Page 19 of Devoured

“Zahra?”Varner called my name and I looked at him.

I blinked. He was watching me with interest, not concern. Like I was a specimen doing something unexpected under a microscope.

“Sorry. I was just...”

“Taking a moment to reflect. Perfectly natural.”

His smile was understanding in a way that wasn’t.

“This process can be overwhelming. Confronting our past. Our choices.”

He leaned back, fingers steepled.

“Let’s return to your marriage. You adapted to his violence. You survived. That takes incredible strength. To wake up every morning knowing what was coming and still make breakfast, still smile. That is not weakness. That’s dedication.”

The words sounded like praise, but I heard the mockery underneath. He was congratulating me for staying. For taking it. For being the kind of woman who let herself be destroyed piece by piece rather than walk out the door.

“Tell me about the physical abuse.”He said it casually, like asking about my favorite book.

“When you killed him—did you feel powerful?”

“I felt nothing.”I told him the truth.

“Nothing?”His voice snapped. “You stabbed your husband multiple times and felt nothing?”

“Just... empty.”

“What about his mother?”His tone shifted—softer now, probing. “She lost her only son. Have you thought about her grief?”

My chest tightened. Theo’s mother in court, wearing white, her face destroyed by grief. She’d loved him. Really loved him. But she didn’t know what he was.

“A mother’s love is quite something.”Varnar watched me closely. “Unconditional. Eternal. Something you never got to experience yourself.”

The words hit exactly where he’d aimed them.

“Three miscarriages.”He glanced at my file. His voice was gentle as a scalpel. “That must have been devastating. Perhaps if you’d been able to give Theo a child, things might have been different. Men often settle down when they become fathers.”

I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself.

But the tears were already coming.

“Some women just aren’t meant to be mothers.”His voice was soft, as if he were being kind. “But the inability to fulfill that basic biological function can create tremendous psychological strain. Perhaps that’s what really broke your marriage. The empty nursery. The silence where children’s voices should have been.”

My hands clenched in my lap. He was twisting everything, making it my fault. Making me the reason Theo had hurt me.

“His mother will never have grandchildren now. Another loss you gave her.”

I wiped my eyes quickly, hating myself for breaking in front of him.

That’s when everything shifted.

Behind Varnar, something massive loomed in the corner. The figure from my nightmare—just standing there like it had always been.

The walls started to weep black.

The Persian rug dissolved into wet stone beneath my feet. The air stank of rot, copper, things gone bad. Varnar’s face stretched wrong, his professional smile pulling wider and wider until I could see teeth all the way back to where teeth shouldn’t be.

I fell backward off the chair. Hit the floor hard. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.