15. Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Raena
P ain is an old friend, welcoming me home like I’ve been away for far too long. My body aches, and not in the delicious way I’ve grown accustomed to since my Shadows came into my life.
No.
This familiar ache is unwanted and violating.
Peeling my eyes open, darkness greets me. My back presses into a mattress, my hands gripping the soft sheets beneath me–too soft to be the same ones I had in my old cell. Nothing but the pain feels familiar at all. The bed’s not hard and lumpy. The blanket covering my body is not scratchy or thin. It’s too comfortable.
Did I get rescued after I passed out?
Am I back at the Shadows’s house in one of their beds?
My body flies up in the darkness, no restraints holding me down. Hope helps me block out the pain between my legs, confusing me, but I ignore it. Throwing off the plush blanket, revealing my naked body, I try to get to my feet. But my weak legs shake as dizziness overtakes me, and I fall back onto the bed into a large, wet spot.
“I wouldn’t try to get up right now. You have enough drugs coursing through your veins to tranquilize a horse.” My mother’s voice mocks me from somewhere in the darkness. Or maybe she’s haunting me in my mind. I don’t know anymore. I can’t think straight.
“I don’t know what you did to piss him off, but he shot you up with something. He tied me up here and made me watch while he fucked you.” Venomous disdain coats her words, the darkness too thick to see where she is. “You’re a dirty little slut, you know that? Even unconscious, you gave him your pleasure. Moaning and begging. You even gave him more than one orgasm. Do you feel that? The bed is wet from you, little whore. ”
I can’t even respond as fury floods my body– adrenaline and rage making a potent mixture even with whatever drugs he injected me with.
All I can see is red.
I can practically taste her blood in my mouth, coating my tongue like acid as I slowly stand to my feet once more. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, but I can’t listen to her anymore. She’s my mother, for fuck’s sake. And she just watched him rape me. It was one thing to facilitate my kidnapping, not once, but twice. But this.
I have to get out of this room.
There’s a window in here, and even though it’s dark out, I can see moonlight streaming in through the sheer curtains. Using the window to guide me, I find the door and flip the light switch on the wall next to it. Soft light bathes the room, illuminating the large space. There's the bed I was on, a large four-poster bed decorated in fancy cream and white bedding. It’s a lavish room, so much of a contrast to the dingy, cold cell I was in before, that it gives me whiplash. But I push the revelation aside in favor of getting the fuck out of here.
Turning to the door, I twist and pull. Throw my unsteady weight against it, but it’s no use. It’s locked. Of course, it’s locked. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems.
Turning around, I find my mother staring at me, her evil eyes peering into mine like I’m beneath her. The chair she’s tied to faces the bed where she watched her old lover rape her daughter, and instead of being upset by this, she blames me– like I destroyed her life and stole her future, not the other way around.
Red clouds my vision, and it’s like I’m experiencing my first kill all over again. There’s a dagger lying on the dresser next to the door, like it was left just for me. The weight feels at home in my steady hands, a gruesome reminder of who I’ve become– The Hunter.
My feet travel on their own volition, moving towards her in a daze. I can hear her shrill voice as she jolts in her confinement, but I can’t make out what she’s saying with my blood whooshing in my ears on repeat.
Like the first time, I’m naked, my body on display without my consent. Unlike the first time, I want her to see. I want every scar, every mark, every horrific memory that’s carved into my skin to etch its way into her tormented mind. She should get to see what she’s done. King might have wielded the blade that carved chunks from my soul, but Ava… my mother, handed him the knife.
Crimson mist once again fills my vision as a cloak of warmth settles against my skin like a comforting blanket. I can’t focus on that. Not when the memories– my living nightmares– assault me. Like home movies on a broken projector screen, crackling and popping as they reel through my mind. Every cut slashing into my skin as if it’s happening again.
Every touch…every word, slams into me at once.
Until the soulless organ squishes beneath my blade, pulsing one last time before it stills.
Until all the pretty shades of red fade away, and I’m ripped back to reality.