Free Web NovelMatt was on the floor of the room, palms pressed against the dark marble, arms bent.
One pushup.
He went up.
Down.
Two.
Up.
Down.
Three.
His left arm trembled more than the right. Always the left. It was the first to give out when he got tired, the first to buckle when the weight of the body came down on him.
Four.
Matt gritted his teeth and pushed again.
Five.
He'd been doing this for two days.
Two days since he woke up. Two days since the queen told him he needed a week to recover.
And in those two days, Matt had discovered something fairly humiliating.
His body was useless.
Not weak — useless.
After four weeks of sleeping, not moving, not eating anything besides the queen's blood, his muscles had forgotten how to function.
They weren't hurting. They weren't injured. They simply weren't responding. He gave his arm an order and the arm carried it out halfway, late and with a tremor he couldn't control.
Six.
Matt felt sweat running down his forehead, his neck, his back. His white hair stuck to his cheeks. Long. Too long. Every time he lowered his head, the strands brushed the floor.
He hated it.
Matt hated the hair. Hated the trembling. Hated the body. Hated the room. Hated doing pushups on the floor of the queen's bedroom like an animal learning to walk again.
But above everything else, in that exact moment, there was one thing he hated more than all the others combined.
"Seven."
Matt closed his eyes.
The voice came from the bed. Calm. Soft. Friendly.
"Eight."
Matt pushed again, trying to ignore it.
"Nine."
He couldn't.
"Stop counting," Matt said, annoyed.
But the queen ignored him.
"Ten."
Matt raised his body, lowered, and came back up.
"Eleven."
"I told you to stop counting."
"Twelve."
Matt turned his head just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye without losing his balance.
The queen was reclining on her side on the enormous bed, head resting on one hand, elbow sunk into a pillow. Her legs were stretched out, bare feet crossed at the ankles, her expression as relaxed as it had been for two days.
The queen was watching Matt.
Watching him with complete attention, no distractions, the look she got when something genuinely interested her.
And Matt was very little interested in what interested the queen.
"Thirteen," she said.
Matt gritted his teeth.
"Fourteen."
Matt went up.
"Fifteen."
Matt went down.
"You're doing better than yesterday," the queen commented, in an almost proud tone. "Yesterday your arms gave out before ten. Today you're already at fifteen."
"I don't need you to count."
"But I want to."
"I don't want you to count."
"Sixteen."
Matt felt his left arm give out suddenly.
His body dropped and his face nearly hit the floor. Matt shot his left hand out at the last second and caught himself on his side, breathing hard.
'Damn.'
He had lost focus.
And he had lost focus because of her.
Matt stayed like that for a few seconds, propped on one arm, chest rising and falling. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose onto the marble.
From somewhere inside his head, a loud voice appeared.
"Teacher! Teacher, I'll help you count! I'm really good with numbers! One, two, three, four—!"
'No.'
"But—!"
'No.'
"…Okay."
Her voice came out low, in that tone she used whenever she was told off. Matt imagined her curling up in a corner of the mental world, and for an instant felt something close to guilt.
Just an instant.
Then the other voice spoke, quieter.
"Rest a little, Matt. You're too worked up."
'I know.'
Noxx didn't push further — she knew that would only irritate him more.
Matt pushed himself up to a sitting position on the floor, legs crossed, hands on his knees. His heart was beating fast. Too fast for fifteen miserable pushups.
Before, he could do hundreds without breaking a sweat, but now fifteen left him breathless.
Matt wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and looked up at the bed.
The queen was still watching him.
She wasn't reading. Wasn't drinking. Wasn't doing anything at all. She was just there, reclining, observing him with that quiet half-smile Matt had learned to hate over the years.
"Don't you seriously have anything better to do?"
The queen blinked, slightly surprised.
"Better than what?"
"Than watching me exercise."
The queen considered it, or pretended to. With her, Matt was never quite sure.
"No," she said at last. "Right now, I don't."
Matt narrowed his eyes.
"You're a queen."
"Yes."
"You have an entire kingdom."
"Mm-hm."
"You have nobles, houses, clans, affairs, politics, wars, problems." Matt made a vague gesture with his hand toward the door. "You have things to do. Important things. Things that aren't me."
The queen smiled a little more.
"I freed myself from all of that."
Matt went still — completely caught off guard by that.
"What?"
"Temporarily," she clarified, as if it were a minor detail. "I left the kingdom to Iris. The council matters, the house disputes, the daily irritations. All of it. Iris will handle that for now."
Matt stared at her in disbelief.
"You left the kingdom to Iris?"
"Yes."
"To that slacker?"
"Yes, to that slacker."
"Why?"
The queen shifted slightly. She settled better on the pillow without looking away from him for a second.
"Because I want to be free to focus on what truly matters," she said. "The recovery of my dear son."
