Chapter 46
Cataclysm
THE MAESTRO | Past
Ithought the worst of it had passed in that room when she was screaming, tearing at my shirt, and fighting the nurses. I thought once the drugs were out of her bloodstream, the rest would be a linear climb back to the light.
It isn’t. It’s a different kind of hell.
She is calm nowadays. There have been no more explosive episodes like the one at the clinic, no more frantic screaming at the walls or running to windows to look for bodies that don’t exist. But this silence is heavier than her screams.
She flinches.
Every single time I step into her line of sight, her shoulders jerk, her hands instinctively tighten into protective fists against her thighs.
Yesterday, I reached out to brush a stray, damp curl away from her cheek while she sat by the window, and she recoiled so violently that her head cracked against the glass pane.
She stared at me with wide, hollow eyes, waiting for a blow that was never going to come.
I barely sleep. Most of the night, I lie awake on my side of the mattress; the space between us feels vast. I watch her as she sleeps soundly, her breathing deep and even only when the dark takes her consciousness.
Sometimes, when the rest of the house is dead, there are so many things I can’t process.
I look at her pale, soft features under the moonlight and try to reconcile the woman who used to beg me for transparency with the ghost currently occupying my bed.
She is still not talking to me. Not a single word has crossed her lips in forty-eight hours.
When Elena brings her meals, Selene nods.
When Marcus instructs her to sit or lift her arm, she complies like a well-trained doll.
But when I speak, she looks through me, as if I am nothing more than a monster.
Marcus performs regular check-ups, monitoring her vitals as the last remnants of the scopolamine leave her body. But by this morning, her body was reacting to the other change. She spent the first two hours of dawn locked in the bathroom, dry-heaving into the bowl.
She’ll know today or tomorrow. A woman doesn’t mistake that kind of sickness for long, and her body is already demanding answers her mind isn’t ready to give.
So, I keep this task for myself. I will tell her myself. “Leave us, Elena,” I murmur when I enter the room.
Elena nods quietly, bowing her head before slipping out.
I walk over, giving her every opportunity to see me coming.
I sink onto the foot of the chaise lounge, keeping a careful distance so she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t move a muscle, her eyes fixed on the steam rising from the cup on the table.
“Selene,” I say softly and extend the paper to her.
For the first time in days, her eyes flicker. She slowly turns her head, her gaze dropping to the glossy paper in my hand. Her brow furrows slightly, and a faint, distant spark of confusion breaks through the glaze.
“You’re pregnant,” I tell her. “It’s a boy. A son. Our son.”
I watch her face closely, bracing myself for tears, for shock, for another wave of terror about her Mother or the sins of this house.
Instead, she chuckles. It starts small, then quickly builds, bubbling up into her throat until she is laughing out loud. But there is no joy in it.
She pushes herself up from the cushions and looks down at me, her eyes bright with something unhinged that scares me more than her catatonia ever did.
“A son?” she repeats, throws her head back, laughing harder, her shoulders shaking violently. “Another monster for the collection?”
“Selene, calm down,” I growl, standing up, my hands hovering near her shoulders but forcing myself not to touch her or to trigger the panic.
“No, no, no,” she croons, her voice dropping into a sickeningly sweet, playful tone. She steps closer to me, crowding my space, her head tilting at an unnatural angle as she stares up into my face. “You don’t understand, Zagreus. I’ll kill it.”
The blood in my veins turns to pure ice. “What did you just say?”
“I’ll kill the child,” she whispers, her smile widening until it looks like a scar across her face.
She takes her own hands, her fingers curling into claws, and slams them hard against her own stomach.
“I’ll rip it right out of myself. I’ll throw myself down those stairs.
I’ll make sure it bleeds out of me until there’s nothing left but red on the floor. Just like Papa.”
“Stop it!” I roar as I grab her wrists, forcing her hands away from her stomach.
She lets her arms go completely limp in my hold, her body leaning heavily toward mine as she peers into my grey eyes.
“Will it hurt you?” she asks softly as she leans in until her cold lips brush my jawline. “Tell me, Zagreus. If I kill your son… will it finally break you? Will it hurt you the way you hurt me?”
She looks up, wide-eyed gaze locked onto mine; a soft, mocking giggle escapes her lips.
I look down at my wife, my fingers trembling against her wrists, realizing with gut-wrenching horror that the poison has left her with a mind weaponized against the only thing I have left to lose.
Us.