My hand lowered to my side as I stared blankly at Sanela. And time slowed down with a surreal quality to my confusion. The world became quiet but for the ringing in my ears.

Sanela had purposely hit me.

Too many panicked thoughts were running through my head. The loudest was that Sanela had somehow discovered I'd been with Varen.

Stupidly, it took the second slap with a startled cry of pain tearing from my throat, my head snapping sideways and my body crashing against the wall, for me to realize what was going on. It took far too long for me to understand how I looked in my dress, my bed-mussed hair, barefooted with the high heels dangling from my fingers. How I'd been found here with Romain, in a quiet part of the mansion no one visited.

Her arm, taut and quivering with violence, whipped back, and I shirked aside cowering against the wall, drawing up a forearm to shield my face as she unleashed another strike.

Romain pushed to his feet. He lunged forward, grabbed hold of his wife's wrist, and stopped her from hitting me again. "Sanela, this isn't what it looks like."

She wrenched her hand free, stumbling back, spitting and snarling, "Oh, really? Look at the both of you." She shoved a hand through my hair, clenched a fistful of locks, and tugged hard. My head jerked with the force. Pain flared across my scalp and I winced, biting back a wail. Sanela let go to swivel around and grab hold of her husband's chin in a fierce grip. She ran a thumb over the lipstick smeared on his cheek, digging so deep and hard the skin pulled white. "Both of you look like you've had a lovely evening fucking one another."

Movement caught my attention. Marissa stood behind Sanela, her hands pressed against her mouth, vivid blue eyes stark against her pale complexion. And then my gaze flitted briefly to the servants' shortcut beyond Marissa. The secret doorway was cracked open and only a sliver of Dolcie's face was showing, utter terror was etched into her ashen features. She stood there frozen, staring back at me. She didn't know what to do. Neither did I.

"Do you deny it?" I heard Sanela ask.

My gaze slid back to hers. Such wrath roiled in her gaze. Such hatred. "I-I-I..." I stuttered, trying to shake my head, no. But my muddled head was too heavy to move and I couldn't push the words out.

Romain yanked his face free. He growled, "Listen to me—"

"Listen?" Sanela scoffed with hysteria tingeing her tone. She flipped up her hand dramatically. "Shall I listen to how you fumble and figure out a way to worm your way out of this? To twist it all and convince me it's not true?" She threw her head back and laughed, her dressing gown shivering with the motion. The sound of her bitter amusement had a flurry of shivers skating over my flesh. Her laughter stuttered out, and when she calmed herself, rubbing the back of her wrist over an eye damp with tears, she continued. "You really thought you'd get away with this." Her blotchy cheeks rounded with a black scowl. "Both of you fucking in my home, under my roof!" She struck out at Romain in a tornado of wild strikes, hitting his shoulder, neck, and face, driving him back.

"Mama!" Marissa shrieked rushing forward. "Stop!"

But Sanela didn't heed her with the rise in building temper. "This is how you treat me? Disrespect me? Bedding a servant. She's practically a baby!"

Romain shoved her hands aside, staggered forward, and restrained his wife, clamping his hands around her forearms. "Sanela!"

"Daddy?" Marissa whispered, hovering behind us.

"Marissa," Romain groaned, blowing out a defeated breath. Guilt colored his distraught expression, and made it hard for him to meet her gaze.

"I couldn't stop her from coming here," Marissa confessed, wringing her hands and glancing between us. "The Head Housekeeper paid Mama a visit not so long ago."

"Mr. Volkov?" His name was more air than voice. My mind reeled, trying to figure out what he had to do with all of this.

Sanela tore herself from Romain's hold. The silk dressing gown flapped around her figure, the belt untied, and the front of her wine-stained nightgown draped low on her chest as she drew herself to her full height. "At least someone had the backbone to bring this out in the open. To tell me the truth. You paid her debt, Romain. Just Tabitha's." She stabbed a finger with chipped varnish at my face. "And no one else's."

Oh gods. The debt of mine Romain had wiped to buy my silence. He had enough on me at the time knowing that I'd stolen Laurena Wychthorn's hair but he'd sweetened the deal by clearing the money I owed his family with all the precious antiques I'd broken recently.

I suddenly couldn't get enough oxygen into my lungs and the high heels fell from my limp hand to clatter on the ground. I slapped a hand on the wall as my knees wobbled beneath me.

Sanela narrowed her bloodshot eyes on Romain, smugness radiating from her. "He'd been suspicious since then and kept an eye on you both. Taking note of your unaccounted time. Catching the way you both looked at one another when you thought no one else was watching."