Something inside Matt twisted.
It wasn't rage — rage was already installed as a base that everything else rested on.
It was something else.
It was that word.
Son.
Dear son.
Matt felt his empty stomach turn, and not from hunger.
"Don't call me that."
"Call you what?"
"Son."
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The queen tilted her head.
"But you are one."
"I'm not."
"To me you are."
"I don't care what I am to you."
The queen didn't take offense. She never took offense. That was one of the most unbearable things about her. Matt could say whatever he wanted, could insult her, could spit every word with all the hatred he had inside him, and she'd stay there, calm, smiling, receiving it all as if Matt were saying something tender.
"I'd like a little privacy," said Matt, lowering his voice.
The queen let out a small laugh.
"No."
Matt frowned.
"I'm not asking for permission to escape. I'm asking you to let me exercise without watching me like I'm an animal in a cage."
"I know what you're asking."
"And?"
"And no."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to."
Matt clenched his jaw.
That was another unbearable thing about her.
The queen didn't need to justify herself. She didn't owe anyone explanations. When she didn't want to do something, she simply didn't, and when she wanted to do something, she did. Her will was the only law she respected.
Matt put his hands back on the floor and got into position for another set of pushups.
But before he went down, he stopped.
There was something that didn't add up.
Something he'd been noticing for two days without fully processing.
"Why are you so attached to me now?"
The queen raised an eyebrow.
"Attached?"
"You weren't like this before."
"Like what?"
Matt searched for the words, but they didn't come out cleanly.
"Before you monitored me. Corrected me. Forced me to do things. But you didn't… weren't on top of me all the time. You didn't watch me while I slept. You didn't count my pushups. You didn't stay in the same room with me for days doing nothing but observing me."
The queen listened until the end. She didn't interrupt once. And when Matt finished, she responded with the same calm as always.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Matt blinked.
"What?"
"I was separated from my dear son for a long time," said the queen. "And when you finally came out, you were so weak you slept for four weeks straight."
The queen paused briefly while adjusting her hair.
"Isn't it natural for a mother to want to be close to her son after something like that?"
Matt felt revulsion climbing up his throat.
"Stop talking to me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm actually your son. It's unpleasant."
"And how would you like me to treat you?"
Matt went still.
The question caught him off guard. Not because of its content, but because the queen asked it at all.
The queen didn't ask things like that.
The queen decided how things were going to be and then waited for everyone else to adjust.
She didn't consult. Didn't negotiate. Didn't ask anyone how they wanted to be treated — much less Matt.
Matt looked at her for a full second, trying to figure out if it was a trap.
Probably it was.
With her, almost everything was.
"I'd like you to be very far away from me."
The silence settled over the room.
The queen looked at him. Her red eyes glowed softly in the dimness of the room.
And then she laughed.
Not loudly. It was a low, soft laugh that barely moved her shoulders.
"I refuse."
Matt exhaled through his nose.
"I knew you'd say that…"
"But I warn you of one thing." The queen sat up slightly on the pillow. Her smile changed. Not bigger, but more dangerous. "If you keep up that attitude, you're not going to leave me any other choice."
Matt narrowed his eyes.
"What attitude?"
"The one of constantly saying you don't want to be near me." The queen rested her chin on her hand. "If you keep at it, I'm going to have to show you how much I care about you. I'm going to have to give you a lot of love. I'm going to hug you. I'm going to cover you in kisses until you learn to accept it."
Matt felt his stomach turn again.
His face twisted into an expression of complete disgust. He couldn't stop it. He didn't try to stop it. All the revulsion he felt shot to his face at once.
"Don't do that."
"No?"
"No."
"Then stop saying you don't want to be near me." The queen smiled with a sweetness that gave Matt chills. "Every time you say it, I'm going to get closer. Every time you push me away, I'm going to care about you more. So you decide, dear son. You can keep pushing me, and I'll keep hugging you. Or you can stay calm, and I'll stay calm. Which do you prefer?"
Matt looked at her in silence, understanding that he had fallen into her game again. That whatever he said she'd use against him.
If he protested, she'd hug him. If he insulted her, she'd hug him. If he asked her to leave, she'd hug him.
There was no answer that would get him out of it.
There were only answers that made his situation worse and answers that kept it the same.
So Matt didn't respond.
He let out a long, heavy, frustrated sigh, and put his hands back on the floor.
"Don't you have anything to say?" the queen asked.
"I'm training."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
The queen laughed again, satisfied, and lay back down on the pillow.
"Fine," she said. "Keep going. I'll be counting."
Matt lowered his body.
One pushup.
The queen counted.
"One."
Matt gritted his teeth and continued.
◇◆◇
Matt had been on the floor for a while when someone knocked at the door.
The queen sat up.
