Ivy
He lifts me in his arms before my bare foot even touches the ground. The cloak he wrapped me in almost falls away, but he catches that, too, keeping it huddled around me. And when I try to push away from his hard chest, when I try to free myself of his grip, he only tightens his hold on me.
“Let me go, Santiago.”
“No.”
Marco opens the front door, and Santiago carries me in. I’m still shivering even though it’s warm in the house. The cold I feel is so deep inside me that even a raging fire wouldn’t touch it.
What he did tonight, that display, another very public humiliation and his utter lack of concern for my well-being? I don’t forgive him for that. And I don’t believe he cares about me. No, I’d sooner believe any concern was that maybe he’d gone too far and broken me. Killed me, even. Like he’s threatened to. He doesn’t want me dead yet. He hasn’t had his fill of torturing me just yet.
“Let me go!” I twist in his arms as he carries me past my bedroom and farther down the long corridor. I’m exhausted and weak, but I have to fight.
He doesn’t budge. My struggles don’t seem to impact him at all. He’s stone-faced as we head up into this darker part of the house.
“I hate you,” I hiss. I have to say it because I have to feel it. It’s the only thing I should feel after that.
At that, he glances down at me, but it’s too dark to read his eyes. It’s hard enough when it’s light.
He doesn’t reply, though. No smart comment. No strikes against me like at dinner last night. Just him as he usually is. Cold and impassive. Inhuman.
We stop as he opens the double doors at the end of the corridor, and when we enter the large suite, I instantly know this is his bedroom.
I can’t help but crane my neck to take it in. Black walls, damask paper, dark, heavy velvet curtains the color of the night sky, moonlight pale through the windows. Ironclad again. Like the rest of the house. And at the very center of the room is a high bed bigger than any I’ve ever seen with four hulking posts, a thick duvet, and pillows he scatters carelessly across the floor while still holding me.
“I’m not fucking you,” I tell him when he snatches his cloak away, pulls the blankets on the bed back, and lays me down. I smell him on the pillow. It’s his pillow. “I won’t let you touch me again. Ever! Do you hear me?”
He ignores what I’m saying, but when he lets me go, and I move to sit up, he puts a finger to my chest.
“No,” he says, pushing me to lie down. “Stay.”
“I’m not a dog, you bastard.” I slap his hand away, but he catches my wrists.
“I said stay.” I hear the nightstand drawer open, and he holds up a pair of leather cuffs. “Or I’ll make you stay.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Your choice, Ivy.” How does he sound so calm when I sound so frantic? So insane?
I look at them, then at him. He means it. So I lie back, and when he is satisfied and releases my wrists, I snatch the duvet and pull it up to my shoulders, then turn my back to him.
I hear the drawer slide closed, and he moves away. When a door opens, I turn my head and watch. Bathroom. A moment later, he comes back toward me, opening a small old-fashioned-looking bottle. Something I’d fill with sand and call fairy dust when I was little.
I sit up, needing to keep alert, to watch him. I hold the blankets tight to me. I’m still naked. Still cold. Still filled with hate for this man. My husband. I feel him between my legs still. How rough he was. How hard I came. How I passed out, my head spinning even in the blackness of that mask. All the sounds, all the people. The sex all around me. My senses heightened when he blinded me.
“I hate you,” I tell him again, this time feeling the heat of tears in my eyes. “I hate you.” I want him to know it. To understand that this hate is something deep inside me, rooted in the ice spreading through my veins even as a little voice inside my head reminds me that for a moment, for one undeniable moment, it wasn’t hate I felt. It was jealousy.
And no, not for a single moment.
“I hate you, Santiago De La Rosa,” I say with more conviction in my voice than I feel deep inside me.
Come has dried on the insides of my thighs.
I’m going to put a baby inside you.
No. No. I cannot allow that. I will not.
“Drink this,” he says, holding out the strange little vial.
I look at it, then at him. I snort-laugh. “Are you insane?” I push his arm away. “You think I’ll just drink your poison?”
“It’s not poison. It will relax you.”
“No, I guess you’re not ready to kill me yet, are you? You’re having too much fun.” I turn my face away. “I don’t want your drugs, Santiago.”
“Drink it.” His voice is tight, and when I don’t reply, he grabs my jaw, fingers digging into my skin as he forces me to look at him.
I want to tell him that the tear that slides down my cheek and onto his finger is just a remnant leftover from earlier. It’s not from any emotion I feel now. Certainly nothing he has made me feel. I don’t, though. Instead, I study him as he looks at me, his expression strange and hard to read. He’s almost captivated. And it’s then I see it. Subtle but there. He’s struggling with something.
Probably his desire to kill me. To just get it over with warring with that sadistic devil inside him.
I snort, breaking the spell.
He blinks. I watch him. I sometimes catch glimpses of something akin to pain in his eyes, but those few times I’ve seen it, it’s been there one instant and gone the next. I guess I’m searching for it now.
I shake my head. Anything I imagine I’ve seen is probably my mind playing tricks on me. You’d have to be human to feel pain, and Santiago De La Rosa is not human.
He is the devil.
“My mother made it for me when I was little,” he says, confusing me with the admission. “For when I was agitated or upset. It won’t hurt you.”
I study his face. This is the closest we’ve been when he’s allowed it. And it’s the most he’s shared with me ever, even given his admission in the chapel when he’d punished me. That was fact. His father beat him. This is something else. Not a mere statement of fact.
This admission carries emotion.
I don’t know if it’s at the mention of his mother or at what happened, but he is unnerved and almost vulnerable. I remember what Antonia told me about her. That she’d gone back to Barcelona and died there. That her grief killed her.
Is that what I see here? Is he grieving?
I shift my gaze to the vial again, remember those stories of poisonings within The Society. I always thought they were just that, stories, but now I’m not so sure.
“I don’t want it,” I say even though I know he can make me drink it. He can make me do anything he wants.
As if he’s read my mind, he brings the strange little bottle to his lips and takes a sip, then puts it under my nose again.
He releases my jaw. “It’s not poison. It will help you. I promise.”
“No.”
“Drink it.”
“Or what? You’ll make me?”
“Yes.”