Chapter 23
XXIII
EDEN
Pain explodes behind my eyes.
It’s white, blinding and crackles down my jaw like lightning.
The whole world tilts before I even hit the ground.
My cheek smashes into gravel and my bag tumbles from my hand.
My vision swims—boots, shadows, cold stone, blood.
The courtyard stones bite into my cheek, tearing skin.
My teeth slam together, and the taste of iron floods my mouth, my teeth rattling in my head. It feels like I’m going deaf.
I blink once, then twice as my vision spills.
I can’t breathe.
My skull screams—my whole body screams, actually. The ringing in my ears is louder than his voice, but I feel him, standing over me—radiating rage like heat off a furnace.
I can’t breathe.
I blink hard against the dark. My vision swims. My body wants to curl in on itself, to protect something soft, something sacred, but there’s nothing left in me that feels untouched.
I cough, and blood hits the stones.
My limbs shake. Not just from the impact—but from something deeper. Something that’s been twisting inside me for weeks. A fever I can’t sweat out. A weakness that no medicine touches. A hollowness under my ribs, like something’s draining out of me slowly.
I thought it was stress, maybe grief.
But I’ve never felt this sick until now, now that I’m around him.
I push myself up on shaking arms, pain flaring in my shoulder. My vision doubles, then focuses.
Silas is still there.
He looks wild. Pale. Breathing hard.
Like somehow he’s the victim here.
“You made me do that,” he spits, fists clenched. “You forced my hand, Eden. You don’t get to walk away from the future we planned, from me, like I’m nothing.”
I stagger to my feet.
Every part of me throbs with pain.
One of my bags lies open nearby, books and a sweater scattered like debris.
“I didn’t make you hit me. I never made you hit me.
You did it because you wanted to, because you thought you could get away with it,” I rasp.
My lip is split. I can feel it swelling with each word I mumble.
“But those days are over Silas. I called off the engagement, the whole world knows now,” I spit—more blood. “We’re over.”
It’s like my words hit a brick wall.
“I loved you, Eden. Publicly,” he growls. “And you humiliated me. You let them laugh at me. You let him touch you—”
“That has nothing to do with this! You lied to me about who you were.”
I can’t help but think this is all my fall. I let Silas get close to me, I let him twist himself around my spine until I couldn’t tell what was mine and what was his. I let him in—all because I thought it was the righteous, honorable thing to do.
But now?
I realize it was the biggest mistake of my life.
Everything that I thought I knew doesn’t exist anymore—and that includes whatever relationship we had. “It’s over, Silas.” Let it go.
I feel like I’m dying.
My chest aches, my vision is tunneling and that’s when I realize it’s not just from the hit. I’ve been feeling ill ever since I tossed that ring away in the streets of London. At first, I thought it was a bug I picked up.
But, it’s getting worse.
“You look like shit,” he says, almost smiling. “You can barely stand.”
I want to hit him, to scream, to set him on fire and watch him burn for all the horrible things he did to me. But I don’t. I couldn’t. I just don’t have that in me.
So, I just look him dead in the eye and say: “I’d rather die than belong to you.”
The words leave my mouth before I can take them back.
His jaw ticks, pupils dilating.
I see when the last bit of restraint that was holding him together breaks.
He grabs my wrist again, tighter this time. I bite back a cry.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he hisses. “You don’t understand what you are.”
“What I am?” I laugh, shaky and sharp. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I yank my wrist free and stumble backward—right into the shadow of the statue behind me. My chest heaves, my skin burns and my bones feel like they’re vibrating, humming with something wrong.
I don’t understand what’s happening to me.
“You’re mine, Eden,” he whispers. “Your soul is bound to mine. And if I can’t have you, nobody will, so you can forget about whatever plans Lucian has filled your head with.”
I clench my fists.
“I’m tired of you.”
I’m moving before I even realize what I’m doing. My hand makes contact with his face. Not enough to knock him down, but enough to make him stagger, enough for a bruise to form on his cheek. He’s stunned.
I hit him again, and again.
“You ruined my life!” I scream. “You’re the start of everything bad that’s happened to me at this place.”
Suddenly, he grabs both my hands so harshly that the air leaves my lungs. He looks down at me with such disgust I can’t believe that I was planning to spend the rest of my life with him. His face is splotched from bruises but I didn’t manage to draw any blood.
