Page 62 of Seduced

She briefly considered screaming, but her voice had died in her throat.

Only one thought remained:

My sins have found me out.

This is my punishment.

I am going to die a sinner.

On and on the thoughts went, and she lay there, frozen in fear amid all the blood, unable to move. Her brother’s white, austere face appeared in front of her—she hoped the image was only inside her mind, but one couldn’t tell, so real did it seem—and frowned down at her in disappointment.

Poppy curled in on herself, bringing her legs up to her chest and hugging them close, as the tangy smell of bloodsoaking into the mattress filled her nostrils, making her stomach roll with painful nausea.

That was how Dante found her a few hours—or possibly days, it certainly felt like eons—later.

“Are you all right, love?” he asked, sounding decidedly more awake than he had this morning. His mouth was full; Poppy ventured a look. He was attacking a plate of eggs and bacon.

Poppy tried to say,‘Yes, thank you, move along, nothing to see here,’but all that came out was a whimper.

Dante took a good look at her, and stopped mid-bite.

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed, and promptly ran away.

That was not the last straw; the last straw had been ages and ages ago, sometime between being starved in her brother’s house and kneeling on the seeds and rice in that empty, cold chapel. But, for some unknown reason, this, Dante’s turning away from her bed and positively sprinting out of the room, made the tears start coursing down her cheeks.

“What happened here?” A voice said above her head; definitely not Dante’s voice.

“I-I’m sorry,” Poppy murmured, although it was too late for apologies.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” the voice said, lifting the covers briskly. Poppy felt so exposed and ashamed, it would be a good time now to be reduced into cinders, if one was ever meant to spontaneously combust. But nothing like that happened. “It is just a part of being a woman.”

It was Rania, the beautiful brown dancer, Dante’s friend.

“I do not always get my monthly flows,” Poppy tried to explain, still attempting to cover herself and the blood up. “They come most irregularly, if at all.”

“No wonder they do,” Rania replied, gathering up the bloody sheets, entirely unimpressed. “What with you being so tiny and being starved half the time.”

“Who…who said I have been starved?”

“Dante,” Rania replied. “He said he recognized it from the way you eat.”

Rania calmly helped her get out of the bed and wash.

The fact that she barely commented on the mess, or the amount of blood, astonished Poppy even more than how much Rania knew about how women’s body worked. Poppy, having had no mother or sisters, barely knew anything about herself.

“Do not ever be ashamed of your body,” Rania told Poppy. “It is a glorious thing of beauty, and anyone who has ever made you feel differently is in the wrong. Your body is something to be respected, celebrated, and cared for.”

Right, Poppy thought.As if that could ever be true.

But she did listen to what Rania was saying, and tried to understand, and watched the ease with which she treated her own body and honored it. She had never considered that a possibility.

They spent the day dancing alone in Dante’s room, playing with the cats, and having long, warm soaks in the club’s Roman baths. Some called them Turkish baths—the difference was small.

Hades had had warm springs installed in one of the great halls, and had turned it into his very set of own pump rooms. It was London’s best kept secret. Poppy had heard talk of these Roman baths within the Hellion Club, but she, like everyone else, had thought them a myth. But now, in the early afternoon, they were empty, and Rania led her inside and instructed her on how to put on the light robe and walkslowly in the pool, until the cramps in her stomach went away.

The Baths were large and spacious, their walls painted with Roman murals of Greek gods and goddesses all around, images fit to make one blush wherever they looked. But it was done somewhat tastefully, with Greek statues, pillars and gables all around, to give it something of the air of the Parthenon.

“Lord Perlin,” Rania said, as they were enjoying their second, long, warm soak of the day, “is well-known for his love of Greek and Roman architecture. He has studied it extensively, and took a very active part in the designing of the entire of the Underworld.”

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