“So what… we are meant to drink virgin period blood?” The idea makes nausea roll through me at how disgusting and barbaric it sounds.
“No.” She shakes her head. “We get it injected.”
“What?” I bark and she twists her face to look at mine, her expression solemn.
“Somewhere out there, they are bleeding and torturing young girls. Then they compact it into an IV we take once a year at initiation.”
“How… how did you find out about what they did?”
“Dr Fisher.” Her face goes stone cold and another emotion flashes across it too quickly for me to catch. “He came to me once. I… I had tried to kill myself when it all got too much, but I failed. The next cycle, I was tied up and he came in drunk. He told me all about it. How I should feel special and lucky because I have founders’ blood and how multiple of his ‘other girls’ would die to be in my position.”
Fae shudders, as her eyes shutter closed, cutting me off from anything else she might be feeling. “When we pass our initiation, we take part in a bleeding ceremony, where we are made to cut ourselves, and then our blood is replenished by that of the virgins.”
She opens her eyes again and a fierceness I have never seen before burns bright. “And when I am finally initiated… me and Felix are destroying this fucking practice from the inside out.”
“Fae…”
“No,’ she snaps. “You wanted the truth, you have it. It is up to you whether you choose to betray me and become one of them, or whether you help save innocent children across the world.”
“Where do they keep these girls?” I ask, trying to process all this information.
“I have no idea. But I will find out… or die trying.”
CHAPTER 11
FAE
The vibrations pull me out of my dream. I groan as I stretch for my phone on the bedside cabinet. After I finished baring my soul to Roman yesterday, he went weird. I can’t work out how he went from finding any excuse to touch me to pulling back the second he brushed against me. I’ve had people use me, want me, reduce me to something they could take. I’ve never had someone reject me like Roman did.
I should be grateful. It takes away the confusion of whatever this is between us, but I can’t ignore the disappointment sitting heavy in my chest. We didn’t really talk after that and he drove me straight home. My room had been completely fixed. I can only assume Felix saw me crawling out of Roman’s bed, had a heart attack, and decided to sort my destroyed bedroom out himself.
My room is washed in pale, calming tones that make it feel deliberately restrained. Robyn was the colour in this home and I liked it that way. Without her, everything feels bland. I love my room just as much as I love hers. She is chaos and colour; I am deliberate and restrained. Soft white walls catch the daylight spilling through the curtains I forgot to close last night as the light settles across the space and makes everything feel cleanand airy without turning it cold. The wood floor beneath is natural oak, smooth and lightly grained, adding warmth, and a large rug sits beneath the bed, somewhere between sand and stone, softening the room and dulling any sound.
The king-size bed dominates the space, framed in solid wood to match the flooring. The bedding is layered but understated. Unlike Robyn, making my bed every day is non-negotiable. Crisp white sheets, plush earthy pillows stacked neatly, and a cream throw drapes across the edge. Even the sparse furniture follows the same quiet order. It is calm and everything I want in life.
I once heard the phrase a messy room is a messy mind and it stuck with me. Since then, everything is orderly. Minus the few personal touches I recently destroyed, it looks more like a showroom than a bedroom.
I open my phone and check the time, a slew of messages are waiting from Victor, Atlas, Riggs, and Felix. My stomach sinks when I see Roman hasn’t reached out, even though I knew better. No matter how hard it was to tell my story yesterday, I knew I had to keep going. I think, in a way, it was a test. I needed to see whether he would side with the founders or whether he would understand and stand with me.
Not just me, but Felix too.
I was eighteen when I finally told Felix everything. For a long time, he did everything he could to stay out of the house. When we finally opened up about what happened, it was easy to forgive him for leaving. He was just as abused as I was. The only difference is, he realised it for what it was and I didn’t.
He used to ask me all the time to tell him what was going on, but I always insisted everything was fine. I think that broke him. He saw it as betrayal, as me not trusting him. What he didn’t realise is that I had been groomed to believe everything was fine. It wasn’t a reflection of how much I loved or trusted my brother, it was how warped my understanding of normal had become.
How can someone tell you something is wrong when you have no idea what normal is? It’s not like I went to friends’ houses or saw other fathers with their children. I was isolated by design, kept exactly where I was meant to be. The only person I ever saw being parented was Felix and he wasn’t a stranger to Father’s punishments either.
It was Robyn who made me realise that what I went through wasn’t normal, but in fact very, very wrong. We were sitting in the kitchen of our old dorm, sipping wine, when she started to open up about her upbringing. At first, I didn’t understand the emotion behind it. Most of what she said was what I went through too.
So when I saw her crying, I was shocked. This loud, confident, happy girl, was worked up and twisted over something I thought was normal. When I tried to support her, when I told her I’d been through similar things and that it was okay, she just stared at me. I will never forget the look she gave me that night. Pure, unfiltered pain. Not for herself, but for me.
“It’s not normal, girly pop,”she said, squeezing my hand over the counter.“Adults aren’t meant to hurt children. You know that, don’t you?”
I didn’t respond. How could I? I had no idea what to say, but Robyn did. She always did.
“It’s illegal, what they did to me, Fae. It’s illegal what they did to you too. It’s called child abuse…”
After that, I started researching what child abuse actually looked like. The different types, the patterns, the language around it and then finally told Felix everything. For the first time in my life, I understood what he’d been asking from me all those years. We cried together, then made our own plan. Of course, it will be easier for him. He’ll live relatively free outside of the compound, shadow Father, then step into his role at the company. Felix will only ever be called in when needed.