AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even if I hated life inside the academy, the building was living history.
“Stand here.” No nonsense, Cyderial pointed to a position before the biometric scanner, where I was measured by the computer and granted access as an instructor.
The door hissed open, and in we went, the light fog that tried to follow us in forced out by the building’s whirring filters.
And it was done. I once again belonged to the academy—a slave to the man who tortured me within these walls.
Yet it felt so familiar I couldn’t even hate it as I should.
The faculty tour was dispassionate, as he must have known I had been in most of the restricted rooms—with or without permission—over the years.
Until we reached his office, where he took me by the wrist and dragged me over the threshold when I inadvertently dug in my heels.
Because that pretty room was deadly.
It was dangerous.
And I had been hurt in there.
The door closed, it locked, my unhappy self completely trapped once again.
The shreds of my black dress had been removed, everything glittering, pristine, and polished.
As if my life had not been ruined in that space only a handful of days prior.
Drawing me inside, Cyderial said, “You will meet with Maeve shortly, so if there is something to be said, now is the time to address it.”
If he thought I was in the mood for conversation, he was out of his mind.
Over there was where he first kissed me. That was the cabinet with the reflective glass front, where I had seen my new slit open under Cyderial’s touch. And right there, on the floor, was where he put his cock inside me as I begged him to stop.
His hand came to my shoulder, and I just about leapt out of my skin.
I may have even whimpered—a tiny, embarrassing sound.
Making his thrums, his deep, pulsing calls, he snatched me to him, warmed me with his body, folding me into him. “Lorieyn, maybe we should begin your day in the training room. Maeve can wait. Would you like to come at me with a sword?”
A very sharp one? Yes. But making him bleed would not change any of this. I had work to do. “No, thank you. I will meet with Maeve.”
“I will have her collected.” Just as I had been bodily collected and urged deeper into my personal nightmare. “Sit, relax. Or steal any rocks you want.”
My voice was hardly above a whisper when he sat me on his white death-couch. “I don’t think a rock is going to make me feel better right now.”
Arranging my limbs like I was some little doll, he fluffed pillows for behind my back, laid a soft blanket over my knees.
All the while, I could not control my tongue. “This is where you sat me the night Private Cullen was hanged.” I pointed to the front of his desk. “And that is where I stood when you denied my graduation and stole the fog.” My eyes went to the most terrible part of the room. “And over there, you raped me.”
Catching my face, distorting my cheeks as he turned my attention back to him, he kneeled at my feet, somber, but said nothing as he drank me in.
Weaponized silence that flayed me bit by bit.
Cut to the bone, I felt so wrong in my skin. And I knew… I knew… he wouldn’t change anything about his choices in the past.
Where I saw tragedy, he saw triumph.
That was why he kept his silence.
And I wept for it, sobbing with only my tormentor to lean on.
