I stop shaking, and peace comes over me. This is it. Kent taught me many things, and the most important one was to let go. He stripped away everything I used to keep myself together, and he replaced it with false trust. He made me put myself—my life—into his hands, and I did. Last night I couldn’t have said no to a single thing he wanted. I still can’t. He is my glue, and without him I am nothing. Just a puddle of cells and flesh.
“Attempted murder of the commander in chief. Plotting against an allied leader. Entering the territory on false pretenses. Espionage.” Kent’s voice is dead, as though he’s reading from a script. He’s right there, just a few steps to my right. There’s that familiar pause, and the guns fire. Two bodies flop to the ground.
Trust me, Bianca. Trust me. You have to, or this will never work.
Tish lets out a sob. When Tish gives up, that’s huge.
I hear the scrape of boots across asphalt. I hear them stop just behind me. I can smell him. That sweet male scent that used to make my knees weak and my pussy wet. He’s here for me.
You’re not fit to be a Barry. Those were his words.
“Conspiring to kill the commander in chief, entering the territory under false…” He trails off as his voice catches.
I’m not okay. I’ll never be okay. Now that he’s gone from me, I’m an empty hole. Without him I face year after unending year of darkness. I am already dead, but I’m a corpse that can still think. Feel. Cry. He sees this as an execution, but it’s not. It’s mercy. I sway slightly, tilt my head back to the gun I know hovers just behind me. It is permission. It is forgiveness. I close my eyes and wait.
Silence.
“Kent,” Nico prompts.
The bag is ripped from my head. Kent uses the sole of his boot to shove me face-first into the ground. I’m half on my side, though, and I can see him.
“I forgive you,” I say, my voice thin as wind. My eyes close almost to slits.
“Come on, Kent, stop dicking around,” Nico demands.
“I can’t kill you,” he says, his voice low and thick with emotion. He snorts. “You’re good; I’ll give you that. I guess I’ll have to send you back to your father. You and your sister.”
Cursing under his breath, Nico spins around and flings his weapon at another soldier. He runs his hands through his hair, almost as though he’d like to tear it out.
Tish is crying, great big gulping sobs.
I just stare at him. I was so ready for it all to end, and now he’s making me stay? I have to feel this?
“You tell your father to get ready for war. We’re coming. Then you’d better find someplace else to go, because if I see either of you again, you’re dead.”
He gets to his feet. “Nico.”
“What the fuck, Kent. They tried to kill Lawrence.”
“I’m done here. You get her—you get them both out of here. I want them gone by dinner.”
Without a backward glance, he stalks away.
Nico yanks Tish to her feet and pulls off her bag. She spits in his face, and he hauls back and punches her. Tish staggers back with a grunt.
One of the other soldiers puts a hand under my arm and helps me to my feet. My hands are still bound, and my feet burn, making walking difficult. But I follow him numbly. Obediently.
I walk into my cell unassisted. They toss Tish in behind me, and the door slams shut.
Tish latches on to me and lets loose. I’ve never heard her cry like this. “I thought I was going to die! I thought they were going to kill us.” Just like she did for me, I pull her to my chest and pat her hair. I am a corpse.
Tish catches her breath. “I was wrong about him. Kent. He’s not quite the monster I thought he was.”
I say nothing. I have nothing to say. He’s left me empty. I am flesh and muscle and teeth, but I no longer have free will. He’s taken that from me, and it’s gone forever.
Tish is wrong. Kent let me live. He is the perfect monster.
~ ~ ~
We huddle together in the corner of our cell. Tish falls asleep against my shoulder, but I can’t. I thought being raped was the worst thing that could happen to me. I thought nothing could surpass that, but I was wrong.
I shut down. In my mind I make up another day. Instead of accusing me, Kent comes into my room, scoops me up, and tells me he loves me. He makes love to me slowly, tenderly, and we fall asleep in each other’s arms.
