The torn silk was a dead weight in her arms.
Elara drifted through the lower corridors, a shivering specter in a thin chemise, her feet numb on the cold stone. The slap from Valentina still burned on her cheek—a bright brand of shame that pulsed with every heartbeat. The memory of tearing fabric echoed in her ears, a sound more violent than any shout. She wasn't looking for a hiding place anymore. She was simply moving, a leaf caught in the draft of a tomb, pushed by currents she couldn't see.
The hallway here was narrow, lit by widely spaced, dim bulbs—a service corridor, far from the grand spaces of the mansion. The air smelled of damp stone, bleach, and stale tobacco. It was a place for things, not people. Storage rooms. Laundry. The mechanical guts of the house. No portraits watched here. No one came here unless they had work to do.
A door to a cavernous, disused laundry room stood ajar, yawning darkness within. She passed it without slowing.
But then, the shadows behind her moved.
"Well, well. Look what the cat didn't even bother to drag in."
Marco's voice was an oily smear in the silence, sliding over her skin.
Elara froze. Her joints locked. Her breath stopped. The old reflex, carved by years of her father's unpredictable rages, took over completely.
Marco stepped into the weak light. Silvio materialized beside him like a grinning shadow, always hovering at Marco's shoulder, always ready to laugh at whatever cruelty unfolded. They smelled of cheap wine and sweat—the sour, cloying scent of men who had been drinking for hours, who had worked themselves into a state where violence felt like entertainment.
Marco's eyes, bloodshot and hungry, traveled over her with slow, revolting pleasure. They took in the thin chemise, the bare arms, the torn silk clutched to her chest like a shield. A smile spread across his face—the smile of a man who had just found something he thought belonged to him.
"Lost your pretty dress, topolina?" Marco tutted, taking a step closer. "Did the boss not like his present?"
Silvio snickered, a high, nervous sound. "Maybe he wanted to unwrap it himself. Got tired of waiting."
Elara took a step back. But her shoulder blades met cold, unyielding stone. There was no escape. The corridor was narrow—Marco and Silvio blocked the only direction that led anywhere but deeper into dead-end storage rooms.
Trapped. Again.
Panic set in. Elara’s body shook in waves of terror.
Marco closed the distance. He stopped so close she could see the pores on his nose, the broken capillaries in his cheeks, the yellowing whites of his eyes. She could smell the sourness on his breath—wine and something rotten.
He reached out. Not for her. For the bundle of silk in her arms. His fingers closed over it. Tugged.
She held on. A last, futile instinct. The fabric was all she had—the only thing separating her skin from his gaze.
Marco’s grip tightened. His smile turned cruel. "Let go, little mouse. It's trash now anyway."
He yanked. The fabric slithered from her numb fingers, falling to the floor in a heap of ruined emerald. It landed between them like a dead body.
"Better." Marco's voice was thick with satisfaction. His gaze now had nothing to obstruct it. It crawled over the thin cotton of her chemise, over the outline of her body beneath—the narrow shoulders, the sharp collarbones, the places where hunger and fear had left their mark. "See, this is more like it. This is what you really are. No fancy silks to hide behind."
Silvio edged closer, his eyes wide with curiosity—the curiosity of a child watching something small and helpless squirm. "She's shaking, Marco."
"Course she is." Marco's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, intimate and cruel. "She knows what happens to little mice who wander out of their holes all alone. Especially when the big cat's busy licking his wounds."
The big cat. Kazimir.
He was referring to whatever had happened tonight—the fight that had left Kazimir's knuckles ruined, the rage that had turned him into a volcano.
Marco knew. They all knew. The wolf was wounded, and the jackals were taking advantage of his absence.
Marco lifted his hand.
Elara flinched. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the blow—the slap, the fist, the familiar impact of male violence against her flesh.
The blow didn't come.
His fingers—calloused, dry, rough—brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder. The touch was light, almost delicate. That made it worse. The intimacy was a violation far deeper than Valentina's slap. Valentina had struck her as an equal, a rival. Marco touched her like she was his.
"Shh." The sound was meant to soothe, to mock, to claim. His thumb traced the line of her collarbone above the chemise's edge. "So quiet. Always so quiet."
She shuddered—a full-body tremor of pure revulsion she couldn't suppress. Her skin crawled where he touched. Her stomach churned.
"I wonder…" His hand slid down, palm flat, over the curve of her shoulder, down her arm. His grip settled around her wrist, thumb pressing into the pulse point. "I wonder what it takes to make a mute girl make a sound."
Silvio's giggle was choked, excited. "Gotta be something real special, Marco."
"Yeah." Marco breathed the word, his face close to hers. His other hand came up, hovering near the tie at the neck of her chemise—a simple cotton bow, the only thing between her skin and the air. "See, the boss doesn't want to play. He just wants to glare and drink his whiskey. But that's boring."
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His fingers toyed with the cotton tie. Pulled it gently. Let it go. Pulled it again.
"A wife like this… she shouldn't just sit in a room and gather dust. She should be used. Appreciated."
The word landed like a stone in deep water. Used. She knew that word. She had been used her whole life—to absorb her father's rage, to clean his messes, to be sold for his debts. Used was all she was.
Her mind began to float away. It was a familiar sensation—a trapdoor swinging open beneath her consciousness. She had discovered it as a child, hiding under her bed while her father's footsteps stalked the hallway. The gritty texture of the wall against her back, the smell of their breath, the pressure of Marco's grip—it all began to recede. Becoming distant. Muffled. The sounds of the world became sounds underwater. She was leaving. The castle drawbridge was groaning shut.
"Maybe he just doesn't know what to do with her," Silvio offered, leering.
"Maybe he needs a demonstration." Marco's voice was thick now, rough with intent. His fingers tightened on the tie. "Maybe we should show him. Show him what his precious, untouched wife is really good for."
