Treasure Of Dragons, Royal Dragons Book 1 Chapter 53

Drago

We made it home in the very early morning hours, so it was still dark but dawn wasn’t far away. We had first checked into the nursery and only Isobel and the children were there, so we very much expected to find Ria asleep in our bed. However, when we reached the room, the bed was empty and looked as if it hadn’t been slept in.

The room looked different but I couldn’t put my finger on why right away. I noticed that the fireplace was lit in the sitting room, so Ria had been in here, so where was she now? That’s when I heard the shower running.

I opened the door to the bathroom but before I stepped in I saw glass all over the floor and only one light burning. I looked and every single mirror over the sinks was broken, most of them now lying in broken pieces all over the floor. I saw the base of one of the lamps casually tossed into the middle of the floor. It was missing the shade and the cord, and it looked like the bulb had also been broken along with the mirrors. 

I could still hear the water running but I didn't hear anything else. The guys were with me and were looking at the same mess I was, “There’s blood on the floor, it looks like bloody footprints.” Cole mentioned from right behind me.

I saw what he was looking at, so I rushed across the room to the shower, I had shoes on so I wasn’t worried about stepping on the glass. However, it looked like Ria very much had. As soon as I got close enough I saw her huddled on the floor of the shower. 

I rushed in and turned the water off. She was huddled on the floor still in her clothes. She had been getting ready for bed, obviously, based on the attire she was wearing. I would see the bottoms of her feet were bleeding now that the blood wasn’t being washed away by the water. For it not to have healed meant the glass was still present in her feet. 

Cole knelt down to examine the bottoms of her feet, “They are covered in glass, the whole bottoms of both feet are full of glass. I need to get all of this out, but it’s going to take a while. We probably should take her to the clinic room so I have more light and equipment.” 

I nodded and picked her wet body up and wrapped her in towels, then carried her down to the clinic room. I sat her on the bed and Cole started gathering things to clean all of the glass from her feet and pointing the very big extremely bright light so he could see all of the tiny pieces. 

I looked at her and her eyes were open but swollen and red, so it was apparent that when she was huddled there in the shower she had been crying a lot. She didn’t say anything, and I think she was just caught in whatever trauma had been triggered with everything that happened today.

After everything she had talked about in that room with the Stoicas and then in the garden with Arabella, who knew what in all of that triggered this for her? I just brushed her hair off her face and continued to run my hand through her wet hair. She didn’t even acknowledge me or what was happening. I honestly wasn’t sure she was even aware right at this second.

“Why do you think she destroyed all of the mirrors?” Cinder asked all of us.

“I need to go check something I’ll be right back,” Ash told us and we nodded in understanding.

Cole was sitting on a stool looking at the bottoms of her feet, and he was swearing quite a lot for him. Normally, Cole was pretty calm and collected, “I can’t believe how much glass she has in her feet. She must have walked over it repeatedly.” he just shook his head. 

“She got rid of all of the pictures off of the walls, and I noticed several items that were missing from the dresser and nightstand, it was pictures and picture frames. There was also a silver tray that was on the top of the dresser we had given her to put her jewelry or whatever on.” Ash told us as he came back to the room.

“So, anything reflective she got rid of, just like she got rid of the mirrors.” Cinder suddenly figured it out. 

Then it hit me, something she had said to Arabella in the garden, “Earlier when she was talking to Arabella in the garden she made the comment that every time she looked in the mirror she was forced to see how dirty and disgusting she had become.” 

I heard several of my brothers mutter “Fuck” and I wholeheartedly agreed. “We already know how derogatory she refers to herself with us, she constantly calls herself a whore or an incubator or a walking womb, it’s like she removes all humanity from herself and reduces herself to nothing but an object. Then when she was talking to the Stoicas she mentioned how much her stepfather drilled into her head that she was nothing but an object for his use. So, I guess in a way her mind keeps making the connection, that she is now back to that, she is an object not a person any longer. That she only is what we can get from her, just like with him. Most likely it’s so ingrained from all he did, that it’s just automatic for her brain to go there with the circumstances she’s in with us now.” Cole let all of that tumble out of his mouth as he continued to remove glass from her feet.

“I’m honestly not sure what we can do about that. Just keep reiterating that she’s more than that, or not that? Is there a time when what we say will overpower what he always said all the years she lived in that damn house with him? I just don’t know at this point. We’ve been unsuccessful in getting someone here she will actually talk to, so other than that what can we possibly do? We know she’s not dirty, bad, damaged, or what the fuck ever, but how do we get her to see that?” I asked out loud. 

I don’t think any of us honestly had a good answer to that. So, for right this second, we just took care of her, then we cleaned up the bathroom floor, and we decided not to put the pictures back up. Maybe it would help her if she didn’t have them for right now. We would ask her about it a bit later, after she had time to decompress from today, and we did as well. 

We would need to figure out a solution, but who knew right now, what that solution could possibly be?