She skidded to a stop as she appeared before me, her eyes wide with concern.My lips parted, but my voice barely made it past my throat.
“We have to leave.Now.”
It was little more than a whisper, no louder than the squeak of a mouse.
But my hands—shaking, desperate—found hers, gripping with a force that betrayed the storm raging inside me.
I pulled her with me, stumbling, nearly tripping over the uneven ground as we fled toward the carriage.My pulse roared in my ears, my breath ragged, my body fighting to expel the images seared into my mind.
Bless her.Mary asked what had happened, her voice trembling with concern.She pleaded for answers, but the words wouldn’t come.
Some horrors could not be spoken of.
Some nightmares refused to be named.
The ride back was a fever dream.
The countryside blurred into meaningless streaks of green and gold beyond the carriage window, the world spinning past as if it wanted to rid itself of what I had seen.But the horror clung to me.Burrowed into me.
No matter how tightly I shut my eyes, the images returned—Lord Winston’s grotesque smile imprinted deep into my mind like a wound that would never heal.The glint of his blade.The sick, eager moans.The dying man’s ragged breaths were swallowed by the depravity taking place beside him.Gods above.The woman.That woman.
What were they?
What kind of wretched souls found pleasure in such perversion?
The carriage lurched to a stop, but I did not wait for the footman.
I flung the door open, stumbling onto the gravel.My legs carried me before I could think, my breath coming quick and ragged as I ran.Away.Away.Away.But there was no outrunning the filth in my mind, no tearing free from the memory sinking its claws into me, dragging me back into that dim, suffocating room.
When I reached my chambers, my hands shook violently, so I could barely latch the door behind me.
The walls closed in, smothering—but at least they were mine.At least here, in this gilded cage, I could pretend I was safe.
But my body betrayed me.Tremors racked my limbs, my pulse an erratic drumbeat against my ribs.I pressed my hands to my cheeks, ice-cold with terror, desperate to ground myself, to find something real beyond the nightmare clawing at my thoughts.
“I can’t marry him.I can’t.I can’t.”
The words spilled from my lips, a fragile, useless mantra—a whispered plea against the crushing weight of certainty.
I had no choice.
Not unless?—
A name flickered in my mind, a lifeline in the darkness.
Lord Hassan.
Where Winston was filth and decay, Hassan was something else entirely—something I needed to believe in.
He had offered me refuge—a sanctuary in his townhouse.
But could I trust him?
Or was I only grasping at cobwebs, weaving a foolish dream of escape in a world where men—no matter their charm or promises—only ever took what they wanted?
ChapterEight
AMIR
