CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR What I Cannot Unknow
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
What I Cannot Unknow
I thought grief was more than screams and whispers, a soundless convulsion in the marrow, gnawing through silences and leaving its bones rattling inside your chest. It was not always death that birthed it; sometimes it was discovery.
A photograph. A ring. Or a box in the floor where marble ought to be eternal.
My hands still trembled, raw with dust and paint, and something fouler… the stickiness of truth half-swallowed. The images seared into my skull would not leave me. Zagreus, younger, lighter, and unscarred. I did not know why looking at his scarless face disgusted me more than his scars.
He was laughing…. With a faceless woman, promised in white, pressed against him. One he loved.
I told myself I had misread, misseen, misremembered. But no… the evidence sat too real in my lap. I had been an interloper in a life already written. A counterfeit bride stitched into another woman’s veil.
I didn’t even know it affected me so much. It shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care. Why the fuck did I give a damn if he was married or not? I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him at all.
I scrambled. The box was clutched to my chest like a lifeline and a curse.
My fingers fumbled frantically as dust streaked my knuckles when I pressed the panel down, my heart hammering a drumbeat loud enough to summon ghosts.
I wiped my face with the heel of my palm, smudging tears into grey shadows, grabbed a brush, and sat before the blank canvas.
Pretending I didn’t hear the footsteps outside.
Just as I wiped the tears, the door opened with a click. And I quickly felt his presence. It was diabolical how he was here when I didn’t want him to be here.
I knew before I lifted my eyes that he was not himself.
Because he hadn’t visited me these last three days.
Avoided me, if I put it in female language.
So, his untimely arrival was odd. I lifted my eyes slightly, catching the sight of his tie hanging undone around his throat like a noose loosened at last. His storm-grey eyes were hooded, glazed down with something darker than fatigue.
Lust. Wine. The scar on his face looked sharper beneath the dim light, crueller, as though it had deepened in my absence.
My heart clenched. My gaze fled, and I bent my head to the brush in my hand as if colours could shield me from him.
The sound of his shoes softened as he crossed the room. Then a pause. My body knew before my mind did. I felt the heat of him at my back. A shadow folded over me, and he crouched, lowering himself until I could feel his breath stir the stray strands of hair against my temple.
“Dolcezza…” he purred, softened by intoxication, almost childish as his arms wrapped and slipped around me, and in one sudden pull and a gasp, I was lifted and rearranged onto his lap.
I stiffened. My limbs screamed to resist, but my body betrayed me, sagging into him as though I were stitched from the same fabric as his need. He buried his face against my neck, murmuring against my skin. “I missed you.”
My throat closed. I swallowed the knife of my anger. “Where were you?”
His chest rose against my back; he was breathing slow, inhaling whatever I had to offer. “Out.”
“Out,” I repeated with a scoff. My nails dug into my palm, carving half-moons.
“Out where? Business or…” I let my words falter because I wanted to know where he was.
With whom? Was there a woman? Or was it just my imagination?
It shouldn’t matter, but why was I so restless? “Or was it someone else?”
He stilled. A silence before it breaks. His face lifted from my shoulder, and when I dared glance sideways, his expression was nonchalant, stoic, almost cruel in its refusal to be moved.
“Do you want me to lie?”
I shook my head, tears dancing in my eyes as my heart buckled beneath the weight of it. “Why lie? Is it that easy for you to lie every time?”
“Because lies don’t hurt you.” As if lies wouldn’t hurt?
My mind clawed at words but found only jagged questions, and I turned around subtly, masking my tears.
“Why did you marry me, Zagreus?” My voice cracked as I tried to gather myself. “Why did you kill Adrian? Why do you know more about me than I know about myself?”
He shifted, pulling me tighter against him.
His body was heavy and suffocating around mine.
His half-lidded eyes burned and met mine.
“Dolcezza…” Trembling lips ghosted the shell of my ear as if he was trying to gather himself too.
“I decide what belongs to me. And I keep it. Whether you beg, bleed, or burn. All of you is mine. And I’m yours. ”
I didn’t believe him. The photographs I saw said something else.
He was married prior to me, and that burned something in me.
I was ash, I was fire, and moreover, I was just air.
Invisible and everywhere. He wouldn’t care about me.
Why would he? I was just another woman, but he was the only man I let claim me. I was his claim. His dark claim.
My throat trembled, but I pressed on. Rage clawing through despair. Anger was something I couldn’t control. I felt like losing myself entirely. There was so much going on and I had no idea where I was, or what I truly was. Everything felt like a lie and I wondered if I was ever real.
Being done with my emotions, I swallowed hard. “Have you ever… loved someone, Zagreus? Ever… ever once felt something that wasn’t ownership, wasn’t this endless cycle of ruin you drag me through?”
Something shifted, and I felt it in my bones. I slightly turned my head only to find his jaw clenched tight and breath hissed between his teeth. His eyes flickered, stormy greys turned into pits of darkness. Guilt, anger, despair, frustration, loss… and gain.
But the emotions disappeared as soon as they came, and his hold tightened painfully. “Don’t do this.”
I hissed through the discomfort. But I could not stop.
I wanted to wound him, to dig until he bled.
To pull out the buried box and make him watch those photos.
“You don’t deserve love, anyway. Never will.
And I hope… god, I hope…” I swallowed the tears as I held his gaze.
“I hope you never get that person, Zagreus. I hope they tear free from your grasp and leave you rotting with the truth of what you are.”
The storm broke. His calm shattered, rage lighting the hollow spaces of his face. His hands tightened around me as he turned me to face him, and his eyes reflected raw and shuddering pain, burning against fury that could gut a world.
