Page 114 of Cursed Shadows 2

My wide eyes land on the floor. Tears slick my lips as I try to speak through the hitching of my breaths, “I-It… two-two…”

“Two months?” The tension in him as he takes a step closer to me, I feel it shoving at me, raining down on me like fists. “Since the Eclipse began?”

I can’t manage another word.

It’s all I can do to just nod my grimaced face—

Then father shouts—roars—at me.

Unleashed, his rage has him towering over me and he bellows something savage in my face.

I scream under the attack, a side of father I’ve never faced, never known. My body is rigid, hands half lifted at my sides as though braced to push at his chest if he’s to strike at me, and I back up and up and up until I’m absolutely squished against the wall.

“Two months,” he bellows. “Two months of frolicking around with a darkling! How you shame me, child! How you shame yourself with your spoiled body!”

Cornered between the wardrobe and the wall, I whine something pitiful. All I can manage is a shake of my head, once, twice, before father’s hand come smacking down on the wall beside my head.

His shout rattles my bones, “I found you with him, child. I know what you’re doing with that beast!”

I wince. “We didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t…” I can’t get my breaths out, it’s all chopped and hitched and my bottom lip keeps fluttering into my mouth. “No, no, no—”

“You lie to me?” His shout booms through the bedchamber, the entire house, and I hope and I pray Pandora comes to my rescue. “He was found between your legs, you vile thing! His scent is all over you! You dare trick me?”

“Other things!” My cry hitches with a whine. “Not sex, not sex!”

Father’s silence spurs me on.

My lip wobbles as I breath out, “We did… other th-th-things… but-but n-not th-tha-that.”

I’m cringing against his energy, as though it’s a beast who’s cornered me in the wild, one ready to rip me to pieces.

I fear he might.

“Speak clearly, child,” his bark shivers my cringed body. He strikes out—and I don’t even cry as his palm strikes, hard, across my face so hard that my body is twisted and my other cheek presses against the wall.

Stunned, I just stare at that wall.

Tears hang off my lashes. I hardly notice them through the distant pain screaming on my cheek, like it stings, like it weeps, like it’s been set alight.

Faintly, I’m aware of the blood trickling out of my nostril. It falls over my lips, the metallic taste strong on my tongue.

Not once,not oncein my nineteen years of life has father ever struck me. Never shouted in my face or cornered me, never frightened me.

But he’s not sorry.

Cheek turned to him, father doesn’t back away. Instead, he adds in a snarl, “Do not play with your words as you let him play with you. Did you have sex with that darkling?”

“No.” The answer chokes out of me.

“Did he touch you between your legs?”

With a snivel, I nod.

“With his hand… or with his mouth?”

“B-bo-both…”

Then his voice drops with a growl that stirs my bladder with threats, “Did you touch him?”

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