“So I was told. You’re not the first one to have that, either. But unfortunately, it will not protect you.”

I clap a hand over my mouth as bile rises to my throat. The idea of being paraded in front of a group of men, to be auctioned off like cattle… It leaves me with a visceral reaction. My own body rejecting it, like I can simply puke the whole concept away.

“I-I can’t go back to him,” I say softly when the nausea eases its claws off me.

Adrian must know that. He has to know that I will not ever give him that satisfaction. That I would rather take a lifetime of humiliation and suffering over being with him again.

She nods. “Then I hope your next owner will be kinder.”

Owner. Just like that, the nausea comes ripping back to life.

“Come, my child,” she says, offering me a hand. Her nails are grotesquely long and perfectly painted. The pink talons of a monster who thinks it can fool me into believing she is something else. Each ring finger is daubed with a skull. “You can call me Mere.”

“Mere?” I repeat.

She smiles. “It means ‘mother’ in French. I’m here to help you be born into your new life.”

When I don’t take her offered hand up, she sighs, then reaches down and plucks me up to my feet like I weigh nothing.

“Good girl,” Mere says as she walks me over to a vanity in the corner and pushes me into the seat. “It’s time to make you beautiful.”

52

JUNE

“There,” Mere says, clapping her hands together. “You are perfect.”

I don’t look at my reflection. I’ve avoided it the whole time Mere has worked on me. Maybe because I’m afraid that I will see the fear in my eyes and then I’ll start to doubt. I’ll start to think that going back to Adrian is my only choice.

“Go on, my darling,” Mere says persistently. “You should see how gorgeous you look.”

I still don’t look. I’d spend the rest of my life not looking. But then Mere’s face does that thing where it shimmers with a new emotion, subtle and shifting. This time, anger bubbles up. She grabs my cheeks in one taloned claw and forces my eyes up to the mirror in front of me.

I barely recognize the woman staring back.

This June has eyes ringed with black eyeliner and smudged dark with mascara and smoky eyeshadow.

This June has lips that look seductively plump and glimmer with blood-red stain.

This June’s cheeks are softly pink in a permanent state of blush, hair falling in tumbled curls over her shoulders, and a dainty gold collar fastened around her neck.

This June is pretty. This June is beautiful.

But this June’s eyes are flat and dead.

Tap, tap, tap.

I flinch violently at the knocking sound. Mere floats towards the door. She opens it only an inch and sticks her head out, so I have no idea who’s outside.