How can this be it? He told me to trust him, so I trusted him. He never said it worked the other way; I realize that now. He never said the words I trust you, and I didn’t ask. I just assumed that because he made me feel important, made me feel treasured, he felt the same way. I did everything he told me to do, and when he’d smile, it would make my heart beat faster. A caress across the back of my hand was ecstasy. I didn’t care about the scars on his face. If anything, they made me love him more. He understood what it was to suffer. I lived for his approval; I lived because he made it bearable.
But he never said he loved me, not even once, and my pitiful vision can’t even begin to erase reality.
When the locks turn, I get to my feet. Tish comes awake and brushes back her hair—hair she no longer has—and stands up too.
I’m not surprised when the soldiers cuff us. But when Nico and Ayden saunter into the room, I tense. Why would Ayden be anywhere near me? I eye the bucket of red-hot coals she sets down beside her. Too cold for her? Or is it for something else? Coals. Burning. Kent’s scars. I shiver.
Ayden catches my eye and bares her teeth. “We have a little gift from Kent for you. I hope you don’t mind he’s not here. He doesn’t want his space polluted. But Nico and I, we don’t mind.”
Nico smirks.
“Let go of me, dick!” The soldier ignores Tish as he chains her to a ring bolted high up on the wall.
They chain me too, and as Tish struggles, I think, what’s the point? In the end they’ll win. They’ll always win.
The soldier tightens Tish’s chain.
“You can’t do this!” she snarls. “Kent said we were supposed to leave. He said you were supposed to get us out of the city.”
Ayden grins. “Oh, there’s plenty of time. Don’t worry about that.”
Nico nods at the soldiers, and they take out knives. I eye the serrated edge and go cold. A bullet to the back of the head is nothing. A knife, though… I think I’ll faint. I flick Nico a wide-eyed look. He raises his brows, looks away, and suppresses a smile. But the soldier doesn’t cut me. Instead he begins cutting away my clothes, and another older fear hits me. This can’t be happening. It can’t.
Beside me, Tish kicks and fights, and her soldier grabs her by the neck and slams her against the wall. “I’ll cut you. I promise. Make one more move and I will.”
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Bianca,” says Nico. “They’re not going to rape you. They don’t want your body any more than I do.”
“Pull the chains tighter,” Ayden says. “I want them on their tiptoes.”
My chains go taut, and my shoulders feel like they’re going to pop from their sockets.
“Face to the wall,” Nico says.
Tish swivels around and directs a kick at Nico. “Fuck you, asshole!”
I’m used to orders. Tish is not. The nameless soldier delivers a blow to her midsection and Tish grunts. The soldier places her in position while she tries to get her breath back.
I’m still watching her heave when I hear a high-pitched whistling sound, and something sharp and terrible snaps my skin. It eats into my flesh, tears me open, and I scream. Even Tish screams.
I hear another whistle, and another burning slash tears into my back. They’re using whips. As seemingly endless strikes fall, I grow incapable of thought. I become pain.
When the whistling ceases, I sag, thinking that’s it, but then I hear an object clank against something metal, and then searing, blinding pain cuts into the small of my back. I scream a scream so hard it’s purely animal.
“I’ll fucking
kill you, bitch. I’ll fucking kill you!” The pure rage in Tish’s voice just makes it worse. She can see what they’re doing; I can’t.
“Just another gift,” Ayden says against my ear. “Special delivery from your ex.”
The white-hot object moves over my skin. She’s drawing something or writing something into my skin. It goes on forever. It lasts hours. Years. Even after she steps back, the pain continues, and my muscles can no longer support me. My shoulder sockets bear my entire weight as I vomit all down the front of my chest.
And then Tish starts screaming.
I make myself look. Ayden holds a short, narrow rod. The tip glows red as she draws it across my sister’s skin. Tish is the strong one. Tish is the one who can survive anything, but she faints.
Before my sister has a chance to recover, the solder unhooks the chain and she falls to the floor. When they undo mine, I sag against the wall.
