Chapter 31
PENELOPE
It seems it is always in the dead of night that noises erupt inside this house. Scratching, churning, drumming, scraping, and dragging
But on this night, I wake suddenly to a thud on the other side of our bedroom door, my eyes fly open, my hand automatically going to Billy’s side of the bed, the wrinkled sheets cool to touch.
I frown, my other hand going to the round curve of my belly, seven months into this pregnancy now and I still don’t know how I feel about it.
I spent five months in Billy’s absence hiding it, waiting for him to come back to tell me what to do.
And I’m too anxious to be excited, too frightened to enjoy any part of it. But fiercely protective, nonetheless.
I’m having checks every week, scans every other, the baby is healthy, growing well, already big, it’s still hard to believe such a large baby is tucked behind this tight wall of my abdomen.
I feel him kick, his little foot attacking the coolness of my palm where I press down over him. Butterflies clog my throat in a swirl of confusion as I stare at Billy’s empty side of the bed. He hasn’t left me once since he came back.
Always there to reassure me when I wake up in a sudden hot sweat, my skull full of nightmares.
Dread fills my gut, a tremble in my hands as I push myself over the side of the bed, legs dangling down, socked feet hitting the cold floor.
I pull open my bedside drawer, fingers reaching blindly inside, finding it gone, the gun, the one Billy placed there.
I slip down onto the floor, stretching my arm underneath the bed, finding that gun gone too, and real fear licks up my spine like the lash of a chain.
Something is wrong.
I tell myself I’m just going to head towards the library corner, that I left my weapons there when I was reading earlier in the day.
I’m being paranoid.
The echo of my footsteps across the suite aren’t being counted by listening ears.
No one is watching me from the deepest shadows in the far corners of the room.
But the air is thick, and my pulse is a trapped bird, battering itself against my ribs with wild, frantic wings.
Then I hear it.
Knuckles on wood.
Boots pounding.
My heart is rushing blood around my body at a trillion miles an hour and I fear I’m going to pass out.
I turn, hair whipping out in an arc, and a bag is coming down over my head, my scantily clad body is being held prisoner by another, and I’m breathing in the strong sweet smell of disinfectant.
My head swims, limbs loosening, and then my feet are unsteady beneath me, and I’m scooped effortlessly upwards into the arms of someone who isn’t my Pair.
“Penelope.”
My ears buzz, my vision blurring as I strain with every effort to open my eyes.
“Penelope.”
“Billy?” I manage to force out, a cough working its way up my dry throat, my tongue rejecting it with a gag, it feels like I’ve swallowed sand.
“Penelope,” he says again, so much like my Billy, but also not really like him at all.
It’s Milus’s voice that I wake to, my entire being stiffening, my hands smacking into the arms of the wooden chair I find myself slumped in, pushing me up to stand.
But my legs wobble like jelly, my ankles collapsing like slinky toys, and I flop back down onto the hard surface of the chair before my backside is barely off the seat.
He tuts, my eyes focusing much more quickly now, in my panic, and I squint hard across the softly lit room, finding him sitting before a roaring fire. His legs crossed casually, elbow resting on the fabric arm of the high backed armchair he sits in, chin propped on his curled fist.
I look around, trying to understand where I am, remembering all too quickly how I got here, wherever here is, but I needn’t have worried because his voice breaks through my chain of thought before my eyes can even scan one fifth of the space.
“This is my bed chamber,” he announces coolly.
“Something to drink, Penelope?” he asks casually, uncrossing his legs, still dressed in formal fitting slacks.
“Chloroform really does dry out one's throat,” he informs me, reaching forwards and pouring clear liquid into a short glass tumbler, curling his splayed fingers over the top and offering it out for me.
I don’t move, staring at the glass until he places it back down onto the small round end table at his side.
“You’ve been different since his return,” he says lightly, as if making small talk. “Glowing, some might say.”
My hand reflexively drifts toward my stomach.
His bright blue gaze follows it.
Cold dread blooms beneath my skin.
“Congratulations,” he murmurs. “Truly.”
My lips part, but no sound comes out.
Milus pushes to stand, and I don’t move, even as my brain tells me to. I ignore the instinct. I know you must never run from a predator that enjoys the hunt just as much as the kill.
He circles me once, twice, the air shifting with him.
