WANT ME BACK. BREAK ME TWICE

The Executioner’s Grace

For forty-eight hours, hell didn't stop. Treas and Marina made sure of it. I scrubbed the floors until my knees bled through my uniform, washed coarse linens by hand until the skin on my palms cracked open from the chemical bleach, and was denied food for two consecutive cycles. My fever had spiked so high that the grand hallways of Margualie Mansion began to blur, twisting into distorted shapes in the reflection of the polished marble. My lungs rattled with every ragged breath, coughing up dark, thick traces of blood that I had to hastily wipe away on rags before the guards could see.

I was physically collapsing. My body was a hollow shell, held together by nothing but the rigid, freezing column of my rage.

But on the afternoon of the third day, the cruelty shifted from physical exhaustion to absolute psychological terror.

I was kneeling in the back laundry scullery when the heavy iron door slammed open. Treas stepped into the damp room, her heels clicking sharply against the concrete. She wasn't alone. Clutching her hand, her small eyes wide with confusion and fear, was Allegra.

"Mama!" my daughter cried out, her little voice cracking as she tried to pull away from Treas's grip to run to me.

"Allegra," I gasped, my heart leaping into my throat. I tried to stand, but my swollen, damaged knee buckled violently beneath my weight, sending me crashing hard against the lip of the concrete washbasin.

"Stay right there, Elara," Treas purred, her fingers tightening noticeably on Allegra’s small shoulder. My daughter winced slightly under the pressure, looking down at the floor. "I decided to do something nice today. I pulled your little girl out of her academy. After all, a child should see exactly what kind of woman her mother is."

"Please," I whispered, the word tearing out of my chest like a jagged shard of metal. I looked at Treas, my dark eyes completely raw. "Don't involve her in this. She is a child. Your own flesh and blood."

"She is a bastard stain on my husband’s lineage," Treas hissed, her sweet facade dropping instantly, leaving behind a face filled with unhinged, malice. She leaned down, her mouth mere inches from Allegra’s ear. "You know, sweetie, your mommy is very clumsy. She keeps breaking things in my house. And when people break things... they have to be punished. Don't you think?"

Allegra began to cry silently, her tiny shoulders shaking as she stared at me in my stained, wet maid uniform. "Mama..."

"If you want your daughter to go back to her room safely, without any... accidents on the grand staircase," Treas said, looking back up at me with a lethal, triumphant grin, "you are going to clean the grease traps under the main kitchen stoves. Right now. On your knees. While she watches."

The grease traps were rancid, scalding-hot, and suffocatingly tight. For a woman in my physical condition, crawling beneath the heavy iron stoves was a form of pure torture.

But I didn't hesitate. I didn't scream.

"I'll do it," I murmured.

For the next hour, under the blazing lights of the kitchen, I dragged my failing body across the tile. I reached deep into the boiling, foul-smelling machinery, my skin burning against the metal, while my daughter sat on a wooden stool in the corner, weeping as she watched her mother reduced to a submissive animal. Treas stood above us, sipping iced tea, occasionally commenting on how pathetic I looked.

Every time my vision blurred from the fever, I looked at Allegra’s tear-stained face. And inside my mind, the last vestige of my humanity died.

By the evening of that same day, the mansion was wrapped in a suffocating, heavy silence. The sun had dipped below the horizon, throwing long, bloody shadows across the floor of my locked servant quarters. I sat flat on the cold concrete, my back pressed against the wall. A sudden, violent spasm shook my chest, and I bent double, coughing a thick, dark pool of blood directly onto the floor.

It was time. If I didn't use the vial tonight, my failing organs or Treas's malice would finish me before the sun rose on the fourth day anyway.

Slowly, my hands perfectly steady despite the burning fever, I pulled Mr. Zach’s amber vial from my sweater lining. I snapped the glass neck. I drew the clear, odorless fluid into the sterile syringe, watching the air bubbles rise to the top before clearing them with a sharp tap. I bared my left arm, locating the vein through the dark bruising Treas had left there hours before.

I pushed the plunger down, forcing the liquid into my bloodstream.

For three agonized seconds, nothing happened. My body acted completely normal, the quiet room remaining perfectly still.

Then, suddenly, the reaction hit me like a physical blow.

A violent, catastrophic spasm seized my chest. My lungs locked up completely, refusing to take in air as a terrifying, icy paralysis rippled outward through my nervous system. The room spun wildly. I stumbled backward, my legs completely turning to water, the empty syringe slipping from my unfeeling fingers.

I expected to slam hard against the concrete floor. Instead, two warm, trembling arms caught me from behind, breaking my fall.

"Elara! Oh my God, Elara!"

It was Nina. She had slipped into the room through the side door, her face pale with terror as she gathered my collapsing weight against her chest. Her eyes darted down to the floor, landing on the shattered amber vial and the empty syringe.

"No, no, no... what did you do?" Nina gasped, a massive sob tearing from her throat. She held me tightly, her tears falling hot and fast against my fever-scorched cheek. She rocked me back and forth on the floor, her hands shaking violently. "Why did you do this? Why didn't you wait for him to come back? Elara, please, look at me!"

I tried to speak, but my lips were stiffening, the dark science of the drug systematically shutting down my body's vital functions.

Nina looked down at my face, taking in the horrific reality of what they had done to me. She saw the swollen, bruised cheek from Marina's slap, the raw, chemical burns on my hands from the bleach, and the dark pool of blood I had just coughed up onto the floor. A heartbreaking realization flickered across her tear-stained face. She looked at me not as a servant who had given up, but as a tortured mother who had been pushed past the brink of human survival.

"They were going to kill you anyway," Nina choked out, her voice fracturing completely as she tightened her grip around my shoulders. "They were never going to let you live. This... maybe this really is the only way."

"Nina..." My voice was a pale, paper-thin whisper, barely carrying over the sound of her heavy crying. The darkness was clawing at the edges of my vision, heavy and absolute. I reached up with the last ounce of my fading strength, my cold fingers brushing against her arm. "Care for... Allegra... until I return."

"I swear it. I swear it on my life, Elara," Nina sobbed, pressing her forehead against mine, her tears mixing with the cold sweat on my skin. "I will protect her with everything I have. Just come back. Please, come back for her."

"I will," I breathed.

The icy paralysis reached my chest, wrapping tightly around my heart. My vision fractured completely, the sound of Nina's heartbreaking cries fading into a distant, muffled echo. The world went entirely cold, as the darkness pulled me under.