Eyes Like The Ocean | A Culled Crown Novella

Chapter 13

Oredison Palace, Gazda.

Viera stayed on that floor for hours—days. No food came. No medics or stylists. She was entirely alone with herself and that swirling dark power.

Sleep came and devoured her whole, washing away the pain and fear and soul-deep aching. During the slivers of consciousness, the poison in her veins sang to her of the things she would do. She listened. Let herself settle into that numb dark place, where only she could go.

All her life, she had fought this ability. She had wished to be severed from it. But now, now it was her only solace. That welcoming warm embrace, the comfort that would come if she let it take control, those were the things she craved.

Viera wanted to forget Leighton.

She wanted to forget her mother.

The pain in her chest was worse than anything Malcolm had done to her body. She hated him. Hated him and the Culling and the goddess. It was a violent, wretched hatred that pushed her deeper into herself, driving her further from the person she'd always been.

The poison seemed to smile. It beckoned her towards an edge, a cavernous abyss, she could not see. But she knew it was there.

She wanted to deep dive into it and never emerge.

She was so very tired of fighting who she was. It hadn't done her any good. Maybe if Leighton had known what a monster she was inside, he wouldn't have loved her the way he did. He should have seen it—all the other kids did.

Her father had known.

Sometimes she wondered if the violence that lingered in her flesh was because of him. Could maliciousness pass from father to child with such potency? She didn't know.

***

She awoke to the sound of footsteps. The floor was cool against her cheek, a soothing balm to the tender skin of her face. Her bedroom smelled like vomit and piss. Every bone in her body ached and it was too much—too much—to even lift her head as the door of her bedroom was pushed open and the stylists came bustling in. They paused, their chattering dying on their lips when they saw her lying there.

Viera thought of the dog the prince had told her about. Had anyone said a word when he'd locked it up, starved it to death? She got her answer as the girls all filtered in, their expressions shifting from horror to determined silence. They had a job to do.

She was placed in the bathtub and told to clean herself up. There was a softness to their words this time, a sort of quiet understanding. They pitied her and she loathed it. Viera wanted screaming. She wanted blood and terror and guilt—that was what the world felt like to her.

Instead she was given petal-thin soap bars and lavender scented oils. They dressed her in a pale green gown that hugged her torso, draped from her shoulders, and trailed the ground as she walked. If the occasion had been different, if Viera had been different, she might have found it beautiful. But all she could see where the fading bruises on her jaw, the lashes that wrapped across her back and over the edges of her shoulders.

The stylists tried to hide it all with their tonics and creams, but Viera's split lip still throbbed under the rosy lip coloring they'd so carefully applied. The ankle he'd stepped on was too swollen for heels so they'd opted for feminine looking slippers. She had hissed in pain as the stylists began pinning her hair, her scalp red and tender in places. There were scratches from his signet ring on her cheeks.