Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

Room service

FARAH

I don’t realize I’ve dozed off until the door opens, and by the time my eyes drag open, he’s already standing there, filling the frame the way he always does, like the room shrinks the second he steps into it.

His eyes are bloodshot, rimmed red from whatever he’s been drinking, but underneath the redness there’s something worse—a flat, dead emptiness that looks like it belongs on a corpse rather than a man still standing on his own two feet.

Every nerve in my body snaps to attention at once, some ancient, animal part of me recognizing danger even before my brain catches up to it.

I don’t understand how someone can be this beautiful and this unsettling at the same time, how a face carved so perfectly can carry so much wreckage underneath it.

“Room service,” he says, dry and humorless, holding up a covered bowl like it’s an inconvenience he’s been forced to carry personally.

“Stand. Go to the table. Sit in the chair. And thank me for the food.”

His upper lip curls, just slightly, just enough to make the contempt in it unmistakable.

“You certainly don’t deserve it.”

A soft breath escapes me, something close to a laugh, though it comes out thin and unconvincing even to my own ears.

“I don’t deserve any of what’s happening to me here.”

I hate how shaky my voice sounds, hate that I can’t seem to steady it no matter how hard I try.

“One day you’ll realize that. And then you’ll regret it. But I suppose monsters like you don’t really do guilt.”

“You have ten seconds to get your ass in that chair,” he growls, and the sound of it rattles something low in my chest. “Fail, and I’ll make you regret it.”

I pull in a slow breath, force my legs to move, and cross the room to the table on unsteady feet, lowering myself into the chair across from where he sets the bowl down.

Then, as if he’s reconsidered something, he snatches it back up, rounds the table, and stops directly in front of me instead, close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him.

He uncaps the porridge and lifts a small spoonful out, holding it toward my mouth like an offering.

“Open up.”

“Seriously?” I stare at him, half disbelieving. “You want to lower yourself to feed a lowly human you’re so convinced is going to betray you?”

I let out a scoff, sharp and disbelieving.

“Come on.”

“I want you to live and breathe only by my mercy,” he says, voice low and even, like he’s stating something obvious. “I want you to accept your survival from me, and never know when I might decide to withdraw it.”

“Open wide,” he says again, mocking now, the spoon hovering closer.

My jaw locks, and I sit there stewing in silence for a long moment, some proud, stubborn part of me refusing to give him the satisfaction.

But hunger wins out over pride eventually—it always does—and I part my lips, letting him feed me the spoonful.

It’s bland, tasteless, and worse than the taste is the humiliation of it, the complete absence of power in the act of being fed like a child, like something too weak to feed itself.

I force myself to chew anyway.

Swallow.

“Looks like you can follow instructions,” he says, “when there’s a reward on the table.”

He lifts another spoonful, considering me.

“Now, if you were to tell me what I want to know, the reward would be a lot better than a bowl of shitty porridge.”

“Like what?”

The words come out before I can stop them.

“A well-thought-out last meal before you kill me? If I knew anything about your curse, or how to break it, I would have told you already. But I don’t. I have nothing to give you, because I don’t know anything. I can see that neither you nor your soulless friends are ever going to believe that, so there’s no point wasting my breath on it anymore. One day you might realize your mistake. Or you might not. Either way, I think you’ll be too screwed up by then to even care.”

His hand closes around my throat before I finish the last word, cutting off whatever else might have come after it.

I’ve clearly pushed something in him too far, though at this point I’m not sure what line I haven’t already crossed—since the moment I met him, I’ve only ever seen this side of him, this cold, immediate violence sitting right beneath the surface.

He drops the bowl back onto the table with a clatter and uses his free hand to hold me still, his grip firm enough that I feel my pulse hammering against his palm.

“I’m not the one who’s going to die here,” I choke out anyway, refusing to let the fear win completely.

“That’ll be you. And your death won’t be pretty. Keep pushing me, and it’ll last for weeks.”

He releases me a beat later, disgust written plainly across his face, like even touching me is something he resents having to do.

“You’re crazy,” I wheeze, one hand rising instinctively to my throat.

“You have no idea,” he growls, already turning to pick the bowl back up.

“Now eat your f*****g food. Can’t have you dying on us… yet.”