Page 116 of Vows of Silence

Because it was such a tender thing. Such a motherly thing. Such an ordinary, intimate, harmless little act, except my mother wasn’t here. No one who loved me was here. I was alone in a stranger’s room while unfamiliar hands worked through theknots in my hair, smoothing out the evidence of the forest, the evidence of what had happened, the evidence of me falling apart.

The brush moved from root to end again and again until my scalp ached.

I wanted to ask them to stop.

I wanted to ask them why.

I wanted to ask what they were making me beautiful for.

But my mouth wouldn’t open, and some ruined part of me already knew the answer.

They were preparing me for Silas—I just didn’t know why.

The next time I woke, Silas was there. I knew it before I saw him.

The room felt different with him inside it. He carried silence the way other men carried weapons, and even through the heavy fog clouding my mind, I recognised the shift in the air. The quiet became deeper. More focused. As though the entire room had drawn itself still in deference to him.

He stood beside the bed, looking down at me.

His mask was gone.

That should have meant something. Once, it would have meant trust. Vulnerability. A gift. Now all I could think was that he had taken off the monster’s face and somehow looked no less monstrous without it.

I tried to move away from him, but once again my body didn’t listen.

Silas lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress, and I felt the bed dip beneath his weight. For several seconds, he did nothing but look at me. His gaze moved over my face, my hair, my throat, lingering there in a way that made something cold twist inside me.

Then he reached out and stroked his knuckles along my cheek. The touch was almost reverent. That was the worst part.

If he had grabbed me, I could have continued hating him. If he had hurt me, I could have filed him away with every other violent thing he had done and let the fear make sense. But there was something devastating about the softness of his hand, about the way his fingers brushed over my skin as though I was precious to him. And I was so starved for attention, so desperate for affection, that I welcomed his touch.

His thumb moved beneath my eye, catching a tear I hadn’t realised had fallen.

I wanted to tell him I hated him.

I wanted to tell him he had ruined everything.

I wanted to tell him that whatever had existed between us before the woods, before the tracker, before his hands and his mask and the blood, he had killed it.

Instead, my eyelids fluttered, the darkness consuming me once more.

The last thing I saw was Silas leaning down. His lips brushed my cheek, lingering there with a possessiveness so quiet it felt almost worse than violence. A promise pressed into my skin. A claim.

Then his mouth moved closer to my ear, and for a moment I thought he might finally speak. I thought he might explain, or apologise, or threaten me, or give me something I could hold on to besides the endless, suffocating silence.

But Silas gave me nothing.

He only stayed there, breathing against my skin, until the drug pulled me under again.

When morning finally came, I didn’t wake all at once.

I surfaced slowly, painfully, dragged back into myself by the ache in my muscles and the soreness in my throat. My limbs felt heavy. My skin felt too clean. My hair lay brushed and smooth around me, and beneath the lingering fog in my head, a terrible understanding waited patiently for me to be strong enough to face it.

Someone had washed me.

Someone had shaved me.

Someone had brushed my hair.