In walked Theodore Bolton, fresh from his shower, wearing a black tee that clung to his chest, loose pants slung indecently low on his lean toned waist, and golden hair dripping like he'd just murdered Apollo and stolen the sun for himself. He carried a rectangular box like it was a weapon, or worse—medicine.
His sharp eyes immediately swept the table. He stopped at the half-eaten bowl of poisoned soup. His lips twitched, not with amusement but with something far darker, as though wondering whether his little sister was dumb, suicidal, or both.
Without a word, he strode over, pressed his cold hand against her feverish forehead, and with the casual cruelty of someone manhandling a pet chicken, pried her jaws open and shoved a thermometer inside. Cassandra nearly gagged on the metal.
Do I look like some barnyard animal? She thought furiously. But then again, to a Bolton, livestock probably received better care compared to Cassandra Bolton.
"Forty degrees," Theodore muttered, mouth twisting as if mocking both her fever and her brain.
Lovely. A fever high enough to fry an egg—or worse, fry her thoughts into scrambled nonsense. And what good was a Bolton girl if she turned into a slack-jawed idiot drooling in the halls?
Before she could protest, Theodore popped a pill out of a bottle and shoved it down her throat so abruptly she nearly saw her ancestors. Choking, wheezing, tears leaking down her face, Cassandra clawed for water like a shipwrecked sailor. She coughed so hard her vision spun, only to feel herself unceremoniously hoisted into the air, slung over his arm, and tossed onto the bed like she was nothing more than laundry.
Her body bounced twice. Her dignity hit the floor and stayed there.
She lay there, dizzy, glaring at him with murder in her eyes. But she swallowed the rage like she'd swallowed that pill. She reminded herself again and again—she needed him. She couldn't strangle the bastard. Not yet.
The real question was, though—why had the House of Bolton raised her to be so helpless? Why leave her fragile in a fortress of poisoners? Unless… that was the plan all along.
"Big brother, can you stop throwing me around like a sack? I'm just a sick, weak girl, so you have to be more gentle with me," Cassandra Bolton said breathlessly, her voice weak, pathetic, and—she admitted with an internal wince—straight out of a third-rate melodrama.
She almost gagged on her own words. Did I really just say that? What's next, batting my eyelashes and fainting into his arms like a white lotus bitch? Ugh. Kill me now.
"So useless," Theodore Bolton spat coldly, as though he were swatting a fly.
Cassandra Bolton wisely chose silence. Yep. Just silence. Words got people killed in this family, and she wasn't eager to find her throat slit because she'd complained about sibling handling techniques. She could keep her thoughts. Just her thoughts. Those weren't poisonous… yet.
But her body had other ideas. Suddenly, she shivered, trembled, and clenched her jaw as heat raced through her veins. It wasn't the fever this time—it was the poison she'd willingly swallowed earlier, clashing with her pitiful antibodies like a bar brawl in a tavern where her immune system was the scrawny kid in the corner.
She had known what she was doing—poison as medicine, immunity through suffering. Unfortunately, her fragile body seemed more interested in dying dramatically than adapting. Still, this was the Bolton way: drink death, smile through it, and if you survive, congratulations—you get breakfast.
A wave of heavy fatigue overcame her after the pain slowly receded. Sleep washed over her eyes. Slowly Cassandra Bolton sat up to change into her nightclothes.
Glancing at the basket beside her bed, Cassandra realized with horror that all her nightwear was soaked in soup from her earlier coughing fit. Drenched, sticky, poisoned soup. Splendid. Just splendid.
The alternative? Sleep in her thick bathrobe. Which to Cassandra felt less like clothing and more like being slowly strangled by a fluffy python. She would rather stay awake all night hallucinating corpses in the shadows than endure that suffocating garment.
Everyone always said: sleep prepared, sleep armed, sleep clothed—your enemies could strike anytime. Cassandra disagreed. A knife in hand was useful, yes, but pajamas—or no pajamas at all—didn't slow her down. Enemies weren't going to pause mid-attack and gasp, Oh my God, she's naked! No. They'd die like the rest.
In fact, she had killed many naked people in her life. Men, women, beautiful bodies carved like marble statues. Some prettier than supermodels. None of them looked particularly glamorous with her blade through their throats, with or without clothes.
She paused. Wait. Why does that sound strange when I say it out loud?
Anyway. Pajamas or light nightgowns—that was her rule. Anything else was torture. That horrid night, long ago, when she'd been forced to sleep fully clothed, still haunted her. Suffocation disguised as modesty.
"Sleep," Theodore Bolton ordered, his face cold, his tone final, like a judge sentencing her to death.
"But my pajamas are all soaked," Cassandra blurted out without thinking.