"Stay here," she said, though it was an unnecessary order. Matt wasn't in any shape to go anywhere.
The queen got up from the bed with a fluid movement. She smoothed her white dress with one hand, walked to the door, and opened it just slightly — enough to look out, not enough for anyone to see inside.
Matt couldn't see who was on the other side, but he could hear.
"My queen," said a woman's voice in a nervous tone. "I brought what you requested."
"Thank you. Leave it, I'll take it from here."
"Are you sure, my queen? I can come in and—"
"I'm sure."
The queen's tone didn't change. Still friendly, still calm. But the maid on the other side must have understood something in it, because her response came immediately.
"Of course, my queen. Forgive me."
Matt heard the sound of wheels. Something being pushed slowly through the gap in the door. The queen pulled it the rest of the way in herself, and the maid never saw the inside of the room.
"Have a good day," said the queen.
"Likewise, my queen."
The queen closed the door, and Matt — still holding onto the edge of the dresser — saw what she had brought into the room.
It was a cart on wheels.
One of those low service trolleys, two-tiered. And on top of it, stacked with careful order, were boxes.
Pizza boxes, paper bags with a burger, and capped drinks.
Matt stared.
At first he didn't understand why it caught his attention so much. It was food. The queen had asked him before whether he wanted a burger or pizza, and even though he hadn't answered, it was clear she'd decided for him.
But then he saw it.
The logos.
On one of the pizza boxes there was a logo.
A red circle with the silhouette of a chef and curved lettering beneath it.
Matt knew that logo.
Knew it perfectly.
It was from the pizzeria two blocks from his house — the one that stayed open late, the one he went to on Sundays when he didn't feel like cooking and his mother was tired.
And on one of the paper bags, printed on the side, was another logo.
A burger with two drawn eyes and a smile.
Matt knew that one too.
It was from the burger place near the café where he worked.
The one with the sticky tables and the broken air conditioning.
The one he'd go to after long shifts, when his maid uniform and the embarrassment no longer mattered and he just wanted something greasy before going home.
These were his favorite places to eat. The specific ones. The exact ones. The ones he went to regularly.
Matt felt his mouth go dry.
'How…?'
The question appeared before he could stop it.
How did the queen know where he ate?
How did she know about the pizzeria in his neighborhood?
How did she know about the burger place near his work?
Those weren't famous restaurants. They weren't international chains anyone would recognize. They were small, local businesses, hidden in an ordinary neighborhood in a world the queen shouldn't even be able to point to on a map.
And yet there they were. On a cart. In her room. In the castle.
Matt felt a cold climb up his spine that had nothing to do with the sweat.
'How much does she know about me?'
That was the real question.
Because if she knew where he ate, what else did she know?
Did she know what time he left home?
Which routes he took?
How many times a week he visited each place, what he ordered, who he sat with?
How long had she been watching him during those months when he thought he was free, thought he had escaped, thought he had a normal life with a ridiculous job and a uniform with cat ears?
Matt tightened his grip on the edge of the dresser.
The queen had been watching him the whole time.
Or someone had been doing it for her.
"Time to rest," said the queen.
Matt looked up.
The queen was pushing the cart toward the center of the room, toward a clear space near the reinforced window.
She did it with absolute ease, as if bringing food from the human world into a vampire castle were the most normal thing imaginable.
"You've trained enough for today," she continued. "Now it's time to eat."
Matt didn't move.
"I'm not hungry."
It was a lie.
It was such a large lie that even he didn't believe it.
He was hungry.
He had a hunger gnawing at his empty stomach for hours, a hunger that had gotten worse the exact moment the smell of the food reached him.
It smelled like toasted bread. Like meat. Like melted cheese. It smelled like everything his exhausted body was screaming for.
But he wasn't going to give the queen the satisfaction of accepting.
The queen looked at him. And from his expression, she knew immediately he was lying.
"Don't be a bad son," she said, in an almost sweet tone. "Listen to your mother."
"You're not my mother."
"Eat something."
"I said I'm not hungry."
The queen sighed. It was a soft, patient sigh, the sigh of someone who had had this conversation a thousand times and knew exactly how it was going to end.
"Matt." Her voice dropped slightly. Got firmer. "I can make you eat the easy way or the hard way. If I have to use force, I will. And believe me, you don't want me to feed you with my own hands again."
Matt went still.
The memory came on its own.
The blonde had told him about it.
The queen pushing blood into his mouth with her finger while he slept.
The queen feeding him like a baby who couldn't do it on his own.
The mere thought of going through that again made him feel sick.
Matt clicked his tongue.
"Tch."
Matt let go of the dresser and took a step toward the cart. His legs trembled. He took another step, grabbed the back of one of the chairs, and slowly, with considerable difficulty, lowered himself into the seat.
His body felt heavy sitting down. The muscles were grateful for the rest, even if his pride wasn't.