I startled.

Romain had always been so cold toward me whenever we encountered one another, but his gaze lingered whenever we were in the same place as the other. The one time we'd crossed paths in the Servants' Quarters where the offices were situated, we'd both turned back to look at one another.

And Mr. Volkov had witnessed it.

"A servant," Sanela grimaced, raking a distasteful gaze down Romain's figure. "Of all the choices you had within the upper ranks you had to go and fuck a servant." She rounded on me. "And you,' she hissed, trembling with violent emotion. "This is how you repay me when I allowed you into my home as a child."

I shook my head, no.

"My daughter respected you, befriended you," Sanela continued, disgust curling her lips.

My mind was a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts.

My breath came quicker as pure panic threatened to collapse all rational thought.

I swayed as the overwhelming incriminating evidence was stacked against me.

All the color had drained from Marissa's face and she stared back at me with big eyes shimmering with shock and hurt.

Her hurt caused me more agony than the ruthless slaps Sanela had delivered.

Marissa had already passed judgment.

I mouthed to Marissa—Please...

Surely my friend knew me well enough that I'd never do this. I'd never have an affair with her father and hurt her and her family like this.

"I don't know what to think," she whispered, speaking more to herself than me. "You were always too busy to see me. There always was something off about you when I spoke about my father."

Anguish ravaged the last of my nerves. I'd been riddled with guilt because I knew that her father was having an affair with Dolcie. I couldn't tell Marissa that. I couldn't tell her she was going to have a little half-brother or sister.

Sanela snatched hold of my arm and twisted it brutally, jerking me away from the wall. I gasped in shock. Pain jarred up the bones of my arm, twinging at the joints. "If you're pregnant—"

"I'm not—" I cried, only to be interrupted by Romain.

"You're not in your right mind, Sanela," he urged with placating hands. "You need to calm down and we'll discuss this later when you're calm and rational."

"CALM?!" Spittle sprayed from Sanela's mouth when she let go of my arm to scream in his face, "I would end them both, Romain. Your little piece on the side as well as your illegitimate baby!"

A terrifyingly cold chill settled in the pit of my stomach. She'd kill Dolcie and the baby if she discovered the truth. She'd feed their bodies to the pigs and no one would ever know.

It was bad enough that she thought I was having an affair with her husband, but if she thought that I was pregnant, just as it had been in her past with her father raising another family in his home right in front of his wife and children...

The terror Romain tried to hide, yet failed to do so, haunted his gaze and his slackened features. I knew if I told the truth, he'd spill my secrets. That I was the one who had cut off Laurena's hair. That he'd caught me coming out of Varen's bedroom. It would be far worse for me if those crimes were to be discovered.

And it would be far worse for him if Sanela discovered Dolcie was the one he was having an affair with and that she carried his child.

I saw it streaking across his expression a moment before he spoke.

Oh no, oh no...

"I'm sorry Tabitha that it's come to this..." he said, stepping away. "I care for you, but my wife is right. This must end between us."

Sanela's scream of outrage filled the dim hallway. She grabbed me by my hair, right at the roots, yanking viciously. My startled shriek of pain resounded against the walls. She dragged me away, down its length by a fistful of hair like a willful dog. I stumbled alongside, fear outshining the agony burning across my skull.

Romain stood by silently, allowing this to happen, while Dolcie disappeared, the crack in the door vanishing as she closed it.

I heard Marissa crying out, "Where are you taking her?"

"I'm getting rid of her for good!" her mother shot back.

My heart stumbled. Get rid of me permanently? End me?

I heard a flurry of footsteps upon wood and a gritty sound of cracked clay and porcelain underfoot before Marissa came into view. She pushed to my side. "Mama, please. This is Tabitha," Marissa begged. Sanela wasn't in her right mind. Maybe she'd never been sound of mind. Both Marissa and I knew what Sanela had done years ago, what she'd been part of, what she was capable of doing to me to keep this secret love of her husband's hidden.

"Get out of my way," Sanela screeched, shoving an elbow at her daughter, sending her staggering off-balance and knocking into a low running table. "I will not allow myself to be the laughing stock of the Houses. I will not allow this to get out, having all the matriarchs snickering behind my back and mocking me because my husband was having an affair with someone of no rank, a lowly servant there to service his cock!"

Sanela's fingers bit into my arm. She was strong and furious in her fury. My feet very nearly tripped over themselves as I was hauled away.

