Page 17 of His Eternal Claim

Loyalty in men like Corvin doesn’t exist unless it’s bought with something more expensive than money.

He hinted that Zagreus’s previous wife killed their parents. It might be because of revenge, or something else. But what role do I play in this? Where do I fall?

He had a child with her, or almost did. A life before I was forced into his orbit. Where is she now? Is she truly dead, as Corvin said? Or is she another piece of the wreckage Zagreus leaves in his wake? Where does she fall?

If Zagreus is the monster who kills for sport, then why did he look at me as if I were the only thing keeping the earth on its axis?

I push myself up, my head spinning. I need to move. I need to find the cracks in this sanctuary before the walls close in for good.

My Mother thinks I am her sweet, foolish girl again. She thinks she can peel back the years and find the child who obeyed the spoon. She’s wrong.

She doesn’t know that in my nightmares, she’s a haunting ghost.

But you can’t put a fire back into the wood once it’s already burned.

I slide out of bed, my feet hitting the cold floor. I look around the room for some time before I head for the vanity. My Mother spent an hour brushing my hair, talking about secrets, but she didn’t mention the one thing that matters.

The price of her resurrection. Where was she all those years?

That “why” is eating me alive more than “how”.

I open the drawer, finding only silk scarves, expensive creams, and jewelry.

There has to be something. Even a calculative man like Zagreus left something for me in that red room.

My Mother has to be foolish at some point. I desperately want my thoughts to be absurd. That everything I am thinking is wrong. I am terrified of what I will find if I climb the walls a little higher. I am afraid of finding out whether the image I’ve painted in my head of my Mother is black and white or colourful.

I see a small, inconspicuous jewelry box tucked behind a stack of lace handkerchiefs. It looks odd among the fabrics, so I grab it and open it.

I expect some jewels to be there; instead, there is a single, crumpled photograph and a small, amber vial.

I pick up the photo first. It’s old, the edges frayed. It shows a boy and a girl on a cliffside. The boy is sixteen, I guess. His jaw already set in that hard line, his eyes dark with a strange look that should have frightened the girl. But the girl… she’s laughing. She’s leaning into him as if he were the air she breathes.

It’s me. And it’s him.

But it’s the writing on the back that makes my heart stop.

Property of the Cosa Nostra. Do not return.

And then I look at the vial and the bottle of pills beside it. The label is hand-written in my Mother’s elegant, flowing script.

Memory Suppression Protocol. Dose: 5ml.

The nauseous feeling returns, stronger than before. These are the same pills Mama fed me a while ago.

I hear a footstep in the hallway and freeze, shoving the photo and the vial back into the box just as the door handle turns.

I dive back into the bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin, closing my eyes and forcing my breath to go heavy.

The door creaks open, and a shadow falls over me.

“I’ve increased the dosage like you said.”

“The resistance is higher than we anticipated,” the voice continues, the sound of heels clicking softly toward the bedside. “Her subconscious is fighting the block. If we push it any further, we risk permanent cognitive collapse. She will also forget how to speak.”

“She’s better that way,” my Mother’s voice answers. The sweetness is gone. “I will take everything from him like he took from me.” I lie perfectly still.

Property of the Cosa Nostra. Do not return.