Chapter 3
"Why are you dragging your feet? Haven't you eaten?" Hazel barked.
She marched over and slammed the laundry stick across my back.
Smack! My shirt tore, and a red welt appeared in a flash.
I gritted my teeth so hard that it felt like they might crack, my eyes burning with unshed tears, but not a single drop fell.
I'd endured wounds far worse than this on the battlefield.
Back then, I had a thousand homes to protect behind me, and Rhett in my heart.
Now, all that remained was a bottomless abyss at my back, and inside, nothing but emptiness.
"Lady Katherine is here," a shrill voice announced from the doorway.
Hazel dropped the stick immediately, her face plastered with sycophantic eagerness as she hurried to greet her.
"Oh, Lady Katherine, how could you lower yourself to visit such a filthy place?" Hazel gushed, her voice dripping with flattery.
Katherine swept in, wrapped in a blazing fox fur, flanked by a crowd of attendants.
She pressed a delicate embroidered handkerchief to her nose and mouth, her expression openly disgusted.
Her gaze finally landed on me. "Isabella, what happened to you? Look at yourself."
She walked right up to me, her tone laced with the kind of pity a cat showed a mouse.
"Look at your hands. They're all torn up. It hurts me so much to see you like this," she said.
I stopped what I was doing and gave her a cold stare. "There's no one else here, Katherine. Drop the act."
Katherine's fake smile froze, then twisted into something cold and sinister.
She crouched down, leaned in close to my ear, and spoke in a low voice only the two of us could hear, each word slow and deliberate.
She whispered, "Yeah, I'm not pretending anymore.
"Feeling sorry for yourself, Isabella? Think Rhett's blind to everything?"
She snickered, her voice dripping with wicked satisfaction. "Want to know a secret? I took his sight."
I snapped my head up, fixing her with a fierce, unblinking stare.
Katherine smirked, "Back on the battlefield, I slipped some poison into his suoup every day.
"The dose was tiny, not enough to kill him, but enough to make sure he'd live in darkness forever.
"As long as he can't see, the truth is whatever I say it is.
"If I said you tried to harm me, he'd ruin you without a second thought."
She reached out and dug her nails into the wound on my wrist.
"How does it feel to be destroyed by the one you love most? Isn't it soul-crushing?" she taunted.
I was shaking with rage, so mad that I could've ripped her throat out with my teeth.
"Katherine, you psycho. He trusts you," I spat.
"Trust?" Katherine scoffed, her grin stretching even wider. "He's always been suspicious.
"He never trusts anyone. He only believes his own judgment, and I'm his eyes and ears."
She shoved me, and I fell headfirst into the basin of bloody water.
"Hazel, it looks like Isabella's still not busy enough," Katherine said.
She stood up, regaining her poised, aristocratic air.
"When she's finished with these clothes, have her scrub every inch of the laundry room floor with her bare hands," Katherine commanded.
She turned to leave, but stopped at the doorway.
She added, "By the way, the King said he doesn't want to hear a single word about Isabella again.
"From today onward, she's dead to everyone."
The door to the monastery slammed shut behind her.
Hazel strode over, her face twisted in a cruel grin, and raised the laundry stick once more.
"Did you hear that? The dead don't deserve any rest," she shouted.
That night, I knelt on the freezing stone floor, dragging myself across the grime with my ruined elbows, inch by inch.
Blood was smeared behind me in long, snaking trails.
It felt like a wound that would never close.
Not only were Rhett's eyes blind.
Even his heart was blinded, too.
On the third day, snow started drifting down from a heavy gray sky.
The well in the monastery was crusted with a thin layer of ice. Whenever I plunged my elbows in, it felt like a thousand steel needles piercing right through to the bone.
My hands were swollen beyond recognition, the wounds bleached pale and oozing pus after soaking in filthy water.
"Hurry up! If anything happens to this robe, you're dead meat," Hazel snapped.
She sat off to the side, warming her hands by the fireplace, cracking snacks and spitting curses nonstop.
I kept my head down, scrubbing away at the fancy robe, my mind numb, going through the motions.
It was Rhett's garment.
Once, I used to dress him in armor and tie his robes for him.
Now, I was like a criminal, kneeling in dirty water, scrubbing out the sweat he once left behind.
I coughed constantly, my breath catching in the icy air.
A stabbing pain exploded in my chest, forcing me into a fit of harsh, uncontrollable coughs.
It was the old arrow wound I got shielding Rhett. In this merciless winter, it had finally come back to torment me.
"You dare cough your filth onto His Majesty's robe," Hazel shrieked.
She stormed over and kicked me hard in the chest.
I was sent flying, my back slamming into the stone wall.
A mouthful of blood spurted from my mouth, staining the white snow with crimson.
"Wanna die, don't you?" Hazel barked.
She was relentless, grabbing the laundry stick and beating me mercilessly, swinging at me from every angle.
"Do you think you can slack off? Think you can play dead?" she snarled.
I curled up in the corner, using my crippled arms to shield my head and face.
The stick landed with heavy, dull thuds, each blow bone-shattering, as if she was trying to break me apart.