Chapter 3

After the memorial, everyone sat down to eat.

I kept my head lowered and desperately stuffed food into my mouth.

My stomach hurt from how full it was. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I refused to stop.

I was terrified this was only a dream.

So terrified that I didn’t even notice Ethan calling my name.

“Emily!”

“Here!”

I shot to my feet on instinct. Food spilled everywhere, and a bowl shattered with a piercing crash.

White shards lay scattered among the filthy mess.

The food was dirty.

I dropped to my knees in the wreckage, grabbed a handful from the floor, and tried to shove it into my mouth.

In prison, wasting food meant being branded.

They thought it was fun.

But there was nowhere left on my body to burn.

Ethan caught both my wrists. His face was dark with anger.

“Have you lost your mind?!”

For a moment, his face blurred into the faces of the guards. I couldn’t tell them apart.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please don’t burn me!”

I shook all over, terrified, and slammed my forehead against the floor several times.

A shard pierced my skin. Blood ran down my brow and into my eyes, but I barely felt it.

He dragged me into a room upstairs, took out a first-aid kit, and carefully picked the fragments from my forehead.

He was so close, yet I didn’t dare entertain a single other thought.

His jaw tightened. He gave a short, unreadable laugh.

“Well, look at you. You’ve gotten good at taking pain.”

I lowered my head and said nothing.

This little pain wasn’t even a fraction of what I’d endured in prison.

My silence drew another angry laugh from him.

I didn’t understand. What did he have to be angry about?

Ethan lifted my chin with one finger and rubbed his thumb across the scar on my cheek.

“Does it hurt?”

Did it? I couldn’t really remember. Maybe I’d gone numb and couldn’t feel it anymore.

Still, I obediently nodded.

I must have been losing my mind, because for an instant I thought I saw pain in his eyes.

“Good. Maybe you’ll learn your lesson.”

See? I’d imagined it.

After dressing my wounds, he called his private doctor.

“Can you fix her face?”

The doctor studied me in silence. After some hesitation, he shook his head with regret.

“Reconstructive surgery can only achieve about a seventy percent improvement. Afterward, she may…”

No longer look like Claire.

He didn’t finish, but we all understood.

Ethan had only ever cared for the resemblance around my eyes and brows. If even that disappeared…

To my surprise, I felt relieved.

But I missed the unreadable look in Ethan’s eyes.