Chapter Twenty-nine

Avery's POV.

The jerk was so violent that I thought my hand had been ripped from its socket. I looked up to see the person holding me.

It was Lucian.

One of his hands braced around the cracked railing. The other hand locked around my wrist as the leather of his gloves bit into my skin.

My ribs slammed against the stone edge of the terrace as Lucian hauled me upward with a brutal force like that of a fisherman landing his catch.

My feet hit the stone as I crashed into him breathless. His nostrils flared as he breathed in terror. “Did you think I will let the ground have you? Did you think you could leave me that easily?”

I planted my hand against his chest and shoved him with every ounce of strength I had left. “Don't touch me!” I screamed.

He wasn't expecting it, so he stumbled back just a few paces. “Don't you ever touch me again,” I choked out, my voice trembling as much as my hands.

I wiped my palm on my dress, trying to get the scent of the slaughterhouse off my skin. “Why did you save me? You just pulled me back into your cage.”

I looked at Lena. She was standing a few feet away, her face pale, her eyes darting between us. “Avery,” she called out, reaching out a hand.

“No,” I snapped, backing away from both of them. “I'd rather have fallen than remain here.”

I turned and ran. The red moonlight casting long, distorted shadows behind me, leaving the blind monster and his sister alone.

A storm approached, which made the clouds darker than the night sky. The wind howled like a cry of loss, blowing the leaves and bending the trees.

The hairs on my arms rose up as the first boom of thunder came crashing down. I barely made it to the stone steps before the rain started pouring heavily.

Lightning cracked, loud as a whip, and a huge fork of white light split the sky into shattered pieces. The noise assaulted my senses as the roof vibrated with the hits of a million raindrops.

Within seconds, my dress clung to my skin, heavy with water. My hair plastered across my face as I ran blindly outside, through mud and over roots, the storm swallowing every sound except my ragged breathing.

I stumbled near an old room, slipped inside, dropped to the floor, and pulled my knees against my chest. My hand locked around my ankle as I tried to keep myself from shattering.

I clawed at the collar, but it wouldn't come off. “Get off me,” I sobbed at the metal. “Get off.” The collar didn’t respond.

My breathing came in broken pulls as I pressed my forehead to my knees, rainwater dripping from my hair onto the floorboards beneath me. For a moment, I drowned myself in the noise of the rain.

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing everything to disappear. Just for a second. Just enough to not feel anything, but the world didn’t oblige.

Lightning flashed through the windows, bleaching the darkness white for a heartbeat.

Only then did I realize where I had run. The old forbidden east wing. The room Lucian had warned me never to enter.

And in that heartbeat, I saw the portrait.

It hung above the fireplace, enormous and ghostlike, half drowned in shadow. Another pulse of lightning illuminated it again.

I froze. Not that I had never seen it before, seen my own face staring back at me from that canvas. That was what had unsettled me from the first day.

But I had never stood this close. Never let myself look.

I pushed to my feet slowly, water dripping from my dress onto the old wood floor as I moved closer to get a better look at it.

I was painted beneath a blood-red moon, draped in silver silk that shimmered even through layers of age and dust. My hair spilled over one shoulder in waves, my mouth curved in something too sad to be called a smile.

Why had the painting been hidden? And why had Lucian forbidden me from coming here if the face in the portrait was mine?

My trembling fingers brushed the frame. And for the first time, I noticed the details. This time, I saw scratches carved through part of the canvas. Deliberate gouges. As if someone had clawed at the painting.

Trying to erase something or someone. I leaned closer, and beneath the damage, there had been another figure beside her.

A wolf, its heart pierced, a blindfold drawn tightly over its eyes.

A voice came from the darkness behind me.

“You were told never to come here.”

I spun so fast that my back struck the frame. Lucian stood in the doorway, rain running from his hair and shoulders. The storm behind him framed him in flashes of white lightning.

“You followed me.”

His mouth tilted, humorless. “You ran through a storm half-mad and nearly fell off a terrace. Did you think I would let you disappear into the woods?”

I lifted a shaking hand toward the painting. “What's this?”

Lucian went silent for a moment, I thought he would walk away rather than answer. Instead, he moved into the room.

I stepped closer before fear could stop me. “Answer me, Lucian.”

He said nothing, only reached toward me. I flinched. Then, his hand dropped for the collar. A metallic click. He was unlocking it.

The weight left my throat so suddenly I staggered. The iron fell into his palm.

My throat felt strangely bare. Vulnerable. Almost unreal. I touched my neck in disbelief. “You…” My voice broke. “Why?”

His thumb brushed the red marks the metal had left on my skin. “You should not ask questions whose answers may ruin you.”