Page 51 of Beloved Sacrifice

Rose looked at him, then shook her head. “What is it about you that makes me want to tell you things?”

Marek didn’t reply. He watched her steadily and calmly. He wouldn’t demand, only ask.

Rose started pacing, walking on the outside edges of her feet. “We were in the kitchen and Elroy walked in. He looked at me, frowned, and then pointed down.” Rose’s breathing was just a bit too fast, an unconscious sign of agitation.

Or remembered fear.

“That was the signal to kneel. When Elroy did that, it meant it was time for me to submit. I froze, looked at…looked at the boy I loved… I’ll never forget it. He wasn’t confused—he was surprised. I realized he knew exactly what that gesture meant. He looked at me, and…”

Rose stopped pacing. She stood eerily still—spine straight, shoulders back—staring into middle distance.

“He knew, which meant he was one of them. I slid off the counter and knelt on the floor. That was the worst moment, because he was supposed to be my knight, the brave prince, but he wasn’t.”

Marek hadn’t thought the ball of dread in his stomach or the ache of sorrow in his heart could grow, but they did. With a terrible certainty, he knew that the story of Rose wouldn’t get better.

“I started crying as I took off my clothes. The boy I loved stormed out of the room. He left me there, with him.”

The hand not supporting her ribs was curling and uncurling in an anxious motion. Part of Marek wanted to tell her to stop—for both their sakes.

“Elroy made me bend over the counter, then tied my hands behind my back, looped rope around my throat and tied it so if I tried to stand up and get away, I’d choke myself. Elroy ordered me to be silent, so when the first lash of his cane opened the skin on the back of my thighs, I bit the inside of my cheek so hard it bled. But I was silent.”

Marek now understood why Rose knew the difference between broken and cracked ribs.

“I looked up and saw the boy I loved standing in the doorway. He was watching his father hurt me.

“The third blow broke me. I couldn’t keep quiet. My mouth was full of blood—I’d bitten my lip and cheek. I remember seeing my own blood on the counter when the pain made me start to gag and I spat out all that blood, all over the pristine counter. I begged Elroy’s forgiveness for disobeying, begged for a few minutes to compose myself. The pain made it impossible to think, to behave the way he’d trained me.”

Her words painted a vivid, horrible picture.

“That was when the boy I loved stepped in.”

Marek wanted to cheer. Finally, finally, someone had helped her.

“He told Elroy that since…that since he was the one who’d been offended, it was his right to punish me.”

“I’m so sorry, Rose.” He whispered the words, not wanting to interrupt her, but needing to say them. She kept up her restless, anxious pacing.

“Elroy gave him the cane, but the boy I loved undid the rope. I remembered thinking this was it, we were going to make a break for it, run away.”

Logic told him that wasn’t what happened, that the story didn’t suddenly get a happy ending, but some foolish part of him hoped for that, rooted for Rose and this boy she’d loved to run away and sail off into the sunset.

Her next words were stark. “He spanked me while his father watched.”

Marek shook his head once.

“I was heartbroken that he hadn’t come to rescue me. Embarrassed that he’d seen me naked, that he knew what his father had done to me. Enraged with him for doing this to me. He was my friend, my family, the person who, in my fantasies, saved me from the hell I was living.”

“I’m sorry for what you suffered, Rose.”

“It gets worse. Or better. Depending on your point of view. Because the spanking didn’t actually hurt. It sounded worse than it was.”

Marek was ready to cheer again. “He was pretending?”

“Yes—playing along. As soon as the spanking was over, he ordered me to his room. I wasn’t sure, so I behaved like the obedient thing they’d made me into. I was scared I’d been wrong, that he really was just like his father.

“But he wasn’t. When he came, he held me, and I felt safe. He told me that they’d trained him too—nothing like what I experienced, but he’d had the same birds and the bees lecture. But he’d just shrugged it off.

“He wanted to run away that night.” She shook her head. “He was older than I was, but he was naive, because he didn’t realize we couldn’t run. We were trapped.”

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