Chapter 30
Vow
THE REQUIEM | Past
Lately, the headaches have been brutal. But the small white pill works miracles. Within an hour of swallowing it, the edges of my mind blur and the sharp corners of my grief round out until they feel euphoric.
It makes the changes in the house easier to digest. Because something is wrong with Zagreus.
He is home. Not just occasionally, or for a tense, silent dinner, but always.
He has kept his promise with a terrifying devotion.
Every single morning, he is sitting at the end of that ridiculously long dining table, drinking his black coffee, waiting for me.
He eats breakfast with me, tracks my movements with those dark, unblinking eyes through lunch, and sits opposite me at dinner.
The strangest part isn’t his presence; it’s the lack of friction. A few days ago, I lingered at the doorway of his study, expecting him to order me out. Instead, he looked up from his papers, his features softening, and gestured to the leather couch.
“Stay,” he had murmured. “Read. Do whatever you like. This room belongs to you as much as it does to me.”
So I stayed. Now, the silence between us is our secret language. He even noticed the charcoal smudges on my fingers. The next afternoon, a massive wooden easel arrived, accompanied by dozens of heavy, expensive canvases and jars of oil paints.
Yesterday, while the rain lashed at the windows, I painted the sea, and strangely, it was not the angry, violent waves I usually watch, but a calmer, deeper blue. I hadn’t realized he was standing behind me until his breath warmed the bare skin of my nape.
“You’re magnificent,” he had whispered, his hands hooking loosely around my waist, just enough to let me feel his heat without forcing me into his space. “I knew you had magic in your fingers.”
I hadn’t pulled away. And that night, the headache had returned, and I realized my heart was learning his touch. The heart doesn’t have a memory for names or political allegiances; it only remembers warmth. And Zagreus is a sun that refuses to let me freeze.
“He’s chipping away at you,” Mama says, her voice snapping me out of my thoughts.
The fire in her bedroom crackles, casting long, dancing shadows across the heavy velvet drapes. I am sitting on the edge of her bed, my head resting against her knee while she strokes my hair. It’s a ritual now. I spend my nights here, in her room, fleeing the vast emptiness of my own.
“He’s being kind, Mama,” I whisper, my voice thick from the pills she gave me twenty minutes ago. My eyelids feel heavy. “He brought me paints. He stays for dinner. He… he doesn’t touch me unless I let him.”
Elena had even defended him subtly this morning while changing my linens, mentioning how the master hadn’t smiled in all her years of service until I began sitting in his study. But Mama’s fingers tighten in my hair, her grip just sharp enough to pull me back from the edge of sleep.
“Kind?”
Mama lets out a cold, humorless laugh that makes my skin prickle. “A wolf doesn’t become a lamb just because he feeds you from his palm, Stina. He is starving you out. He is letting you think you have a choice so that when he finally takes you, you’ll thank him for the privilege.”
I frown, shifting so I can look up into her hollow, elegant face. “I know what he did, Mama. And I will never forgive him for that. He said he doesn’t have a mistress. It’s just… there’s something. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like there’s more to him than he shows.”
“Of course, he doesn’t show his true colours. Why would he want a cheap mistress when he has the prize trophy locked in his tower?”
She leans down, her distant, sorrowful eyes burning with an intensity that terrifies me.
She cups my face, her palms cool against my flushed cheeks.
“Listen to me, Stina. He is your husband. In the eyes of the law, in the eyes of his world, your body belongs to him. Men like Zagreus… they grow vicious when they are denied what they bought. Right now, he is playing the patient suitor, but how long before the monster loses his temper?”
“He won’t hurt me,” I say, though the words feel flimsy.
“He already hurt you! He took your Father! He took your life!”
Mama’s voice cracks. She shakes me gently, her gaze boring into mine. “This world doesn’t care about you, Stina. It doesn’t care about a grieving girl. If you remain a ghost, he will simply consume you until there is nothing left. You have to survive him. And survival means playing his game.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I whisper, a tear slipping down my cheek.
Mama’s expression shifts, softening as she wipes my tear away, her thumb dragging across my lip.
“Then let me teach you,” she whispers, her voice a venomous hiss. “He wants you, Stina. He is obsessed with you.
“His patience is his weakness. Do you think he’s giving you time? No, he is waiting for you to break. So break him instead.”
I blink through the fog, my heart racing despite the sedative. “What do you mean?”
“Seduce him,” she commands softly.
“Give him exactly what he wants,” Mama continues. “Open your door. Let him into your bed. Give him your body, make him believe that his patience paid off, that he has finally tamed his wild little bird. Let him become drunk on you. Let him reach the absolute peak of his happiness…”
She pauses, her lips curving into a small, cruel smile that mimics the ghosts of the past. “…and then, take it all away.”
I stare at her, my breath stalling. “Mama…”
“Do what he did to you,” she gasps, her fingers digging into my shoulders. “He entered our lives, he showed us a glimpse of peace, and then he ripped the foundation out from under us.
“He killed your Father. He shattered our family. You must be cruel, Stina. The only way to destroy a man like Zagreus is from the inside out. Sleep with him. Make him worship you until he cannot breathe without your permission, and then use that power to cut his throat.”
“I… I can’t,” I stammer, the image of Zagreus’s dark, reverent eyes in the study flashing through my mind. The way he had kissed my thumb. The way he had promised to burn the world for me.
“Don’t be a fool, child. Do you think he sees a person when he looks at you? He sees a trophy won from a war. If you don’t take control of this narrative, he will eventually force his way into your room, and you will have nothing left but your pride.”
She pulls me against her chest, rocking me slowly as the rain beats a frantic rhythm against the glass outside.
“Go to his room tonight,” Mama whispers into my hair. “Or invite him into yours. End the separation. Give him his wife, Stina. And let the trap snap shut.”