Tonight, like most nights, I dream of the last time I saw my brother Arsen alive.

Before I killed him.

The memory is so vivid, so very fresh. It’s been almost six months, but it could have just as easily been yesterday. I start the dream where I usually begin, my body remembering the rage I felt that day with deadly accuracy.

After all, no one has ever been able to get the best of me the way that Arsen has. It has always been that way.

In the cool spring air, I’m standing on a broad balcony, my shoulders tense as I square off with my brothers Arsen and Damen.

“Arsen,” Damen says to him, warning my brother against goading me any further. I’m enraged, livid from the barbs we’ve been trading.

I scoop up one of the pieces of broken glass on the floor, my face contorting with rage. There is a moment where he is laughing at me. Always laughing, which incenses me further. I launch myself at him with a primal scream, knocking Damen to the side.

He’s ready for me, grabbing my hands as we both topple over to the ground. I am wild-eyed, my breathing erratic. I land on top of him, trying to stab him with the shard of broken glass. Arsen grabs my hands, closing them a little.

The glass cuts into my hand. I begin to bleed, but I don’t even wince. Blood pours from my hand onto my chest and face. Arsen gets some of my blood in his mouth as he grimaces. He tries harder to close my hand around the shard of glass, to force my hand away from his body.

Damen groans angrily and tries to tackle me off of Arsen. In the moment of confusion, Arsen lets me go. That’s all the time I need to turn the glass shard outward and plunge it into his ribs.

Arsen opens his mouth as a bright blossom of pain sprouts up on his side. Looking down at his wound, Arsen sees that I am grinding the shard against my own sticky red fingers, driving it as deep as it will go, piercing his flesh.

“This is what I will do to your girl,” I whisper brusquely, flecks of spit flying out of my mouth to hit Arsen’s face. “Then you’ll wish you’d thought twice when you had the chance to save Aurelia. You will pay for that, brother.”

“I, what the fuck?” Damen yells, prying me off of Arsen.

Arsen looks down again. I see him doing the math, seeing the blood pumping from his wound. I didn’t just stab him, in my red-tinged haze I managed to hit an artery.

I just stand up, limping a little, and grin. “You’re going to die, right here, right now. Then we’ll see who the best of the three of us really is.”

“Get the fuck out of here!” Damen cries, falling to his knees beside me. “Oh shit. He got you bad, Arsen…”

I turn away, dropping some of the shattered bits of glass that are still in my grasp. Some have been driven into my flesh deep. I just bleed openly, not caring about it too much.

With my other hand, I wipe at my face. The blood is pumping in my ears. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, steady and calming. I’m a bit confused as I make my way down the stairs. Everything is muddled.

What just happened?

I get to the front door of the restaurant, pausing to look back. A couple of white-shirted waiters rush towards the stairs. A man stands behind the bar, his eyes trained on me, talking to someone.

Shit. That’s not good. Is it?

Did I really hurt Arsen? I can’t remember anything from just a few minutes ago, which is in itself worrying. My vision blurs.

And then I’m awake, staring at strange walls in the mid-morning. I’ve kicked the sheets and blanket off, and I’m sweating furiously. I blink and sit up, not quite understanding yet what is reality and what is a dream.

My eyes focus on the tall windows, light filtering in through long, billowing curtains. I remember now that I fell asleep last night with the windows open. The breeze here in Èze is continual yet soft, a constant companion. Even now I can hear the ocean just beyond the castle, the tide either coming in or going out.

I spend a minute looking around the bedroom, a light-filled affair with dark wood floors and perfectly white linens. The windows are huge, and I can see the sea from my terrace. The stones of the walls are different colors of white, cut in little rectangles like the whole castle is made of. It’s pristine in here, untouched.

I’m the dirty one, the thing that doesn’t fit in here.

Isn’t that always the case?

Bleary-eyed, I get up and walk to the adjoining bathroom. Like everything else in this house, it’s been retro-fitted and updated with the newest furnishings. Perfect white bathtub, graceful dark faucet, pristine white sink. I run through the shower quickly and then dress in my normal clothes. White dress shirt, dark slacks, dark shoes.

Rolling my shirtsleeves up, I consider what I should do first. My stomach growls. I should figure out food, I know. Food is often forgotten when I have something to obsess over.

My lips curl upward as I think about what I have to obsess over right now. Tiny, soft, fragile. Her fiery red hair and big blue eyes pair just perfectly with her fair, freckled skin. My fingers itch to touch that skin, to strip her completely naked just to see if she’s freckled everywhere.

God, I’ll just bet she is. And she’s quite responsive, heat rising in her face at the slightest hint of impropriety. Her blush and the way she can’t meet my eyes only make her more attractive.

What secrets does she hide under that demure appearance?

I can’t wait to find out.

Heading down the staircase that leads to the bottom of the castle, I grin to myself. She probably freaked out when she woke up back in that dark little room all by herself. Probably wept and prayed for salvation.

Little does she know, no one is coming to save her from me. If anything, I’ve saved her from Father Derrik. I don’t know for sure what his plan for her was, but after what happened to Aurelia and her two successors, I have an idea of how things would end.