Matt looked at the table.
It was small.
Too small.
It was one of those round, low tables, barely larger than a tray, with just enough room for two plates and two glasses.
And it had two chairs.
Two.
Facing each other, but so close they were almost touching, because the table didn't allow for any more distance than that.
Matt understood the problem a second before it became real.
The queen sat in the other chair.
And when she sat, her leg was against Matt's leg. Her shoulder against his shoulder. Her arm brushing his arm.
They were pressed together.
Completely pressed together.
Matt tensed and tried to shift away, but there was nowhere to go. If he moved to one side, he'd fall. If he moved backward, he'd be away from the table.
The only viable position was that one, with the queen pressed against his side, so close he could feel the warmth coming off her.
"I'm sweaty," said Matt.
"I know."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"No."
"It should."
"Well, it doesn't."
The queen said it without moving so much as a centimeter.
If anything, she moved slightly closer, resting her elbow on the edge of the table and turning toward him.
The queen's white hair brushed Matt's shoulder. Her perfume, soft and clean, mixed with the smell of Matt's sweat and the smell of the food on the table.
Matt gritted his teeth and looked straight ahead, trying to ignore everything on his left side.
The queen opened one of the boxes.
"Pizza or burger?"
Matt didn't answer right away.
Part of him wanted to say neither. That he wasn't going to eat. That he'd rather go hungry than accept anything from her.
But that part was small. And the hunger was big. And the smell was unbearable. And his body needed food to recover, and recovering was the only thing that was going to get him out of this room, this castle, and this woman.
So Matt swallowed, and answered quietly, almost reluctantly.
"…Burger."
The queen smiled.
She took one of the paper bags, opened it, pulled out a burger wrapped in wax paper, and set it in front of him. She unwrapped it carefully, slowly, leaving the burger exposed on the open paper.
Matt looked at it and felt the cold from before return, stronger.
Because it wasn't just any burger. freёwebnoѵel.com
It had a double patty. Melted cheddar, a lot of it, too much, exactly the way he liked it. Crispy bacon. Caramelized onions. No tomato. No lettuce. No pickles. Nothing green. None of the things he always asked to have left out.
It was exactly the burger he ordered.
Not similar.
Exact.
Matt felt terror.
It wasn't a word he used often. It wasn't a feeling he admitted easily. But that was what he felt looking at that burger.
Cold, quiet terror, settled at the bottom of his stomach.
Because the food wasn't the problem.
The problem was what the food meant.
The queen knew where he ate. Knew what he ate. Knew how he ate it. Knew what he had removed and what he had added to a simple burger from a random place in his neighborhood.
She knew things that not even Clara, who worked with him every day, had bothered to learn.
She had studied him.
Had studied him for months.
Every preference. Every habit. Every small, insignificant detail of his human life — that life he thought was private, that life he thought was his — had been watched, noted, and saved by the queen for an exact moment like this one.
To sit him in a small chair, pressed against her, and put a perfect burger in front of him.
Matt clenched his fists under the table.
"Don't you like it?" asked the queen.
Matt didn't look at her.
"…It's decent."
"I thought you'd love it. It's your favorite, isn't it?"
Matt didn't respond.
The queen smiled a little more and began eating her own slice of pizza, calm, in silence, without pushing him further.
She didn't need to push.
She'd already made everything she needed to make clear perfectly clear.
Matt looked down at the burger.
The hunger was still there. Stronger than the terror. Stronger than the disgust. Stronger than the pride.
So he picked it up with both hands — because with one his trembling was too bad — and took a bite.
It was warm.
It was good.
It was exactly as he remembered.
And that made him feel worse.
Matt chewed in silence, staring at the table, with the queen pressed against his side eating her pizza as if they were a normal family sitting down to a meal. Without talking. Without looking at each other. Just eating.
And as he swallowed bite after bite of that perfect burger that a woman who knew him too well had sent to fetch from another world, Matt reached a conclusion.
One that had circled his head before — in the cave, in the mental world, in every conversation with Noxx.
But that now, sitting there, pressed against the queen, eating from her hand without being able to stop it, became clearer than it had ever been.
Matt wasn't going to be able to fool her.
Not someone who knew even how he liked his burger.
Sooner or later, the queen would notice the difference. Would realize something didn't fit. Would see that the Matt in front of her wasn't the usual Matt.
And when that happened, the whole plan would fall apart, and his family would be in danger again.
There was really only one option left.
Only one way to get out of there for good.
Matt took another bite of the burger, chewed slowly, and thought, with a calm that frightened him a little:
'I'm going to have to kill her.'
He swallowed.
'Her.'
He glanced sideways at the queen, eating beside him, suspecting nothing.
'And Iris.'
But for some reason, part of him was already starting to resist that idea.
