The Devil's Daughter (Hidden Sins #1)(34)

She walked through the first level on silent feet, every room increasing the feeling that she’d knocked her head a little too hard yet again and the last ten years hadn’t happened—that she was still a seventeen-year-old kid staring through the bars in a cage.

Eden shook her head. It didn’t matter that not one thing—from the faded blue paint on the walls to the position of the decorative bowls on the table—had changed in the last decade. That was eerie and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t why she was here. The information she was looking for wouldn’t be downstairs. It would be up in the bedrooms.

She climbed the stairs, avoiding the squeaky one out of a habit she’d thought she was long past. The first door on the left was her mother’s room, and she slipped through, holding her breath against the familiar floral perfume that lay in the air like a distant memory. A memory that tasted both bitter and comforting, all wrapped up into a toxic present.

Just like the rest of the house, the room was identical to when she’d last been here. She stared at the bed. Somewhere around when she was thirteen and won the fight to attend public school, she’d realized that not all girls had relationships with their mother like hers and Martha’s. With Eden and her mother, there were no late-night gossip sessions or movie dates or any of the many other mother-daughter bonding activities that normal teenagers had in between hating their parents. No, all she had was Elysia and the role Martha insisted on casting her in.

Persephone.

Her throat tried to close, but she took a deep breath in through her nose, held it, and then exhaled. It took five more breaths before her heart rate dropped down to something closer to normal, and another five more before she could force herself to move past the giant four-poster bed. The bed she’d so often been tied to and lashed on as a form of punishment. Martha couldn’t take her out into the square like she sometimes did with someone who really stepped over the line, so she’d always kept those sessions private. Just her and Eden—and Abram to observe.

No matter what Eden did in rebellion, Martha maintained the fiction that she was heir to everything. That someday she’d step up and take on the mantle of leadership that was just waiting for her.

Eden snorted. Even if she’d been fool enough to believe the lies, her mother would give up power when it was pried from her cold, dead hands. She’d grown to suspect she might have suffered an unfortunate accident if she’d ever tried to actually follow her mother’s plans.

Demeter was most powerful while grieving, after all.

She went into the closet and pushed the clothing back to reveal the little panic-room door, the one she wasn’t supposed to know about. It seemed beyond impossible that this would be the same, too, but Eden plugged in the code, holding her breath. She hissed when the error message scrolled across the little screen. Damn it.

It doesn’t matter. I know where she stores the code, so I just need to get into her office alone soon and then make another trip back here and . . .

God, it seemed so impossible. She meandered through her mother’s room, but there were no state secrets hidden among the jewelry littering the top of the dresser. She hadn’t really thought there would be. Just to cover all her bases, she checked beneath the bed, and her breath rushed out at the sight of the cedar box stashed there. She knew that box, knew every groove carved into its side—and not just because it depicted the many tortures Persephone supposedly suffered at the hands of Hades. Throughout her childhood, that box coming out had signaled that Eden had once again stepped out of line. That she needed purifying. She knew exactly what that box contained—a whip, and candles, and padded cuffs that could restrain a person without leaving bruises.

It took more effort than it should have to push up to her hands and knees, the very gravity seeming to increase in an effort to keep her pinned in place. Her mind oh-so-helpfully supplied her with the memory of her shirt being ripped down her back, of the snap the whip made just before contact, the breathless moment of numbness before the pain hit. She managed to push herself up a few inches. Of the green candles with their pretty red flowers on the side, so innocent-looking despite the pain their flame inflicted. Over and over again. Her fingers dug into the thick rug, scrambling for purchase even as the past threatened to drag her under.

Move, move, move. The only other option was to lie here and wait to be found out, which wasn’t an option at all.

She staggered into the hallway, desperate to keep moving so she could get out of this nightmare. She bypassed the room that had always been hers. The thought that nothing in it had moved since she’d left, that it had stood against time as a shrine to her, was too much to bear. They probably held vigils praying for me to come back. It seems like something my mother would do.

She hated the guilt that spawned in her chest—hated it. There was absolutely nothing to feel guilty for, but logic had no place in Martha’s house.

It never had.

The next room made her hesitate, instinctive fear holding her back from pushing open the door. She gritted her teeth and turned the doorknob. The blackout blinds kept the room like some kind of vampire’s crypt—or maybe that was her opinion of Abram coloring her perspective. She had to be careful about that. She was too close to this whole thing—so close that if Britton knew, he would have yanked her back to Virginia the second the information reached him.

Except he does know, because Zach called him to check up on me.