“Now, respond…” He pressed his lips against mine—painfully, his fangs came out and drew blood from my lower lip. For a moment I thought about forcing myself to return the kiss, but I found that I couldn’t. I simply didn’t know how. Every part of me was just wishing for it to end. It didn’t seem to matter to him, because the blood on my lips quickly shifted his attention from forcing me to kiss him back to his craving for my blood.
His mouth quickly left mine and found my neck, and he once again sunk his fangs in and drank my blood. I was trembling uncontrollably as his arms clamped around my body, crushing my chest against his. I tried to push him away, but found that I couldn’t. I stared up at Ingrid, who was still standing by the door watching everything that was happening and I wondered how she could do it. What kind of mother do I have? How could she just stand there and watch him do this to her own daughter?
She looked at me blankly, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Please…make him stop…” I mouthed at her.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “That’s enough, Borys. You’re going to drain her of blood before you marry her.”
Borys withdrew his mouth from my neck. “I love how she trembles. Your daughter is so beautiful, Ingrid. Untouched.” His eyes darkened. “Except for that brute, Derek Novak.” He let go of me and stood up, looking down at me as I curled into a ball on the floor. “I’m going to make him pay.”
“Please don’t hurt him…” I begged. For that, I got a kick in the gut.
As I coughed, he looked at me coldly. “Your pleas only make me want to hurt him further.” He then turned and brushed past Ingrid. “Put a bandage on the bite mark,” he instructed her before leaving. “I don’t want it healed. I want to see the scars tomorrow. It will be a sign that she’s mine. Make sure she’s a stunning sight tomorrow. Make me look forward to our marriage bed.”#p#分页标题#e#
The door closed and I was alone with my mother. That’s when I realized that neither Ben nor the guards were in the room. “Where’s Ben? What did you do to him?”
“Your best friend is fine. Don’t worry about him. I instructed Claudia to be gentle with him. We need him to be presentable for the wedding tomorrow. He’s the best man after all.” She walked past my still curled up form on the floor. “Get up, Sofia. Why must you be so stubborn and pathetic?” She began to rummage through a drawer in one corner of the room.
“What kind of mother are you?” I managed to say in between broken sobs. “Your king is about to kill the man that I love.”
I shuddered when she sped my way and threw me onto the bed. “Understand this, Sofia,” she hissed. “The man you love is Borys Maslen, not Derek Novak. The Shade’s prince has obviously brainwashed you…”
Despite my tears, I laughed wryly. “It’s you who’s been brainwashed, Ingrid…or maybe I ought to call you Camilla…is there still any part of her left in you? Dad was right about you. You are insane. You left your own family to blindly serve this villain of a king.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know what my life was like. I loved Aiden. He was everything to me, and then you came along. I never wanted you, but I gave in to his requests for a child, because I loved him. You stole him from me.” She was saying the words calmly, her eyes set on the bite marks on my neck as she proceeded to tend to the wound.
The spite every word contained mixed with the calmness and affection by which she expressed them made her one of the scariest people I’d ever met. I couldn’t begin to fathom how broken a creature my own mother was. I was certain, however, that even though I had been born of her womb, she was now a complete stranger.
No more words were exchanged until she was done. As she turned to leave, I couldn’t help but cry out, “Please…help Derek. Help Ben. They are dear to me. I love them.”
She stopped right by the door. She didn’t bother to face me as she shook her head. “No, Sofia. You love Borys. He’s the only man you’re allowed to love from now on.”
That’s when I accepted that my mother was completely gone. Camilla Claremont wasn’t just insane. She was dead and her body had been replaced by Ingrid Maslen.
CHAPTER 51: SOFIA
The silence and solitude was driving me crazy. It’d been more hours than I could count since Ingrid left me. I had no way to track time, nothing to take my mind off of Derek and Ben and what torment they were most likely going through. I couldn’t stop crying. At some point, I just crumpled myself up on the bed, knowing that there was no way I could escape that bedroom, hoping that sleep could provide me with an escape from the tormenting thoughts and emotions coursing through my mind and soul.