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Her gaze followed her as she left, then she turned to me. Well, not me—the bloodied bird cage behind me. She silently closed the door and crossed the space…and went right past me.

“Don’t you fucking?—”

“That was some slap,” she said. I turned to her. I hadn’t heard her waiting behind the door.I hadn’t heard her at all.Had I been so crazed by the bloodlust that I had been so unaware of my surroundings? I had always heard her. Always smelled her.

Reel it in, I hissed at myself, but it only made the monster inside angrier.

I watched in muted surprise as she slowly picked up each and every one of the feathers that had fallen to the ground before placing them back into the cage.

Stop it.I wanted to scream at her.Stop fucking touching them!

My entire body was shaking. I couldn’t stop it. Anger was running through me so violently…but there was something else. Something else that had been there since the first night that I got on my knees and bared my neck to the prince.

It was becoming stronger. Taking over my body like a tidal wave, and it felt as heavy as lead. It was weighing me down, threatening to pull me into the floorboards and never let me out again.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. It was mine, you can’t touch them!

But the words wouldn’t come out through the knot in my throat.Please don’t.I wanted to beg her to stop as she reached for the cover that had been thrown to the ground. I didn’t want to look anymore. I didn’t want to see anyone else destroy the one thing I owned. But with more gentleness than I had ever seen from her, she carefully covered the bird cage from view.

Please stop.Bloodred tears filled my eyes.Please stop being kind.

My fragile psyche couldn’t handle it. I wanted her to lunge at me again. Take me out while I was vulnerable. Destroying the cage and all that was left in it would have been easier to stomach.

But instead, she had doused my anger with ice-cold water, leaving only that stored, heavy feeling that fought to be let out.

She lifted the cage with one hand and propped it against her shoulder, still not looking at me. She was searching the ground for any other feather that might have fallen.

“I’ll take care of this and come back for your blood,” she said, turning to me. Her face was unreadable and not at all like how it looked when she was trying to murder me.

“You weren’t sent for blood.” My voice was hoarse.

She paused as she passed me, her honey eyes meeting mine.Fight me. Make this easier on me. Please.

But she did none of that.

“Wait for me.”

And with that, she left me alone in my cold room. The darkness lingering around my mind chose that moment to crowd in on me.

Wait for her?

I wanted to follow her. Wanted to tell her how pitiful it would be formeto wait for her.

But my feet couldn’t move. I sat down right there on the floor and did exactly as she ordered.

I waited.

Vesper

The dumpster was on the floor just above the guards’ quarters.

I didn’t let the irony get past me that the family thought less of the guards than they did their own trash. Or that they kept most of it inside until it was ready to be taken out to the landfill once a week.

Another thing about their image.

They didn’t want their trash to be seen by outsiders. They wanted everyone to see their picture-perfect palace and ignore the ugliness that lay rotting within.

Just like the princess.I paused after throwing the bird cage into the trash can along with the feathers. One of them got stuck to my uniform, and when I picked it up, the image of Aurelia’s troubled expression flashed across my mind.