Shit. Shit, I didn't mean to, I don't even know what I did.

Sasuke had a hanging chandelier that dangled from the ceiling, centered in the middle of the room and casting a soft glow. I was looking at the lights, the only interesting thing in the room after I'd read the spines of the books for the third time. That was all I was doing, I was watching them, getting lost in my own thoughts with the chandelier as my canvas. One moment they were glistening, pretty and intact; the next, several were shattering and raining glass down on the floor with a jarring pop, crack!

I stared in awe at the gleaming mess, not yet had it set in what had happened. I hadn't caused anything like that since I was a child back at the laboratories. I didn't know I could, the experiments had often gone so wrong and yielded poor results. No, the chandelier must have been faulty, it couldn't have been my doing... After staring at the broken shards of glass for several seconds, the realization sunk in and panic followed right behind it. I hoped I had time to figure out how to get rid of the mess, but before any grand plans came to me, I heard someone coming up the stairs, likely a very angry someone. My heart sunk low, leaking out of my rib cage and through the floor. I wouldn't need it anymore, because Sasuke was going to fucking bury me.

The doorknob turned. The door opened. I stopped breathing. I didn't like how calmly the door opened, especially upon seeing Sasuke's expression directly contradicting any peace. He caught sight of the glass on the floor first thing and narrowed his eyes, brows furrowed in confusion, before the realization dawned on him. I couldn't bring myself to say anything as I watched him look up at the chandelier to confirm said realization, and after that, his eyes found me. "What the hell did you do?" he asked, sounding more confused than anything, but the anger hadn't dissipated from his eyes entirely.

I glanced back at the chandelier, which was swinging back and forth a bit. It looked pretty obvious what had happened, but not how, and I couldn't answer that any better than Sasuke. That wasn't going to do me any favors, though. "I–I don't know, I was only looking at it and the bulbs burst, I didn't—"

I was still staring at the ceiling as I struggled to piece together both what had gone wrong and a decent explanation, when I saw Sasuke start towards me. I snapped forward again and started to push myself off the floor. He reached me before I got all the way there, wrapped his fingers around my wrist, and yanked me the rest of the way up. I didn't quite appreciate the help. "They don't blow up on their own," he snapped, as if I weren't aware how light bulbs worked. "Tell me what you did. Were you throwing something?"

I attempted to pull my arms away from his vice-like grip. "I didn't do anything to them, asshole! You must have faulty wiring!" I answered. He would never believe me, not if he wouldn't even listen to me. I couldn't take getting blamed for every last thing, it was like Sasuke was only looking for an excuse to lash out. His father was right, he needed something to take his anger out on, but I would've suggested something more along the lines of a punching bag. Contrary to what Sasuke might believe, that wasn't what I was.

Sasuke's hands tightened around my wrists until I worried the pressure was going to snap them. I hissed in pain, no longer able to work my way out of his grasp, and now wishing I'd stayed in the stupid window seat and died of boredom, instead. With dizzying speed, Sasuke spun me around and slammed my back into the wall. The impact wrenched a cry from my chest, along with all the air in my lungs. Pain crackled up my spine, but I didn't have time to focus on it, my brain was trying too hard to center on everything happening. Sasuke's body caged mine against the wall, inexorable, powerful, and absolutely terrifying. I pried one eye open to peer up into Sasuke's furious eyes. "I've almost had it with your mouth, harlot. Watch it, or I'll do it for you."

I heard every word, but the second the insult hit my ears, it drowned out the rest of his warning. Rage launched up my throat and onto my tongue, burning my lips enough that I had to open them. "Fuck you!" I snarled, leaning back into the wall, and turning my face away. It wasn't the first time I'd heard the degrading word, but it was always generalized, or in anger. Hearing Sasuke use it set off a fuse in me that any self-respecting person had. I didn't have much, but I had a shred of that left, and I'd be damned if he took anything else away from me. "What gives you the right to treat me like that, you prick, I'm—"

"I have every right to treat you however I fucking please." Sasuke didn't raise his voice, but he was close enough that the icy whisper had all the effects of shouting. His body caging against mine kept me pinned to the wall; cold and strong. Adrenaline started to worm its way through my veins when my heartbeat started to pick up. The panic came too fast for me to crush it under my heel, faced with the raw power and anger before me. I had nowhere to move where I could escape the way Sasuke leaned into me. The anger in his eyes brandished an almost carnal glint.

