7. Florencia
7
Florencia
H e stood outside the room, leaving me to dress on my own, but there were far too many hoops, loops, and laces on the back of this gown. There was no way I was going to be able to do it up all by myself. It would be a cold day in hell before I let one of those lace-face weirdos touch me. Sweat pebbled at my neck at the memory of them centimeters from my face.
One of them sniffed me.
“Can you help me?” I called out into the hall.
As if he noticed the look on my face, he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you like white?” Zotz asked.
I shook it off. “It’s fine.”
The dress was the exact same I was wearing in my dream with Elio. Same golden threads, same sweetheart neckline. Even the fabric felt the same between my fingers. I wasn’t ready to tell him about the dream, though I suspected he knew it from the moment I opened my big mouth and revealed I knew his name.
His silence on the subject unnerved me.
His fingers never touched my flesh, working nimbly to tighten and thread the lacing on the back just right until the gown was a perfect fit. We stood there, pausing for a moment that lasted far too long for my own comfort.
I wasn’t really good at this game we were playing, and my poker face showed it. Inside of me lived a demon who gnawed my entrails, demanding sacrifice. It wanted me to control my environment, to obsess about things other people didn’t care about, change who I was from the very fabric of my design, twisting my mind into dark catacombs I’d never truly find my way out of.
Yet to everyone else, all they saw was Flo.
They couldn’t see the pain, the fear, the struggle. That was the nature of any good curse, though, wasn’t it? A good curse doesn’t let you speak of it to the ones you need most. Except my curse couldn’t be lifted by some prince with a kiss. My curse required stability, routine, prescriptions, and weekly visits to a therapist.
I was already prey to myself, so no, I didn’t have time to play a cat and mouse game with someone else.
This frustrating man–god, whatever he was. I ached to scream at the top of my lungs, beat my fists against his chest and demand he send me home. He wanted my fears, salivating for them, his canines growing sharper anytime he smelled it on me. Yet, when he had me at my most vulnerable, standing in front of that tub…
He did nothing.
Because it wasn’t him I was afraid of. And why would I be? I was a Morales. I had six very powerful sisters who would destroy the space and time continuum to find me.
There was nothing I feared more than my own mind as long as they existed.
Nothing was scarier than me.
And what I could do to myself.
Okay, maybe the creepy silent bitches too.
The dining hall held a fourteen-foot-long table, a dozen or more chairs spread throughout but only two plates placed next to one another. There were no paintings, no art, no portraits hanging on the wall. The hearth was a dilapidated mess of broken stones that looked like it had not been lit for centuries, maybe longer.
I moved quickly to sit, assuming my place wasn’t at the head of the table. Camazotz eyed me suspiciously before taking his place there. As if summoned, several of The Silent hovered through a large swinging door in a single file line, perfectly spaced one behind the other as they each carried a dish.
They stopped, perfectly positioned in the gap between two chairs before gliding forward and placing their respective plates on the table. They never turned their heads or moved their necks, and with their face coverings, it was impossible to know if there was anything that beckoned their attention.
It was as if they were programmed.
I looked down to the plate below me as soon as they vacated the room, the smell an enrapturing aroma that forced my stomach to roar with need. I had yet to eat. I had no idea how long I had been here; it was always dark, and I wasn’t sure if time was even a construct in a place like this. But my mortal stomach still begged for nourishment.
My first fork full was roasted beetroots. I moaned as the earthy flavor coated my tongue before I swallowed it down. Next, I had the parsnips, then big helpings of broccoli and the most unbelievable selection of colorful carrots.
“Oh my God.” I couldn’t stop eating, one mouthful after the other, until I noticed from my peripheral that he was staring at me with a wide grin.
He wasn’t eating.
Obviously. Why would a god need to eat?
“How is the food so good?” I had to know.
Zotz breathed out amusement. “What is a child’s nightmare?”
I laughed. “Seriously? Kids are stupid.” I shook my head.
The curious look on his face never faded, and since he was determined to watch me regardless, I figured I could at least finish my dinner. “Yes, but they kind of shape the place up, don’t they?” He forked a piece of roast and held it in the air.
“Are you going to eat? Do you need to?” I questioned.
