I groaned as I rolled over, curling into a ball when sharp pain shot through my back. Two things occurred to me through the fog of waking: my arms and legs were no longer bound, and the sunlight streaming in through the window seared my eyes with horrific intensity.

  The sensations were so unexpected that for a moment I lay frozen, waiting for my mind to make sense of them. Freedom of movement. Light. A soft bed beneath me. My body remembered the restraints even as my mind registered their absence. My muscles tensed, waiting for the familiar bite of rope against raw skin.

  I stumbled to the window, yanking on the tie holding open the curtains. The material felt rich and heavy between my fingers. Closing them with an unhappy mumble, I braced my hands on the window frame as my head swam. My stomach rolled violently, threatening to empty itself onto the polished wooden floor. I stayed leaning against the frame until the feeling passed, my palm pressed flat against my abdomen, willing it to settle.

  The curtains blocked most of the light, but thin rays still penetrated the edges, casting the room in a dim glow. It was enough to make out familiar shapes and contours that tugged at my memory.

  Shuffling back toward the bed, I stopped in the middle of the room and gazed around, confused wonder spreading across my face. I was back in my bedroom. Vague memories of Selwyn and Jacobi flashed through my mind—their faces appearing at the top of worn wooden steps, the horror in their eyes as they saw me. I'd dismissed those images as dreams, products of my desperate mind reaching for comfort in the darkness. Another memory flickered—a knife flying through the air, my body lunging to intercept it, sudden pain in my back as it found its mark.

  The scent in the air—hints of lemon polish and fresh linens—was so achingly familiar that it threatened to unravel me. My chest tightened with something between joy and terror. If this was real, then I was safe. If this was another hallucination from the Golden-Hour poison, the fall back to reality would destroy me.

  A gentle female voice called out from the doorway. "Miss?"

  I shrieked instinctively before clamping my hand over my mouth, the sound feeling foreign in my throat. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, and I pressed back against the wall, searching frantically for a weapon. In the cellar, unexpected sounds meant only one thing—Marcelo returning, bringing fresh torments with him.

  A human woman stood there, brown hair tied back in a tidy bun, wearing what was likely once a white cooking apron over her long dress. No threat in her posture. No knife in her hand. Not Marcelo's face with its cruel smile, eyes that lingered too long, fingers that explored freely.

  "Are you hungry, miss?" The woman walked to the bed, pulled a sheet from the pile there, and approached me, holding it out. I took it with trembling hands and wrapped it around myself, only now becoming aware of my naked state. My skin prickled with vulnerability, and I clutched the fabric tighter, creating a barrier between my body and the world.

  She walked to the door of a chamber adjoining the bedroom. "I'll run you a hot bath, miss."

  "...Clover?" The name came to me suddenly, rising from some untouched corner of my mind.

  The woman turned with a warm smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. "Yes, miss, that's right."

  I took a hesitant step toward her, and Clover held out a hand to steady me as I came close. The touch against my arm was foreign, unwelcome, yet necessary. Every place her fingers brushed sent unpleasant ripples across my skin, yet I couldn't stand without the support. My legs trembled beneath me, muscles weak from disuse. Each step sent tremors of pain through my body, reminding me of wounds both visible and hidden.

  "Did my brother send you here?" The question seemed to come from somewhere outside myself, my voice hoarse and unfamiliar. My throat felt raw, as if I'd been screaming for days. Perhaps I had been.

  Standing a good foot below my height, Clover smiled up at me and patted my arm lightly, careful to avoid the more obvious bruises that mapped my skin in varying shades of purple and yellow. Her hand was warm and solid, an anchor to this reality.

  "No, miss. You're at the Senator's home now." Clover grasped my arm lightly, leading me into the bath chamber. "A hot bath will do you well, miss."

  I nodded, letting her guide me, still uncertain if I could trust my senses. The polished stone floor was cool beneath my bare feet, a welcome contrast to the heat that seemed to radiate from my wounds. The knife wound in my back throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a steady reminder of reality.

  A long mirror hung on the wall, and I walked to it, staring at my reflection. The face looking back at me was a stranger's. Thin, with prominent cheekbones that had never been so sharp before. How long had I been in that cellar? Days and nights had blurred together in an endless cycle of pain, hunger, and fear. My fingers hovered over the visible cuts and bruises marking my pale face—a split lip still healing, a yellowing bruise along my jawline, a small cut above my right eyebrow. My white hair hung limp and matted around my shoulders, streaked with substances I didn't want to identify. My eyes, normally bright silver, seemed dulled, the light in them diminished to a flicker.

  Clover clicked her tongue as she watched. "I'll be back with some hot water, miss." She gave me a long, even look in the mirror, eyes lingering on the worst of my visible injuries. "I shan't be long." Her tone carried a warning I couldn't quite decipher, though her expression held a mixture of concern and something else, pity, perhaps.

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  When she left, I stepped closer to the mirror, the sheet still wrapped around my shoulders. Here, I could examine the damage done. I sighed and closed my eyes, dropping the sheet and letting it pool around my feet. I kept my eyes closed, listening to my heartbeat hammer in my chest as I stood there. This didn't seem real. How could I be here? After everything that had happened, how could I simply be standing in this room?

  I rested my face in my hands, trying desperately to sort my memories from my dreams. The Golden-Hour poison had dissolved the boundaries of my mind, leaving me uncertain of what had truly happened and what I had imagined. I remembered ropes. Pain. His voice. The knife.

  "Miss?"

