Page 76 of Tainted Serenity

I manage to drown out a whimper as the ropes dig so deep into my flesh that I feel the slick and wet liquid of something coppery starting to seep down. It mixes with sweat, making the ropes somewhat slippery.

A loud bang comes from the corridor outside, making my body flinch as adrenaline spikes through my body in both fear and desperation. Arthur scowls at me before he turns toward the opening of the room, standing completely still as he listens for whatever is out there. Taking the moment of distraction to my advantage, I yank with one final thrust as the ropes dig into my flesh before slipping out of the restraints from the blood and sweat. Pain engulfs me as I cry out, screaming out from pure agony as sweat makes my hair stick to my forehead.

Arthur swirls around, staring at me with a type of fury that makes my skin crawl with imaginable ants, but before he has the time to walk over to me in quick strides, I am up from the chair. I untangle myself from the ropes, breathing as regularly as I can while feeling nausea hit me. The room spins, and I stumble forward, realizing what a mistake it was to try to escape this moment. Before I can react, Arthur has me pinned against his chest, and something silvery glints in the corner of my eyes. My heart starts pounding harder, and I am sure Arthur feels it. I can almost feel his smirk.

He has a knife pressed against my throat in a silent warning and threat.

And then the footsteps of someone approaching becomes clearer, making me go rigid in Arthur’s vile grip.

A figure appears in the opening of the room—someone dressed in all black with a hood over his head—but I would recognize that body everywhere. His muscular chest presses taut against the fabric when he looks up, and despite the darkness, I make out his sapphire eyes as he watches Arthur with something akin to horror when he sees me in his grip.

“Don’t do this,” Grey says, a quivering in his voice he desperately tries to conceal.

He is panicked, and I see it in his body language that he fears the moment I will slip away from life’s edge and into the underground of death. How many moments of watching your lover get hurt does it take for a human to fully, completely lose it?

Arthur pulls me even closer to him, bringing the sharp blade toward my throat and pressing it just a bit harder. Grey lifts his hands as one would try to calm down a wild animal, taking a step closer, which prompts Arthur to press the knife even tighter. An intense ache takes over as the room starts spinning around me, the pain in my wrists becoming gradually worse as the blood drips down to the floor with a silenced sound.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Arthur screams, making me wince.

“You won’t kill me,” I say, my voice almost slurred from the pain that consumes me.

He presses the blade harder against my throat until I feel liquid slowly seeping down my neckline, and I fear that if I swallow, the blade will cut too deeply into my skin, and then this would all be for nothing.

“If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it in the snowy forest. But you didn’t, because you wanted me alive. You wanted me to become your precious doll,” I spit out.

Rage fills his body, a relentless force that makes his muscles quiver, and I find it strangely amusing. Hasn’t he learned that you should never let your emotions get the best of you in a deadly situation like this?

He is too blinded by rage at my words to comprehend the fact that I use my foot and kick backward, hitting his balls until he groans from the pain and lets go of his hard grip on me. It gives me the perfect space to slip from, but in doing so, he manages to slice my upper arm, drawing blood. I hiss out but quickly manage to yank the knife from his grasp. Reacting without thinking, I turn around and push him against the floor with enough force so that he falls. Then the knife plunges into his stomach in a satisfying manner. A horrifying scream comes from behind me, and I turn around fast enough to see Esther standing there, rage and fear swimming in her eyes.

The brief moment of distraction was a mistake because Arthur seizes the opportunity to grab another dagger, holding it against my throat as a threat.

“Don’t hurt her!” Grey’s voice booms through the room.

He’s holding Esther at knifepoint now, having somehow disarmed her. Arthur realizes the catastrophic mess he finds himself in, and he glares at Grey with seething hatred in his eyes.

“Don’t hurt a single fucking bone in her body, or I will slice your daughter’s throat in an instant. Understood?”

I shiver at hearing his voice like that, commanding and authoritative, with a dark tilt to it that makes me tingle despite the circumstances. It shocks me how he knows about Esther, but maybe Daxton told him when they disappeared from me.

“Fucking kill her!” Esther screams, her voice high and demanding.

I never once let my eyes go from Arthur, observing his every move. I see the dilemma in his eyes, the panic in them at seeing his beloved daughter being threatened like that. Despite being a soulless monster, he has still found the emotions of caring about another human just as fucked up as he.

Dropping the knife to his side, Arthur kicks me to the ground beside him as he groans.

“Fucking coward,” Esther seethes.

I quickly manage to grab the knife he held seconds ago, and it’s not soon until I hear the cracking sounds of fists flying. I don’t dare turn my eyes away from Arthur; I only hope Grey is okay. As I hear a woman crying out before it quickly dissolves, I know Esther has fallen to the ground. I don’t know if she’s alive or not, and I still don’t look away from Arthur.

He looks so pathetic, lying there on the floor surrounded by dust, with his suit that was previously ironed, now wrinkled and full of splotches of blood.

I’m breathing heavily, the dizziness still making the edges of my vision darken, but I won’t give up just yet.

I grab the dagger tighter in my hands until my knuckles whiten as I loom above Arthur’s frail body. I cannot help but feel amusement and peace settle over me, as if I am finally able to breathe. It feels like emerging from the water after several slow seconds under the surface without being able to breathe. With my last strength and consciousness, I plunge the knife into his heart as memories pile up in my head.

It’s suddenly my mother in front of me. My mother whom I killed brutally, and now I’m doing the same to Arthur.

Oh god, I’m a killer.

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