He gripped me hard enough that I gasped, his voice ragged, almost breaking, and furious. “Don’t.”
But I already had. I realised I had never been closer to his heart, or to my ruin.
I was never afraid of storms, though. Maybe I never encountered them. But the one in front of me was deadlier than any. And I was foolish enough to stand at the centre of him.
He reduced my world to him only. But I wouldn’t let him have his way with my thoughts and head. So, I did the only thing I was capable of. I pushed him. And surprisingly, with him intoxicated, I easily pulled away from his grip and crawled away from him to the door.
But like I said, I was foolish.
His hand shot out, rough fingers circled my ankle, and I was dragged back beneath him as the air punched out of my lungs in a startled gasp. My body betrayed me, part surrender, part resistance.
“I don’t deserve love?” he snarled, his breath hot and whiskey-laced. “You’re my fucking wife, Celestine.” His Italian accent was as thick as smoke and curled around vowels. This was the first time he ever called me by my name. “You belong to me. Your love belongs to me.”
I wanted to spit at him, to claw my way free, but his grip on my jaw left me trapped, his calloused fingers digging crescents into my soft skin.
Anger flared in me, but beneath it, treacherous warmth ignited.
The warmth of recognition of his touch, of being held captive by his gaze, even in cruelty.
“Stop this fucking nonsense.” I twisted in his hold, but he wouldn’t budge. He pressed his body unapologetically closer.
“Stop this fucking nonsense, huh?” he snarled. “This is not nonsense. This is my way of claiming you. You hate me, don’t you? You’ll hate me more today.”
I hated him for it, hated him because some part of me did want it. My chest burned with humiliation of my own heartbeat.
“You don’t own me,” I spat. “You can’t claim what I don’t give.”
Something dangerous flickered in his eyes. He swallowed the fury. He slammed me closer, his forehead brushing mine as his lips trembled with words unspoken before he crushed them out.
“You are mine, Dolcezza, in every way. I’ll never..” his voice cracked imperceptibly, “…let anyone tear you from me. Even if I have to chain you to my shadow.”
Who would tell him his words were chains themselves? That he was terrifying, suffocating, and my anchor.
His hands gripped my hips, bruising and forcing me against him until every inch of me was mapped by his violence. My mind screamed resistance, but my body betrayed me.
Shivers raced under his touch. I wondered if he could feel that too. If he was feeling me too.
My breath caught as he licked his lips, and there was no tenderness in them. Just hunger, frustration, a desperation he didn’t have language for.
There was no religion that could save me now, and I realised that the moment he leaned down and his lips devoured mine in a kiss too brutal to be called a kiss.
I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, inviting him in, and simultaneously, my eyes shed tears. What was I doing? It was not lucid. But did it even matter?
I was beyond the point of rationalism. Beyond the cogency. Beyond sanity. He groaned into my mouth and I bit his lips hard, drawing out blood, tasting it on my tongue, but he didn’t pull away. If anything, the bulge between his legs grew bigger.
“You think I don’t know how to love?” he growled against my mouth. “I only know how to ruin, how to burn. And still…” his voice softened, painfully human for a fraction of a second, “… still, I would burn the world just to keep you warm.”
My nails dragged down his arms. “You’re pathetic,” I whispered. “You call this love? You only know how to cage what terrifies you. Admit it, Zagreus. I terrify you.”
He chuckled as his hand slid into my hair, yanking my head back, forcing my eyes to the mirror as he pressed me against the cold floor. My reflection stared back. Wild-eyed, torn between fury and darkness, something shamefully hungry.
“Look at you,” he breathed, manhandling me to stand, and his arms found my waist. His thumb brushed my lower lip before he bit his own. “You hate me, don’t you? Hate me all you want. But don’t you dare look away. You’ll remember this, every breath and mark I give you.”
“Say it,” he demanded. “Say you’re mine.”
I swallowed, my reflection fractured in the mirror, and my heart thundered with every question I never wanted answered. Was it madness to crave the very thing I despised? Was it sickness to find beauty in the hands that shackled me?
My lips parted. “I am not yours…” I breathed out.
He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re very stubborn. Don’t worry, I’ll fuck the resistance out of you and by the end of this night, either you’ll forget your own name or… become mine.”
He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back as he dragged me towards the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. With his other hand, he tore at my clothes, crystals flying everywhere as he exposed my soft, creamy skin to the cool air.
“Watch, Dolcezza,” he demanded, voice a low, dangerous growl. “Watch as I claim what's mine. Watch as I fucking ruin you for yourself.”
He shoved me against the mirror, the cold glass a stark contrast to the heat of my skin. His hands roamed my body, squeezing, kneading, leaving bruises in their wake. He kicked my legs apart, spreading me open for him.
Zagreus undid his belt and pants, freeing his large, thick cock. It jutted out, hard and angry, the tip flushing a deep, angry red. He stroked himself once, twice, before gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks.
With one brutal thrust, he slammed into me, burying himself to the hilt. He didn’t give me time to adjust, just started fucking me hard and fast, the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin echoing in the room.
“Fuck, you're so goddamn tight,” he snarled, hips pistoning in and out, his cock sliding in and out of my dripping womanhood as I moaned. “Watch, little wife. Watch as my cock moves in and out.”
One hand snaked up to my throat, squeezing lightly, while the other reached down to rub at my clit, pinching and tugging the sensitive nub. He leaned down, biting at my neck hard, sucking a dark bruise into my skin.
“This cunt belongs to me,” he growled, giving a particularly hard thrust. “This body belongs to me. You belong to me, you understand? Say you fucking get it. Say you're mine.”