And I don’t look, don’t turn my head, follow him, instead, keeping my gaze forward, fixating on the fireplace, sitting still, straight.
He crouches in front of me, face level with mine, eyes bright like a flame finding new tinder. “A child,” he says. “His child.”
Every muscle in my body goes rigid. The way he says his. A mixture of awe and disgust, and something I can hear but not describe thick in his voice.
His hand touches my knee.
I flinch involuntarily and curse myself for it immediately.
He laughs softly, almost fondly. “Oh, don’t worry. I wouldn’t hurt you. Not when you’re carrying something so precious.”
Precious.
The word feels poisoned the way his forked tongue wraps around the word and sours it.
Then his voice lowers, silk covering steel. “Do you know what makes a child valuable in this place, Penelope?”
I shake my head. Genuinely interested in hearing what it is about breeding that makes The Obsidian, its god, tick.
“Access.” His smile sharpens. “Influence. Leverage. A promise of loyalty sealed in blood.” He tilts his head, canting it in such a way that makes him look so much like my Billy that my stomach churns. “But only if the mother is… properly aligned.”
My stomach plummets.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, the words travelling free of their own accord.
He stands, slow and theatrical, like a performer unveiling the climax of his show.
“I’ve been observing you. Since your little outburst. Your spirit. Your devotion. Your… malleability.” His eyes gleam. “I believe you could join my most sacred circle.”
My breath leaves my body in such a rush it feels as though my chest cavity crushes in on itself, deflating like a popped balloon. “No,” I say before thinking. “No. I-”
His expression never changes.
Not once.
This small curling smile that screams lure and kill.
“Penelope,” he says gently, “you misunderstand. It isn’t an invitation.
” He steps behind me, fingers brushing the back of the chair, catching the ends of my hair.
“It’s a future.” He leans close enough that I feel his breath on my ear, his hands folding over the arms of my chair.
“My girls are cared for. Protected. Elevated. They serve at my side. They bear children raised with purpose. They never go hungry. They never go unshielded.” His tone softens, dangerous in its sweetness. “You could be one of them.”
My heart is pounding so hard I feel it in my teeth.
“No,” I manage, voice cracking. “I’m Paired. I belong with Billy.”
Silence.
Then a chuckle, low and amused.
“Belong.” He tastes the word like it’s an insult. “Penelope, love belongs in storybooks. This is The Obsidian.”
He circles me again.
“And I am asking you for obedience. Not romance.”
Terror claws up my spine as he stops behind my chair, his hands folding over my shoulders, squeezing.
“Billy won’t allow it,” I rush out, not knowing what else to say, but I know Billy holds some semblance of power here.
He has some standing with the elders, with council members, inner circle members thinking highly of him.
I scoff a half-laugh that erupts unprompted, disbelief at the audacity of this conversation, “Billy would never-”
“He won’t have a choice.”
My blood runs cold.
The leader of this goddamn cult stops in front of me, hands clasped behind his back.
“You see, I could send him away again. Farther this time. Many more months. Years.” He smiles. “Perhaps until after the child is born.”
A tremor rips through me at the same time my baby kicks and I think I might faint.
“Don’t. Y-”
“I could also claim your baby the moment it takes its first breath. Raise it in the high chambers. Untouchable. Unreachable.” His eyes glitter. “You would see the child only during rituals. Or never at all.”
“No-”
“And Two,” he continues softly, abandoning the use of Billy’s name entirely now, trying to show me how little Billy means to him, to The Obsidian. “Would break long before he realised the loss was permanent.”
My heart lurches, acid in my throat, sickness threatening to burst out of my tummy.
“Stop,” I choke out.
He crouches again, placing a single finger under my chin to lift my face. The touch is light, almost tender, but it burns like battery acid.
“I don’t want to take anything from you, Penelope.” His voice lowers to a whisper. “I want to give you a place beside me.”
“I don’t want it,” I breathe.
“But you will.” His smile is serene, patient, monstrous. “Because refusal comes with… consequences.” He lets the word settle into the air like ash. “And agreeing guarantees your child grows untouched by our world’s cruelties.”
My eyes sting. I feel like I’m drowning.
His hand smothers my belly, and bile rushes up the back of my throat, fingertips digging in like little dull teeth.