Page 180 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
And I was now bound to the bedframe.
I couldn’t stand. I could only sit or kneel.
Hands retracted, but I could still feel the violating scorch they left behind. The guards left the room. The one I’d sent flying glared at me with a look of cold death.
“I wish I’d done worse,” I hissed.
When the man went rigid, his comrade pulled him forward.
“We can’t,” he barked. “Come on. Leave her.”
Nostrils flared, but the man fell in line. They left me there, bound to a bed, panting and searching my surroundings frantically.
Books had fallen from the bookcase the vampire collided with. It was one of many bookcases. On the center of a coffee table stood a marble vase with a familiar floral arrangement.
I was in Aster’s bedroom. I heard creaking and muted voices from around and below. Otherwise, my new reality was quiet and still.
There was nothing to distract me from the shame eating me alive. The shame I’d inherited from my mother. The shame I’d been learning to release.
My stomach churned with sickening horror. My heart was a tight fist.
I’d failedeveryone.
57
EVIE
Hours passed.
No one came for me.
Until the door opened, and the Servant returned.
I screamed at the nightmarish sight.
I blinked. Once. Twice. A third time. I convinced myself I was hallucinating. The past and present merged, a grotesque tapestry of the dark pit inside of me.
The hole where my mother’s love was supposed to go.
Because in the woman’s hand was a bag of rice.
Her black gown skimmed the floor as she approached me with a look of self-righteous ire. She scattered the rice on the floor underneath me.
I refused to cooperate. I swept the rice away with my feet. I crouched instead of kneeling. I pulled against my restraints.
She grabbed my arm and scalded the shit out of my skin. I cried out, unable to move away from her with my hands bound.
“Kneel.”
I shook my head. Through the blur of my tears, it was my mother standing over me. The lump in my throat returned, a sob forming deep in my core. I swallowed it down.
She burned me with her touch until tears spilled down my cheeks and onto the floor. She pushed me down, forcing my knees into the pointy grains.
“Every time you try to stand, the time of your punishment increases,” Mama said.
Fuck. I closed my eyes. She wasn’t my mother.
I wasn’t there anymore. That home was gone.Shewas gone.
