Page 34 of Goldflame
A shadow moves in the hallway—a hulking figure I recognize as one of the guards. Alex enters with a threatening casualness that makes my stomach lurch. His bulk fills the space around him. He strides toward me and clamps his hand around my upper arm.
“Get off me!” I hiss as he drags me backward.
Julian doesn’t even look up.
Lady Harrow seems to have already forgotten me.
And I know, the way I’ve been understanding again and again these past several days, my mother was treated like this, felt like this.
Alex pulls me from the dining room. Once we’re past Julian’s field of view, Alex loosens his grip just enough for circulation to return but not enough to regain my dignity. Every rough jolt reverberates through my skeleton until anger propels me forward.
“I can walk myself,” I snap, jerking free from his grasp with all the defiance I have left.
Alex smirks but lets go, hovering close behind as if daring me to try anything clever. But I know better now—-it’s not the time to try to make an escape.
I stumble back into Adrian’s room and slam the door behind me. The sound echoes in my ears as my cheek throbs and stings.
And there it is: my first taste of humiliation at the hands of the Inferno Consortium.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AURELIA
The weight of the pen in my hand is too much, like I’m holding a brick instead of a thin metal tube. My diary sits open in my lap, a blank page staring up at me, but my mind is as empty as the paper. No—not empty. Overcrowded. My mind is a storm, so deafening I can’t grasp a single coherent thought.
On top of the mess, is the memory of Lady Harrow’s hand striking my face yesterday. My cheek doesn’t hurt anymore, but something deeper has been damaged. Something important.
I press two fingers against the spot, wondering if shame has a temperature. If someone were to place their palm against my skin right now, would they feel it burning from this new feeling inside me?
It’s strange how the worst kind of pain doesn’t show itself physically. This kind of pain is quiet. More insidious. It slips beneath your ribs and curls around your organs, making a home there.
My body feels foreign and hollow now. Like someonereached in and scooped everything out that made meme, leaving just a husk behind. Every breath I take feels borrowed, each heartbeat mechanical. The humiliation has carved me out, plucking away pieces of my soul like petals from a flower.
He loves me not. He loves me not. He loves me not.
I feel squeezed smaller and smaller until I wonder if I might simply fold into nothingness. Would anyone even notice?
Not Julian. Not after yesterday.
The way he looked at me—or rather, through me. The way he simply sat back down and continued eating his damn breakfast as if I were nothing more than a speck of dust. A mild inconvenience. Something to brush away and forget.
God, that hurts more than Lady Harrow’s slap ever could.
My vision blurs from tears, but I blink them back, refusing to give in. Crying feels like surrender, and I’ve already lost enough ground in this war. But my fingers tremble as they hover over the blank page. Finally, words claw their way out and I start writing.
I’m becoming a ghost in my own?—
The door swings open without warning, the jarring sound making the pen slip from my grasp. I scramble to grab it, heart racing as two women enter. Maids, from the looks of their simple black dresses. One carries fresh towels and a makeup case, the other a garment bag.
Before I can form a question, a familiar figure fills the doorway behind them, and my entire body seizes.
Julian.
His bruises are still healing, with purple and yellow spreading across his jawline, stitches cutting through his eyebrow, one eye still partially swollen. The coldness in his visible eye cracks everything under my skin.
My heart pounds a desperate rhythm, like it’s trying to escape this fate. To run where my legs can’t. To flee this room. This man. This devastating pull between us that refuses to die even after everything.
The war in my body is immediate and visceral—my skin prickles with awareness, blood rushing to my cheeks even as bile rises in my throat. Part of me wants to launch myself at him, to tear his wounds open with my nails and make him hurt as badly as I do.