“There is nothing I need to do. I do only what I desire.” He put the meat in his mouth, chewing it so oddly, so inhumanly, I couldn’t help but laugh again.
“You don’t want to eat that.” He frowned at my amused tone.
Camazotz’s gaze drifted down to my neck for a split second before he swallowed hard, something like difficulty stuck in his throat before he washed it down with wine.
“Have you ever eaten food before?” I couldn’t help it; he looked almost childlike in the way he tried to mirror my actions.
“Once or twice.” He narrowed his eyes, not breaking contact with me until the smile faded from my lips.
He was immortal.
My eyebrow rose, and I sipped from the wine in the chalice beside my plate. Delicious notes of chocolate, berries with a balanced, woody finish, dry, but not too dry. It was, of course, the best wine I ever tried. “Who could be scared of wine this good?”
“Recovering alcoholics,” he replied quickly while playing with the rim of the glass.
I paused, saddened at the thought of relishing in the cause of someone else’s misery. “So anything could be someone’s nightmare. There isn’t a good or bad, just perspective.”
He wiped excess wine from the corner of his lip with his thumb. “Are you trying to imply I might be good?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think you’re good, Zotz. You kidnapped me.”
My answer seemed to satisfy him, but we were both aware I held no fear for him or his land. I’d been lost many times before, but this time? This time, I was in a strange place that somehow didn’t feel strange. I wasn’t as scared as I should have been, and that bothered him. I could see it in the way he grabbed the fork, his knuckles going white as he thrust another forkful of ham in his mouth.
“Will you share more of your fears?” Zotz asked, chewing noisily and not looking at me.
He was bracing the table, holding the edge like it was a precipice and he was contemplating it. His eyes were cast down, his wings twitching. I brought my elbows to the table, resting my chin over my hand as I took a good look at him. “Will you?”
His lip quivered just slightly, the corners tugging up for a brief second before he sobered his expression. “Do gods fear?”
I sighed in defeat. “I guess not.” I picked at my nails nervously before the clearing of his throat brought me back. Just like his castle, Zotz was supposed to be the big scare, with his ruined face, his black eye, and yet there was something more than just a bad dream about him.
“I’m scared of my father,” I said truthfully.
He lifted his eyes to me. “He’s dead.”
I wanted to ask how he knew, but it was pointless. He was Camazotz. Of course he already knew. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”
He leaned back in the chair, dropping the fork to the plate and ceasing his farce. “Tell me anyway.”
“He married my mother for power and to destroy the Morales line. He bewitched her, keeping her dull and witless so she would keep producing witches like his personal broodmare. With every child, she became weaker in power, and eventually, with the last daughter, her magic was weak enough for him to strike.”
I shook the image of our dead mother from my brain, the one I happened upon by accident the day I invaded my sister Emilia’s nightmare.
When she watched him kill her.
“My father was a weak warlock from a bloodline that cared not to pass down knowledge. That’s where our family succeeded where all others failed. With every generation, we grew more powerful while all other witches succumbed to the fate of modern-day life, losing heritage, losing the craft, losing their magic little by little until it became nothing more but a whisper of intuition in their gut.” He let me speak, though it was obvious he already knew it all. “When he killed our mother, he tried to raise us like pigs for slaughter, each one a part of his multilevel plan to become all-powerful.” I scoffed, finally looking from my fingers back to him.
“What happened?” he asked with a voice gentler than I thought him capable of.
I didn’t blink. “We killed him instead.”
“But you are still afraid of him.” He wasn’t asking; he was stating.
“My turn,” I said, pressing down on my molars. “What’s the key for?” I gestured to the cord around his neck, the iron key hanging from it.
“You think this is a game?” An eyebrow quirked up.
“Most things aren’t, but I still like to play.” I brought my elbows to the table, folding one hand over the other. “Answer.”
“No.” He narrowed his eyes, daring me to push.
I knew better. Instead, I asked another question. “Why did you kidnap me?”
“I abducted you. You are not a child.” He was good at that, of diverting what he didn’t want to answer in an attempt to avoid the truth, almost as if he couldn’t–
“You aren’t playing fair,” I pointed out.
“You saw him in your dreams?” He ignored my complaints.
“My father?” I blinked too fast, trying to comprehend.
