Page 20 of Venom & Vanity

That's the problem, I've never known how to remain in control when it concerns her. She's my blind spot, always has been and always will be it seems. Every plan I've ever made where she's involved has fallen apart the second she looked at me like she meant something by it.

“If I swear not to run and come back to the house soon, will you leave me here to bathe alone for a few minutes?” There's something in the tone of her voice that has my chest constricting and the urge to comfort her is strong, but the vacant look in her eyes has me holding back. It's the first time she's asked us for anything instead of demanding or taunting, and somehow that's worse. It sounds like surrender, and I don't like what that costs her, or what it might mean she's given up on.

She's walling herself off to us and I don't know if that's a good thing or not. My feelings may have shifted for her but that doesn't mean Dad and Prince's have changed. I have no idea which version of today the two of them are going to choose tomorrow.

Suddenly feeling unsure and confused as fuck as to what my intentions are, I push back. Prince gets the hint and pulls out of me. I hold her as Dad eases out of her. I watch her face for any sign of pain but she doesn't so much as flinch, and somehow that absence of reaction worries me more than if she'd cried out.

I hold her a second longer than I should and force myself to release my hold on her and slowly lower her to her feet. The vacant look on her face is gonna fucking haunt me. I want to reach out and brush away the frown lines on her face and take away her worries, but I don't. I force myself to remember the reason why I am on this island and try to latch onto the anger, but it's not there. I go looking for it the way you check a pocket for something you know you had a second ago, certain it has to be somewhere.

I don't know where it went or when it vanished but I have a sinking feeling it disappeared the moment she appeared back in my life like a magic trick. I'm terrified of what that means I've become in its place.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SNOW

I keep my back to them while they dress.

Without the warmth of their skin pressed against mine the air hits me like a punishment, cold and immediate, and I hate that I notice the absence. I hate that my body has already started cataloguing what it feels like when they are close versus when they are not, like some kind of treacherous internal record-keeping I didn’t authorize.

“There's a shirt here for you.” Daddy's voice carries across the water without effort, the voice of a man accustomed to being heard without raising it. “Ten minutes. You go over that and we'll hunt you down, and you won't like what happens when we catch you, Apple.”

I say nothing.

I don't need to. The threat is clear and I believe every syllable of it. The fact that some depraved part of me files it under things to look forward to is information I am keeping strictly between myself and whatever god is currently watching this disaster unfold.

I peer back over my shoulder before they clear the tree line.

I can tell them apart from behind and that is objectively terrible information to have about men I don’t know. Sir is the one shirtless, broad shoulders carrying the absence of fabric with the ease of someone who has never needed armour. Grumpy's shoulders are bunched tight, wound up even now, even walking away, like his body doesn't know how to put the rage down. And Daddy—Daddy walks with his head up and his spine straight and the specific fury of a man who is angry at himself for something he can’t undo, radiating off him in waves I can feel from twenty feet away.

I turn back to the water before they disappear completely.

I don't need to watch them go.

I need to stop watching them at all.

The water is cold and I sink into it anyway and try to remember who I was before I woke up on this fucking Island. A princess. A fighter. A girl with a plan, a kingdom, a father she was trying to save and a life she was trying to hold together with both hands while the queen slowly and patiently dismantled it from underneath her.

That girl wouldn’t recognize what I am doing on this island.

That girl never would have let strangers see her undone.

I smack the surface of the water with my palm, a sharp frustrated crack that startles a bird somewhere in the canopy above me. I cup water in both hands and bring it to my face and hold it there for a second, cold against my cheekbones, and breathe.

I don't know their names.

That’s the thought that keeps surfacing no matter how many times I push it under. I know the names they want me to use, which aren’t their names. I know the shape of their shoulders and the timbre of their voices and the specific quality of silence each of them carries. I can’t tell you a single true thing about who they are beyond this island and these masks and the particular way each of them hates me.

I know what their bodies look like.

I can’t picture their faces.

I wash as best I can without soap, without shampoo, without any of the things that would make this feel like anything other than what it is. I work my fingers through my hair, pulling through the knots with the focused patience of a woman who has learned to manage her own mess because no one else was going to. Halfway through the left side the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.

I don't react.

The Huntsman taught me that. Not these Huntsmen, mine—the one the queen sent to end me who had the inconvenient integrity to teach me to fight instead. He said the most important thing you can learn is how to know you're being watched without letting the watcher know that you know. The element of surprise is the only currency that never loses value.

I keep working through the knots and I listen.