And with how quickly he immobilized me, I have a feeling he was allowing me to hit him—because he thinks I’m weak and defenseless. So I step on his foot with the heel of my shoes, as hard as I can.
He flinches, closing his eyes and sucking in a sharp breath from the pain.
But he doesn’t let go of my wrists. “You’ll have to do much better than that, Eden.
” My name sounds like a curse slipping from his venomous mouth.
“You’re right though. I was the start of everything that happened to you at Augustine.
” He grins, and it’s everything but warm.
My stomach starts to coil in on itself, pain wringing in my belly. “I’ll be the end of it as well.”
Silas knocks his forehead against mine so hard that the world goes black.
I wake to cold stone beneath me.
My wrists won’t move.
My legs won’t move.
Panic slams into my chest, jerking me—but I’m strapped down. Leather straps bite my skin. The air smells like damp stone, iron, incense… and something older.
Something dead.
Above me, candlelight flickers across the high, arched ceiling. A crucifix has been shattered, its pieces nailed upside-down to the walls like some grotesque mockery. Where am I?
That’s when I hear him.
Silas.
Clapping, slow and deliberate, as he steps out from behind me, into my field of vision.
“There she is,” he says softly. “My little bride of blood.”
My throat clenches.
His eyes shine in the candlelight, but there’s nothing holy in them. How did I ever see anything worth loving in those eyes? How did I believe that God sent him to me?
“You’ve caused me so many problems, Eden,” he says, circling me like a predator, his fingers trailing along the carved stone. “You’ve fought me every step of the way. Even when I tried to protect you. Even when I loved you.”
I twist against the restraints. They don’t budge.
“You should’ve stayed obedient,” he says, voice tight. “You should’ve worn the ring. Smiled at the cameras. Let me fix things.” He yells out.
He stops at my side, crouching. Hair sticks to my temples, and he bruises some of it away like he’s comforting me. But his hands are clammy and cold, sending a chill down my spine.
“But no,” he whispers. “You had to be difficult. Had to go crawling to him. Lucian. Like he could save you.”
That enrages me. So much that I spit in his face.
There’s nothing I can say that will get through that thick skull of his. But I can certainly do things to piss him off. But he wipes my spit off his face and licks it.
Then, he laughs.
“Still spirited. That’s what I liked about you,” he says. “That’s what made you worthy. You think I did all this just because you had money? No. There were girls before you who I could have chosen.”
He rises to his full height again, arms outstretched as he walks back behind me.
“I chose you, Eden. Not just because of your name. Not your looks. Not your bloodline. But also because your soul burns. And that’s what The Spirit wanted. That’s what made you the perfect offering.”
My heart drops.
“Offering?” I whisper. “What are you talking about?”
He grins. “You still don’t get it, do you? You still think this is about love. About hurt feelings and broken engagements. No, darling. This is about faith. About power.”
He paces, slow and reverent.
“After I met you, The Spirit demanded a sacrifice,” he says.
“But not just any sacrifice. She had to be brilliant. Beautiful. Difficult. And so I chose you. But to prepare you—well.” He chuckles.
“We had to weaken you first. Break you down. Piece by piece. But you broke the bond that night at the boathouse.”
His eyes gleam. “That’s why I had to use Vivienne.”
My stomach turns.
“What?” I breathe.
“Vivienne’s death was necessary. She was… the trial before the offering,” he says, like he’s explaining the weather. “She got in my way, so I gave her just enough rope to hang herself.” His laugh is hollow, and my blood runs cold. “But it was Anastazya who gave her the final push.”
“You killed her.”
My emotions go haywire. Disgust. Horror. But most of all, anger.
I was right—Vivienne’s murder wasn’t an accident.
Silas did it.
The boy she told me not to date.
The boy she told me to stay away from.
My choices killed my closest friend.
“She was in the way,” he says, shrugging. “She was going to expose us. She saw the rituals. The knives. The blood. She knew about what we got up to down here, and she wanted to thwart it all. It would have ruined my whole plan.”
He leans in, hands on either side of my head, his face inches from mine.
“But you didn’t need saving,” he whispers. “You needed belonging. And now, you’ll have it.”
Tears burn my eyes, but I won’t let them fall. I won’t let him see how much he’s affecting me. But there’s a hole where my heart used to be. A gaping, insatiable hole filled with memories of Vivienne, especially the last one.
