Page 64 of Decimation

A sob builds in my chest, but I swallow it down with the last crumb of cheese. Crying feels like giving him something else, and he’s already taken far too fucking much.

I force myself to look at the room again, really look. This is a holding cell. A temporary space. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. I am being kept here, held here, but for what? For me to become her enough to be permitted to leave.

A tremor that is half revulsion, half something darker and more shameful rolls through my belly.

I am trapped. The door is locked; I’ve already checked. The windows are barred, and somewhere in this house he is moving, breathing, planning the next act of this grotesque theatre. The man with the swirling colours and the voice that wraps around my will like silk.

If you want to survive then you will be.

I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars, and terror coils in my gut alongside the food I’ve devoured. It whispers that I am already changing, that every bite of that meal is a communion, that the taste of home is just another chain. And beneath the terror is a sick, twisting heat. The way his gaze has lingered on my throat. The way his truth-blue swirl has seemed to caress the air between us.

I am afraid of him. I am afraid of what he might do.

And I am terrified, utterly terrified of the part of me that doesn’t entirely hate being the centre of such absolute, annihilating attention.

He comes for me again a few hours later, and the air itself seems to thicken with his presence.

I can tell his mood has changed. Not just shifted, but shattered and reassembled into something unrecognizable. This is not the rational man I spoke to this morning. His colours swirl in those same manic yellows I first saw, and the shadows pooling in his eyes have grown deeper, hungrier.

A cold, quiet part of my mind whispers that it’s as though a different creature is wearing his skin.

But that’s impossible. This is Konstantine. It has to be Konstantine and yet every instinct screams that the person I bargained with earlier is gone, replaced by something that merely looks like him.

Could I have been drugged? The thought flickers desperately in my head. Is this some elaborate, sadistic trick to break me, to strip away every last certainty until I can’t tell sanity from nightmare?

The questions don’t soothe; no, they burrow deeper, wrapping around me like a snare.

My stomach twists so violently I taste bile as I force myself to stand, a lifetime of brainwashing coiling through my limbs while the old, poisonous litany whispers in my head that this man is my leader, my master, the holiest of holies. The words rise before I can stop them.

“Grand Master.”

I can’t keep the curtesy or the words in. It may have been years since my childhood lessons back in my father’s home, back when they still pretended to believe but old habits don’t die, they just wait in the marrow, ready to betray you.

The curtsy feels like a noose tightening, and the title burns my tongue like a curse considering what he has done to me.

His eyes are wild, his movements erratic, as if he is barely holding himself together under a cracking veneer of calm. He smiles at me, and the smile doesn’t reach his eyes; it crawls across his face like a wound that’s learned to move. It makes my skin crawl in a way that’s almost sensual in its horror, a terrible, unwanted shiver that heats the base of my spine even as revulsion coils in my belly.

What is wrong with him? How can he be almost rational one moment, and completely deranged the next… does he have a fractured mind, or am I the one fracturing here? The idea that he might be performing this, testing my limits deliberately wriggles beneath my skull like a parasite. I try to anchor myself but the world feels waterlogged, unreal.

His stare bores into me, but I don’t dare do a thing to break it.

“Let us try again,” he says, his voice soft, almost gentle but I hear the thing slithering underneath, the promise of pain wrapped in velvet. His tone licks at my ears and a dark, involuntary part of me shudders at the intimacy of it even as my heart hammers against my ribs like a caged animal.

I want to laugh. I want to scream.

He holds out his hand, and I hesitate. My instincts shriek at me to refuse, to fight, to run but I tried that before, and it only brought more pain. Reluctantly, I take his hand. His grip is firm, his skin corpse-cold against mine, and a fresh wave of dread crests through me at how intimate that chill feels. He leads me out of the room, his steps confident, as if he doesn’t just own the villa but the very air I breathe, and maybe my lungs along with it.

“I’ve had your room prepared,” he says as we walk down the hallway. “It’s exactly as you like it.”

How could he know what I like when I don’t even know myself anymore? The question tastes like poison. I try to keep my expression neutral, to hide the fear coursing through me like ice water but my body betrays me; a tremor in my hands, legs that threaten to buckle as if they’ve already decided surrender is the only option. I focus on breathing, on putting one foot in front of the other; if I can just make it through this, if I can just survive…

We reach the room and he opens the door, stepping aside to let me enter. I pause in the doorway, my eyes scanning the space. The ornate furniture, the heavy drapes that swallow the light, the large bathtub in the corner gleaming like an altar. It’s a room fit for a queen, or a prisoner kept in velvet chains. My chest tightens as I realize the air is faintly perfumed, and the thought slithers back; Am I breathing something in? Has this whole day been laced with something meant to make me pliant?

Konstantine steps inside and closes the door. The soft click of the lock echoes through my bones. He moves to the bathtub, turning on the tap. The sound of running water fills the room, and with it a knot of dread tightens in my stomach, low and visceral, sickeningly close to a darker kind of anticipation that I refuse to name.

His eyes never leave me, unblinking as the water slowly rises and rises.

“Get in,” he says, his voice calm, almost soothing, a lullaby sung by the thing under the bed.