Page 54

T yson sits next to Oliver near the pantry, the boys are playing with their mini dump trucks that they are running over cookies with while I help do the dishes with one of the other servants.

Clarice bitched me out real good for being down here.

Eventually, giving in, and I have been down here for a few hours helping prepare food for the guards and royals while also preparing the servants’ dinner.

I also find something soothing about cleaning or cooking.

It is a task that occupies the mind, one that has an end result that can be seen.

It is better than the thoughts that usually occupy my mind or, more like haunt it.

Ghost of fragmented and distorted memories, twisted and wicked as they force me to relive the past on a never ending loop.

I suppose the other servants here look at me like I am a madwoman wanting to be a servant, but it is better than being me. Better than being Abbie. Nobody wants her, me, as Mrs. Daley would say.

Yet here, being a servant is like being invisible.

We are the ghosts who clean and about the castle, sneaking into rooms before quickly leaving.

Servants are the shadows of our master. We live with routine and repetition, no thinking, just working, my mind separated from my body as it handles the task it was told to do.

Muscle memory takes over, and I no longer exist. I just float within myself as I move from task to task.

Apparently, Gannon told Clarice he doesn’t want me working now that I have Tyson. Yet he made it perfectly clear that Tyson was no longer welcome. Therefore, I am not. What he also doesn’t realize is that working is the only peace I have known. I need to work, I want to work.

Clarice grabs the roster down from off the wall, looking for a spot to place me on.

Drying my hands on a tea towel, I move toward her and peer down to see where she is putting me and which floor I will be working on.

I hoped for my usual floor since it was our quarters, and I could have Tyson with me. Or maybe with Azalea.

“I can go back to my old post. I live up there, anyway,” I laugh, and Clarice sighs, chewing on the end of her pen. She sets it down and looks up at me.

“Abbie, Gannon will lose his head if I put you on this roster,” she says, tapping it with her index finger.

“Which is why you won’t be!” Gannon snarls, making me jump. Turning around, I spot him at the entryway. Gannon storms through the kitchen and passes me while looking for Tyson. Tyson instantly jumps to his feet across the room at the sound of his voice.

Gannon glares at me as he passes me, moving across the room, and scoops him up.

The room falls quiet, and I glance around nervously as he turns to face me before stalking toward me.

He is furious. Did the servant wake him?

I told her to just set it on the table so she didn’t wake him.

I knew I should have taken it up. I know how to move around that floor silently.

“Why are you down here?” he snaps at me, and the tone of his voice is one I have never had directed at me before. And it shakes me to the core.

My eyes widen when he snarls and reaches for me.

All I see is his hand coming toward me, hyper-focused on it for mere seconds, and it is all I can see besides the fury on his face.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and my body tenses, a noise I am not sure if I make or someone else sounds around me.

My heart is pounding so hard in my chest that I can hear it in my ears.

I recoil, waiting for his blow, my skin prickling and itching as I wait for the familiar feel of my hair being ripped out. Waiting for my head to bounce off the floor as he dragged me. Or the tearing of my flesh as Kade mauled me. Waiting for the pain.

Instead, he curses, and the voice isn’t Kade’s but Gannon’s. “Fuck, Abbie?” he whispers, his hand falling heavily on my shoulder. I flinch at the contact, expecting claws, but instead, I got fingertips.

My eyes fly open to find I am on the ground. I don’t know when I dropped to the floor or when I lifted my hands to cover my head. I don’t even remember doing it.

I just remember his hands, the furious look on his face, how my stomach sank, sending my body into a cold sweat, and the itchiness of anticipation as I waited for the pain to start.

“Abbie.” his voice whispers, sounding almost like a plea, and I find him kneeling next to me, guilt all over his face as I blink up at him.

I can see Gannon, see him right in front of me, but my body is not registering that this man is not Kade.

Glancing past him when I see movement, I also find everyone staring at me.

My face burns with humiliation as I sit cowering on the floor.

“Out everyone,” Clarice bellows at the servants, clapping her hands at them to hurry, and they take off.

Tyson is sucking his thumb, watching me with a strange look on his face.

My hands reach for him, shaking like a leaf during a storm.

Gannon doesn’t stop me when I snatch Tyson from him, clutching him to me before I get to my feet and run for the door.

My legs burn from running upstairs and through the corridors by the time I get back to Tyson’s room.

I set him on the bed, trying to slow my beating heart that slams against my ribcage painfully, each thud harder than the last before I start struggling to breathe.

My vision tunnels, and I glance at Tyson, suddenly feeling faint as panic seizes me.

His lips are moving, and tears flood his eyes and streak down his cheeks, his little face turning red as his hands grasp air and reach out for me.

Yet I am deaf to my surroundings. The only noise I can hear is the beating of my own heart.

It feels like I am having a heart attack.

I can feel my blood pumping harder through my veins, the erratic palpitations in my chest.

I feel the moment my eyes roll into the back of my head as I try to suck in much-needed air.

I am falling, yet I feel nothing as I hit the ground.

There is no pain. I hear nothing despite knowing Tyson is screaming his head off, and as my vision darkens even more as my head hits the ground and jolts my eyes forward, the last thing I see is the door opening and boots. Then everything goes black.