan rises and crosses over to the cabinet without looking at me. He pulls out a large Waterford crystal vase.
He walks back toward me, holding it up to the candlelight.
Turns it slowly.
Watching the way flames catch in the cut glass, throwing fractured rainbows across the walls. A beautiful thing, made ugly by the hands holding it.
I stop breathing.
His eyes find mine and he smiles down at me. That terrible, patient smile that always precedes the worst of him.
Then he opens his fingers.
Crystal detonates against marble, shards exploding outward in a glittering shrapnel of ruin. Pieces skitter across the floor, spinning, catching light, settling into stillness like the aftermath of a bomb.
"On your knees, Keira."
My mouth turns to sand. "What?"
"Pick up every single piece. With your hands."
I could refuse. Could stand up and walk out. Force him to drag me back or let me go. But Hale is upstairs. And whatever punishment Ewan gives me for defiance won't stop with me.
"Now, Keira," he yells, and I lower myself to the floor.
The marble bites through the fabric of my dress, cold seeping into my knees.
I reach for the nearest shard. It slices into my palm before I've even closed my fingers around it.
Blood wells immediately—dark against white stone, sliding between my fingers, dripping onto the floor in a slow, rhythmic splatter. I stare at it for a moment, detached. Wondering if this is really happening. If I'm really here.
Then I pick up another piece.
And another.
The cuts multiply. Palms. Fingertips. The soft webbing at the base of my thumb. Each one burns sharper than the last, layering pain on top of pain until my hands feel like they're on fire.
I lean into it.
Pain is the only thing in this room that still belongs to me.
Above me, Ewan watches with his arms folded across his chest. "Faster."
I reach for another shard, keeping my eyes on the floor. A sliver of glass catches in an open wound, embedding deep in my palm. I bite the inside of my cheek, refusing to make a sound.
I won't give him that.
"If anyone attempts to help her," Ewan announces to the guards outside, his voice carrying like a decree, "you'll be terminated. And then you'll take her place. Understood?"
