Chapter 10: Lady Seraphina Damaris Vontell Arrives
Oliver had experienced fear in many forms. He had known the bite of the whip, losing body parts to experiments, the searing pain of chains cutting into his wrists, and the terror of standing before the staff of Solomon, an unfathomable power.
He had defied his masters once, summoning the courage to reach for freedom in his past life.
But this fear was different. It was instincts that had been hammered into his mind by long years of untold suffering.
The moment he saw her through the veil of the carriage window, his knees buckled.
His body collapsed before he could think, his legs giving out beneath him as his hands shot up to his head, fingers clawing at his scalp as memories came crashing down. The suffocating tide of his past life drowned him all at once.
She was the beacon reminder of...Pain—The constant taste of his own blood. She was a woman who stood among corpses, licking the blood off her fingers like a delicacy.
Lady Seraphina Damaris Vontell.
A terrible noblewoman of the Somaran Empire. The twentieth wife of Richie Von Rich. His step mother, and the woman who had ushered living hell into his life.
Oliver gasped as phantom screams filled his ears. The faces of innocent children twisted in horror as she slaughtered them for sport. She had made him watch. Forced him to kneel in their blood, whispering words of false kindness, telling him he should be grateful she even allowed him to exist.
Cold sweat ran down his spine. His breathing turned ragged as his fingers dug deeper into his scalp, trying to pull himself out of the memories, out of the past, but it was too real. The pressure in his chest swelled, suffocating him.
He was weak.