I had long since given up. He told me it was twelve years since he took me, but it felt like longer. I was starving and in constant pain. I knew I deserved this for my years of being a savage beast, so I took it with no complaint. Well, as little complaint as I could manage. It was getting harder every day to endure and every day he broke me just that little bit more. There was no reprieve, it was the same every day and worse when the bells chimed. He told me that the villagers were praying for my soul in church, but that I didn’t deserve to be saved. He was right. I didn’t. I tried every day to call out to my sire to help me. To forgive my actions and rescue me, but he didn’t come. He never came.
After the carriage ride, I woke up in a beautiful room with lavish surroundings, but a locked door that I just could not open however hard I tried. Pounding on the door in frustration, I was left for weeks, growing weaker and weaker from lack of blood, when he finally came back.
Unable to pick myself up from the bed, he carefully sat down next to me, kindness on his face as he offered me a goblet of blood. I drank it down quickly and asked for more, but he refused. He wanted me weak and at his mercy. He undressed me slowly, taking great pleasure in my lack of resistance.
“Oh, you are even more beautiful than he said,” he murmured to me, but I didn’t know what or whom he was talking about.
He undressed himself and climbed on top of me. He kissed me, but I didn’t respond. It didn’t deter him from his task. He entered me slowly, relishing every second. He sped up and finished quickly, moaning into my mouth as I just lay there starved and in shock.
This treatment carried on for years. I saw the leaves turn and fall and turn and fall from the tower window. I wasn’t mistreated, just used every night. After a while, he started to look after me better, sending handmaidens to bathe and dress me, brush my hair and do all the things I wasn’t capable of doing myself.
But eventually, he grew tired of me and my unwillingness to accept him. He had me dragged to the dungeons to be treated as he then saw fit. The nightly visits continued, but I showed neither willingness nor fear, having been in this position so many times before it was nothing. I drifted off into my own world as he fucked me harder and harder, causing more damage each time he came to me. I was slow to heal with not having regular feedings and often I was left to bleed for days at a time.
He started getting crueler and crueler, getting angrier with me for not accepting him until he just couldn’t stop himself anymore. Every time the bells chimed, he came to me, dagger in hand and cut me open, navel to neck, pulling my flesh apart slowly and painfully. He separated my ribs and fed directly from my heart while I whimpered in agony. I couldn’t stop myself. He had broken me. I was completely shattered. I knew I would die here, at his hand. It took me all the time in between to recover from his torture and then he would return and do it all over again as the bells chime
d.
T he three of them are staring at me in varying degrees of horror and disgust as I finish up as much as I’m willing to tell right now. Not even Constantine knew what he really did and I know it is killing him hearing how his own creation could do that to me.
Devon speaks first, pointing to the stained glass. “That’s you? That’s you? What the fuck, Lizzie, why? Why?” he asks, desperately.
I’m not even sure what he is actually asking me, so I just blink at him as Cole stares at me in shock. I daren’t even look at CK, feeling his fury rolling off him in great big waves.
“And you spared him?” he asks quietly. “Why would you do that? I was prepared to kill him anyway. You should have let me!” he roars suddenly, losing his temper in a rare show again, picking up one of the chairs and throwing it at the window shattering it into a million pieces.
We all step back from the flying glass covering our eyes. Oh, wonderful, CK, that cost a fucking fortune, I think wryly, irrationally.
I cast my eyes to his now in the silence following the splintering of the glass. “I won’t be the reason you turn on your own. He has suffered being stuck in the dark, humiliated at being stripped. I was happy to leave him be if he left me alone, but now that he is back and I have the strength to do this myself, with your permission, I would like to end him,” I say formally to my sire, who just looks at me like I’m a day late and a dollar short.
“I will hold him down while you do it,” he says shortly after a very long pause.
“Liv?”
“Yes, Cole?” I prompt when he doesn’t continue.
But instead of speaking, he crosses over to me and hugs me tightly, crushing me to him so hard, I think my bones will break.
“Why would you let yourself be reminded of it?” he asks, pulling back and pointing to the now gaping hole in the wall. I study it closely and realize that I can’t even see the chair that CK threw at it. It must have ended up somewhere near the front gates.
“It wasn’t so much that I was reminding myself of it,” I say slowly.
Cole looks puzzled, but CK’s eyes focus on me in frustration, “Aefre. I have told you a thousand times, more even, that you were not responsible for what happened to you.”
“What do you mean not responsible? Why would you think you are, Liv?”
I look away from him ashamed of my own torturous behavior.
“I behaved in a manner that…”
“Aefre! You do not need to explain yourself.”
“Yes, I do! I behaved in a manner that attracted his attention. I brought it on myself. I deserved it.” I choke out a sob.
CK roughly pushes Cole out of the way to grab me and shake me. Geez, so much for the gentle touch.
“Stop this at once,” he orders me. “If anything, this is all my fault. I told you last week that all of this is my fault. If you are looking to blame someone, blame me. I won’t let you carry this on yourself. I created him. I made him. I warned you that day, before he turned up, but in my anger at you, I left you. I left you alone to be taken by him. I will never forgive myself for that.”
“You knew he was coming for her and you left her?” Devon yells at him.