Dread welled up in my chest, rising from a hidden cavity where I kept the realities I didn't want to think about. Something was wrong with Sasuke, something I didn't understand, but it was crystal clear. I only didn't know what—or if—I could fix it. With a hard swallow, I ground my teeth together. "Get off me," I grit out. I hoped my voice didn't waver as much as it sounded like to me. What else could I do, what else was I supposed to think? I knew how people used slaves. I knew what happened to pets purchased by rich, cold nobles. Had I been an idiot, assuming Sasuke to be above that?

Sasuke's hold loosened abruptly, and I thought he might let go and leave me, but I wouldn't be so lucky. He smirked, and it reached his eyes with a knowing glint, like he was catching on to something. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be in on what he'd realized, but I was sure that staying ignorant would only be detrimental for me. It was a rock and a hard place. "Don't flatter yourself," he sneered, "a dog like you isn't worth a second glance, and I can't imagine the disease you carry."

Humiliation burned first my eyes, then in my chest, making it a challenge to ensure no signs of it appeared on my face. It was like fire; the smoke might as well suffocate me. Those weren't the first insults I'd heard, nor was it the first time I'd heard things almost identical to that. People shouted a lot of things to homeless people and orphans they saw out in the roads or alleyways. Age hardly mattered, one you appeared mature, it was like free game. Prostitution was a rampant last resort with people like me, and I had no wish to insult those who turned to it. But for Sasuke to imply, to assume that on his own? He had no right, he didn't understand. The amount of times you heard something didn't make it hurt any less each time. "It takes one to know one," I snapped. That was almost shamefully childish, but if nothing else, I survived on spite. Spite was a son of a bitch, though.

The back of Sasuke's hand cracked across my face, the second time in as many days. Like the first time, the power behind the hit was enough to knock me down. Hot, stinging pain made the burn in my eyes worse, and when I raised my hand to cup my wounded cheek, there were flecks of blood where Sasuke's nails had cut me. A few stray tears leaked past my squeezed-shut eyelids and stung the shallow wound. I couldn't bring myself to look up at Sasuke, who was still shaking with rage above me. I worried it would antagonize his temper, and I couldn't bear to see him watch me fall apart. For several harrowing seconds, I sat still and waited for him to lash out again, but another hit never came. Sasuke won out on that small bit of self-control and stormed out with a slam of the door that shook the bedroom walls. At that time, the whole room could come crumbling down, and I wouldn't care.

"Fucking bastard," I muttered to myself. I knew he couldn't hear me, but it still made me feel a little better, and who was going to rob me of that small comfort?

From somewhere down the hall I heard Sasuke call to me, "that mess had better be cleaned up before I get back!"

He didn't need to add the "or else" for me to pick up on it. However, he didn't say how I was supposed to clean it all up. One look around the room told me there were no brooms or dustpans or anything else that would be useful, and had there been, what if Sasuke used it as another reason to lose his temper? "Don't touch anything!" he'd said. "Clean the mess up!" he'd said.

"With what?" I asked. I'd only asked myself, but that counted. With a dissonant look at the sea of glass scattered across the floor, I exhaled a long sigh and resigned myself. If my cheek was going to sting, I suppose my hands could, as well. I crawled forward towards the start of the mess, and began to pick the shards up piece by piece. Distantly, like I was listening to someone else's thought, I felt like I was picking up pieces of myself, too.

If I had stayed inside that room with her another second, I would have done something I'd regretted. She was an audacious, disrespectful, and now lying wretch? Never had I met someone with such a penchant for blatant insolence. I had grown up around servants, around civilians who revered me and enemies who feared me. Itachi and I had never had an issue with anyone giving us the respect we had earned and carved out ourselves. We wore our clan's name, and that made people turn their heads; but we had risen to the top ourselves. We'd taught and trained ourselves as weapons in a world that still struggled with fragile political relations, and that was what made people bow their heads. I earned respect, and I expected it from those so below me. From those who didn't offer it, they would fear me, instead. The girl? Nothing frightened her, I was starting to wonder if she had any weaknesses.

Now, I see I'd finally found one.

