Page 49 of Velka Manor

Screams echo in the distance, bouncing off the walls as I descend the stairs, going deeper into the dungeon. My feet leave the plush carpet for the cold cement, and I shiver, regretting not putting on shoes. I follow the screams, gazing into the cells as I go, seeing so many people from my past. They have got every single person who ever hurt me down here, locked up to be tortured. If I know them, it will be a long time before they let anyone have the peace of death.

A loud bang and a final scream come from the room on my left a few doors down. A sickening wet squelch has my stomach turning, and I scrunch up my nose, peering inside to see someone with their head caved in laid on the floor. The person is unrecognisable, bones, blood, and teeth splattered against a wall.

“I hope they deserved it,” I say, leaning against the door frame.

Ghost snaps his head up, wiping blood from his face, smearing it all over. “I wondered if they would let you come see me.”

I laugh, shaking my head, crossing my arms across my chest. “They would never let me come see you alone. I waited until theywere asleep. They wouldn’t suspect I would seek you out after just learning thatyouwere actually the one who contributed your sperm to my existence. It was the only time to get you alone.”

“And you wanted to speak with me alone?” he asks, grabbing a wooden chair, pushing out another from the small table at the back of the room, gesturing for me to take a seat.

I walk into the room, feeling the blood and other things I don’t want to think about between my toes, seriously regretting not putting on shoes. I grab the chair he offered, and we sit down at the same time.

“I wanted to speak with you without having to deal with those two. You’d be dead before I even got my first few questions out.”

He nods his head, huffing a laugh. “That sounds like them.”

“How did they find out you were my biological father? Did you tell them?” I ask, not bothering to beat around the bush.

He grasps my chin with his bloody hands, and I lift it, clenching my jaw. “Dorian noticed first. Saw me watching you too closely. ‘You have her eyes,’ he said. I had never been more terrified of a child than when I thought he was going to blow my identity.”

He lets me go, and I rub my chin, unable to stop myself from looking at his eyes, seeing my own reflected. How have I never seen that before?

“But he didn’t. He walked away and never mentioned it again. It wasn’t until you got older, and we started to work more closely to protect you, that I told him I had been sent by Vincent to be his spy. Vincent Stone never trusted his son and wanted a more trained soldier in the manor to take care of things if the need should arise.”

“You call what you did protecting me?” I ask, tilting my head to the side. “I was terrified of you when I was younger.”

He runs his hand through his hair, smearing the white-blonde with blood. “What I did was to protect you, to make you stronger. I saw so much of my sister in you. She was soft, kind, and belonged far away, but she couldn’t get away and she died because she couldn’t survive this life.”

His voice shakes, and he coughs, clearing his throat. “She took her own life because she didn’t see another way out, and I was too late to save her. I didn’t want to take the chance of making the same mistake with you.”

His hand reaches across the table and hesitantly grabs mine. I don’t hold it back, but I don’t shake him off either.

“Your mother, Lucinda, and I were just a brief fling, something to do to pass the time, and then one day she told me she was getting married to Charles Stone. I thought nothing of it, of her until your birth and her death were announced. I thought the timing odd but didn’t look too deeply into it. I didn't want to if I’m honest, but then I saw you at one of your birthday balls, you were three years old and all I saw was my sister. I knew you were mine, knew I had to protect you.”

“You never tried to take me. You never tried to get me away from this place,” I say and he hears the accusation in my tone and drops my hand like I burned him.

“Would you have gone if I tried? Would you have left them behind?” He points to the ceiling, indicating to the only two people I care about. “By the time I arrived, they were your everything. You only smiled when they were around, seeking them out even when it got you punished. You would have never left them.”

I nod, conceding that he is correct. I wouldn’t have left them, I would have put up so much of a fight to stay with them he would have been caught. Still…

“Shouldn’t that have been irrelevant? Shouldn’t you have cared enough to want more for me than a life in the bloodline, done everything you could have physically done?”

He works his jaw, avoiding my gaze, and I know I’m right.

“You did what you could while still keeping yourself safe. You toed the line of risking being banished or slaughtered by the bloodline, but you didn’t fully go over it.” He opens his mouth to either object or make an excuse, but I wave my hand, cutting him off.

“Look I get it, there’s only two people I would stick my life on the line for in this fucked up organisation. But they are also the only ones that would for me as well. I just needed to confirm that,” I say, standing up.

I’m not sure what I was hoping to get talking to him or what I even wanted, but I feel like I got it.

“I do care about you, Octavia,” he shouts, jumping to his feet, his hands planted on the table. “I…I wish I could say more. I wish…” His face scrunches up, his nostrils flaring.

“I know,” I whisper. “Maybe you’ll care about someone else one day enough to save them, but it’s okay that it wasn’t me. I never needed saving.”

I grasp the door frame, biting the bottom lip, needing to do one more thing, cause I might not need saving but he does.

“You should leave the manor,” I say, twisting to look back at him. “If they think that for a second I might come to care about you, they’re going to kill you. I wouldn’t risk staying too long.”

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