“Elio. He’s the one who told you my name. How did it feel to meet your prince charming?” The way he referred to his brother, there was something there, something I knew well from having my own siblings.
Envy.
Jealousy.
I didn’t need him to say it, but I wanted to see if I could force the truth he was so proud of from his scarred lips. “Tell me why you abducted me.”
“Because I live to piss him off.” He clawed at the edge of the table with both hands, baring his teeth, as if just the mention of his brother was enough to bring him discomfort.
“Is that why you want me scared?” I lifted an eyebrow, waiting for his response.
Crossing his arms in front of his chest in a way that was far too human for a creature like him, he huffed, “No.”
I couldn’t fight the sing-song in my voice. “I thought you said you never lie.”
“It is not a lie,” he snarled, dragging his chair back with a loud screech as it scratched over the stone, but he didn’t stand. “Come here.”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head.
His gaze hardened, his voice quieter. “Come here, Florencia.”
The fire in his words scorched my skin. I felt his urging down to my core, but instead of giving in, I fisted the tablecloth. “No.”
He parroted back in the same musical tone I gave him, “If you do, I’ll tell you why I brought you here.”
My turn to cross my arms and lean back. “I thought it was to piss off your brother.”
He smirked. I imagined myself saying no and walking away, somehow running back to the room or maybe down to his dungeon if it meant not crossing paths with his masked maids again.
Nothing here had a face .
Nothing but him and the cat.
Because the human brain could not create a face it had never seen.
What the fuck were they?
My bravery only took me as far as standing, and with my first step, my knees buckled, but I moved on, trembling harder with each step until I finally made it in front of him. My chest heaved erratically from my wild, frantic breaths.
Every word escaped me.
“Sit.” He tilted his head, nodding to the table in front of him.
My head jerked slightly, not even enough to be considered a response, but he understood it as my attempt to deny him.
He leaned forward, swiping his arm across the table in one, clean motion and wiping his plate, and everything else that occupied the space.
“Sit.” His words were sharper this time.
I placed my hands on the edge of the table, but his grip found my hip, sending me the rest of the way up until I was seated just above his lap. He ran his tongue over his teeth in a way that made my blood pulse at my inner thighs, my low belly, all the way down my–
“Spread your legs,” he commanded, forcing my eyes wide at his brazenness.
I gripped the tablecloth beneath me, and this time, it wasn’t just stubbornness. I’d always been too afraid, too stuck in my obsessive ways, in my poorly programmed mind and in others’ dreams, to focus on me, in the now, being in it.
And we were in it right now. Here, with Camazotz between my legs, using his own knees to spread mine apart. I bit the inside of my cheek but didn’t protest. He watched me with curious eyes, taking far too long to make another move, but I didn’t dare break my gaze away. He grabbed my feet, placing them over each of his thighs before sliding his hand up my skin.
No shoes, no underwear, nothing but the dress between me and him, because it was all he’d laid out on the bed. His hand slid under the lace, cold yet soothing against my blistering hot skin as his touch stopped at the junction of my legs.
His voice was low when he spoke. “Are you scared yet?”
I released his gaze, focusing on the rest of his face instead. The way the four scars perfectly sliced across his face diagonally. The way they cut through his top lip and his black colored eye, the scar not allowing the hair to grow where it stroked through his eyebrow.
There was something powerful about looking at the abyss and choosing to jump.
I finally responded with a full, slow nod of my head. His hands dug into my hips, Zotz coming to a stand, his body between my legs as he looked down on me with a mad rage on his face. His left hand gripped me, his long nails pressing down into my flesh like a warning—sharp, but somehow inviting with the pain.
This was real.
His other hand moved to my heat, his fingers sliding over the slickened divide, and the gasp left my lips with no warning.
“You’re not scared at all. Look how wet you are.” Had any man said those words to me, I would have blushed in awkward discomfort. Maybe a normal girl with a normal life would be overanalyzing this moment.
But it wasn’t a man between my legs—it was the king of nightmares, and I was no normal girl. I was a witch, and the scar he wore on his face was just a mirror of the one I carried in my mind, the one given to me as a child as I was forced to fight the nightmares of others as if they were my own.
Most days, I couldn’t tell reality from dreams.
