Chapter 8
Claim
THE REQUIEM | Present
Everything tastes like a lie nowadays. Days bleed into nights, and nights often bring memories I have no recollection of. Sometimes I am on the beach, sometimes the blue fades into white sheets. The only constant in that haze of thoughts is stormy greys and clashing waves.
I don’t recall much.
I don’t want to recall much.
Every time I try to, it brings a headache and terror, because what I find down there is not something my mind wants to remember.
I stare at the ceiling, watching as shadows stretch into fingers across the white paint. It feels like they’ll extend and grow to wrap around my throat.
I turn to my right, watching the curtains sway. I feel like I am somewhere where I was never meant to be. I should be sleeping, letting the pills Mama gave me take over and sweep me away, to be lost in a haze and never wake up.
But I faked the sleep. I let my breathing go shallow until Mama was satisfied the medicine had drowned my consciousness.
She left ten minutes ago.
Now, I am alone with the storm inside me.
It’s a tempest of half-remembered touches and whispered vows that don’t fit the story I’ve been told.
She told me Zagreus is a monster and had taken too much, but as much as I want to believe her, my heart doesn’t let me.
The hatred I thought I had for him is not there anymore.
When I escaped him, I thought it’d bring me freedom, peace, and a life. Now, I don’t even recall what I was thinking.
My Mother’s version of the world is soft, lavender-scented, and safe, while Zagreus’s version is cold, iron-wrought, and terrifying.
So why does her safety feel like an interment, while his terror felt like being alive? His touch evoked something in me long forgotten, but the Mother I remembered is someone I’d never known. There’s no longer that spark in her. She no longer feels like home.
Jumped from one cage into the next. At least with Zagreus, everything was a lie.
Fake.
Less true.
Consuming.
But with her, the bars are carefully honest. She lets me pretend I’m free, even though I haven’t been allowed to set foot outside this room. A maid comes three times a day, always at the same hours, bringing me meals, changing my clothes, feeding me medicine. It all looks rehearsed.
I haven’t seen Corvin since I woke up. He betrayed his own brother. He spat on his bloodline to bring me to a woman I thought was ash and bone.
Why?
I roll onto my other side.
Loyalty in men like Corvin doesn’t exist unless it’s bought with something more expensive than money.
He hinted that Zagreus’s previous wife killed their parents. It might be because of revenge, or something else. But what role do I play in this? Where do I fall?
He had a child with her, or almost did. A life before I was forced into his orbit. Where is she now? Is she truly dead, as Corvin said? Or is she another piece of the wreckage Zagreus leaves in his wake? Where does she fall?
If Zagreus is the monster who kills for sport, then why did he look at me as if I were the only thing keeping the earth on its axis?
I push myself up, my head spinning. I need to move. I need to find the cracks in this sanctuary before the walls close in for good.
My Mother thinks I am her sweet, foolish girl again. She thinks she can peel back the years and find the child who obeyed the spoon. She’s wrong.
She doesn’t know that in my nightmares, she’s a haunting ghost.
But you can’t put a fire back into the wood once it’s already burned.
I slide out of bed, my feet hitting the cold floor. I look around the room for some time before I head for the vanity. My Mother spent an hour brushing my hair, talking about secrets, but she didn’t mention the one thing that matters.
The price of her resurrection. Where was she all those years?
That “why” is eating me alive more than “how”.
I open the drawer, finding only silk scarves, expensive creams, and jewelry.
There has to be something. Even a calculative man like Zagreus left something for me in that red room.
My Mother has to be foolish at some point.
I desperately want my thoughts to be absurd.
That everything I am thinking is wrong. I am terrified of what I will find if I climb the walls a little higher.
I am afraid of finding out whether the image I’ve painted in my head of my Mother is black and white or colourful.
I see a small, inconspicuous jewelry box tucked behind a stack of lace handkerchiefs. It looks odd among the fabrics, so I grab it and open it.
I expect some jewels to be there; instead, there is a single, crumpled photograph and a small, amber vial.
I pick up the photo first. It’s old, the edges frayed.
It shows a boy and a girl on a cliffside.
The boy is sixteen, I guess. His jaw already set in that hard line, his eyes dark with a strange look that should have frightened the girl.
But the girl… she’s laughing. She’s leaning into him as if he were the air she breathes.
It’s me. And it’s him.
But it’s the writing on the back that makes my heart stop.
Property of the Cosa Nostra. Do not return.
And then I look at the vial and the bottle of pills beside it. The label is hand-written in my Mother’s elegant, flowing script.
Memory Suppression Protocol. Dose: 5ml.
The nauseous feeling returns, stronger than before. These are the same pills Mama fed me a while ago.
I hear a footstep in the hallway and freeze, shoving the photo and the vial back into the box just as the door handle turns.
I dive back into the bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin, closing my eyes and forcing my breath to go heavy.
The door creaks open, and a shadow falls over me.
“I’ve increased the dosage like you said.”
“The resistance is higher than we anticipated,” the voice continues, the sound of heels clicking softly toward the bedside. “Her subconscious is fighting the block. If we push it any further, we risk permanent cognitive collapse. She will also forget how to speak.”
“She’s better that way,” my Mother’s voice answers. The sweetness is gone. “I will take everything from him like he took from me.” I lie perfectly still.
Property of the Cosa Nostra. Do not return.
“Corvin is restless,” the clinical voice says. “He’s tired of your games, Hannah. He wants the throne. And it won’t be long before Zagreus comes for her and you.”
“Zagreus is a dog chasing his own tail,” my Mother snaps. I hear the rustle of silk. “He thinks he’s not his Father, but he’s more ruthless than his Father. She’s the only way to get to him. We can trade her for the Italian throne and the ledgers.”
“Trade? You’ll return her to him?”
My Mother scoffs. “Trade happens when both parties are equally benefited. I’m not returning him his wife, but a weapon that has been dismantled and reassembled to blow up in his face.”
The woman I don’t know replies, “And if he sees through the fog?”
“He won’t,” the woman I once called Mama whispers.
“Zagreus is a man ruled by a singular, blinding obsession. He’ll be so grateful to have his ‘miracle’ back that he won’t notice the fuse is already lit.
By the time he realizes she’s not the woman he knew, the ledgers will be in my hands, and the Italian throne will be vacant for the taking. Corvin can take it for all I care.”
I am a bargaining chip in a war between the woman who birthed me and the man who branded me.
“Anyway, keep an eye on her. We’ll need her sane for the flight.”
Their footsteps retreat, and the door clicks shut. I don’t move for a long time. I just lie there.
Property of the Cosa Nostra.
Love is just a pretty word for a debt you can’t pay.
I sit up, the fake drowsiness falling away.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
It’s not my heart. It’s the air being displaced. It’s the sound of a predator coming home. And a realization so deep I can’t process it.