The scent of her fear was still fresh and making my blood thrum with hunger. I hadn't even done anything to warrant it, but when I realized what it was that was frightening her, I knew I'd found an advantage. I hadn't yet thought about her in that way, still preoccupied with the way she'd thrown everything around me off kilter. I was too busy with my duty, both personally as well as to my family and people. Frankly, I'd also been too frustrated with her to consider what personal companions were usually intended for. Even though it'd been unintentional, never had she been so quick to shut her mouth and lower her head. Her reaction almost made me laugh, but I doubt it was with humor. How many people had a homeless, skill-less ibrida "serviced" in their life? I couldn't begin to guess. Her sensitivity to the truth was not my problem. Everyone had to grow a backbone at some point in their life; people weren't nice, they weren't going to sugarcoat things. The world didn't favor the weak. Seeing her on the ground, knocked down and face shining…

I cringed and looked at my hand, where a trace of her blood still stained. It was only a fleck, I'd hardly hurt her. Still, the scent had filled my head within seconds, heady and sharp as the fine wines humans gorged themselves on. If I hadn't left, I was afraid I'd have drained her dry. I didn't trust myself, nor did I trust her uncanny ability to push me right to the edge. I knew better than to go so long without feeding, even when the price was worth it. Still, now this tiny amount was enough to drive me to the brink. She smelled so rich, and I could hear her blood pulsing through her veins every time I got too close. It would be so easy, she would taste so—

I bit down on my tongue and stopped that thought before it finished. It was only because she was a slave. She was here solely for the purpose of serving me, and that included any way I saw fit. If I had a need, she was there to satisfy it. It was the hunger talking, swaying my thoughts. I'd seen the strongest of men lapse in the face of a strong enough hunger, it spoke louder than any rationale.

I'd hoped to find some peace in the kitchen, but when I walked in, the sight of Itachi and our mother greeted me. The buzzing in my head worsened, but I couldn't bring myself to turn on my heel and leave again. My mother's face lit up with a gentle smile the moment she saw me, and despite my aggrievance, I felt some of the tension leaking from my shoulders.

"Itachi told me about your decisions last night," she said, her even and soothing tone dampened some. She, like Itachi, had too soft a heart. Only, unlike with Itachi, I wanted to protect my mother's as much as I could. Itachi didn't need it. Neither of us ever had, nor had we ever even had that chance. "You took in a girl, right? Is she well?" My mother asked, and how her innate maternal concern made me fight an inward wince. Even the way she said it was too pretty a way to put it, taking them in. She knew that herself, but I was sure the idea of saying "bought" repulsed her.

"She's fine, mother," I assured. I debated how much to share, but decided that her name was at least warranted. My mother would have asked at some point, if I didn't tell her. "Her name is Amaya." The girl's name felt strange on my lips, it was so rare I'd used it, it tended to stay inside my head.

My mother's smile never wavered when she approached me and rested her hand on my shoulder. "That's a lovely name. Both of them are," she said, with a backwards look at Itachi. It dawned on me that he must've been talking with her about his own pet before I'd interrupted. Itachi's gaze was boring into me, and I could anticipate being unable to avoid what he wanted, but he was silent until our mother was well gone from the kitchen.

I had my back towards Itachi when he spoke. "Is she really all right?" my brother asked, suspicion dripping from his every word in that way he had of reading everyone around him like open books. "Or have you allowed your arrogance and your temper to get the better of you?"

That rubbed me the wrong way, and I was certain Itachi knew it would. He never said anything without calculating it first, a born and raised leader. Casting a scowl over my shoulder, I let a scoff past my lips. "Why do you care so much about it?" I asked, "that girl is none of your concern. She's a slave, she's beneath both of us. I don't concern myself with your pet, and I suggest you stop doing so with mine."

Itachi's eyes hardened. Had I been younger, that disappointment would've felt crushing. "So, you have," he shook his head. "Sasuke, do you truly believe that? Can you look at her and see nothing except a pet?" Itachi shivered when he grit out the offending word. "They're people."

I clenched my jaw against the throbbing pain in my head. "They're slaves, slaves get bought for very specific reasons." I didn't need Itachi patronizing me. I didn't want his disapproval, nor his advice. "If you want to spoil your pet, fine, but I don't need you telling me what to do with mine."

