Taken (Dark Legacy Duet 1)

I look like my great-aunt, also named Helena, down to the silver streak I refuse to dye. She’s in her nineties now. I wonder if they had to lock her in her room and steal her wheelchair, so she wouldn’t interfere in the ceremony.

Aunt Helena was the chosen girl of her generation. She knows what’s in store for us better than anyone.

“They’re coming,” my mother says.

She has super hearing, I swear, but then, a moment later, I hear them too.

A door slams beyond the library, and the draft blows out a dozen of the thousand candles that light the huge room.

A maid rushes to relight them. No electricity. Tradition, I guess.

If I were Sebastian Scafoni, I’d want to get a good look at the prize I’d be fucking for the next year. And I have no doubt there will be fucking, because what else can break a girl so completely but taking that of all things?

And it’s not just the one year. No. We’re given for three years. One year for each brother. Oldest to youngest. It used to be four, but now, it’s three.

I would pinch my arm to be sure I’m really standing here, that I’m not dreaming, but my hands are bound behind my back, and I can’t.

This can’t be fucking real. It can’t be legal.

And yet here we are, the four of us, naked beneath our translucent, rotting sheaths—I swear I smell the decay on them—standing on our designated blocks, teetering on them. I guess the Willows of the past had smaller feet. And I admit, as I hear their heavy, confident footfalls approaching the ancient wooden doors of the library, I am afraid.

I’m fucking terrified.1SebastianEthan and Gregory flank me as we make our way through this godforsaken house in the middle of a fucking cornfield in the middle of fucking nowhere, USA. Why in hell anyone chooses to live here is beyond me. I just hope the girl isn’t a fucking dimwit. A year is a long time.

Ethan is whispering something in Gregory’s ear. Gregory is even quieter than usual.

I glance back at them, and I know Greg’s quiet misleads people into thinking he’s the safe one, but he’s not. He’s the most sadistic, if you ask me. I mean, if there are degrees. Can sadism be measured in degrees?

“We decide together,” Ethan says to me. He’s repeated this mantra for the last forty-eight hours.

“I decide, little brother.” He’s twenty-five, three years my junior. Gregory is twenty-four.

“She’s all of ours,” he says, sounding like a fucking toddler who doesn’t get his way.

“No,” I clarify, and I’m trying to be patient because really, I can’t blame Ethan for being the way he is. “She’s mine.”

“She’s only yours first.”

“Give it a rest, Ethan,” I say.

“Sebastian.” My stepmother’s heels click over the hardwood. “Don’t fight with your brother. You know I don’t like to see that.” She goes to Ethan, touches his cheek. “You’ll all have your turn with the Willow whore. They’re resilient.”

Her loathing of the Willow women is so obvious, a part of me wishes the chosen girl luck because she’ll need it to walk out of the Scafoni home when her three years are up. It’ll take someone with a spine of steel to survive my stepmother, never mind my brothers and me.

“Why do you hate them, Lucinda?” I ask, enjoying my power over her.

Truth be told, she probably hates me as much as the Willows, but it doesn’t matter. I may not be her biological son, but I am master of the Scafoni family. My father is dead, I am the eldest, and I have no intention of letting anyone rule me or usurp my place, especially not Lucinda.

“They’re whores, Sebastian. There to serve a purpose. Remember that instead of turning on your brothers. Family first. Never forget it.”

“You don’t have to remind me of that, Lucinda. I just wish I understood your hatred of them. I mean, what are they to you? You’re not a Scafoni by blood, after all.”

This irritates the fuck out of her, and that fact makes me grin.

The library doors open, saving her from having to answer.

A thousand candles burn inside, casting a warm glow over the large room. I’m not sure which scent is stronger, that of old books, of melting wax or fear.

I spy the first white sheath, and as much as I like to tell myself this is nothing more than a family obligation, a thrill runs through me.

I’m excited to claim my Willow Girl.

Lucinda falls back, as is her place.

I step forward and turn to my right, where Mr. and Mrs. Willow, the proud parents of this generation’s crop, stand with ghostly faces. I nod my greeting. I am civil, at least.

I take in the room, still avoiding the girls on their blocks, saving them for last, appreciating the ancient library—the only thing old about this house, the rest having been rebuilt ten years ago, and it was done cheaply too. I hate cheap. But I guess by then, the money from the previous reaping was running out.