THE BLOOD ROYALS Book 2: Long Live The Queen!

Chapter Thirty One: The Women of Adair

Daa Haan
Renee's POV
The after effects of a physical assault are bruises, ugly ones which usually fade away with time. I have plenty of those especially around my midsection. If I had been pregnant, the baby would definitely be dead.

The after effects of a miscarriage is blood... something I have none of. I am sitting in a bathtub full of warm water looking at the stained glass window depicting a rose. I can hear pigeons cooing outside the slightly open window. Della is using a sponge to clean me. She found me on the bathroom floor crying later n the day after Adair's beating. She is trying to talk to me but I can only feel that man beating me up. I feel... scared.

"Renée." She turned my face. "Perhaps an ultrasound to check on the baby. You haven't bled. May be there's a slim chance it survived. I will find a way to make it discrete. Adair won't know."

There's no blood.

It's too young. There should be blood.

"There must be a way to get rid of him. You're a duchess. Don't you have any power?"

"I'm in a difficult place. I would reach out to Admiral Cormac but he has locked down the naval base. No one in, no one out. He has withdrawn all naval ships to the sea. He is taking precautions. I can reach out to the crown to send reinforcement but I will get arrested for treason and the punishment is death. I don't want to die. The only way is to go along with what Adair wants until I'm in a position to fight back."

She ran a sponge over my arm.

"I was never pregnant. I lied to stay alive. But I think he will kill me anyway. He will do it just to hurt Reli."

"Oh Renée..." She sighed. She reached for the plug to drain the tub. "Get out."

I obeyed and moved aside. She opened the stained window. She stood there for a moment before she grabbed a pigeon.

"What are you doing?"

"Saving your life. Get in the shower, cold water for a few minutes. Let the water run and sit in the corner. Look miserable." She got a knife from under her dress on the side of her thigh. I looked away. She killed the bird. When I did look her way she was spilling the blood around the tub, some on the floor dripping it carefully from somewhere in the middle of the bathroom to the tub and then to the shower. She took my hand and made me touch the bleeding headless bird. She pressed my hand on the glass wall of the shower. After the bird stopped bleeding, she wrapped the dead bird in a towel and put it at the bottom of a laundry hamper. She used some of the clean towels from the rack to try and clean the tub making a mess of everything. She discarded the towels in the laundry hamper. She took some powdered soap and spilled it around the tub. She scrubbed and made a bigger mess. "It has to look like I'm cleaning up after your miscarriage. It can't look perfect. The guards will walk in at any second-"

She was right but it wasn't the guards. It's the monster.

I don't have the strength to get up. I pulled my knees to my chest to cover myself. He stopped at the open shower cubicle. He looked at the tub and the drops of blood on the floor. He finally entered the cubicle and he turned off the water.

Della didn't leave. She stood by watching.

Adair knelt in front of me. "I'm so so sorry Renée. Please, forgive my brutality." He pressed his hand on his chest. When he slapped me that whole hand covered the span of my face. It felt like my head would turn around and fall off. I saw darkness and stars. "But you had to be freed from Relian's grip. He got you pregnant to control and own you. You're not from nobility yet he sold you the lie of royalty. He has promised you a crown if you give him an heir. The monarchy is finite. The future is not and they cannot be part of it. That is why his blood shouldn't live. His kind has to end. I'm sorry for hurting you."