Chapter 3

Sloane's POV

"Sloane, darling, why are you spacing out?"

"You've been sleeping terribly since you lost your sight. You woke up so many times last night," Auden said warmly, the very picture of a devoted husband. "Thanks to Ondine's special tonic, you're looking a bit better. Drink it while it's warm, sweetheart."

I kept my head down, "listening" to the sloshing of the liquid in the glass.

Just an hour ago, I had watched human eyes bobbing in this exact sludge.

"Of course. Thank you, Ondine."

Staring blindly into Auden's piercing blue eyes, I fumbled my hand forward, purposely missing the glass once before "finding" it.

I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and chugged the nauseating fluid in one go.

I clamped my jaw shut, ignoring the rusty tang of blood coating my tongue, and forced down the bile rising in my throat.

Dinner was French veal and potato stew.

Ondine practically slammed the plate down in front of me. I blindly picked up my fork, stabbed a piece of meat, and shoved it into my mouth, chewing deliberately.

Crunch.

My teeth hit something rock hard. My chewing instantly froze.

I rolled my tongue over the object in my mouth. It had deeply grooved crowns and jagged, splintered roots.

It was a human molar.

"Darling? You don't like the food today?" Auden’s low voice drifted across the table.

A chill shot up my spine. He was analyzing every micro-expression on my face like a spotlight.

I opened my mouth, delicately spitting the bloody, shattered tooth into a white napkin, and pitched my voice into a fearful whine. "I bit down on a bone... It really hurt my tooth."

Two seconds of dead silence.

I watched Auden gracefully reach across the table and pluck the human molar from the napkin. He held it up to the crystal chandelier, turning it in the light, genuinely amused.

"Oh, my deepest apologies, sweetheart," Auden dropped the human tooth onto his bread plate with a chuckle. "Ondine, how exactly are you prepping the ingredients?"

"So sorry, Mr. Hale," Ondine scoffed, not sounding sorry at all. "I'll go prepare a fresh plate for Mrs. Hale."

As she leaned over to snatch my plate away, a silver bracelet slid down her wrist, dangling right in my line of sight.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was an intricately carved, handmade silver bangle.

It was my sister Lark's. We had been orphans, relying only on each other. That bracelet was her talisman—she never took it off. Never.

Unless... Lark was already dead.

My eyes involuntarily dropped to the stew in front of me. The thick crimson gravy. The unidentifiable chunks of meat. The human tooth I had just spat out...

Utter disgust and sheer panic threatened to tear me apart.

I had just eaten a meal made of my sister.

That night, I lay rigid in Auden’s arms, staring into the dark.

In this isolated mansion, my sadistic husband and his thieving mistress were boiling me alive like meat on a chopping block.

I racked my brain, trying to remember what exactly happened before I went blind. But a huge chunk of my memory felt violently carved out, leaving a terrifying void.

Who sent that text warning me? Were they trying to save me, or were they just watching a lamb thrash in the slaughterhouse for fun?

The next morning, the second Auden left the house with his briefcase, Ondine's footsteps approached.

She wasn't cleaning. She started circling my spot on the sofa like a vulture eyeing carrion, clattering teacups, brushing a duster intentionally over my hair.

With every movement, my sister's silver bracelet clinked against her wrist.

"Ondine..."

I took a deep breath, clutching my hands together, shifting back into the pathetic, weak persona.

"My eyes just aren't getting better. Auden is so good to me, it breaks my heart. I'm so scared he'll get tired of a blind wife one day."

Ondine stopped walking.

She stood right in front of me, her heavily mascaraed eyes raking up and down my body with blatant malice.

Suddenly, she let out a bizarre, spine-chilling giggle.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Hale."

She leaned all the way down to my ear, her voice dripping with the euphoric cruelty of an executioner:

"You'll 'recover' very soon. After all, the other women in your situation always healed incredibly fast."

My blood instantly froze.

The other women?