My body jerks violently.
Duct tape bites at my wrists when I yank against it. They’re bound behind the chair, pulled tight enough to make my shoulders ache. My formal dress is still on me, but ruined now. The black fabric is ripped at the hem, dirt-streaked, one side twisted wrong from being dragged. The slit that made me feel beautiful hours ago now leaves part of my thigh exposed to the room like a joke I no longer understand.
A sound catches somewhere to my left.
“O-Octavia.”
Silas.
The way he says my name is barely more than a broken breath, weak enough that panic slams straight through my ribs. My head whips toward the sound. He is there, tied to another chair, close enough for me to see him clearly, far enough away to make the distance feel torturous.
Blood has crusted dark in his hair. A gash cuts viciously along the side of his head, the kind of wound that requires stitches and hospital light instead of the pathetic strip of gauze wrapped around it now. Somebody tried to stop the bleeding, but not out of kindness. Out of practicality. Out of wanting him conscious enough to witness this.
His wrists are bound too. Taped harder than mine, maybe because they already learned he is the one to fear if anything slips. His arms are straining against the chair with such brutal force that the wood groans each time he jerks. Fury and panic have sharpened him down to something almost unrecognizable. His face is too pale. His breathing is too rough. His eyes, when they lock on mine, are full of the kind of fear I have never seen him wear without hiding it behind violence first.
A voice rises from behind us.
“Good morning, lovebirds.”
The sound of it turns my blood to ice.
The man circles into view with obscene casualness, as if he is the host of this room instead of the rot inside it. He takes a seat on the bed in front of us, the mattress dipping beneath his weight, one leg crossing over the other like he has all the time in the world. A mask covers most of his face, but it doesn’t matter.
His eyes.
Recognition hits so hard it almost blacks me out again.
Those eyes are older now, the skin around them lined in a way I do not remember, but they are the same. The same flat, devouring interest. The same little gleam of ownership. The same look that once hovered over me while my mother sold my childhood by the hour and called it survival.
The man who left the deepest tallies.
The man whose hands taught my body terror in a language it still speaks fluently.
Something tears out of me then, not fear but fury so violent it feels like vomiting fire. I scream, throwing myself forward against the chair, the tape ripping painfully at my wrists while my whole body thrashes to get at him, to get away from him, to destroy him, to stop him from breathing in the same air as Silas.
“Get it all out, princess,” he says mildly.
Princess.
The old name lands like filth.
Silas explodes.
“Get the fuck away from her!”
His chair rattles so hard it looks like it might splinter under him. He throws his whole body against the restraints with enough force to tip the back legs off the floor for a second. Tape cuts deeper into his wrists. The gauze on his head shifts, fresh blood beginning to seep through where his pulse and rage refuseto leave the wound alone. He looks feral. Half-mad. Beautiful in the most horrifying way, because every piece of him is trying to get to me and failing.
The man on the bed glances at him with almost bored amusement.
“Touching,” he says. “Really. Makes a man nostalgic.”
My stomach turns. The room seems to shrink around the sound of his voice. Every old instinct is at war inside me now, some screaming to go still because stillness used to keep things shorter, some screaming to keep fighting because Silas is here and if he sees me go small maybe it will kill him worse than the head wound will.
Silas is still trying to rip free.
His eyes never leave me for long. They keep darting over me, scanning, cataloguing, desperate to know how hurt I am, how close he is to losing me, how much damage has already been done in the space between the ballroom and this room. Every time his gaze catches on the tears I can’t stop, his face twists harder.
“Look at me,” he says, voice ragged, aimed only at me now. “Octavia, beautiful, look at me.”
