Page 10 of Sweet Nightmares (Wicked Mirrors #2)

Chapter Seven

N othing felt the same after she ate the ghost. Technically, Jane believed Nightmare when he said she’d only devoured the magic, but she couldn’t unsee or unfeel what had happened that night.

When they returned to his realm, Nightmare took the diary and placed it in the Shadow Wing—the one place she was forbidden to go to—and Jane hadn’t seen it since.

It had been three months since then, and every day, Jane felt stranger and stranger things as if the magic inside of her was stirring and begging for a release, yet nothing had happened. Not until her husband tried to kill her.

The first time she went invisible was when her husband was choking her.

His sausage fingers were wrapped around her neck when suddenly her throat wasn’t visible any longer.

Unfortunately, one didn’t need to see the person they were strangling to finish the job, but fortunately the incident confused him enough to let go.

Her husband had reached the tipping point where he no longer wanted to share Jane with a Mirror, and if it were up to him, she’d never visit Nightmare again, but it wasn’t up to him, and he knew it.

But regrettably, he had figured out that Nightmare wouldn’t come to Jane’s aid, and his abuse was escalating again.

But the one thing that kept him from killing her was the money. His endless supply of wealth would run out if she died, so he kept her around like his little golden goose.

This meant she was forced to endure dinners with him seven days a month.

Dinners like tonight, where he sat inches from her with a possessive hand on her leg.

Jane swallowed and tried to empty her mind because when he got this way, it usually meant he would force her down and painfully take her.

Sometimes on the kitchen floor, sometimes on the dining room table, and on good nights, he actually made it to their bed.

But when he was in this mood, it was always rough and was always accompanied by excruciating pain.

Sometimes, he punched her or slammed her head into things: the table, the wall, once a grandfather clock, anything really. He wasn’t very inventive.

“You’re getting fat,” he said, squeezing her upper thigh.

She was not. Jane couldn’t get fat with her diet and exercise routines. Especially with her body type. She was tall but had a thin frame. It took her considerable effort to gain any weight at all.

But Jane knew better than to talk back to her husband. She was his little rag doll, which he tossed around and manipulated like a puppet on strings.

She simply smiled sweetly at him, and he scooted closer.

Fuck .

Jane sucked in a rattling breath as the lights flickered in the wall sconces, singing an off-key harmony of dread.

“I want you to eat this.” Her husband held out a small white worm the size of a sienna coin.

Jane instinctively leaned backward. “What is that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Open your mouth, and I am going to feed it to you.”

“No.” Jane scooted her chair away from him. “Absolutely not.”

His fingers dug into her thigh and kept her from moving any further. “You are my wife, and you will do as I will.”

“No,” Jane breathed, “no.”

“What did you say to me?”

It was the first time she had ever said the word to him.

“No?” He seethed. “Did you just say no?”

“I will not eat that worm.” Jane clenched her jaw tightly. She wouldn’t allow it. Whatever it was, it was not going into her mouth.

Never.

Besides the fact that it was disgusting, there was no telling how it would affect her dancing.

It all happened before she could comprehend it. In a flash, her husband was slamming into the floor, breaking apart her chair in the process as he straddled her and forced open her jaw, slamming the white slimy worm into her mouth.

“Swallow.”

“No,” she mumbled.

“Swallow.” When she didn’t, he punched her in the face.

Magic tingled in her veins, just out of reach, and she didn’t know how to pull on it to help herself.

Her husband punched her again, repeating the process until she was fairly certain she had swallowed the worm, but it was unclear because, after a while, she had lost consciousness completely.

There was a part of her that begged the darkness to stay—begged the world to just be done with her.

But it wasn’t.

At least not yet.