Itachi pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against, his jaw set tight. Even when we were both adults, the cool expression dug a pit of regret in me. "I don't want to hear you refer to Alex as that," Itachi warned. "It's a deplorable term. You can pretend all you wish, Sasuke. You know as well as I do that circumstances can be unfair. It isn't their fault that a greedy and power-hungry system takes advantage of those who are unlucky." Itachi left, but his words still hung in the air like fat rain clouds.

I remained still long after Itachi had gone, my hands gripping the counter and shaking. The only thing Itachi was good for anymore was leaving me feeling lost and doubting my own words. Even when there was nothing to doubt. He had always been the one who stood above everyone else, who could do no wrong. His protectiveness over the Feles boy was only going to end in tragedy.

He couldn't pretend our circumstances were anything alike.

I hadn't been able to stop shaking ever since the earlier conflict. The chill had seeped into my bones, and my hands were stinging like I'd dipped them into an open fire. Several tiny cuts littered my fingers and palms and made it hard to move them, but I'd finally gotten all the glass up and dumped into the bin in the bathroom. It'd taken a couple of hours, and I'd skimmed the floor twice to ensure there were no stray pieces that had gotten flung to other spots in the room. God forbid I miss a shard and Sasuke (or myself) step on it. My hands had stopped bleeding by now, after I'd rinsed them in the sink. I had to hope they'd quit stinging so terribly, soon. The only thing for me to do was to sit, staring into air and half-awake.

With my back leaning against the foot of Sasuke's bed, I was close to passing out, before the sound of the door opening wrest me back into some semblance of alertness. Moving wasn't worth the effort, though, I was content to stay in my little spot while Sasuke came in. I wasn't too eager to get in his way. He took one look at the floor, then towards me, his mouth opened in the beginnings of a sentence. He cut himself off when he saw the delicate way I was holding my hands, the thin cuts a bright crimson against my skin. "Did you do that to yourself?" he asked slowly, almost like he didn't want to know in spite of asking.

I looked down. They didn't look that bad, I'd seen a lot worse, it wasn't like my hands looked mangled. "You told me to pick up the glass," I reminded him, not lacking bitterness, "so I did." Had he forgotten that little incident earlier?

"With your hands?" He sounded incredulous. After nudging the door shut behind him, he came to stand in front of me. I tilted my head back against the bed so I could look up at him. He had a brow cocked, but I couldn't decide if he looked amused or surprised that I could possibly be that stupid. Trust me, I was full of surprises; but it wasn't as if I had a ton of options left to me.

I shrugged, "you didn't have anything else, what else was I going to do, stare at it until it evaporated?" Looking back, I wondered if that might've worked. After all, it was as inexplicable as them blowing in the first place.

Sasuke snorted and shook his head before he headed into the bathroom, leaving me feeling something like a chagrined kid. From where I sat, I could hear him rustling through things. "You could have used a sheet of paper off the desk," he called back to me, as if a suggestion now could have any use to me. With an indignant sniff, I flexed my burning hands. That would've been nice to know, only it was a few hours too late.

"I remember someone telling me not to touch anything," I mumbled back. To my (weak) satisfaction, Sasuke had nothing to say after that, not until he came back into the bedroom with a little jar in his hands. I recoiled when he knelt in front of me and reached out—it was an immediate reflex, my body flinched away before I could re-steel myself. Who wouldn't?

"Let me see your hands," he ordered, holding one of his own out palm-first. I stared at him for a moment, cautiously unfurled my hands from my chest, and reached them out. With surprising care, he took my right one first and dipped his fingers into the jar. The bluish cream stung as he coated my wounds in it, not that it could compare to the initial pain of getting cut. If it would bring any relief, I would shut up and take it. My teeth sunk into my tongue to bite back any hisses of pain while Sasuke gingerly treated the wounds. When he finished, he happened to glance up at me, catching me off guard. His eyes lingered on mine for a second too long before he broke it by standing up. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd started holding. That same glint I'd caught in his eyes earlier was present once again. With a dry swallow, I pulled my hands close to me again. I didn't want to place a name to that look, but I wanted to make myself as small as I could.

