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Lahat ng Kabanata ng REGRET THE HUNGRY GOD : Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

21 Kabanata

Chapter 1: The Bad Deal

The blood wasn't mine. That was the only good thing I could say about tonight. I scrubbed the pink stain on my apron with a wet paper towel in the bathroom of Mickey's Diner. The fluorescent light buzzed like a dying fly. It was two in the morning. My hands smelled like bleach and bacon grease. The stain was from a drunk trucker who'd cut his hand on a broken ketchup bottle. He'd waved the bleeding palm in my face and called me a "creepy bitch" when I didn't flinch. I didn't flinch because I'd stopped feeling surprise three years ago. People always got uncomfortable around me. Dogs barked. Babies cried. Baristas forgot my order while staring directly at my face. I was a glitch in the wallpaper of the world. I didn't know why. I just knew I was tired. Mickey fired me ten minutes later. "You make the customers nervous, Sera." He handed me a crumpled envelope with my last three shifts in cash. "I don't know what it is. You're a nice girl. But you're bad for business." I took the mo

Chapter 2: The Weight of Silence

I woke up drowning. Not in water. In quiet. My eyes opened to a ceiling I didn't recognize. Dark wood beams. A chandelier made of black iron and dead candles. The air smelled like old books, cold stone, and something faintly metallic. Blood. Old blood, soaked into the bones of the building centuries ago. I was lying on a leather couch that probably cost more than my mother's medical bills for a year. A wool blanket had been draped over me. My sneakers were gone. My damp hoodie was still on, but someone had tucked a pillow under my head. Someone. The memories hit like a freight train. The alley. The rain that didn't touch him. The screams inside my skull. I sat up too fast. The room spun. I gripped the edge of the couch and forced myself to breathe. The screams were gone. My head was quiet. Not just quiet. Empty. Like someone had taken a power washer to the inside of my brain and scrubbed away every anxious thought, every worry about rent, every echo of my mother's disappointed

Chapter 3: The Rules of Ruin

The kitchen was a cathedral of copper and marble.I sat at a long wooden table that could have seated twenty people. A plate of food appeared in front of me without anyone visibly putting it there. Eggs. Toast. Sliced fruit arranged like a fan. I stared at it like it might bite me."It's not poisoned."Kael sat across from me, holding a cup of black coffee. He didn't drink it. He just held it. Maybe he liked the warmth. Maybe he liked pretending to be human."I'm not hungry," I said."Eat anyway.""Why? So you can keep your pet Null alive long enough to use me at your vampire prom?"His jaw tightened. It was a small movement. Barely there. But I caught it."The Conclave of Thorns is not a prom. It is a ceasefire dressed in silk and champagne. Every bloodline attends. Witches. Shifters. The Fae Courts. The Old Families. And my kind." He set the cup down. "We smile. We negotiate. We pretend we are civilized. And then we go home and sharpen our knives for the next century of quiet war."

Chapter 4: What the Dead Remember

The kitchen door didn't just slam open.It exploded.Wood splintered. Hinges screamed. And Kael Valerius stepped into the dead garden like a storm given legs. His eyes weren't bruised anymore. They were black. Completely black. No white. No iris. Just two voids that swallowed the gray morning light.He wasn't looking at me.He was looking at Margot."Get away from her."His voice wasn't human. It was layers. A hundred voices stacked on top of each other, speaking the same words at slightly different times. The sound made my teeth ache.Margot didn't flinch. She just kept smiling that soft, eyeless smile."There you are, my love," she said. "I've been waiting."I stumbled backward. My bare feet caught on a dead rose bush. Thorns scraped my ankle. I barely felt it. All I could see was Kael's face. The fury. The terror. I'd seen him bored. I'd seen him tired. I'd seen him crack open just enough to admit he wanted to die.I hadn't seen him afraid."Margot is dead." His voice was still lay

Chapter 5: The Weight of Knowing

I didn't sleep.The guest room was beautiful. Four-poster bed. Velvet drapes. A fireplace that lit itself when I walked in. The kind of room that belonged in a period drama about people with too much money and too little sense.I lay on top of the covers in my damp hoodie and stared at the ceiling.The woman's voice didn't whisper. Margot didn't appear. But I felt them. All of them. Not as sounds. As pressure. Like standing in a crowded room with your eyes closed. You can't see anyone, but you know they're there. Breathing. Watching. Waiting for you to open your eyes so they can start talking.I didn't open my eyes.At some point, the gray morning light turned gold. Then white. The fire crackled. The estate settled around me like a living thing. Old houses do that. They breathe. They shift. They remember.This house remembered too much.A knock at the door."Come in."Kael entered. He'd changed clothes. Black slacks. A charcoal sweater that made him look almost human. Almost approacha

