Page 95 of Servitude to Serpents

I don’t react as Mistress turns the corner, her painted lips pulled into a deep frown. “Keeping you sweet was as much of a disservice to you as it was your former owner…and nowme, seeing as I’ll be the one correcting your incompetent trainer and my husband’s mistakes.” She actually says it as if it’s a gift, a favor she’s doing me.

I stand there, sopping wet, staring at her with the same amount of expression as a doorknob. I should be terrified.

In a way, I am.

It will hurt, whatever comes next.

“Your former house might have been comfortable with your disobedience, but I will not be, seeing as your previous lessons didn’t take.” Her lips hitch up into a tiny smirk before she soothes it away. “I shouldn’t have let him sell you out from underneath me, but that’s neither here nor there. You will not embarrass the House of Bloom.Come.”

Let him sell me out from under you?

I dip my head, padding over to her before she turns, snapping at the older woman. “And you.”

Panic rises in my chest. “She—” The smack Mistress lands on me is enough to send me to my ass, all my breath leaving me at once. Pain flares across my cheek, my hand slamming up to press the reddened skin, only to come back bloody, where her nail caught on her hand's path across my face.

“Come.”

We do, dread for the first time in months laying heavily in my stomach.

Grandma hardens her jaw when she sees me wipe at my tears frantically, making me miss a note.

“For Christ's sake, Chloe,” she mutters. Not to me, but I hear it all the same. The concert hall is enormous, the melody echoing back at me as I glance out at the empty seats that, in an hour, will be filled with the who’s who of her high society friends.

My eye patch sits discarded in my lap, the stage lights and my tears making my blurry eye burn like hell. It would help to have it on, but Grandma says it’s ugly, distracting from the music, so I don’t dare ask. When another wayward tear makes me miss a key, her hand connects roughly with the back of my head. It hurts, sure, but not much. It’s just…jarring, the way it tightens my chest and makes my lungs squeeze in on themselves. “Enough crying!”

My bottom lip wobbles, knowing it’s probably for the best Mom and Dad refused another invite. It’s probably best…

A sob bursts free from my chest, and she slaps me again. My cheeks puff out, my chest gripped with the effort to keep in my next sob, because I miss them. I miss them so much. I practiced so hard, for Mom, so she’d be… I don’t know, happy? Maybe? Maybe she’d smile at me again. Maybe I could remind her I’m her baby too.

OrI was.

I’m sixteen now. I’ve even got my license, thanks to Grandma's driver. Since I left, they’ve never come to a concert, not a single school event. Daddy-daughter dances spent on the sidelines with a lump in my throat. Stuffed in frilly dresses for proms and events I was forced to attend. After a while, I stopped asking not to, unable to stomach Grandma’s harsh blows to the tune ofRenee would have loved to attend a prom.Do it for her.

My scabbed and bloody hands slam the keys of the piano as I jerk up off the bench, listening to Grandma screeching as I run off the stage, bursting at the seams and knowing there’s no reprieve. No arms to run into and no shoulder to bury my head in. There’s nothing but tears.

Endless, endless tears held at bay by rapidly blinking eyes and deep, steadying breaths.

I knew it the moment we crossed the threshold of the adjoining room, that something terrible was about to happen. To me, her, or both, I wasn’t sure. Whatever primal thing we have in us to warn us when we’re in danger was flaring, every red flag waving, just nearly two years too late. My defeated heart pumps like crazy in my chest, adrenaline crashing through my veins, my body readying to either fight or flee. Both responses have long been beaten out of me; I do neither. Judging by the resignation in Gemma’s eyes, I can tell she feels the same. The men jerk us into position and standing guard at the door, every bit as useless as the locks.

Nobody here cares enough to fight anymore.

Sexual sadism isn’t something that afflicts women often. It’s more of a man’s thing. Everything that comes next is gifted to us in slow motion and highdefinition. The sound of the cuffs being fastened to our ankles and wrists, the sound of the metal-tipped wipe made as it connects with flesh. Mistress’ laughter rises above it all, her taunting, the catcall whistles, the guttural moans of pleasure as she fondles her cunt and tits.

My head lulls as she stalks over to the table, using some kind of tool to redefine the line of whatever she has been snorting for the past hour. Her breath leaves her in a sigh after she takes in the white powder, her burgundy-painted nails gripping the edge of the table as she arches her back like a cat. I can feel my heartbeat in my ears, everything weighing a thousand times what it usually does as I swallow hard, forcing myself to look over at Gemma.

Somehow, I find it in me to watch. My stomach curdles at every piston of the automated machine positioned between her legs. The large and wide, cone-shaped dildo gradually works its way deeper inside her, blood squelching with each thrust. The older woman is limp, her chin touching her chest, her long silver hair threaded with streaks of black unraveled from her bun. My chin wobbles, and fuck, I can’t stop it when vomit surges up my throat. The kind, quiet older woman is in some kind of fucked up reverse cowgirl, and the machine isn’t stopping.

It’s my fault.

My putrid, sticky, hot bile runs down my chest as Mistress grabs the hose, washing me off again. I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve done this.

“Next time you’re lucky enough to be at an event, how will you behave?”

I sob. My body is an open wound as she shouts over the water, the icy stream as good as salt in every cut. “I’ll be good.”

It’s the same thing I’ve been promising for hours.

“Good,because it’s coming up quick, and I’m quite excited to display you in your new form,” she taunts, her strong perfume filling my nose as she grips my hair. “Part of me hopes you mess up. I’ve been dying to have you in my room from the moment I saw you. Little Lily, will you cry for him more? Your former master? He sent people to check in on you, you know? At that fucking bathhouse he tried to hide you away in. Sent his snakes to make sure they were holding uptheir end of the bargain. Keeping you like a showpiece,no touching allowed. A lily ofmyhouse, rotting away, collecting dust, her sweet petals left to wilt without cock and pain to give them their vibrance? It’s funny, the things men will lie to their masters about, if only you wave enough cash in their faces.” Bile churns in my gut again.

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