His face was inches from hers. His breath washed over her—hot, sour, invasive.
But she stared through him.
Her eyes were wide, unseeing. They fixed on a point above his head—a crack in the plaster, a hairline fracture running from the ceiling to the corner. She poured herself into that crack. Became it. Became the empty space between the wall and the paint.
Be the crack. Be the plaster. Be nothing.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Marco's whisper was hot on her face. "All that attention you got at dinner, that was just people looking. But this is what you're really good for. To be a good little hole for the men he's too proud to acknowledge."
The vulgarity was a weapon. Each word was meant to soil, to degrade, to define her in the most brutal terms possible. But they bounced off the empty space where she used to be.
Marco leaned in. His mouth aimed for her neck, her jaw—anywhere his ownership could be marked. His grip on her wrist tightened. His other hand pulled at the tie—
And stopped.
Marco pulled back just an inch. His leer faltered. He studied her face—the blankness, the utter, vacant stillness, the complete absence of the fear he craved. No tears. No flinch. No resistance. Just… nothing.
"The fuck?" he muttered. He shook her arm slightly. "Hey. Look at me."
Her eyes didn't focus. They remained fixed on that distant crack, on the space where she had gone.
Then he slapped her. A sharp, open-handed crack across the same cheek Valentina had struck.
Her head snapped to the side. Pain bloomed—bright, distant, like a fire on a faraway hill. A faint red mark rose on her pale skin. But the body made no sound. Her head lolled back. Her gaze remained empty, fixed on nothing.
Disgust twisted Marco's features. Not the disgust of a man repulsed by his own actions—but the disgust of a predator denied the satisfying crunch of bone, the thrill of a struggle. And beneath it, something else: a sliver of superstitious unease.
"She's not even in there." He said it to Silvio, his bravado thinning. "It's like… fucking a corpse."
The thrill drained from Silvio's face, replaced by nervous unease. "Maybe… maybe we shouldn't. If she's like this… it's weird, Marco."
Marco released her arm as if it had grown hot. She slumped slightly against the wall, a puppet with cut strings. He stared at her—at the perfect, terrifying blankness of her. The ultimate defiance was no defiance at all. It was absence.
"Pathetic." He spat the word, but it lacked its usual cruel power. It was just a descriptor now, a diagnosis. He kicked the pile of torn silk at his feet. "Clean up your mess, mouse. And stay out of our way."
He turned and stalked off, footsteps echoing down the corridor. Silvio scurried after him with one last, bewildered glance over his shoulder—a glance that held not cruelty anymore, but something like fear.
The silence they left behind was different from any silence she had known. It was the silence of a vacuum. Of a space where sound itself had been erased.
Elara did not move for a long time.
Slowly—achingly slow—sensation seeped back. The cold of the floor against her bare feet. The throbbing in her cheek, a dull pulse of pain. The weight of her own body, held upright by the wall at her back.
As if operating on a delayed timer, she slid down the wall. Her spine scraped against the stone. Her legs folded. She sat on the cold floor in a heap of trembling limbs and thin cotton.
Mechanically, she reached for the torn silk. She gathered it into her lap, folding the ruined fabric with numb, clumsy fingers. The movements were automatic—the same careful folding she had done a thousand times for her father's laundry, for the sheets she wasn't supposed to touch. Order from chaos. Neatness from violence.
As she lifted her head, her unfocused gaze drifted down the empty hallway. It caught on movement. A shape in the deep shadows of a recessed doorway. A figure resolved from the darkness—the severe grey bun, the worn profile, the still hands folded at her waist.
Anna.
The old housekeeper was not looking at her with pity. Not with shock. Not with the impulse to help. Her face, half in shadow, held an expression Elara had never seen there before: a profound, weary sorrow, as if she were watching a sad, inevitable scene from a play she had sat through too many times.
Their eyes met across the dim space. For a second, there was a connection. Not of rescue, not of comfort, but of grim, mutual recognition.
A ghost acknowledging another ghost.
Elara saw it in the old woman's eyes: the knowledge that this was how it was. How it had always been. How it would always be. The strong hurt the weak. The predators tore at the prey. And the prey endured, or didn't, and the world kept turning either way.
Then, without a sound, Anna turned. She melted back into the darkness of the doorway. And was gone.
Elara sat for another moment. Then she stood.
Her legs held. Her feet carried her forward. She held the bundled silk to her chest like an infant, like the only thing in the world that was hers. She did not look left or right. She did not check for more shadows, more predators, more hands reaching from the dark.
Her internal compass—shattered by the night's violence, rewired by years of survival—pointed to only one location.
The room. The cage. The wolf's den.
Because the wolf, for all his fury, had never actually hurt her. Not like Marco. Not like Valentina. His violence was a storm she could see coming. Theirs was the darkness, the shock, the hands that appeared from nowhere.
Her body led her forward like a sleepwalker. Through corridors. Past doors. Up the stairs to the private wing. To the familiar door, still ajar.
She pushed it open.
The bedroom was dark. The bathroom door now stood open—the wolf had left. The silence within it was now just another piece of the room's furniture, empty of threat, empty of presence.
She did not go to the bed. She did not go to the alcove.
She went to the corner where the wall met the wardrobe. The narrowest space, the deepest shadow. She sat down on the floor, her back pressed into the joint. She placed the bundle of torn silk beside her.
Then she folded in on herself. Drew her knees to her chest. Wrapped her arms around them. Rested her forehead on her knees.
And she was gone.
Not asleep. Not crying. Not thinking.
Empty.
The rabbit had been caught by the jackals. It had not fought. It had not run. It had simply disappeared, leaving behind a hollow, quiet space where a girl used to be.
When Kazimir finds out what Marco did…