"I have a meeting to attend tonight," the words interrupted my train of thought. I snapped to when Sasuke started talking, and I looked up to watch as he pulled off his shirt. Startled, I felt a surprised flush warm my face before I could turn away to afford him privacy. Where I was from, people tended to treat their bodies as a little more, you know, private. "I don't know how late I'll return, so I'll grant you permission to leave the room for a while, as long as you don't get into anything."

My ears pricked up at the prospect of getting to leave the room for a while. The thought was so enticing, I could ignore that bit at the end. I'd felt so cooped up the past couple of days that even an hour out of my little prison felt like a gracious gift. Sasuke finished dressing and ran a hand through his hair, an attempt that didn't do much to straighten it out. I found myself staring at his face for a moment, caught up in the realization I'd not had a good chance to get a real look at Sasuke, yet. Everything had been too hectic, and it felt illicit to steal a glance. It sounded odd, but there was a barrier there that felt as if either of us shouldn't try crossing it.

As I'd noticed on the first night, his features were softer than his brother's, less sharp and defined. Sasuke's eyes were rounder and his lips fuller even when they were more often set into a smirk or thin line of annoyance. His Grecian nose and narrow jawline complimented him well. He was a handsome young man with a proud, patrician face that didn't match the capricious layers underneath, but I was learning that appearances tended not to match personality.

With a disapproving glance around the room, Sasuke departed with one final order, of course everything came with a price. "The laundry room is down the stairs and to the left. Clean up around here, if you can handle it without hurting yourself," he glanced over his shoulder once finished. The smirk that followed his words left my own lips trying to twitch up in response. Trust that a spoiled brat like him couldn't take care of his own chores. Dragging myself up off the floor and gathering up the clothes sounded like more energy than I wanted to expend, but I did get it done...after a bit of dawdling.

The stupid room was big enough to make gathering clothes feel like a scavenger hunt, but never let it be said I was a quitter. A few minutes later saw me in the laundry room (which, despite Sasuke's directions, took me a couple of tries to find) and setting the washing machine. I was prepared to leave the machine to its work and go off to, hopefully, seek out something to eat. My stomach had stopped aching last night, as it had been the third in a row since I'd last been able to find a good meal, but my head and limbs both ached and I felt as sluggish as a drugged sloth. It might not please Sasuke, but what he wouldn't know wouldn't hurt him. Or, rather, wouldn't hurt me.

Led by hunger, I headed out of the sweet-smelling laundry room and almost into the path of someone else heading through the hall. The person covered their mouth with a startled gasp and I jumped back in shock to get out of the way. I was convinced for a moment it was Itachi, but a closer inspection corrected that guess. It was a woman, perhaps in her early forties, if even. I could see why I thought her to be Itachi at first glance, with her long black hair, she looked a bit like him. But, more than anything, she looked like Sasuke. That realization was jarring. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her hand still covering her mouth before she lowered it to reveal a smile. "You startled me, I thought I heard someone in here. You must me the girl Sasuke spoke of," the woman held her hand out to me.

Wary but hating to offend her, I accepted her soft handshake. "Uh, probably," I started, "my name is Amaya, I was just doing some laundry," I explained, as if exiting the laundry room wasn't a good enough hint.

To her credit, the woman didn't comment on my awkward way with words. "I'm Itachi and Sasuke's mother, you may call me Mikoto."

I might've guessed as much. Although, aside from the resemblance, the similarities stopped there. Even then, where Sasuke looked cold, Mikoto managed to make those features warm. Her smile was too gentle to ever remind me of Sasuke, but her eyes, oh. He had his mother's eyes, almost identical, but her smile lent her eyes a gentle depth that Sasuke's lacked.

"It's nice to meet you," I bowed my head. As much as I didn't want to trouble her, she was my best bet at not getting lost in this massive place. I couldn't imagine who'd find my corpse, starved, but I'd definitely haunt this place in vengeance. "I'm sorry, but could you tell me where the kitchen is?"

Because your son was trying to starve me, and that wasn't how I wanted to go. Well, maybe he wasn't trying, but he sure wasn't too bothered about it.

"I was on my way there now," Mikoto inclined her head, "I'd be happy to make enough for two, follow me." She headed off down the hall, and there went my plans to not trouble her too much. The idea of Sasuke's relation to this kind-hearted woman was still reeling in my head. He reminded me a lot more of his asshole of a father.

After recalling that sinking dread I felt while standing before that man, I actually felt guilty for that comparison.

