Page 47 of Until the End of Ever (To the Cruel Gods #2)

KLEOS

" W ake."

I didn't know how long it took for me to wake up, but it was dark outside. The mother of all headaches didn't change the fact that I recalled every excruciating second of the meeting with the Mother of the Year.

Dressed in white, Zenya Pendros stood over me, self-satisfied, proud of herself, as she always was when she got her way.

I moved—or at least, I tried to, willing my body to get up. Not a single limb twitched. I was completely immobilized.

"There, that's better," she drawled, mouth curved into a smile. "A full moon would have been preferable, but I believe most of the spell has taken hold. Stand ."

I was on my feet in seconds, petrified. Not only because the body that wouldn't obey me moments ago had leapt to her command, but because I could see my reflection in the window.

Each of Lucian's beautiful red runes had been burned from my skin, and angry, dark scrolls now replaced them, carved directly with the black blood-stained knife I could see on my aunt's desk.

It was a miracle I couldn't feel any of it. Presumably, the spell controlling my body prevented me from feeling whatever was done to it. It made sense. It was, after all, a forced marriage ritual. It had likely been designed so the victim wouldn't feel their rape .

I was panicking, my mind coming up with a hundred different scenarios, each more disgusting than the last.The most horrifying thing of all was that instead of racing in fear, my heart beat slow and steady, enslaved to Zenya's will like the rest of me.

She could stop it. She could kill me with a single word, a single thought.

What monster did she intend to bind me to? Or would my mother tie a poor innocent man who didn't know what she'd done to me? Would I always be this empty doll, but with my mind intact? I could imagine no worse torture.

"Yes," Zenya said. "I believe it worked. I can see in your eyes you're still there. If you hadn't been so difficult, your mind wouldn't be part of the equation, you know. It would just have been a strange dream, and you would have woken up content."

Content?

She was insane.

I'd always known my mother was self-centered, but I didn't realize she was that deluded.

"I would know. The same was done to me. One day, I was saying, ‘no thank you, Mother, I'd rather have a career than some new blood ball and chain.’ The next, I woke up married. And you know what happened?"

I stared at her.

"I gained influence. People started paying attention to me.

I wasn't just a little girl with too much power, but a woman.

A mother, too. You came as a package deal.

"I wanted to throw up, imagining my father raping her while she was in the same state I was in.

But instead of describing the horrific event I expected, Zenya continued, "Your father had knocked up a fucking barmaid, and they made me call their bastard my daughter. Can you believe that?"

I could.

In fact, nothing had ever made more sense.

Zenya wasn't my mother.

A strange knot inside me loosened at that knowledge. Every time I'd shown her something I was proud of as a child. Her indifference. Father might have been busy, and often absent, but he'd never had her degree of complete contempt. Because he was my father, while this person was no one to me.

No one but an enemy.

I knew better than to think blood meant everything.

Zenya looked enough like her own parents for me to be rather certain they were related, and they'd done this to her.

Meanwhile,Silver's foster parents weren't her blood, but they'd never, ever treat her like Zenya had treated me my whole life.

Like a tool to be used then discarded when there was no direct advantage to it.

The situation was just as awful as it had been moments ago, but realizing I hadn't been hurt by my own mother brought me a certain degree of peace.

Someone knocked at the door.

"Yes?" Zenya called, like it was her own office.

Timothee walked in. "Ma'am. Gideon and his mother have gone to investigate the diversion."

The short, skinny boy didn't so much as glance at me.

"Excellent," Zenya said. "Is the whole team standing by?"

"Yes, ma'am. Awaiting your orders."

I remembered how Timothee pulled Gideon aside earlier. He was part of the team that investigated the murders, which had no doubt made it easy to ensure there was no hint of proof leading to them.

"Let's go, then. Kleos, put your shawl back on."

I willed myself to resist my body, to stop, to scream, but I picked up the shawl on the floor, wrapped it around my shoulders, and walked out right behind my mother, like the docile doll I was.

At the door, we were joined by three men, none of them remarkable, all of them visibly in awe of my mother. She'd always had a way with men.

One of the men, I didn't know, though I didn't have to ask myself why he'd been chosen: he was tall, broad, and visibly dumb.I wasn't surprised to seeCastor Pendros-Valmont, but Vance, the part-owner of my club? That one hurt.

It wasn't entirely his fault. Mother had probably targeted him to have ears and eyes close to me. And it would have worked until two weeks ago, when I escaped her claws.

I should have stayed in the manor, where I was safe.

Silenced, restrained, pulled ahead with each of Zenya's steps, I had no choice but to follow her like a puppet on strings, wishing I could cry.

We walked down to the ground floor, heading towards the passage between theArena and the Hall of Truce.

"Kleos?" Silver asked, walking into the Guard just as we reached the doors.

"I am taking my daughter to her father's office, where we'll have a family meeting," Zenya declared without pausing to stop. "Lovely seeing you, Edith."

My best friend watched me in stunned silence, trying to read my face for a clue. I couldn't so much as twitch a muscle. Hoping against hope that my eyes could tell her something was wrong, I stared hard.

And then she just said, "I'll pop by the manor later."

Zenya huffed, but it sounded amused rather than put out.

Later would be too late. She would complete what she'd started.

Later, I would be content with whatever fate she condemned me to.