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Blinding light slices through the blackness, and two guards enter my cell.

“No! No!” I kick and swing out at them, summoning a stubborn strength that refuses to be beaten down, even now. Even when I’ve lost what mattered most.

Rough hands lift me up from the floor, jostling my body as they drag me out of the cell.

“Let me go! Get your fucking hands off me!” My voice bounces off the walls, mocking me with its echo.

Cement grates the tips of my toes, while I’m carried out of solitary and up the stairs. The familiar scenery of the abandoned prison passes across my periphery, but I don’t bother to question where they’re taking me, because I already know.

We come to a stop in front of Remus’s bedroom door, and the guard knocks before opening it. They haul me across the room, past Remus, who stands alongside the bed wearing a velvet, red robe. At the opposite side of the room, Agatha sits slouched in a chair, sipping a red fluid that looks like wine. My grandmother’s necklace still rests on her collarbone.

Wrenching my hand free, I stand upright, chin high. The second I spin toward Agatha to tear my necklace from her throat, the guards’ hands are on me again, hauling me back.

Cold shackles bind my wrists and ankles to the bed posts, with little regard for how tight. As the men step back, Remus stares down on me with an emptiness I can’t even begin to decipher now.

“How did you know?” The words practically hiss through my clenched teeth.

“Where to find you? Mother told me, of course.”

Mother. I frown at that, as my mind reluctantly pulls fragmented pieces together, a puzzle for a much bigger picture I failed to see. “Mother Chilson. She was the one who took you in. Who read you the Bible.” The children Freya traded for Lillith’s freedom.

“Ding-ding-ding!” He raises his defective hand, twisting it around in front of me.

“She did that to you?”

“No, bless her soul. Agatha and I were infected at birth. We were the progenitors of the research done at the convent. Raised by scientists and doctors, until we were old enough to make our own way.”

“Born Rager.”

“Yes again. Now do you see why it’s so very important for me to fuck something pure?” His fingers slip down the edge of my body, where he directs his attention. “Your father made us orphans. He murdered my mother and brother in a raid on our nest. I remember the day very clearly.” Eyes seemingly lost to the memory, he clenches his teeth, as if reliving the anger. “The pity in your father’s eyes, when he found Agatha and me hidden together. One would think he spared us that day, by not having his men execute us the same cruel way he did our mother. He knew, though.” He shakes his head, the venom thick in his tone. “He knew that, by abandoning us there, he might as well have pulled the trigger himself. He stole our mother and left us to die.”

“She was infected. Your brother became infected, and that’s why he raped her.”

“You are perceptive.”

“Then, this … this is all revenge? You plotted to take me for revenge?”

“I cannot tell you how long I’ve waited for this. When I found out you’d been offered up for a sacrifice? I ensured victory by having Titus fight to claim you.” The hem of my shirt lifts, as he runs his fingers over the edge of my stomach. “Poor Titus. I daresay that beast fell in love with you at first sight.”

I double blink to ward off the tears that I refuse to give him. I refuse to hand over my agony to a man who would feed on it with no end to his hunger.

“I would’ve treated you like Agatha. A queen. But you were so quick to run away from me. To give your body to another man. A diseased, savage, whose seed has probably tainted your womb.”

The guards step away, taking their posts at either side of the bedroom door.

Remus rounds the bed, wearing a smile that turns my stomach inside out--the same one he wore just before he chucked the Lobelia over his shoulder. “I have a gift for you.” From a box on the nightstand, he lifts a severed head by its hair, and it’s not until it’s set upon my stomach, blood trickling over the edge of my body, that I realize it belonged to the maid who tried to help me escape.

Aiyana.

Eyes rolled back. Skin a purplish-blue.

A scream rips out of my chest, and I jerk my hips, sending the severed head rolling to the floor. The chasing sound of Remus and Agatha’s collective laughter only adds to the terror prickling my nerves. Remus slides his robe from his shoulders, revealing the stark patch of hair at his groin, where his penis sticks up from his thighs. Without a word, he climbs onto the bed, straddling my leg.

My pants are yanked down, and a shock of panic drums up just enough energy for me to wriggle in protest.

“No. No!” I kick and tug at my binds, while a scream tears across my throat. A hard smack kicks my head to the side, the sting of it tingling across my skin, but it doesn’t settle the fight in me. Bucking my hips beneath him, I make a poor attempt to push him off.

Unhindered by my struggle, he takes hold of his cock in one hand and digs his clawed fingers into my hips.