I felt tiny and intrusive, sitting at the table while she cooked. I swear I'm not an ill-mannered beast, but the second she placed the bowl in front of me, I'd polished the entire thing off within minutes. Rice, meat, and vegetables all. I couldn't even feel embarrassed about scarfing the meal down, I was so relieved to have something my belly again.

At the very least, I convinced her to let me wash the dishes. It wasn't until after Mikoto had left, after politely explaining she had an errand to run, that I felt I could relax. It wasn't that she made me uncomfortable, it was that I worried about making her uncomfortable; like I wasn't sitting straight enough, or that I spoke too fast. Everything about the woman screamed of regality. You know what I screamed of? Anxious disaster.

Speaking of, it was a good idea to not sneak up on those who were anxious, because they would scream.

With no warning, a pair of arms loomed from the corners of my eyes and I didn't have time to react before they were squeezing me into a hug. I rasped out a cry of surprise, but with the air getting crushed out of me, it was hard to do much else. I didn't have to worry about who it was, so that took the edge off the initial heart attack. The suffocation thing was still going to be an issue, though, if he didn't let go.

"Fuck," Alex exhaled the expletive from where he had his forehead pressed into my shoulder, "I missed you so much, I didn't think you would ever come out! Are you okay?"

Well, not after he'd tried to scare me to death, no. But otherwise? "I'm fine, I promise. You can stop squeezing me," I soothed. He unlocked his arms to free me from the death trap, allowing me to take a grateful breath. When I turned around, though, I regretted even asking him to let go. He looked worried sick. I stroked his hair back and offered him a reassuring smile as best I could muster. "Look, I'm not hurt, everything is okay. You don't have to worry, anymore." I hadn't thought about how it would look to Alex, I'd left him alone almost a solid two days. Whether it was of my own volition or not, I felt sick with guilt.

"Bullshit," Alex snapped, wiping away my pitiful attempt at reassurance. Surprised at the outburst, my eyes widened when he pointed to my face. "You've got a bruise right there, I'm not blind. He hits you," he accused, his voice so filled with disgust that it left me no room to deny.

That didn't mean I wouldn't try. "I said I was fine, it's nothing but a little bruise," I brushed off. "We've gotten hurt far worse just trying to make it through the night, it isn't that serious." That, at least, was the truth, as much of it as I could divulge. Alex wasn't unused to the sight of a meager bruise.

"I should kill him," Alex's voice lowered into a deadly, venomous growl that made even me shudder at the chill. My brother was such a demure person that hearing such rage coming from him was unnerving.

I rushed to diffuse the situation before it could get any worse, I didn't want to imagine Sasuke even looking at my little brother wrong, much less what would happen if Alex tried something like that. "No, no—you can't. We aren't in a scrap with some other starving kids, Alex, Sasuke wouldn't flinch if you hit him." Trust me, I would know.

Alex's ears flattened into his hair. I knew he hated what I'd said, but it was better than him wandering off and getting himself into a fight. It was never his job to protect me—not before, and certainly not now. My last chance at completely making Alex drop the subject was to distract him; what better way but to do that and quell my own concerns at the same time?

"Are you?" I asked. Alex narrowed his eyes in confusion, prompting me to clarify, "hurt, I mean?"

Alex hugged his arms over his chest. My hackles started to rise before he finally opened his mouth. "No, Itachi has been nothing but kind. I feel more like a guest than a slave," Alex's confession came with an awkward rub of his shoulder. "I don't know how I feel about it. I thought this would be different, that it'd be easy to tell who was bad and who was good, but I can't."

It would be easy to tell who was bad and who was good. I closed my eyes. It was such an innocent, blind statement.

"As long as he's treating you well, why look for a reason it's wrong?" I carefully asked. Alex didn't look at me after that. Was it true, was Itachi taking care of Alex like he had promised me? Alex wasn't a good liar like I was, he stumbled over his words and took too long to come up with what he had to say. I couldn't find a fallible lapse in his story. I had labelled Itachi as a monster long ago, when I heard of the way he could cut through a battlefield. I'd thought people were black and white. You were either a good person, or you were bad, you hurt others. Now, faced with the confrontation that Itachi wasn't the malicious, heartless man I had already painted him to be… It was like the glass. I had to pick up the pieces, only with this, I was going to have to make something new out of the shards. In the shards, I could see the pieces of a reflection, someone staring back at me, but I refused to look too deep.