Her body, like a broken mannequin after its final act.
“You’re insane,” I choke. “This isn’t faith. This is murder.”
“It’s devotion,” he snarls. “I bled for you. Bound myself to you. You think you can walk away from that? You think throwing away my ring can break a holy bond?”
He reaches beneath the altar and pulls out a blade—thin, ceremonial, curved like a sickle. It gleams in the candlelight.
“I didn’t lose you,” he says, voice shaking with something I’ve only ever heard when he’s forced his cock inside me, some sort of ecstasy. “I sanctified you.”
He places the tip of the blade against my sternum.
“And now, I’m going to make sure no one else ever touches what belongs to me.”
The scream rips from before I can control it.
I’m not scared.
I’m angry.
So so angry.
Because Silas isn’t god.
He’s not my fate, and I refuse to die for him.
The hundreds of hours I spent in church, my prayers, everything. None of it mattered. The only thing that matters is the here and the now. Now, all I have is myself. The tip of the blade bites into my chest, but it’s enough to ignite something deep inside me.
Not fear.
No, a heat I’ve never felt before.
I twist—violently. My wrist sears as the strap cuts into skin, but I feel it give. Just slightly, just enough. Silas frowns, caught off-guard by my resistance. He’s never seen this side of me before.
“Don’t—” he starts.
But I do.
I fucking do.
I’ll never listen to him again.
I whip my head up, slamming my forehead into his nose. There’s a crunch, a yell—he staggers backward, clutching his face, the blade slipping from his fingers and clattering to the floor. Blood gushes from his nose.
I don’t wait.
I yank my right arm again, hard enough that the strap splits—but so does my skin. Pain screams through me, but I’m used to my arms hurting. Even then, it’s a different kind of feeling.
It’s freedom.
The second my hand is loose, I reach across, clawing at the other strap. My fingers are slick with my blood, but I manage to untie my left wrist, then the chest strap. My legs are harder—they’re buckled tightly and soaked with what smells like pee. That must have happened when he knocked me out.
But I fight.
Silas roars behind me.
“You ungrateful little bitch—”
I roll off the altar just as he lunges.
I hit the floor, landing so hard my pain sparks through my spine. My right arm is shredded and burning from the straps, the blood pouring fast, and I’m seeing doubles.
But I crawl toward the blade.
It’s the only thing that might give me a chance out of this.
My brain feels like it’s in manual mode and every breath, every thought, every movement I make feels like an intentional, painful movement.
He grabs my ankle.
“Don’t you run from me. You belong to me, Eden!”
I twist again, kicking him in the knee with all the strength I have. He grunts, my kick hurts him just enough that his grip falters.
I grab the blade, spinning with all I can muster.
The motion slashes a wide arc across his shoulder. He screams like a child. I don’t know how deep the cut goes, but he reels back, clutching his arm. His eyes are wild and filled with what looks like…betrayal?
“You’d kill me?” he gasps, holding the wound on his shoulder. Blood spills over his fingers. “After everything, you’d kill me?”
My eyes widen in disbelief.
“I’d bury you,” I spit, rising to my feet on shaking legs. “For Vivienne. For me. For every time you hit me, for everything you carved into my chest. I’d bury you because someone as vile, as disgusting, as horrible as you shouldn’t exist.”
My vision is tunneling and my head is spinning, but I’m up on my feet. We’re far enough apart that I feel safe enough to start backing out of the chamber.
He stares at me, panting like an animal. I must have hurt him more than I thought, because he’s struggling to stand, hobbling towards me like a maniac.
“You’re bleeding out,” he sneers. “You won’t make it far. We’re both going to die.”
“At least I’ll die free,” I growl. “Not chained to you.”
I turn and run.
Through the tunnel-like maze that winds itself underground. When I finally see the light streaking through the entrance and cold air slams into me, I know I’ve made it back to the outside world.
I have no idea where he took me, but I start running.
I don’t know where I’m going.
I don’t know if I’ll make it.
Still, I run.
I’m bloody.
I’m shaking.
But I’m alive.
Behind me, Silas shrieks like something inhuman, and I feel something snap in my chest. Like a rubber band, like a rope that’s finally broken from the pressure.
It jerks me backward, but I also feel the pressure in my chest dissipate.
The pain in the back of my head that felt like it was fueling my sickness.
That’s when I know.
Silas doesn’t own me anymore.