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He crosses to the vanity and lifts a small silver instrument from the tray. My blood turns cold.
Not that.
Anything but—
He notices and his evil smile returns. “There. Still afraid of something.”
The room tilts.
No.
No.
I am back in my body all at once, too much in it. My skin too tight, bones too loud. Heart hammering against ribs that have forgotten they are only ribs. He turns the instrument in the light, admiring it.
“Do you know what fascinates me about the mind, Olive? How much may be removed before the person becomes more pleasant.”
I cannot move, the bindings are not even on me now. They do not need to be, but my body remembers them well enough.
“Please,” I hear myself say and I hate the word.
His eyes brighten. “Ah.”
A sob rises in my throat, and I swallow it until it cuts.
“Not today,” he says. “You have been lovely this morning.”
He returns to the door, but at the threshold, he pauses. “Eat when they bring your tray. If you refuse again, I will have someone feed you.”
The door closes and the lock turns and the room exhales around me, but I do not. For several minutes, I stare at the ceiling and try to remember the order of things. Breathe. Blink. Move fingers. Move toes. Eventually, I sit, and the motion sends severe pain through places I refuse to name. I grip the edge of the chaise and wait for it to pass, but it does not. It becomes background; everything becomes background eventually. That is the most horrifying thing. People can adapt, even to cages, to hands, or even hunger.
I press one palm low against my stomach. Empty. The word opens beneath my ribs. He took my womb, not because he did not want children, but because it was mine, because he could. Because men like him cannot see a closed door without needing to own the room behind it. A sound escapes me.
Small, yet animalistic. I fold over my lap, pressing my hand harder against the place where something inside me used to belong. Was this always the fate of women? To be fought over, bought, handled, arranged, renamed, painted, emptied, and called beautiful for how quietly we endured it?
Would the unjustified abuse, objectification, and ownership of my kind always occur somewhere behind locked doors while men toasted civilization in the next room? I think of Le Havre. Of the women who arrived with bruises covered by collars and stories swallowed behind smiles.
I think of Lazarus laughing against my ear. Alcott smiling over a table full of dangerous ideas and Edward blindfolded on my stage, telling me he had known me longer than this life.
Edward.
His name is the sharpest thing left in me, I cannot breathe around it. How could they find me? I do not even know where I am. After the ship, there was France, then Spain.
I think.
A dock slick with rain. Voices speaking too quickly. A train, then another. Curtains drawn, then sedatives. A road so narrow the carriage tilted near cliffs. Stone walls. Iron gates. This place, wherever this place is. Far from my men and far from the woman I was.
I lift my head, the mirror catches me again. Thin, eyes too large. Cheek reddened from his hand. A doll, his bloody doll. The thought should make me scream. Instead, I feel almost nothing. Numbness spreads through me like cold water, maybe this is survival too. Perhaps The Widow was only useful when she had weapons, money, stages, allies. Without those things, she was never real, maybe I am only Olive. I lean back against the chaise and stare at the painted ceiling. I let the numbness take me, it is not peace, but it is quieter than terror. Quieter than rage and quieter than hope.
A tray arrives an hour later, with soup, a roll of bread, tea, and a pear sliced thin, arranged like a flower. I do not move until the servant leaves, then I look at the food, he wants me alive. Fed enough to breathe and thin enough to display. My hand trembles as I reach for the spoon. A dead woman cannot kill him, a starving woman cannot run, and a hollow woman cannot hold a blade.
I lift the spoon to my mouth, swallowing. The soup tastes of salt, cream, and humiliation. I eat three more bites, then stop. Enough, not for him but for me.
Then, somewhere deep beneath numbness, beneath terror, beneath the places he has touched and the parts he has taken, something answers. Not now, not yet, but someday. I close my eyes and for the first time in three months, I do not pray to be found. I pray to remember, my name, my rage. The feel of fire, the sound of Edward’s heart beneath my ear. The color of Lazarus’s eyes when he called me goddess and the shape of Alcott’s smile when he looked at me like a dangerous equation. I pray to remember that I was not born a doll; I was made a widow and widows, even broken ones, know how to survive long enough to bury the men who want them submissive.
40. Venator Mortis – Edward
Just Pretend
