Page 149 of A Bond in Blood

“Stop,” I replied, trying to shake the whip from my hand, but it only tightened around my wrist.

“I have made her question her sanity.” His shoulders lifted with his breaths. “I have killed before her eyes. I have used her body for my satisfaction.”

“Ulrich.”

He twisted, his eyes burning. “My court has laws for those of us who do these crimes. I have marked you, Brenna. It is your right to do the same in return.”

The shadows pulled my arm upward without my control and I cried out.

“Ulrich! Stop!”

It came down onto his skin with a sickeningcrack. The noise echoed around us, bouncing off the stone walls of his bedroom.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.

The shadows pulled my arm up again.

“Ulrich!” I begged. “I will never forgive you if you make me do this.”

My arm froze in the air and he turned his head to meet my gaze. His hair hung over his eyes, another mask, blocking me from ever seeing who the man truly was.

“I will never forgive you,” I cried. “Do not force me to become the monster that you are.”

His body shook with my words and I stepped back, covering my lips with my hand as a tear ran down the edge of his mask.

“I have marked you,” he muttered.

I nodded. “Yes, Ulrich. Yes you have.”

The whip was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He remained unmoving in his spot, with his black blood running down his back. My hands balled at my sides. I wanted to feel disgust, or to feelnothingat all, but I could not shake my heart’s need to understand.

It was too much—too overwhelming.

So, I turned on my heel, walking right out of the bedroom door. Leaving him startled and naked on his knees. I could have run, like so many times before. The motion was becoming as part of myself as my skin and breath.

Instead, I walked slowly through the halls, allowing this cold darkness to wrap around myself and my senses. Knowing he was not going to follow, at least not immediately.

No, he was sitting in his penance; this much I knew.

After months of learning every secret passage of this palace, I was grateful for my knowledge while I avoided any eyes or hands that may have tried to reach out to my unclothed body.

If I were truly slipping into madness, if I were truly allowing his depravity and hate to spoil my soul, then I would move through his court like the whore they all believed me to be.

I rounded the corner, passing Olen who let out a startled yell, removing his hands from the man kissing his neck.

“Brenna!” he yelled after me, but I kept walking, not acknowledging him.

His shouts continued, but they were not close. Of course they weren’t, Olen was bound to check on hisking. Not the woman warming the ruler’s bed. Soon his words became distant, and my hands shoved open the doorway leading to hallway three.

I walked down the stairs and my tears built until I was standing in the clock room, spinning in place like a nymph that had lost her mind.

Naked in all of her glory.

“Brenna!” Ulrich’s voice echoed around me.

I refused to find him, to acknowledge his choice to follow me. I turned to hallway twelve, needing to cleanse this all from my mind, body, and soul.

His voice repeated my name as I walked away, but I would not respond. I could not respond.

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