I stumbled along hallways. Lurched down staircases.

Shame stung my cheeks. Terror rattled my breath.

In horror, I realized that I wasn't going to the Servants' Quarters.

"Please, Mrs. Deniaud," I gasped. "This is all a mistake."

But Sanela ignored me as she'd done the entire journey through the mansion, mumbling and muttering beneath her breath, calling me a whore. She fisted my hair tighter, yanking me toward the back entrance of the mansion through one of the less-used hallways and doors.

The door swung open before we hit the threshold, opened by one of the Deniuads' bodyguards. The cold air of night slapped my exposed flesh as I was dragged outside. In the cul-de-sac was a black town car. The engine was running, the headlights gleaming on the driveway. Tears clung to my eyelashes and fell down my cheeks, their warmth a contrast to the wintery fear that rattled wildly in my chest.

"I should never have agreed to take you in. Perhaps the same thing that ate your mother should have eaten you too," Sanela sneered.

A guard opened the back door to the vehicle and Sanela jerked my head so brutally I stumbled, tripping over the long length of my dress.

I pitched forward. Clumps of hair were torn from my scalp as I fell, sprawling onto the gravel. The tiny sharp stones razed my flesh, scuffing my palms and knees. The sound of shredding fabric came from my dress.

My clutch slipped free from my bloodied hold and I watched in horror as it cartwheeled across the gravel and skidded beside the wheel of the town car.

The wyrmblood!

And then I heard a voice that had a shuddering sob tear from my throat.

"Tabitha?!"

My aunt. My aunt.

I pushed to my aching knees, twisting around.

Aunt Ellena hurtled down the stone steps. Her loose hair flared about her shoulders, as did the dressing gown she was wearing, the warm fabric flapping around her legs as she bolted toward me, fear devouring her pale features.

I caught a glimpse of Dolcie hovering on the threshold of the doorway to the mansion. And a small part of me was grateful that she'd at the very least sought out my aunt. Perhaps shaken her awake if Aunt Ellena was in her dressing gown. And utterly thankful that my aunt was alright after the thing had taken possession of her to hunt Varen down.

"Tabitha!" my aunt cried, running toward me.

"Aunt Ellena!" I shrieked. "Aunt Ellena!"

My aunt was trying to push through the line of men. Things were being shouted, men were trying to hold her back. I scrambled to my feet, stumbling forward, reaching for her. She wrenched her upper body through a narrow gap between the bodyguards, stretching her hand toward mine. "Tabitha!"

Our hands touched, a mere brush of our fingers before I was hauled back, my feet kicking in the air, her name coursing through the night. "Aunt Ellena!"

I was spun around, dumped upon the ground, and roughly shoved forward.

I only had one chance to duck down and snatch up the wayward clutch that held the most precious item in my possession—wyrmblood.

But the moment cost me dearly when I was thrust awkwardly inside the town car and my forehead cracked on the metal edge of the car's roof.

Dizziness whirled through my head. The eruption of hammering pain threatened to black me out. I sprawled in an ungainly heap across the leather backseat and the door slammed shut behind me.

The town car glided forward.

I clambered to my knees, blinking dazedly, blood drizzling from my gazed palms. I pressed my hands against the tinted rear window.

My aunt dodged around the guards, running after the moving car. I could see her shouting something, and though I couldn't hear what she was saying, I recognized the name she was screaming because it was my own.

I thumped my fists on the rear window, leaving behind smears of crimson blood. "Aunt Ellena! Aunt Ellena!" My aunt couldn't see me. I could tell by the way her gaze skittered across the window without focus.

The car picked up speed and I watched through wavering tears, the distorted image of my aunt collapsing to her knees, her head bowing forward in defeat. The sobs shuddering her shoulders.

My heart cleaved apart with such violence I could barely draw in a breath. We traveled down the driveway, faster, faster, and I watched the woman who'd raised me since I could remember, become smaller and smaller as we traveled through the forest. The scraggy branches moved in to obscure her crumpled figure.

And then she was gone.

My aunt...my aunt...

My head throbbed with ferocious pain.

Blinding terror ensnared me with cold, barbed thorns.

I was alone. Truly alone.

I had no one.

I had no idea at all where I was going. If indeed I'd even make it there alive.

And everything, what I'd endured, the ruthless agony pounding at my head, was too much, all too much. My vision collapsed inward with inkiness warping my vision.

I pitched sideways, passing out.

And darkness claimed me.