Page 8 of Reflections of Silence

I will tear her apart.

And she will love me for it.

The entire time I feasted I thought of Gisella. Her pale flesh torn apart beneath my hands, her bones fragile, brittle. Her life beating frantically against my tongue as I took her to the edge again and again.

And when I was done, a shell of a woman was left, one I barely recognized as my once lover, no longer my servant.

“She must leave this house tonight,” I murmured to the younger sister who could have taken her place earlier. Wide, white eyes stared at me, written with the fresh horror of a thousand nightmares yet to be had. “You, too. Charleton will compensate you both handsomely. Leave this place,” I repeated, stalking to the mineral rock pools the house was built over, needing to cleanse myself.

Purify, before I touched her.

I had a wife to terrorize.

CHAPTER FOUR

GISELLA

My heart thundering in my chest in a delayed response after I left the carriage and the strange shadow man behind, I followed the tall valet who carried my tiny casket that contained my scant belongings to my room.

Suitewas more appropriate.

I barely saw the house or its halls, stumbling over my own feet in my haste to keep up with the speedy man, but I saw plenty of my own room, turning circles on the plush, patterned carpets, standing in the starlight that filtered through the arched windows.

My new home was a tower room. Bring in the dragon if you will, sir. Perhaps a moat to complete the picture. My accomplice scurried off, leaving me alone in my second new home on the same day.

Married to a nun, swept away to a castle home.

Even I could see that the building, though common in my homeland, was out of place in this new world. All flat sands and rivers and archaic reptilian nightmares…my new home lookedso out of place I struggled to understand how my husband had built the place unless by pure force of will alone.

Clearly, I’d hit the realm of fantastical notions. That thought could go right back into my casket, along with the intense coachman with his hungry eyes. I shivered, stepping outside my door and venturing a short distance along the hallway, but the shadows beckoned, and I darted back into my room, slamming the door shut and pressing my back to its unyielding surface.

I’d wake in the morning, still in my old room in my father’s house half a world away to discover this fairytale was all but a dream.

If it could be true.

I pushed away from the door, turning about the room too fast. The wine and my spinning took the mass of color with it, leaving me heady and swaying. I collapsed onto the bed, missing the pillows by a good measure. My aim didn’t matter; the mattress was enormous. I sank into its soft comfort, letting its plush surface curve around my weary body.

Too tired—or too drunk—to bother taking off my boots, I fell asleep in the same tattered dress I’d traveled across oceans to marry a man I hadn’t met yet.

My fleeting dreams were filled with shadows, midnight eyes in the face of a man I couldn’t see, and illicit kisses that faded as I awoke but craved all the same.

Daybreak, and breakfast, arrived far too early for my disposition; drapes were drawn aside with a combination of sighs and exclamations. Sighs from the army of maids who invaded my serene brand of darkness—such a happy plane to exist on a self-induced blue devil—and exclamations from mewhen sunlight burned my eyes. I rolled in my sheets, drowning in my pillow and using my sleep-matted hair as a barrier. If the staff were so enthused, couldn’t they visit another member of the household?

I burrowed deeper, swearing softly in my native tongue. A tap to my shoulder told me it was time to face the day. As gracefully as possible, I turned my rat’s nest of a head, certain it was nothing less, to the maid who proffered a pot of coffee beneath my nose.

“Merci,” I mumbled, attempting to sweep a tangle of frizzy knots from my face.

She gave me a bright smile and a bobbed curtsy. I watched the pot with no little trepidation. Being scalded on the morning I was to meet my new husband wasnothow I intended to spend my first day in a new life.

The young girl—she could surely be no more than six and ten, two younger than myself, perhaps—poured the coffee deftly into a porcelain cup decorated with minuscule cornflower blue patterns. It reminded me so much of the setMamanhad kept for special occasions that my stomach lurched, accompanied by a prickling around the corners of my eyes.

I blinked rapidly, trying to disguise the panic rising inside me, and failed miserably if the look on the girl’s face was anything to judge by.

“What—” I swallowed with a dry throat, trying to form words. More coffee was offered beneath my nose, and I took a grateful sip. I nodded my thanks. “What’s your name?”

“Minette, madame.” Though her voice was clear and high, it was horribly mangled by the hideous accent I’d encountered on the docks.

Realizing that this was, in fact, the way they spoke here, I resolved to teach my maid—Minette—conversational French, at least.

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