I look up at him. Is he serious?
Yes. He is. And he would. I mean, this whole situation, it’s archaic. Like we’ve gone back in time a hundred years. A thousand.
“Is it, Willow Girl?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You don’t like sweetheart. You don’t like Willow Girl. Tell me, do you need me to whip you?” he asks, nudging my hip with the toe of his shoe.
I shake my head, hug my knees to myself, and look straight ahead. Anywhere but at his mocking eyes.
“Get up.”
I shake my head again. I can see the goose bumps that have risen on my arms, making the faint dusting of hair stand on end.
“Get up, Helena. Don’t make me make you.”
I grab hold of the fallen blanket, but he steps on it. When I look up at him, his dark eyes are narrowed and intense.
“No blanket. I want to see you.”
Hasn’t he seen enough? I want to ask him, but I don’t. I can’t push him too far.
“I’m tired of repeating myself with you,” he says.
I rise slowly to my feet, covering myself as best I can with my arms, keeping my legs close together, letting my hair fall to shield me like I’m Lady Godiva on her horse.
He steps back a little, and the silence between us is heavy, like it can be put on a scale and weighed.
It feels like it’s sitting on my lungs, that weight, suffocating me.
“Look at me.”
It takes me a long minute to do so, to meet his slate eyes, and when I do, it’s like I’m in another dimension, another world.
It’s just him and me and this silence.
It’s too much. Too loud.
Deafening.
And as I study him, there’s something that won’t let me look away.
If I’d met him under different circumstances, I’d find him attractive, not scary, but it’s not that which has me caught like an animal in a trap.
He’s the hunter and I’m the prey.
He and I, we’re connected somehow, and maybe it’s our shared history or our bound destiny, this insane game we have to play out.
I don’t know what it is, but it is. It’s there.
The ring on my finger weighs heavy.
Bone.
I suddenly know what my aunt meant.
The ring, it’s made of human bone. I know it.
I imagine my aunt in this room. I wonder if it looked the same then. If I’m sleeping on the bed she once slept on. I imagine her standing here, much as I am now, facing off with her Scafoni master, because that is what they are. What Sebastian is. My master.
The word boils inside my gut, and I fist my hands.
He steps closer to me, and I realize he’s been studying me all this time. He lifts my hair and pushes it behind my shoulders. He then takes my wrists, and when he wraps his hands over my fists, I see again how much bigger than me he is because my fists, they look like a child’s in his giant hands.
He doesn’t try to open them but sets my arms by my sides. When he touches my jaw, even though it’s a featherlight touch, I flinch.
He lifts my face slowly, turns it from side to side, brushes the bruises with his knuckles, presses against them like he’s fitting his fingers to the marks they left, making sure they’re his. Who else?
He then slides his fingers down over my throat, cups it again, and I panic. I clasp my hand over his forearm prepared to drag him off. To fight even if it means a whipping.
But he surprises me. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, his voice low but not harsh. Not threatening.
He could threaten. He could do so much more than threaten.
He could throw me on the bed, force my legs apart, and take what he wants.
I have no power here.
Physically, I’m no match. I am alone in this house of my enemy.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeats.
And I surprise myself because I feel my lip begin to tremble, feel the flush of something—God knows what—at his words because they’re gentle and maybe I’m being fucking stupid but maybe I just need to believe he means them. Even if they’re a lie, I need something to hold on to right now.
I let my arms drop to my sides, and when he swipes his thumb along my face and smears a tear across it, I let my lashes fall closed. He cups my face with both hands and pulls me closer.
“Look at me.”
I open my eyes and look up at him. He’s so close, I can see every speck of gold in his eyes and this, right now, it’s like I’m more naked than if he were to look over my body, if he were to lay me out and open me up and study every detail of me.