Chapter 39
“When Roman is dead?”
VALENTINA
Afirestorm rips through my blood at the sight of that witch bitch cunt with her hand on my dick, her mouth on my fucking cock. The pathetic, little blyad—whore—putting her disgusting hands all over my husband!
I’m gripping the edge of the platform with white-knuckled fingers, heart slamming against my chest. I barely register Anton stroking my hair from behind me, his hands light on my hips, with his raging erection prodding my back.
“There’s a good boy,” I overhear the bitch say. No more than fifty feet away. And one long drop from the platform.
I know how hard Roman is struggling not to get hard. I don’t blame him when it happens. Not after the orgasms Anton forced on me the other night. Roman and I share the same pain, the same agony, the same torture. My twin flame. My head. His soul.
After she rises, this Selene pats his wet dick with approval. It’s a semi at best. All I need to do is fucking walk into a room, and my husband gets hard. He just needs to watch me from the shadows to get even harder.
My breath catches as she stretches out a hand. The man on the other side of the bench hands her the black bag. What the hell is she possibly—oh, hell, no!
The firestorm hits my eyes. All I see is red.
I don’t give a fuck if I’m punished. No more fucks to give. Nothing else matters.
I jam my elbows into Anton’s ribs, so hard, he doubles over. I don’t think. I don’t breathe.
I jump.
Ten feet of pure air before the ground catches me. I’m up as the bruises start to form, scrambling toward my husband as fast as I possibly can. I know the guards are pursuing me…and Anton, but all I see is Roman.
“Roman!” I scream, loud and shrill.
He yanks his head to one angle. “Valya, go! Get out of here!”
I don’t listen. I run headlong right for the bitch, ready to rip apart the fucking strap-on with my claws and teeth. She turns to me with a sadistic smile. I get within an inch before I’m dragged back.
“No, get off me!” I scream, attacking the guard with everything I have. When his hold loosens, I get one small gap of space, desperately lunging again. “Roman, I’m here.” Two seconds. I touch his face for two seconds. “I’m right here. It won’t change anythi—”
This time, Anton catches me, dragging me back.
I kick and thrash and bite and scratch—until he grabs my hair, bringing me down, then dragging me up the platform steps.
My scalp screams from the pain. The straps of my dress fall off my shoulders, exposing half my breasts.
I’m still struggling and writhing when Anton forces me onto the platform, stomach down, his body pinning mine. One tug on my hair to yank my face up.
“Valya, don’t look!” Roman yells.
It’s the first time I don’t obey.
When she shoves the metal phallus through his back hole, sodomizing him, raping the only man I’ve ever loved, I know I’ll summon all the damned legions of hell for the highest order of vengeance.
A strangled scream escapes his throat. The scream knifes through me, cutting me open. I’ve n-never…heard h-him scream.
“Oh, God!” I whimper as she ruthlessly fucks him, pulling out, then ramming back in. The dildo has raised points. And…blood coats the metal.
Roman shakes. He dry heaves.
I can’t stop it now. I retch. Right there on the platform, I vomit up the little food I ate earlier.
The degradation is another depth of pain. Because she and the man alternate, sucking him, milking him, but he never comes. Worse is how dozens of crowd members are getting off on the sight. Some fucking each other, others are masturbating.
I want to cut out every single one of their eyeballs and toss them into the Bering Strait for the fish.
A dry sort of hollow forms inside me. I pour every ounce of hellish fury into it.
The fury of a woman who will go to whatever lengths to get her man back.
The fury of a queen who will crush every goddamn piece on the board.
A demonic, feminine creature who will crawl out of the bowels of hell and burn it all down. For him.
I don’t stop watching. I let it fester. Let it open and bleed. Because I will make this psychotic, rapist bitch pay for every thrust, every drop of blood. I won’t stop until she is screaming with her sick heart still beating in my hands when I squeeze it to a pulp.
And after? I will give Roman so many goddamn blow jobs, he will never remember any other mouth on him but mine.
“I expect you to be well-rested and well-behaved for our wedding tomorrow,” Anton says, his hands casually folded behind his back as he escorts me back to the bedroom.
I glower as he opens the door. “I’ll sleep like a baby, dreaming of how I’ll wake up and make a goddamn snow angel with your blood drowning the bed.”
He chuckles and rubs a few of my blonde tresses between his fingers. “You and he are so alike. No wonder you fell so hard for each other.”
“You’ll fall hard too—when I throw your sorry ass right off a cliff,” I snarl and turn my back, shocked when he doesn’t grab me.
“I love your violent, little mind and your burning heart.” He follows me into the bathroom. “I look forward to breaking you, Valentina.”
“I’m a diamond, you spineless ignoramus,” I spit. “I don’t break.”
Somehow, I will break him. Into a thousand pieces. The will blazes hotter than ever. But the hollow ache inside me doesn’t stop throbbing. I stare down the woman in the mirror before me, ordering her to stay strong for him, for everyone. Queens don’t break.
“You know, I quite like this island,” he muses, and my blood runs cold as I stare at him in the mirror. “I believe it is a good place to settle down and raise a family, don’t you?”
“I’ll kill myself before I ever bear your bastards, Anton.”
He chuffs a laugh, his smile one of ease because he still holds the keys to every chain around us.
“A shame you don’t seem to understand the gravity of your situation.
All your threats are quite adorable. And quite empty.
Even when Roman is dead, I have a host of other weaknesses to exploit.
The house matron and her squawking bird, for example. ”
The moment I spin around to attack, he’s ready for me, seizing my thrashing, flailing hands and bringing his mouth down hard over mine.
I bite down and taste blood. He pulls back with a growl.
