ログインThe light finally won.
It pierced through my eyelids even when they were closed, a searing white lance that cooked my brain inside my skull.I didn’t know how long I had been standing. My legs were no longer part of my anatomy; they were columns of fire that had long since burned down to ash.I swayed.Keep standing. If you fall, he adds an hour.But the command didn’t reach my muscles. The connection was severed.The room tilted sideways. The white walls dissolved.I fell.I hit the concrete not with a thud, but with a bone-jarring crack. My cheek slammed against the floor.Darkness—blessed, cool darkness swarmed the edges of my vision. I let it take me. I let the floor hold me.Splash.Ice-cold water hit my face.I gasped, sputtering, inhaling liquid. I choked, my body arching in a violent reflex.I opened my eyes.Killian stood over me. He held a metal bucThe chain rattled.It was the first sound of the morning.I woke up on the rug at the foot of Killian’s bed. My body was curled into a tight, defensive knot, my spine pressed against the heavy mahogany post where my ankle was tethered.My neck was stiff. My hip, resting on the hard floor through the thin rug, ached with a dull, bruising throb.I opened my eyes.The room was gray. Dawn.Above me, the bed shifted.Killian sat up.I didn’t move. I didn’t scramble away. I just watched his bare feet hit the floor inches from my face.He stood up, stretching. The muscles in his back rippled under his skin. He didn’t look down at me. He walked to the bathroom, the door closing with a soft click.I lay there, staring at the shackle on my ankle. The leather had chafed the skin raw during the night. A thin line of dried blood crusted the edge.I didn’t care.Pain was just noise now. Bac
I didn’t know how long I had been hiding under the stairs.Time had lost its shape. It wasn’t measured in hours anymore; it was measured in the throb of my burned hand and the cold seep of the stone floor into my hips.I sat in the dark, my knees pulled to my chest, my arms wrapped around my shins.I reached up to touch my hair.My hand met air where the weight used to be. My fingers grazed the jagged, bristly ends just below my ears.It was gone. The curtain. The shield. The only thing my mother had left me.I didn’t cry. I had cried in the bathroom. I had cried until my throat felt like it was bleeding. Now, there was nothing left but a dry, hollow ache in the center of my chest.I wasn’t a princess. I wasn’t a bride. I wasn’t even a girl.I was a gray thing. A ghost haunting the crawlspace.Clack. Clack. Clack.Footsteps.I pressed myself deeper into the shadows, making myself small
Morning arrived with a boot to the ribs.It wasn’t a kick meant to break a bone. It was a nudge. A reminder of my status.“Up,” Killian ordered.I uncurled from the rug. My body was stiff, my joints locking up from the cold floor and the damp draft that swept under the door.I sat up, pushing hair out of my face.Killian stood over me. He was fully dressed in a charcoal suit, looking like he owned the city. He held a cup of coffee. The steam rose in the air, smelling of heaven.He didn’t offer me any.He watched me brush the hair from my eyes. His gaze narrowed.I had thick, dark hair. Even after Carmina had hacked a chunk off in the linen closet, there was still enough of it to fall forward, to create a curtain, to hide my face when I wanted to disappear.Killian took a sip of his coffee.“You are hiding,” he stated.I froze. I kept my head down, letting the hair shield me.“
The numbness was a shield.It was heavy, like a lead vest, and it made moving difficult, but it stopped the arrows.I sat on the mattress in the windowless room, staring at the gray wall. My hands were folded in my lap. My burned hand was re-wrapped in fresh gauze… not by a doctor, but by me, using supplies I had stolen from the bathroom trash when Carmina wasn’t looking.It throbbed. Of course it throbbed. But the pain felt like it was happening to someone else. Like I was watching a movie of a girl in pain, and I was just the audience.Knock.It wasn’t a knock. It was a kick.The door swung open.Marco stood there. He looked tired. He looked at me with a strange expression—not pity, not hate. Just… unease.“Up,” he said. “The Don is eating. He requires service.”I stood up.I didn’t tremble. I didn’t scramble. I rose slowly, unfolding my limbs like a rusted machine.I smoothed the front of my gray dress. I checked my apron.I walked to the door.Marco stepped back, giving me a wide
Third person pov:The study was dark, illuminated only by the blue-white glow of the monitor and the ember of a cigarette burning in the ashtray.Killian Alatorre sat in the high-backed leather chair, a glass of amber whiskey untouched on the desk. His hand rested on the mouse, his index finger hovering over the button.Click.The video rewound.Play.On the screen, Luna’s face filled the frame.It was the moment before she cried. The split second where her composure fractured, where the “spoiled princess” mask dissolved, and something else peered out from beneath the grime and the fake bruise.Killian leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.He watched the way her throat worked as she swallowed a sob. He watched the way her pupils dilated, swallowing the hazel iris until her eyes were black pools of terror. He watched the tremor in her bottom lip—a microscopic, involuntary spasm that no amount of acting classes could teach.He froze the frame.He stared at her eyes.He was looking for the
The silence in the servant’s corridor was different now.Before, it had been the silence of invisibility. I was a ghost haunting the edges of the house, ignored and erased.Now, it was the silence of a held breath.Every time I passed a guard, the conversation stopped. Eyes followed me. Heavy. Greasy. They didn’t look at my bucket or my scrub brush anymore. They looked at my legs beneath the gray hem. They looked at my mouth.Inspecting the goods.Killian’s words hung in the air like a thick, poisonous fog. He had branded me in the foyer. He had told them I was his to play with, and now, every man in the house wondered what that play looked like.I kept my head down, hugging the wall as I carried a stack of linens to the laundry chute.My burned hand throbbed—a dull, wet ache under the dirty bandage. My stomach was a hollow pit, gnawing at itself.But it was the shame that made me stumble.I wasn’t a pr