Chapter 6: The First Lesson

Kael led me to a room I hadn't seen before.It was deep in the estate's eastern wing, past a staircase that spiraled downward instead of up, through a corridor lined with doors that had no handles. The air grew colder with every step. Not the cold of winter. The cold of absence. Of places where warmth had been forgotten.He stopped at a door that looked like all the others. No handle. Just dark wood and iron hinges."This is the Hall of Echoes," he said."Ominous.""Accurate."He pressed his palm flat against the wood. The door recognized him. Symbols flared beneath his fingers—the same symbols from the iron gate—and then the door simply... wasn't there. It didn't open. It dissolved. Beyond it, a vast circular room waited.I stepped inside and forgot how to breathe.The walls were covered in faces.Not paintings. Not carvings. Actual faces. They shifted and moved beneath the surface of the stone like drowning swimmers pressing against ice. Mouths opened in silent screams. Eyes tracked

Chapter 7: The price of knowing

I didn't sleep again.But this time it wasn't fear keeping me awake. It was questions. They buzzed in my skull like trapped flies. Why could I hear the Echoes speak when Kael never could? What made my Null blood a "stage" instead of a "cup"? And why did Margot feel like she was growing stronger every time I learned something new?I sat at the window seat in the guest room, watching the dead garden drown in moonlight. The blackened roses looked almost beautiful in the silver glow. Almost alive. I wondered if Margot was standing among them, her eyeless face turned up toward my window.Probably.A knock at the door. Soft. Hesitant. Not Kael's usual firm rap."Come in."The door opened and a woman entered. She was old. Older than anyone I'd ever seen. Her back was curved like a question mark. Her skin was thin as parchment, mapped with veins. She wore a simple gray dress and carried a tray with a steaming teapot and two cups."Master Valerius sent me," she said. Her voice was cracked but

Chapter 8: The Mirror Game

Midnight came like a held breath.I had spent the afternoon reading The Rules of Engagement in the library. The book was dense, written in a style that was both formal and venomous. The Voidborn diplomat who wrote it—a woman named Caelia Veyne—had survived seventeen Conclaves. She'd been poisoned twice, seduced by three different factions, and once walked into a room where every single person wanted her dead and walked out with a marriage alliance.Her first rule was underlined three times.Never let them see what you want. Want is a leash. They will grab it and pull.I closed the book at eleven-thirty. My eyes burned. My head was full of protocols and bloodline insults and the exact proper way to decline a Fae's offer without triggering a blood feud. I felt like I was cramming for an exam where failing meant death.Agatha appeared at my door with a cup of strong black tea and a look of sympathy."Master Valerius is waiting in the Hall of Echoes," she said. "I'd wish you luck, but luc

Chapter 9: The Words That Wound

I dreamed of the Salt Coast.I'd never seen it before. I didn't even know where it was. But in the dream, I stood on a cliff of white stone, staring down at a sea the color of bruises. The waves crashed against the rocks below, but there was no sound. Just silence. Heavy and watching.A woman stood at the edge of the cliff.Her back was to me. Long silver hair whipped in a wind I couldn't feel. She wore a dress made of something that looked like seaweed and starlight. It clung to her thin frame, wet and glistening."Elowen?" I called.She turned.Her face was mine.Not similar. Identical. Every line. Every shadow. But her eyes were different. They were silver. Molten. Ancient. And when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound came out. Just bubbles of salt water that burst against her lips.Find the ruins, a voice whispered. Not Elowen's. Margot's. Find what he buried. It's the key to everything.I woke with salt on my tongue.---Morning light bled through the velvet curtains. I sat u

Chapter 10: The Salt Coast Secret

I didn't sleep that night.The slashed portrait stayed in my mind. The woman in the blue dress had looked familiar. I'd seen her face before—in the Hall of Echoes, pressed against the stone, her mouth open in a silent scream. Iselda. The healer from the Black Forest. The one who poisoned a village.Margot had chosen her specifically. A message. A reminder that she knew the names and faces of Kael's sins better than anyone.I lay in the guest bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the estate breathe around me. Somewhere deep in the walls, I heard faint scratching. Like fingernails on old wood. It stopped when I held my breath. Started again when I exhaled.She's watching you.I didn't know if the thought was mine or Margot's anymore.---Dawn came gray and cold.I found Kael in the dead garden.He stood at the edge of the fountain, staring down at something in the stagnant water. His back was to me, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. The way his hands were curled at his s

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