Chapter 179
KATYA POV
I woke up sideways.
That was the first thing my brain registered. My body wasn’t aligned the way it should be. My cheek pressed into sothing cool and firm, not my mattress.
Darkness wrapped around , thick and unfamiliar. Not the gentle shadows I was used to, but a deeper kind, heavy and still.
My head throbbed, pulsing deeply with an ache that made my thoughts scatter before they could fully form.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again slowly, as if that might make the world rearrange itself into sothing that made sense.
It didn’t. The air slled wrong.
Not wrong exactly—just not mine. A dark, expensive cologne lingered in the room, subtle but unmistakable.
Masculine. Controlled. It wrapped around the way the darkness did, unfamiliar and inescapable. Panic stirred low in my chest.
This isn’t my room.
I tried to move, and my body protested imdiately. A dull pain flared across my back, like sothing was holding together.
Bandages.
My breath hitched. I lifted my hand shakily, fingers brushing my temple and froze.
Fabric. Wrapped snugly around my head.
My heart began to race, confusion flooding in faster than fear. I pressed my fingers there again, slower this ti, confirming it wasn’t a mistake.
Bandaged.
Why was my head bandaged?
The question echoed, unanswered.
I searched my mind for mories—anything—but they slipped through my grasp. Flashes without context. Noise without aning. A sense of before without knowing what before was.
My throat felt dry. My limbs heavy. I tried to roll onto my back and stopped halfway, a sharp reminder from my spine forcing a small, broken sound from my lips.
I wasn’t in my room.
The silence in the room was too heavy, too expensive. I tried to swallow, but my tongue felt like lead.
My mind was a fractured mirror—shards of a screaming face, the sound of breaking porcelain, and a flash of yellow fabric stained with red.
The dress. The thought sent a jolt of adrenaline through , and I forced my body to move. My muscles scread in protest.
The bandages across my back felt tight, pulling at my skin with every micro-movent, reminding of the fire that had been carved into my spine.
I gritted my teeth, bracing my palms against the mattress to push myself up. The fabric beneath my hands wasn’t the rough linen I was used to.
It was cool, high-thread-count silk that felt like water. I shouldn’t be here. I managed to prop myself up against the headboard, the world tilting dangerously for a few seconds as the bandage around my head throbbed in ti with my pulse.
I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the nausea to pass. When the room finally stopped spinning, I looked down.
The heavy, charcoal-colored duvet slid down my waist, revealing what I was wearing. My breath hitched, stopping completely in my lungs.
It wasn’t my uniform. It wasn’t the blood-soaked rags I rembered clutching.
I was wearing a shirt.
A man’s shirt.
It was a deep, midnight black, made of a material so soft it felt like a second skin. It was massive on —the shoulder seams draped halfway down my biceps, and the hem likely reached my mid-thighs.
The sleeves had been rolled up neatly, exposing my pale, trembling wrists.
The scent of him—cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and that cold, tallic edge—hit with full force now.
It was infused into every fiber of the fabric. He put this on . The realization made my skin crawl and burn all at once.
My hands flew to the buttons, my fingers fumbling, shaking so hard I could barely feel the small, pearlescent fasteners.
Who had seen ? Who had touched ? I looked around the room, my eyes widening as I took in the sheer scale of it. High ceilings with dark, exposed beams.
A wall of glass overlooking the dark estate. Minimalist, brutalist furniture that cost more than my father’s entire house.
I bit my lip, the taste of copper faint on my tongue, and forced myself to move. I needed to see.
I needed to know where I was before the shadows swallowed whole. With a shaky breath, I braced my palms against the mattress.
The sheets beneath were silk. I pushed upward, my muscles screaming in protest. My back felt tight, the bandages there pulling against my skin, reminding of a fire I couldn’t quite rember starting.
I managed to prop myself up against the headboard, I closed my eyes, counting to three. My eyes finally focus on the interior of the room.
This wasn’t the guest wing. This wasn’t the infirmary. This was the lion’s den.
The realization hit , making the room spin again. I recognized the layout from the few tis I’d been forced to stand at the threshold, waiting for orders I was too terrified to fulfill.
This was Roo’s private quarters. The inner sanctum where the monster slept. "No," I whispered, the word catching in my dry throat. "No, no, no."
mory began to leak back in, dark and viscous like the blood on that hallway floor. I rembered the silk of my sundress—Nonna’s gift—shredded into yellow ribbons.
I rembered the heat in my head, the high-pitched ringing, and the weight of Gina’s hand in my hair.
And then... the vase.
The sound of shattering porcelain echoed in my ears. I rembered the jagged shard. I rembered the white-hot, jagged edge of my own mind snapping.
I rembered wanting to see the light leave Gina’s eyes. I had jumped on her. I had wanted to end her.
My breath started coming in short, shallow hitches. I looked at my hands. They were clean now, the nails scrubbed of the copper-slling gri, but I could still feel the phantom weight of the glass.
I had lost it. I had gone crazy.
And now I was here. In his bed.
Marina. The na scread through my head like a siren. If she found here... if she saw in his bed, wearing his shirt, with my blood staining his expensive sheets... she wouldn’t just use a whip this ti.
She would finish what she started in the hallway. She was the future Donna And I was a servant who had just tried to murder her favorite maid.
I scrambled to the edge of the bed, my movents clumsy and panicked. The pain in my back flared, a thousand needles of fire stitching into my skin, but the fear of Marina was a sharper blade.
I had to get out. I had to get back to the servant Wing, to the shadows, to anywhere but here.
My feet hit the floor, and my knees imdiately buckled.
The world tilted forty-five degrees to the left.
"Ah!" I gasped, clutching the nightstand to keep from face-planting onto the cold wood floor.
A glass of water rattled on its coaster.
My head throbbed. I touched the bandage again.
Did he do this? Did he beat unconscious after I attacked Gina? Is that why my head is wrapped?
Was I so far gone that he had to break my skull to stop ? The thought made sick. I didn’t know which was worse: the idea that I had tried to kill soone, or the idea that Roo had been the one to "save" by hurting more.
"Why are you out of bed?" The voice ca from the door opening. I jerked, my grip slipping from the nightstand.
††
Not edited.
So still down. 😔
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