At first, I think he’s going to close in, violate me like he has so many times, but he stands there, tipping his head back with a laugh.
Wiping the blood away with a handkerchief, Anton locks his eyes on me. “Thank you for confirming another weakness, Valentina. Oh, the multitude of nooses I have around your lovely throat.”
I flinch when he steps toward me. I hate it. I don’t lower my chin, but waves of icy fear crash through me, threatening to crush my heart. This torture can’t go on forever.
And then, my heart ricochets when I remember his earlier statement.
“When Roman is dead?”
“Naturally.” He tilts his head, eyes gleaming upon me. “You did not think I would truly keep him alive, did you, Moya Samotsvet?”
Split-second trigger.
I grab the first thing I can reach: a porcelain soap dish—and hurl it right at his face.
Instant pride heats my skin when it lands on his cheek, and his head snaps back.
My victory is short-lived when he has me up against the wall three seconds later.
He takes his hardness out. And I choke on a gasp when he tears my dress, forces my legs apart, and buries his cock inside me.
“You goddamn bastard!” I shriek, bucking and thrashing, scratching and biting.
It doesn’t take him long to slam me up against the mirror, shattering it in a second. Ramming me. Careless over the splinters of glass cutting me, opening my still-healing wounds.
“You fucking said no dick if he did your goddamn arena ga—ahh!” I screech when he sinks his teeth into my neck.
“Do I look like the sort of man who gives a shit over honor, Valentina?” He pauses, his cock throbbing inside me as he meets my eyes with a brutal grin, heartless, hellish.
“If I’m not keeping my word to my brother, what makes you think I won’t fuck you when that little hellion inside you comes out? ”
“You. Don’t. Fuck, Anton,” I remind him, burning. “You rut. You rape.” I take what little victory I can with the deep bruise on his cheek from the soap dish.
He ruts three slow and deep thrusts inside me, stretching me, scorching my smoldering inner walls. “So adorable, Valya. A man cannot rape his own wife.”
“Patriarchal bullshi—”
He crushes his mouth to mine, hammering into me in vicious, inhuman strokes. And once he’s shot his load in me, Anton dumps me on the bathroom floor, leaving me there in blood and cum.
He pats my head like a fucking child. “Good girl. If you wash off my cum, I’ll break the little crow’s beak and make sure your precious house matron is there to hear its screeches.”
I clutch my throat, holding back a whimper while curling into the fetal position. Tuck my chin into my chest. But I feel his shadow over me. And see his fist out of the corner of my eye beyond my hair.
“You will bear my heirs, Valentina. If you refuse or try to harm yourself in any way, if you try to kill yourself, know this, my wife: I won’t hesitate to rain hell down on this whole damn island.
After I’ve tortured all the worthless staff here to death, their ghosts will follow you into the afterlife…
and never stop haunting you with their screams.”
The next thing I hear is the slamming door.
I burrow into myself more.
Because if we don’t find a way through this hell, everything he wants will come true.
I’ll watch my husband die. I’ll suffer endless nights of torment.
And I’ll carry Anton’s children. To keep them all alive, I’ll become the perfect submissive wife he wants.
But inside? I’ll be dead. Nothing but a shell of the woman I am now.
Because where he goes, I will go.
My head. His soul. For eternity.
Until that point, until Roman’s heart stops beating, and my soul follows him to death and beyond, I won’t stop burning, won’t stop fighting, won’t stop loving him.
I can never let the flame go out. Because diamonds don’t break.
They shine.
I stand before the tall, gilded mirror, my hands trembling at my sides as Zina kneels at my hem, fussing with the last bits of lace and tulle. I try to square my shoulders, to be strong for her—she’s already wept three times today—but the woman staring back at me doesn’t feel like me at all.
The gown isn’t truly a gown. It’s barely there—an illusion of fabric, sheer as spider silk, stitched with curling white vines and blossoms that climb across my skin like a cage pretending to be flowers. Decorative, yes. Ornate, yes. But modest? Never. So transparent, so exposed.
Of course, he chose this.
My hair has been swept into an elaborate up-do with little braids coiling around each other. A few tresses on my cheeks.
A sudden squawk cuts through the silence. Shalun has perched on the window ledge, his head cocked, one obsidian eye pinned to me. I can’t help but wonder—has he come to foretell my doom?
Zina rises, her fingers lingering at my wrist, tears bright in her eyes as she fans out the gauzy train. “So beautiful,” she murmurs, though her voice splinters at the edges. Forcing it.
I am beautiful. Devastatingly so.
From the corner, Fleur steps forward, bouquet in hand.
Today, they are they, black hair in their usual two braids, their eyes encouraging as they extend the flowers toward me.
The arrangement is strange—not the roses or lilies I expect, but pale-blue irises threaded with white anemones and sprigs of green fern. My brows draw together.
“These are…” My voice trails off. I don’t know the language of flowers like they do.
Fleur has been teaching me, but I only know that blue often symbolizes peace.
Or hope. Blue irises. And white anemones.
White is purity or protection, I believe.
Or both. I could never guess the fern. All I know is that Fleur has chosen something unusual. And I don’t understand why.
When their eyes meet mine, locking on, I swear I notice a telltale upturn of the corners of their mouth. A smile. Like they have a secret. And the bouquet is giving me a hint.
Before I can ask, boots strike against the marble outside. Harsh, heavy. A pounding fist rattles the chamber door.
Zina flinches. Fleur releases the bouquet into my trembling fingers.
The door swings open.
“Time,” one of the guards says flatly.
I take a breath. Then another. I press my lips together, lift my chin. And as they escort me to the chapel, the scent of the bouquet clings to me—like hope. Fragile, but it feels like hope.