Semua Bab The Silence Of His Vows: Bab 61 - Bab 70

The new cage had no bars. It didn't need them.I lay on my side on a thin mattress that smelled like mildew and old sweat, staring at the gray wall six inches from my face. The servant's quarters were a windowless box buried somewhere in the bowels of the Alatorre estate, and the walls pressed in so close I could stretch my arms and touch both sides at once.There was no bed frame. Just the mattress on the concrete floor, stained with things I didn't want to think about. There was no clock. No mirror. No window to tell me if it was day or night, if hours had passed or days.There was only the chemical burn of bleach that had soaked into my skin and hair, and the deep, throbbing ache in my back where Carmina's cane had landed over and over.My wedding dress was gone. Stripped from me by rough hands that hadn't cared when I'd tried to cover myself. They'd given me this instead—a coarse gray shift that hung shapeless on my frame and scratched my skin like burlap with every breath. It smel

Hunger was eating me from the inside out.Not the polite kind of hunger that made your stomach growl during a long meeting. Not the kind you could ignore with willpower and water. This was something else entirely, something that felt like my body was consuming itself, my stomach acid churning on nothing, eating through the lining until everything burned.It scraped at me. A constant, grinding pain that made it hard to think about anything else.I'd been in the Alatorre mansion for forty-eight hours.I hadn't eaten anything since the cathedral.I sat on the edge of the stained mattress in my windowless room, both hands pressed flat against my cramping belly. The shift dress they'd given me was still damp with sweat and dirty water from scrubbing the stairs. It clung to my skin in patches that felt cold and clammy.My head felt light. Disconnected. Like it might float away from my body if I moved too fast.The door opened without warning.Not Carmina this time. A man.A guard.He was mas

Carmina left without another word.The guard looked at me, still kneeling in the puddle of destroyed food.He gestured toward the door with his head."After you, princess. Let's go give the boys a show."The East Corridor was long and oppressive, lined with portraits of dead Alatorre ancestors glaring down from gilded frames. Their painted eyes followed me as I walked, judgment written in every brushstroke.It was also the main route for the night watch.I could hear boots echoing through the mansion, guards walking their patrol routes in pairs, their voices low and rumbling through the walls.They'd positioned me in the center of the hallway.Kneeling on the marble floor.Not on the long rug runner that stretched down the middle—Carmina had been very specific about that. She'd pulled the rug back herself, exposing the cold, hard stone underneath."Knees on the marble," she'd said. "Not the rug. I want you to feel it."So I knelt on bare stone.My back straight. My hands resting flat o

The sun came up, but I didn't feel saved.I was still kneeling in the East Corridor, still in the exact position Carmina had left me in eight hours ago. My body had stopped being my body somewhere around hour four. Now it was just a collection of separate pain signals my brain couldn't process anymore.My legs weren't legs. They were pillars of something that burned and froze at the same time, nerves screaming so loud and so long that the sound had turned into white noise. The kind of pain so intense it circles back around and becomes numbness, except worse, because underneath the numbness I could still feel everything breaking down.The guards had changed shifts at some point. I'd heard the low rumble of voices, boots on marble, the formal exchange of posts. The cruel one—the one who'd kicked my foot and laughed—was gone.These new guards were different. Silent. They stood like statues by the doors at either end of the corridor, watching me with the same indifference they'd watch pain

The floor was clean.My hand was ruined.It was nine in the morning.I'd been scrubbing for an hour with my left hand while my right hand throbbed with a pulse so violent it felt like a second heart beating in my palm. Every heartbeat sent fresh waves of fire radiating up my arm.The adrenaline that had flooded my system during the accident had faded completely, leaving behind cold, clammy shock. My vision swam in and out of focus. The edges of the kitchen were turning gray, the fluorescent lights too bright and too dim at the same time.I dropped the rag into the bucket of dirty water.Done.I tried to stand up.My legs didn't work. They were jelly, boneless things that refused to support my weight.I slumped sideways against the cabinet, cradling my burned hand to my chest. The skin was bright red and swelling worse by the minute, tight and angry.I closed my eyes, and the questions I'd been too terrified to ask finally screamed inside my head.Why?What did my father do to him?Kill