Chapter 55 Madeline
Madeline
My back throbbed from the needlework. The crest outline was complete. Every line inked. Every wing, every branch, every symbol carved into me.
Permanent.
By the time I reached my room, I didn’t want to know what it looked like. But standing in front of my mirror, I realized delaying wouldn’t change anything. I eased my top off carefully, and turned.
The crest sprawled across my back like a living shadow.
Black ink. Silver accents catching the light. Wings arched wide over my shoulder blades. Branches curling down my ribs. Dynasty markers woven through the center. And at the top, across my shoulders, an empty banner.
Waiting for his name.
I stared so long my eyes blurred. It didn’t look like art. It looked like possession.
I pulled my top back on and sat on the edge of my bed. The hard-bound Crow Codex sat on my nightstand. I picked it up, and opened to the ribbon marking where I’d left off.
The claiming rite. It was when Vince fucked me in front of his whole crow dynasty. It was so outrageous I reread it three times. Instead of it getting better, it got worse. A blade dedicated to cutting a wedding dress off.
The Lock-In section.
The more I read, the tighter my chest pulled.
Isolation.
Obedience rites.
A collar. An actual collar, with rules and script and ceremony, apparently. The thigh seal, burning ink laced with blood, actual blood of her husband.
Who wrote this? Why would anyone agree to this?
How was this even legal?
I reached the chapter titled Training the Pet.
Page after page of expectations—behavioral conditioning, communication laws, protocols for submission during rites, guidelines for “correction.” Each line read like a leash. Each paragraph was worse than the last.
I snapped the book closed. I hadn’t even looked at the dialect package. I had no intention to on learning another tongue for them to be cruel to me.
A soft knock broke through the panic.
“Miss Thorne?” A staff member’s spoke through the door.
I rubbed my eyes. “Yes?”
“Your father requests you in the study.”
I froze.
My father?
Maybe he’d finally remembered I was his daughter. Realized I couldn’t carry this alone.
“Tell him I’ll be right there,”
I exhaled slowly and, for the first time in days, couldn’t stop a small, shaky smile. Maybe there was still a we in all of this.
I smoothed my sweater down over the bandage, wiped my cheeks until my skin burned, and stepped out of my room. Each step toward the study felt like hope. Until I reached our study, then the nerves it.
Still, he’d asked to see me.
He wanted to talk.
Maybe things were turning.
I knocked once and let myself in.
My father stood at the dual desk we used to share, shoulders tense, gaze fixed on some point beyond the papers scattered in front of him. He looked exhausted in a way I’d never seen, not even after seven-day negotiations when I was a kid.
A half-filled glass sat in his hand. Another bottle waited.
He didn’t look up when I closed the door behind me.
“Sit,” he spoke like he was addressing a problem, not his child.
I obeyed, taking the chair opposite him.
He stared at the glass for a long moment before speaking. “Is it done?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant at first.
“Yes. The outline is finished. It—”
He lifted a hand, palm up. I closed my mouth in record time.
“I don’t want to know. It won’t matter in a few minutes.”
“What do you mean?”
His jaw clenched. “I found a way out.”
Relief rushed through me so fast it made me dizzy.
“You did?” I leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair. “Dad—oh my god—dad, I knew you would. You always do. We can negotiate with the Crows, or leverage something, or—”
“No,” he tossed back the rest of his drink in one swallow. “I tried negotiating with that man. He plans to have you on your back, giving him six heirs. He will breed you until you break. Then he will depose of you.“
“Dad—”
“You think I don’t know what happens in their rites? He intends to cut you on an altar and fuck you in front of their dynasty. That is the future waiting for you.”
Nausea burnt up my throat.
“I’m scared too. I don’t want any of this. But maybe we can—”
“There is no ‘we.’”
The words hit harder than any slap. For a second I felt them physically.
“I wanted a son,” he continued, voice shaking now, “heirs who could build. Who could protect. Who could inherit without conditions. Instead—” he gestured at me with a bitter, dismissive sweep, “—I have you. And you have cost me everything.”
“Dad, I—”
“The Crows will take your body. And everything I built in Villain will be swallowed the moment you say ‘I do.’ You may as well be dead to this family already.”
“Please don’t say that,” I whispered.
Dead. Already. I forced the tears back. He was hurt. He doesn’t mean to hurt my feelings. Mother was the one that hated me. My father respected me. This was… this was grief.
He reached across the desk and pushed a small porcelain cup toward me.
“Drink,” he said.
I stared at it.
Then at him.
“What is that?”
“Your way out. A painless one. Quick. Before you finish the third mouthful, you’ll be in a better place.”
A better place. Not here. No. I heard him wrong.
“You want me to…” I couldn’t even shape the word.
“I am asking you to choose dignity. That life the Crows offer—it isn’t a life. You will be nothing but a sex slave to that man. A breeding vessel. A pet. This is better.”
My eyes burned hot.
“You want me to kill myself?”
“Suicide,” he corrected, clinical. “On your terms.”
I shook my head, tears spilling before I could stop them. “Dad… no. No. I want to live. I—” My voice cracked. “My show is paused and my phone is on the charger and I… I don’t want to die yet. I really don’t.”
“Madeline. Every second you cling to this life, I lose more. Everything I built vanishes if you walk into that dynasty. So drink. Make it easy. Clean.”
I pushed back from the desk, shaking harder.
“No.”
His expression changed. Whatever softness had been there a second ago evaporated.
“I hoped you would choose wisely. I truly did.” He reached beneath the desk.
My heart stuttered.
“Dad—?”
He pulled out a gun.
My vision tunneled on the gun.
“Dad, please—please—”
“I wanted this to be painless. I wanted you to choose it.”
“No—please—”
“But you always have to make everything difficult.”
“Dad—”
“This is mercy,”
My father raised the gun.
“Dad, don’t—please—don’t—”
He didn’t even hesitate, he pulled the trigger.