  I turned toward the voice and opened my eyes to see Clover walk in with a large pail of steaming water. She emptied it into the bath, the sound of splashing water echoing against the tiled walls. Steam rose in lazy curls, filling the room with welcome warmth.

  "There's more people with buckets coming up soon, miss, if you need to cover up?"

  I shook my head and gestured toward the bath. "Do you mind if I get in there now? I feel like I just want to sit in there for a while." My voice sounded distant, as if it belonged to someone else. The thought of being clean again, of washing away the grime and blood and touch of Marcelo from my skin, was suddenly overwhelming. My fingers twitched with the need to scrub, to purge, to erase.

  Clover nodded and placed the bucket down. She approached me and reached into her apron pocket. "Take these." She handed me a bar of white soap and a rough washcloth. The soap smelled faintly of lavender, the scent momentarily grounding me. "Mind your cuts, but... it helps to scrub away some of the feeling."

  She took her bucket and made her way back downstairs, avoiding eye contact now. The sound of her footsteps faded down the corridor, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  I looked down at the soap in my hand, turning it over. How could something so simple, so mundane, suddenly feel so precious? In the cellar there had been no washing, no cleaning. Just accumulating filth and blood and sweat, the stench of my own fear permeating my skin. The bath beckoned, promising cleanliness, yet I hesitated. To be clean meant acknowledging how dirty I had become. To wash meant confronting every injury, every mark Marcelo had left on me.

  A flash of red in the mirror caught my attention, and I turned, but it had disappeared. Curious, I turned away from the mirror again, and could see the red moving from the corner of my eye. A trick of the light, perhaps. Or my imagination, still playing tricks on me from the poison. I craned my head, looking back over my shoulder into the mirror.

  The raw redness of the brand on my shoulder came into focus.

  I drew my breath in sharply as I realized what I was looking at. Marcelo's crest, burnt into my skin. An ugly, stark reminder of his touch. My chest tightened, lungs refusing to draw breath. The smell of my own burning flesh returned to me, so vivid I could taste it at the back of my throat. I remembered now. Remembered his weight on top of me, pinning me down. His hand holding the hot iron, letting me see it glow red in the dim light, letting me anticipate the pain. The sizzle as it met my skin, the sound somehow worse than the initial pain. My own screams echoing in the cellar.

  The brand began to throb as if freshly burned, phantom pain radiating outward from the mark. My skin crawled, tiny needles of sensation skittering across my body like insects. My muscles seized, locking me in place as I stared at the brand. The edge of my vision darkened, closing in until all I could see was that mark, that red wound in the shape of Marcelo's family crest.

  For a moment I wasn't in the bath chamber anymore. I was back in the cellar, arms and legs bound to that bed, spread-eagled and exposed. The air was damp and fetid, carrying the stench of mold and blood. Marcelo's breathing was heavy in my ear as he pressed the brand to my flesh. "Beautiful," he had whispered as I screamed. "Now everyone will know you're mine." The iron had lingered, pressed harder than necessary, longer than needed to make the mark. He had wanted my pain, fed on it, delighted in it.

  I blinked, and I was back in the bath chamber, staring at my reflection. But the sensations remained—the burning, the violation, the helplessness. My body remembered what my mind had tried to forget.

  A sharp pain stabbed into my forehead and I dropped the washcloth, clutching my head with my hand. The pain grew razor-sharp as the walls I'd built up against my memories of the cellar were torn down. I'd tried to lock it all away, push it aside to be dealt with when I was stronger, to ignore it until the bruises weren't still dark on my skin.

  But the brand had breached those walls. Marcelo's mark on my flesh had brought everything rushing back.

  His voice echoed in my mind. "You're mine now. Forever. Every time you look at this, you'll remember who owns you." His hands on my body, exploring, violating. The knife cutting into my flesh, shallow cuts designed to hurt but not kill, not even scar too badly. Just enough to make me bleed, to make me fear the next cut would go deeper.

  My heart raced until I could hear nothing but its thunder in my ears. My breathing came in short, sharp gasps that didn't seem to fill my lungs. Cold sweat broke out across my body despite the warmth of the room. The pain of my other injuries—the knife wound in my back, the bruises, the raw patches where ropes had worn away skin—all seemed to intensify at once, joining in a chorus of agony.

  I tried to pull myself back from the memories, to anchor myself in the present. This bath chamber. This mirror. This moment. But the memories were a flood now, unstoppable.

  Marcelo dragging the blunt side of his knife along my inner thigh, watching me tremble. "Should I cut here?" he had asked, his voice gentle, almost tender. "Or perhaps here?" The knife had moved higher, a promise and a threat. I had squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to give him the satisfaction of my fear. But he had seen it anyway, had laughed softly. "You can pretend all you want, little demon, but your body can't lie to me."

  My groan of pain rose into a screaming howl and I spun quickly, flinging the nearest weapon—the soap in my hand—at my reflection. The mirror burst with a gratifying shattering sound, fragments catching the light as they fell like deadly rain to the floor. Each shard reflected a piece of me—an eye here, a shoulder there, the curve of a hip, the edge of the brand. Broken.

  I stumbled backwards, my legs hitting the edge of the bath. The impact sent fresh waves of pain through my bruised body, a reminder that this was real. I wasn't in the cellar anymore. I was safe. But Marcelo had come with me, carried in my flesh and in my mind.

  A pained whimper escaped me as I stepped back carefully into the water, curling up against the side of the tub. The hot water scalded my skin, but I just pulled my arms tightly around my torso. The heat penetrated my aching muscles, a different kind of pain that somehow helped dull the memories. If I focused on the burning of my skin in the water, I could almost pretend to forget the burning of the brand.