She doesn’t know it yet, but I probably saved her from dying a terrible death. And all she has to do is fall deeply and irrevocably in love with me so that I can rub her attachment to me in F’s face.

I sigh quietly as I stalk down the long hall. It’s going to take some serious work, stripping away her religion and her defenses. Have I ever forced someone to love me?

No, I haven’t.

I’ve only ever known for a fact that Aurelia loved me. She told me so, and I believed her. All the others, the many faces that blend together in retrospect… who cared about what they felt about me?

This will be a new challenge, something I haven’t done before. It should be easy, though.

How hard can it be to manipulate the emotions of a sheltered little girl? Especially, considering that I’ll be all over her, physically and mentally. Once I seduce her, make her lust for me, I’ll have her well in hand.

As I open the door to her tiny chamber, I don’t bother to smother the smile stretching across my face. She scrambles into an upright position, looking fucking angry with me. Still wearing her rumpled wedding dress, her hair a mess. She is beautiful.

I meant what I said before. I’ve been with prettier and more expensive girls. There is something about her, though.

Something not easily defined. Something more than her wide blue eyes and gently freckled skin. She shoves her hand through her long red tresses, pushing them back from her face.

I smirk at her. “You can come out for good if you’re going to behave.”

Rue folds her arms across her chest. “You drugged me.”

Shrugging, I leave her doorway and start walking down the hall. Sure enough, a few seconds later I hear her footfalls behind me.

“You need to shower,” I say, glancing back at her. “I never want to see that wedding dress again.”

She gives me a dead-eyed look. “I wasn’t exactly given any alternatives.”

My lips curve upward. She’s spirited, I’ll give her that. I can feel the rage simmering beneath the surface of her. That is just fine by me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I bound up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Rue rushes to follow me, looking around at the castle. She seems to soak up her surroundings. Does she find some kind of meaning in everything she sees?

“Come,” I say, heading up a staircase off the living room. “This will be your floor while you’re here.”

Her eyebrows knit as we reach the hallway. While the hall itself is unlit, there are six open doors spread out down the length of it, each one suffusing the hallway with gentle light. I stride down to the third doorway, pausing outside.

I mockingly bow, indicating that she should go into the room ahead of me. She does, her body language hesitant. When she sees that it’s a large bathroom, she freezes up.

I push in after her, going immediately to the elegant silver taps of the oversized white clawfoot tub. Turning them on, I adjust the water, looking critically at her.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

She looks at me, her eyes wide. “Yes. Until you leave, that is.”

I know there is a patronizing smirk on my face, I can feel it. “I think you’re laboring under some mistaken beliefs. I’m here to make sure you fall from grace, not to protect whatever dignity you feel you have. So, get undressed before I help you.”

Our gazes lock. She flushes perfectly pink, underneath all those freckles. Her gaze slides to the open doorway. She stammers out, “I… I can’t.”

“There’s no one else here,” I say, reaching over to test the water’s temperature again. “This is your last chance to undress of your own volition. I don’t like repeating myself.”

She starts to tremble. “No. You can’t make me.”

I walk over to the door, shutting it. Shutting her inside, trapped in the bathroom with me. She looks a little terrified, as she should.

Lunging for her, I catch her around the waist. She’s so slight, weighing almost nothing. Petite doesn’t begin to describe her. She struggles, her tiny hands banging uselessly against my chest as I strip her dress from her body.

Grabbing the straps of her dress, I rip it effortlessly down the back. I expect to see the creamy white skin of her back, dusted with freckles as I imagined.

What I find there instead is badly damaged skin. Most of her back is scarred and healed over, the skin looking almost melted and reformed. The cause of the scarring is unclear, but she’s got several half-healed lashings splayed red across her back.

She’s not wearing anything under the dress. My fingers itch to touch her bare skin, to see for myself that it’s real. I put the flat of my hand against her shoulder, feeling the raised scars.

“No! Don’t!” she protests, but that doesn’t stop me. Her words fall on deaf ears.

“Stop!” she sobs, but I just grab the garment by the rip in the middle and rend it further. Lacy white panties peek out of the slash.

Rue cries out and tries to cover herself, but I grip her by the throat.

“Stop,” I order her, lifting her onto her tiptoes. “I don’t want to do you harm, but there is nothing preventing me, either.”

She goes still. I can feel her pulse fluttering like a hummingbird’s underneath my hand. Stepping close, I revel in the power I have at this moment.

I could easily squeeze the life out of her or snap her graceful neck.

I know it. I squeeze her throat just a little more as if she needed a reminder that I all but own her now. It’s me that must be pleased, at the end of the day.

Her hands rise, clutching at her throat, but she’s not so stupid as to dig her nails into my hand. I smile.

“Good girl,” I tell her, easing my grip. I let go, leaving her gasping for breath. She’s sobbing, sputtering.

I like watching her squirm, but I think I’ve pushed her far enough for right now.

“Wash the filth off of yourself,” I command, turning to the door. “Then we’ll talk.”

I glance back at her, just long enough for her to nod emphatically to me.

Then I leave, a smile on my lips.

She is oh, so pleasingly reactive. I can’t wait to test her some more.