“What do you mean?” I prod, partly because I want her to keep talking and partly because I have no idea what she is getting at.
“I mean…” She tapers off, and this time I count to twenty seconds before she starts again. “This is hard for me to talk about. Only Felix knows the truth. I’m trusting you, Roman. I… I… you can’t tell anyone else, okay?”
I mentally high five myself at the fact she trusts me, my body humming with elation. Maybe I am not too far from having her forever and a thrill runs through me. Then I realise she asked me a question and clear my throat. Pulling her body as close to mine as possible, I move her hair over her left shoulder to give me access to the right side of her neck and place a gentle, chaste kiss.
“I promise, Tinkerbell, whatever you say to me stays with me. I’ll look after you… whatever it is, I can protect you.”
She bristles at that, as though she doesn’t believe me. She does not need to believe me, though; I will show her in time. Taking a deep breath, she counts to ten.
“It started when I was 12. My mum died three years before. Her death… it changed things. Father started getting more erratic, his moods unpredictable, and Felix and I were left with nannies more often than not. When we did see him, he would usually take Felix out for the day and leave me at home alone. My bodyguard at the time, Willie, was awful. He hated me. I am still not sure why…”
Fae’s body convulses, so I lean forward and press a gentle kiss to my favourite spot again.
“Take your time,” I murmur.
“The day I started my period, I thought I was dying. Mum never spoke about what my body was going to do when I grew up because I was too young when she died. The school never taught us anything about it and Father certainly was not going to tell me what to expect. There… there was blood everywhere. When I tried to get help, Father… he…” she clears her throat, moving one hand from the blanket to swipe a tear away.
My blood pressure rises and I try to calm my breathing down. I am not sure where this story is going, but all sorts of red flags are flying. What does this have to do with initiation? Did he hurt her? If he did, I will kill him. Laws be damned. A paedophile isone thing, but incest and a paedophile… I mean, you cannot get any worse than that.
“What did he do, little one?” I dig, trying to get her to continue without pushing too much.
“My father offered me up as a sacrifice.” My body tenses against my better judgement, but she continues. “What I mean by that is every month, I would be forced down to the crypt where a satanic ritual took place. Women would come in and bathe me, men would come down in masks. They would chant, hook me up to an IV, and leave me on the crucifix for days at a time. It went on for the length of my period. They would catch my blood in a bowl left on the floor between my tied legs and only come in to empty it. I was sore and hungry and in pain for days. The adults did not care about any of that, though. If I complained, I was punished. The punishment could be beatings, or whippings, starvation, or even…” her breath hitches.
“Even…?” I ask without thinking, the rage inside me growing with every word she utters.
“The box,” she whispers.
“The box?” I keep count as she goes silent, biding my time to hear the rest of her story. I feel partly honoured that she is confiding in me and partly consumed by a rage so deep I do not know how to compartmentalise it. The beauty of the beach feels tainted now, overshadowed by the torture and pain of what Fae has been through.
“The box… it’s what it sounds like.” She continues after three minutes. “A wooden box my dad created to punish us. He would lock us in there, sometimes for days at a time with no food or water. I would come out so dehydrated that, multiple times, Felix thought I would be dead when Father let me out.”
“That evil motherfucker… I’m going to kill him, I’m going to slowly ki?—”
“No!” she shouts, trying to move off me, but I hold on. “No, you don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand, Tink, because right now nothing is stopping me from storming that mansion and killing him in his sleep.”
“You’ll die. It will be a suicide mission.”
I scoff, “You have such little faith in me?”
“It’s not that, Roman, you aren’t listening,” she snaps and I take in a sharp breath, trying to temper the inferno inside me.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Tink. Okay, explain it. What am I missing?”
“It’s all of them,” she whispers, and I tense again. “They are all a part of it, and… and we will be soon too…”
I sit silent, trying to process my thoughts. When she says all of them, does that mean my dad? Is my mum involved? Are those the women she was talking about? And why? I still don’t understand why they collected her blood. As if she hears my thoughts, she opens her mouth to speak again, more firmly this time, the timid fear in her voice gone.
“The blood of a virgin,” she says like that makes any sense.
“I’m sorry, Fae.” I shake my head against her neck. “I… I don’t understand why they need that and what that has to do with the initiation.”
“Have you heard rumours about the royals drinking babies’ blood because it makes them live longer?” She doesn’t give me time to respond. “Well, it is half true. Except it is not children’s blood it is virgins’ blood and it cannot come from our veins, it comes from our cycle. The hormones released during that time apparently create a reaction to a drug they created nearly one hundred years ago. Do you not ever wonder why my Father, yours, and all the other founders rarely get sick? How the rest of the population live until they are seventy but ours go on to be a hundred unless we execute them?”
“To be honest, no. And if I did, I would have presumed it was because we had better access to healthcare,” I respond honestly.
“I guess virgin blood is some type of healthcare,” she mutters back in that bratty tone of hers I love.