28. Harmony
Harmony
The knock is soft. Too soft. Like he’s pretending to be gentle.
I don’t answer.
The door opens anyway.
Damien stands in the threshold, all shadows and calculation. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak. Just looks at me like I’m a question he’s already answered, but keeps asking anyway.
His voice, when it comes, is velvet stretched over bone.
“You can come back to the main house.”
My breath catches.
He watches me too closely for me to respond, so I nod. Once.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “To be closer again?”
I nod again, slower this time. The air feels thick in my chest.
He tilts his head. “But first,” he says, stepping aside so I can follow, “I have a present for you.”
The words hit me like frostbite. Too kind. Too cold.
Still, I follow. We walk in silence.
Past the silent rooms.
Past the empty hall where Brooke laughs.
Pa st the surveillance room where you see too much.
He doesn’t speak. And neither do I.
The stairs to the lower level groan beneath our weight. The air grows colder. Thicker. The kind of sterile chill that only exists in places where screams have nowhere to go.
He unlocks the final door and holds it open with a theatrical sweep of his hand.
“After you.”
It’s the medical wing. I step inside slowly.
The lights above buzz like flies trapped in glass. The walls are off-white and stained in places where bleach couldn’t quite erase the past. A steel table sits in the center of the room. Nothing on it.
Yet.
Cabinets line the far wall—locked. An IV stand casts a spider-leg shadow across the floor. And still, he says nothing. He closes the door behind us.
Locks it.
“Why here?” I whisper, throat dry.
His lips twitch into something that might be a smile—or a flinch.
“You’ll see.”
I stand still, fingers twitching at my sides. He walks to the cabinets. Pulls out a small silver tray. Places it on the table with care.
Then, finally, he turns to me. His eyes are hollow in the worst way—alive, but unreadable.
“This is the part,” he says, “where you learn to be grateful.”
And that’s all. No explanation. No clue. Just silence. And that silver tray.
Waiting.
* * *
The tray shines under the overhead light, as if it doesn’t belong here.
Like it’s clean. Like it’s merciful.
It’s not.
I flinch when he lifts the cloth covering it.
Underneath—cold metal. Tongs. Gauze. A gag. And at the center, glinting like a predator’s grin, the freeze brand.
My knees give before I realize I’m falling. I catch myself on the edge of the table, breath sharp and ragged in my chest.
Damien hums behind me. Softly. Satisfied.
Like a wolf admiring the trembling of a lamb.
“I thought,” he says, “that since you’re going to be on display soon, you should have something permanent. Something that reminds you where you came from and who you belong to.”
My mouth opens. Closes. The air leaves me like a prayer swallowed by fire.
“Lie down.”
I don’t move, so he grabs me. His fingers are like chains.
I thrash beneath his grip, screaming—begging for him to stop. It’s no use. He is stronger.
He forces me onto the table, straps biting across my wrists and ankles before I can fully register what’s happening.
“No—” I gasp, but the gag is already in his hands.
It’s black. Thick. Fabric that tastes like iron and rot. I scream—only for him to shove it between my lips. Tightly.
He ties it behind my head with slow precision.
“There we go,” he murmurs. “Don’t want you biting your tongue off.”
He leaves the room for only a second. Long enough for my pulse to scream louder than I can. When he returns, the brand is in his hands. It’s misting cold. Frost smokes from the end. It’s shaped like numbers. Four of them. I can’t read them from this angle. I don’t need to.
Th ey’ll be on my body soon enough.
I’ll forever be his property now.
“Breathe through it,” he says gently, like this is a lesson. “Or don’t. It makes no difference to me.”
I try to thrash. I try to twist. The straps cut deeper.
He pins my hip down with one hand.
And presses the brand into my skin.
Right beneath my ribs.
The sound I make isn’t human. It’s muffled and wet and ripped from someplace deeper than I knew existed.
White-hot pain explodes throughout my body—then cold—then nothing.
He holds it there for seconds that stretch into eternity.
I shake beneath the brand as my body goes into shock. This is a nightmare. It has to be. He would never do this to me. It’s real. He’s a monster who cannot be stopped.
When he pulls back, steam curls from my side. I sob against the gag, chest heaving, throat raw.
He doesn’t speak. He just… watches. Watches like he’s looking at a masterpiece.
“I’m not done.”
No.
No, no, no.
His hands go to my thighs. He unstraps one, just enough. Then spreads my legs. Terror crawls up my spine like insects beneath the skin.
My hips buck. He takes his arm and slams my hips back down.
“This one’s special,” he whispers, crouching between my legs.
A new tray. I didn’t see him bring it in. Needles. Ink. Black. Permanent.A tattoo.
He doesn’t warn m e.
He just starts.
The pain is sharper now. More precise. It cuts in waves, over and over. My vision swims. The gag tastes like blood. I scream. I thrash. I beg with my eyes—tears slipping sideways, dripping into my hair.
He hums a lullaby I don’t recognize. A melody of ruin. My ruin.
And when he’s finished, he leans over me, sweat on his brow, fingers smeared with ink. His lips graze my ear.
“Now everyone will know.”
He runs a hand along the tattoo he just carved into my inner thigh.
“Mine.” He says as a promise. No—a threat.
The straps remain in place for another hour.
He leaves me there, gagged, branded, bleeding. Alone with the echo of pain.
And a name I didn’t choose, etched where no one will ever be able to look without knowing—what he took.
* * *
The drive back to the main house is silent. No one speaks. No music. No commands.
Just the steady hum of tires rolling over gravel, and the faint smell of antiseptic clinging to my skin like a second violation.
I’m not gagged anymore. But I don’t speak. Not because I can’t.
Because there’s nothing left to say.
Reese doesn’t meet my eyes when he opens the door.
I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t look at me either.
My steps are slow. Unsteady. My thighs sting.
The brand beneath my ribs throbs in time with my heartbeat—each pulse a cruel reminder.
His name is on me. Inside of me. Burned and inked and sewn into the skin he never deserved to touch.
I make it to my room and close the door behind me. It doesn’t make a sound. The silence is a scream.
I sink to the floor, back against the wall, arms wrapped around my knees.
I’m still wearing the black cloak from the ritual.
It’s too heavy.
It smells like fire.
I tear it off and press my palms to my face, trying to muffle the sob that claws its way up my throat.
I want to call Reese. I want him to ask me if I’m okay, even though we both know I’m not. I want him to be angry. To tell me it wasn’t supposed to go this far.
To say he didn’t know.
But he does know.
They all do.
I press my forehead to the floor. It’s cold. It helps. Barely. I think of Evelyn.
The way she laughed when she braided my hair.
The way she said my name like it mattered.
I think of Astra.
Sharp tongue. Wild eyes. Brave even when she was broken.
I wonder if she feels free.
I wonder if she made it out and loves Lucien.
I wonder if she still thinks of me.
The pain isn’t just physical. It’s in the echo of every room I walk into alone. It’s in the silence where my friends used to be. It’s in the ghosts I’ve been forced to become.
I touch the place beneath my ribs, fingers hovering over the brand.
Then lower—hesitantly—toward my thigh.
I don’t need a mirror.
I can feel it. His name. His claim.
His reminder that I am not mine.
I curl up tighter. The walls feel smaller. The dark feels deeper.
And for the first time since I got here, I don’t pray for rescue.
I pray for war.
Because someone has to make him bleed.
Even if it has to be me.