Page 179 of Blood of the Fairest

"I got them from the man who kidnapped me."

For a moment, I pray my ears simply stopped working.

"Kidnapped?"

Verena is focusing too hard on the goblet in her hand now, tipping it to admire the wine. The way she recounts everything is rehearsed, but uncomfortable. As if she's had to tell this story so many times, she's found the most efficient way to convey it—but she loathes recounting it at all.

"When I was twenty years old, I was abducted from my dorm room by a sexually motivated serial killer—or at least, that's the official classification law enforcement gave him. News outlets loved that label for their sensationalized bullshit, once they got my personal hell to make headlines," she adds bitterly. "But this guy…I knew him before he started raping and killing people. He stalked me for a while, and labels don't do him justice. He was just—he was fucked up, in the head. Beyond help. He…”

She shudders, visibly ill just from talking about this man.

My voice is barely above a whisper, since I don't want to ask this, but I must.

"He forced himself on you?"

"He tried to. He, um…" She grimaces, setting down the goblet to rub her wrists again. "He held me captive for three weeks, actually. Chained up in a basement. Like I said, he was…really sick, and he had lots of strange delusions about me. A recurring one was that I betrayed him somehow by marrying his brother instead of him—even though I was never married."

Her expression grows distant as she studies the goblet in front of her.

"Unlike his other victims, he wanted me to be willing. He wanted me to want him. It infuriated him that I only ever played along to survive, so he tried all kinds of…things to manipulate and scare me."

"Gory things," I guess quietly, realizing her fear of blood stems from a more disturbing place than I may have imagined.

"Sometimes. Anyway, all along, I knew it was just a matter of time before he snapped and tried to force himself on me. When he finally did, I…"

Verena meets my eye again, moisture in her tortured gaze as she whispers, "I killed him."

I barely restrain myself from saying good.

I do think it's good. Anyone who would take a woman for such sick purposes should rot, no matter whose hands their blood stains.

But talking about this is clearly difficult for Verena, whose heart is too kind for the horrors she's describing. So I resist.

Verena exhales shakily and looks away. "Anyway, that's the gist of my sob story. I'll leave out some of the grittier details."

"Don't," I murmur. "You can share everything with me."

Verena shakes her head, finally picking up the goblet again. She downs it all with impressive speed before immediately pouring more.

"I'm only mentioning any of this because I walked away with scars, too. And tattoos. He tattooed his name on me a lot. I got some of them removed—but again, I just covered most of them. I still feel pretty naked without the ink I picked out," she admits, absentmindedly rubbing her collarbone.

She continues to drink wine as I watch silently, anger building in my useless veins.

No wonder she's horrified whenever she thinks her room isn't safe. I understand now why her nights are so haunted—and why she is so viciously protective of Princess Snow White and other women.

All this time, Verena has been tormented by…a man.

A bastard who took her. Tormented her.

Forced his name onto her body and scarred her, literally and metaphorically.

I have felt irritation and anger before, on my own behalf. I thought I knew rage when those damn bandits were trying to take Verena.

But this—the dark, seething fury blooming in my chest…

"Now this is a respectable wrath," the Thirteenth Faerie muses within my skull. "Even if anger for love's sake is trite."

His voice fades as quickly as it arrived, but I still grit my teeth. I despise that fucking faerie.