I caught a glimpse of onyx before I swept the shards away and clapped a hand over my mouth. I'd just remembered I still had work I needed to finish, and at least an hour had already passed. With Alex's admittance still stirring in my gut, it was a perfect chance to escape thinking about it altogether.

"Shit, I forgot I have some things I need to finish," I gave Alex an apologetic smile, but it felt more like a grimace. "I'm sorry. I'll come see you again, soon, okay?" I pressed a quick kiss to his forehead in a goodbye before I left, ignoring his confused noise behind me.

The clothes smelled strongly of the crisp, oceanic detergent as I shoved them into the dryer, and I fought the urge to stand there and bask in the relaxing aroma. I didn't have time to act like an addict huffing. I set the dryer and skidded out of the laundry room to head up the stairs, back to Sasuke's room to finish with the rest of the chores. Of course, what exactly he expected was beyond me, because it wasn't as if his room was a mess. I had at least half an hour to kill before the clothes finished drying and were ready to get folded, so I might as well get to work straightening up a few things. The desk needed things put back in order after his earlier display of knocking papers everywhere, and a little dusting couldn't hurt. The menial, simple work was almost too easy. It reminded me how worse off other people had it, working in factories, or scrubbing whole mansions clean. It reminded me that I might be the lucky one, and that luck was nothing but shit.

By the time I'd realized it, I'd spent quite a bit of time in my anger-fueled cleaning until I felt satisfied that the room looked pristine and like I'd actually done something. While dusting, I'd taken the liberty of pulling out a few of the books on the shelves to get a better look at the covers. The temptation to sit down and read a couple was, although a little childish, almost too much to resist. Maybe if I asked Sasuke, he would allow me that small privilege. Knowing him, he could also laugh in my face and doubt my ability to read, since he seemed so convinced I was an uneducated yokel. It was a stereotype plenty of people believed in, however unfounded it was. That was the point of bullshit prejudices, wasn't it?

It had been a few hours since Sasuke had left for the meeting; I'd left the basket of folded clothes beside the bed after finishing with everything. I had no idea where they all went, and if Sasuke couldn't handle putting his own clothes away, he needed to get his shit together. What did families who enslaved countless servants do, live off them?

It wasn't until somewhere near midnight that I could hear Sasuke coming up the stairs. I'd only begun to doze off a few minutes before, but I was wide awake by the time the door closed behind him. The air grew heavy, thick enough to slice through. The abrupt change alerted every warning bell inside me. The way Sasuke moved was stiff, too tense, it reminded me of the stilted way an aggressive animal moved when they paced in a cage. He'd come to a pause about halfway into the room, his gaze bouncing from the desk to the basket of clothes. Too erratic, my mind supplied the realization. Despite my brief time of knowing Sasuke, I would have to be blind to not see how obvious the change in him was. He was a cool, collected person who moved with a grace that few people had. Tonight, it was nothing but tight, anxious motions. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry and I almost made myself cough.

"Not a bad job," he intoned. Even his voice sounded wrong, it was husky and raw. Everything about him leaned towards feral and inhuman. The reality of it smacked me in the face; Sasuke was as far from human as they came. "Why didn't you put the clothes away?"

I stood from where I'd been at the window seat, admiring the stars popping up in the sky. "I don't know where they go, I think even a princess can put their own clothes away." The words had hardly left my mouth when I understood how gravely I'd screwed up. With Sasuke already so on edge, all it would take was a breeze to shove him off, and I was the wind.

A frightening growl rumbled in Sasuke's chest, filling the once peaceful room with enough tension to kill. My hair stood on end and something twisted in my stomach, leaving me feeling like I'd just dropped ten stories. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. I tried to take a step away, anything to put more distance between myself and Sasuke, but I never got that chance. He was on me in the span it took my heart to stop, his hands clasped my shoulders in a bruising grip. I cried out in shock and pain when he shoved me to the side, throwing me onto his bed with all the effort it might've taken to throw a stuffed animal. I wasn't a small woman by any means, I had weight on me. His display of raw strength made me feel like a tiny, fragile deer staring into the open jaws of the lion about to rip it to shreds.

