✓ WICKED VOWS| JAKE (Book II )

37-Deadly Flowers & World In Ashes

Anna's pov

The world was a void, a yawning chasm of darkness that threatened to consume me whole. Still, there, deep inside that black abyss, a dull, insistent pain started to bloom in my right shoulder, dragging me back to the surface—to the land of the living. I opened my eyelids, and there I stared up at a plain white hospital ceiling. Antiseptic, the scent of sterility invaded my senses; the soft beeping of machines was a constant reminder that I was still tethered to this world.

I tried to push myself up, and a firm, gentle hand seated me with pressure on my shoulder. "Easy," a sharp voice ordered. Rolling my head toward the speaker, it was Jude. Her expression was a pristine, steely mask. Her tone was level, but there was something underneath that made a shiver run down my spine.

"Don't try to move too much. You've bruised your right shoulder pretty badly," Jude went on, her gaze meeting mine with an intensity that allowed no dissent. "Not a word of this to Inna or my mother. Understood?"

My words were more than an order—they were a command, and she knew better than to defy me. She nodded at me, wincing as the pain in my shoulder flared again.

That was when it hit me—my clothes had been changed. Cold and sharp, panic surged through me as I tried to remember how I had ended up here and who could have stripped me of my dignity.

"Who changed my clothes?" The question escaped my lips before I could stop it, my voice hoarse and shaking with the fear of the unknown.

Jude had hardly needed to hesitate, her eyes softening by a fraction before she responded. "It was Jake. He was with you all night."

Jake. The name reverberated in my head as a hundred different emotions churned inside of me—relief, anger, confusion. He had been here, watching over me, touching me when I was most vulnerable. It made a shiver of unease run down my spine to think of what he had seen and what he had thought as he tended to me in my unconscious state.

My bedroom door burst open, and no other than Queen Morana herself walked in, commanding and as cold as ever. Ethan followed right on her heels with a concerned yet frustrated expression. They approached my bed, their eyes upon mine, peering at my face for any sign of weakness.

"You've been through quite an ordeal," Queen Morana said, her voice devoid of warmth. "But you're strong. You'll recover sweetheart."

I nodded, my throat too dry to respond verbally. I couldn't help but notice the way Ethan's eyes flickered with something akin to regret, but he said nothing, merely offering a stiff nod in my direction.

The awkward silence was broken when a nurse came in carrying a bouquet of dark, crimson roses—Terrence's trademark. She handed the flowers over to me, accompanied by a fake smile, murmured something about a good recovery, and left the room very fast.

I gazed at the flowers, their rich, blood-red color contrasting sharply with the stark whiteness of the hospital room. There was a note buried deep within the bouquet, which I retrieved with trembling fingers.

 "Get well soon. I expect to see you back in full health when I return. "—Terrence.

His words were a reeducation on the kind of world I was tangled up in, on the kinds of darkness lurking in corners of my life, ready all this time to swallow me whole. Terrence, I did not know that Terrence was a rose man.

The day crawled by, with minutes that turned into hours of never-ending time. Food, when it was brought to me, went untouched, my appetite devoured by churning nausea in my stomach. The serum they injected into my veins was what kept me in reality—the lifeline amidst the chaos that became my existence.