Page 85 of His Eternal Claim

When he pulls back, his breathing is uneven.

His gaze drops briefly to my mouth before he tears it away. As though looking too long is dangerous.

As though wanting too much is dangerous.

There is no cheering, just the sound of my own ragged breathing. And the crushing realization that I have just become Mrs. Zagreus Vitale.

The wife of the man I love. The wife of the man I hate.

And those two truths hurt exactly the same.

Chapter 28

Bitch, You Don’t Love Me

THE REQUIEM | Past

Aweek passes, or maybe a month, or maybe a lifetime. I can’t tell.

Time has become a strange thing lately. The days blur together until I can no longer tell one from another. Morning becomes afternoon, and afternoon becomes evening. Then night arrives with its hush and reminiscences and sorrow. And then it starts all over again.

I wake up.

I exist.

I go back to sleep.

Somewhere in between, another day dies. Much like the rest of my life.

The house is beautiful. Painfully beautiful, until I have explored every inch of it. Now it is only bland.

I once dreamed of living in a house like this.

The sea stretches endlessly beyond the cliffside windows, crashing against the rocks below. Sometimes I sit there for hours watching the waves. Watching them come and go.

Come and go.

Come and go.

I envy them. At least they know where they belong. I don’t.

The house feels too large sometimes. Even the room bears shadows that come to eat me alive; the hallway feels endless when I walk through it, even the corner reminds me that I don’t belong here.

This place isn’t a home. It’s a cage.

Zagreus hired a maid. Her name is Elena. A twenty-something woman with kind eyes and a gentle smile.

She cooks, cleans, waters the flowers, opens the curtains, closes them, and sometimes she tries to speak to me. Most of the time I don’t know what to say. It’s not her fault. She simply cannot fill the hole inside my chest.

Nobody can.

My Mother spends most of her time with me, at least physically. Emotionally, she feels just as far away as everyone else.

She lost her husband. The love of her life. I lost my Father.

And neither of us knows how to help the other survive it.

We sit together often. Sometimes for hours without speaking, just staring at the sea.