"Sasuke, stop! What the hell is wrong with—" I had started shouting at him, hoping it might get his attention and snap him out of his rage, but it only made it worse. His knees sunk into the mattress as he climbed atop and caged me beneath him, his arms on either side of my head and my waist between his legs. The searing glint of crimson in his eyes crushed my lungs and left me unable to breathe. I wanted to hide, to look away and escape the penetrative gaze, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. I could feel myself sinking in, getting lost, and I knew I'd never find my way out. I'd spent years hearing stories of the Sharingan and how people were terrified of its power. It took me three seconds to understand why.

Glistening fangs gleamed in the dim light when his lips spread in a sneer, sharp and fatal. I opened my mouth, to gasp, to scream, but nothing came out. My back arched forward on my body's own volition, so desperate to escape the impending threat looming over me. "I think a lesson is in order," Sasuke's voice chased a shudder down my back, it was still that deep, throaty cadence. Sasuke leaned down, close to my throat. I could hear my own blood pounding in my ears. His tongue was hot, almost enough to burn when it touched the thin skin of my neck, licking a scalding strip down to my collarbone. I could finally shut my eyes.

"Don't." It mortified me to hear how meek my voice sounded. It was too hard to get a good enough breath to make my words not shake, but I wrenched them from the very corners of my lungs. "Please, I—"

"I don't take orders from anyone, Amaya." He growled my name and my body jerked beneath his. His weight shifted as he moved his arm, his hand pressing to my hip—no, no, no. His hand was cold when it slipped beneath my shirt. Panic had seized me so tightly that I could feel it breaking me from the inside out. My bones were going to become dust, and my lungs wouldn't expand, they wouldn't let me breathe. Things like this happened to people in passing, you heard it on the news, read it in papers. It didn't happen to you. It didn't happen to me. It didn't, it couldn't.

Sasuke couldn't do this, he wouldn't do this—Sasuke wasn't a monster. He couldn't be. I refused to believe that. He was so many things, but never this. There had to be something, some way to make this stop. He could do anything else, I didn't care what got thrown my way—anything but this. I had to snap him out of it. This wasn't Sasuke.

"Master," I gasped out the word and tasted the bitterness on my tongue. "Master please, stop, please! This isn't—you aren't a monster." Begging was so, so bitter, I couldn't get it off my tongue even when I'd stopped talking. I felt Sasuke still above me, his hand freezing beneath my shirt. For a jarring second, I thought it wouldn't work, but slowly, Sasuke took his hand from under my shirt and left it at my hip, where his nails dug in. It was restraint, I realized. That same restraint he'd used that first night. He was trying not to sink too far. Finally, I sucked in a frantic breath, the frigid imprint still stinging on my flesh. His lips curled into a smirk that, while I couldn't see, I could feel it pressed against my neck. His fangs were cool and smooth against my throat. Through my quaking relief, I had enough grace to cringe away from them.

"You don't know what a monster is," Sasuke murmured, and he sank his fangs into my throat, right into the vein. My entire body tensed and pressed up into his, unable to go anywhere with him holding me down. Pain engulfed me, swallowing me whole. His free hand cupped the side of my face as my mouth opened in a scream, but my voice got lost somewhere along the way. I could feel my blood spilling into his mouth, a fierce fire in my neck that began to creep to every corner of my body. I was burning alive.

Sasuke fed for several minutes, the longer it went on the more the minutes started to feel like hours. My thoughts started to fade, along with everything else. My body began to fall limp, until even my fingers wouldn't flex when I tried. My head was swimming, a mass of color and noise I couldn't make sense of. I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer, but my consciousness still clung on for as long as it could. My limbs felt heavy and aching, where every nerve in my body was alight with crackling electricity, thrumming alive. When Sasuke pulled away, my neck started to throb in horrible pulses. Pain wended through my veins and met with the electricity, bringing something heinous to life in the midst. I thought that I was dying, and death felt nothing like the peaceful grace that books described. Cool, cautious fingers brushed across my forehead, moving my hair out of my face.

Exhaustion began to curl her long fingers around me. Faintly, I felt a silken sheet falling across my chest, covering my body. In the last moments I was awake, I thought I heard a whisper. "What is it about you?"

My dreams were tinted red.