So getting wet for a nightmare might have not even been the oddest thing about me. I dropped my head back instead of questioning, instead of hesitating, instead of trying to fight this, and I moaned with the next stroke of his fingers. He took my vocal appreciation as his invite to push a finger in, but one felt like two, and when he curved it inside me, I lost all ability to speak.
“Flip,” he commanded, not giving me the time to react and sliding me off the table, turning me in one swift motion before his hand pushed down on my back. “I’m going to ruin you for him.”
I whimpered, his finger finding its way between my folds once again, but this time, a second one toyed at my entrance, waiting for its turn. I turned my head to try and get a look at him, but with his hand secured firmly between my shoulder blades, there was nothing I could do but resign to my left cheek pressed against the cold surface of the table.
“Ah!” I cried out at a burn unlike any I’d ever felt as two fingers speared inside me, stretching me as he worked them in faster.
“Another?” he asked, and though his tone was playful, almost dare-like, the thought of another finger inside me was suddenly climbing to the top of my list of fears.
I whimpered in protest. “It’s too much.”
But the third finger was there, teasing, threatening, pressing against the others while his thumb did its best to distract me from the pain.
And then, they were gone, leaving me hollow as he pressed into my body from behind, leaning over me. His breath was cool against my ear as he spoke. “I haven’t even gotten to the second knuckles yet.”
I couldn’t hide the alarm in my eyes, the heaviness of his body on top of mine so wrong yet so right that the possibility of more was borderline insane. He lifted off me, his hips pressing into me from behind, a low growl escaping his throat as the hardness of his cock met the swollen, needy fire between my thighs.
With only the fabric of his pants to protect me from it, I was scared . But it was his fingers that made their way back to my cunt, this time playing with the growing mess, using multiple fingers to rub.
“Please,” I begged, bucking my hips back to force what I needed from him.
With an almost vacant look in his blue eye, he spoke, “You moan so pretty for me, I almost believe it.”
My mouth opened to ask what he meant by that, but with a push of his wrist, two fingers were inside me again, this time deeper than before, the pain too sharp, too bright red for me to do anything but scream.
And then, his thumb pressed into my clit, and I wasn’t in the Nightmare castle anymore.
I was in heaven.
With a methodical rhythm, he stroked his fingers deeper each time, barely moving out with every thrust. I bit my lip, closing my eyes and surrendering to the feeling. That was when I felt it coiling around my thigh, slithering up and squeezing.
“What is–” I lifted my head to look, certain a snake was somehow wrapping around my leg.
He grabbed at the back of my dress, lifting my chest off the table just enough so I could see the long, thick black tail coiling up my thigh. “My tail.”
Shock coursed through me. It was silly; he already looked like a monster. I wasn’t sure why the tail was the thing that made me stop. I had a million questions, a thousand words tripping over each other in my brain, but with the next thrusts of his fingers and his tail threatening to join us, my climax ripped out of me. As if the ground opened and swallowed me, as if my skin was on fire, as if a heartbeat existed between my legs, I exploded.
If I made noise, I was unaware of it. For the first time in my life, every sound in my brain came to a deafening halt, as if a bubble had been formed around me.
I quaked, my thighs trembling with every movement of his fingers, sparking continuous waves of pleasure until all that was left was a breathless pile of me on that table. When my hearing returned, it was his chuckling that came first.
“Dirty, Haxia.”
His tail released first, and when his fingers pulled from me, I clenched my thighs shut, turning around on jelly legs and leaning against the table to stay upright. Zotz stood straighter, his wings expanding as he looked down at his fingers.
Coated in blood.
“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
I instinctually went to apologize, to explain that I was only a virgin because my grandmother had long warned us against falling in love or succumbing to marriage. But that wasn’t the full truth. I was too lost, too deep in the chasms of my own mind. Getting off with a partner required getting out of my head, required letting go, which was far more than I was capable of. And If I was medicated? The chances of laying anxiously with someone who couldn’t get me off were too high to risk. I did well enough on my own with my rose vibrator.
But he smiled instead. His eyes glossed over, his tongue cutting over his canines that now seemed sharper. He threw his head back in delight, sticking both fingers in his mouth and humming in pleasure.
“I have been famished .”