Nico flicks each of us a blanket. They fall short and land on the floor. Every movement pulls on my shattered flesh as I bend to scoop mine up. Allowing anything to touch my back is unthinkable, but I cannot—cannot—be naked in front of these people. I clutch the scratchy wool to my chest.
“Come on, whore,” Nico sneers. “It’s time for you to go.”
Tish can’t walk, and two soldiers half carry, half drag her down the hall toward the exit.
I’m blind with pain; I’m sick with humiliation. I’m unbearably hurt and sick, and I can’t be dead inside because I feel. I loved him. He said I could trust him. He said everything would be okay. He… He…
Outside are two snowmobiles. Behind each is a flatbed carrying dog crates.
Dog crates.
Dog crates.
My mind shuts down.
~ ~ ~
I am winter. I lie curled in my cage as Tish taunts the drivers. I wish I could be like her. Then again, numb is better. It’s a whole lot better than despair.
It’d be different if I hardly knew him. Pain would still be pain, but the salt of his betrayal makes it worse. Tish said not to get too close to him, but that was never possible. He stripped me of everything but love and devotion. I crossed lines meant to keep people safe from things like this. I never once wondered how he could love me when he hit me, bit me, humiliated me. In front of others he was wonderful; it was only when we were private, intimate, that he gave me pain. I thought it drew us closer. I thought he was freeing me from the past. What’s wrong with me? How could I come with him hurting me? I am sick. I am depraved, ruined. Oh God, I’m so desperately alone.
The frigid air slices my skin. It sinks into my bones before it numbs me. Anything that takes the pain away is welcome, so I don’t even bother to cover myself. Frozen wounds don’t hurt. Frozen hearts don’t beat.
When the vehicles abandon what I recognize to be the main road, I am only mildly curious.
“This isn’t the way. Hey, asshole, where are you going? Knoxville’s that way!” Tish presses so hard against the wire bars that I wonder if they’ll leave impressions in her skin.
“What is wrong with you? Do you need a map?”
The men ignore her, and the landscape grows increasingly barren. We still ride open sections between the trees, so I figure we travel over a road, that or train tracks. Someone in the old days used this, perhaps every day. But there are no tracks now. I have no idea where we are.
They stop in the middle of what could once have been a crossroads. Both men dismount.
“Last stop for you ladies,” one of them says. The men look the same to me.
One approaches Tish’s cage, unlocks it, and yanks her out. She hisses like a cat and bites him, and he smacks her to the ground, then hauls her back to her knees.
“You’re not going to Knoxville,” he snarls. “You never were.”
“Mom,” I croak, and the other one, the one not battering my sister, flicks me a glance. For a moment I think I see pity, but then his expression shuts down.
I want my mother so badly right now I imagine her here with me. She’s holding my head in her lap. She’s stroking the hair back from my face.
But I have no hair.
“What do you mean we’re not going to Knoxville?” Tish loses her defiance, and panic laces her words.
The one who smacked her sneers. “You didn’t think they’d actually let you go, did you? I guess it’s hard to kill the woman you just fucked. The colonel couldn’t manage it, so he sent us to finish the job.”
“Kent.” The final betrayal. My voice is barely a crackle. I’m on my stomach, gripping the cage with frozen fingers. The pity guy unholsters his sidearm as the first man struggles with my sister.
“Tish!” It’s not a scream. It’s a cry for mercy; it’s agony; it’s the last of my soul. But my voice is gone, and nothing comes out.
The pity guy waits for the first soldier to subdue my sister, which he does by punching her in the stomach. Tish doubles over with a grunt.
A gun goes off, and a splatter of blood hits me. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Another gunshot. I wait for the pain, but I don’t feel anything but cold. Cold.
I flick my eyes open when I hear Tish heaving, scrambling to her feet. The soldiers lay splayed on the ground with rivers of crimson staining the snow around them. I spot a half-dozen armed men, scraggly and dangerous looking, closing in on my sister. Tish scrambles to her feet and tries to run, but a guy with a man bun and a beard scoops her up and tosses her to a companion.
Tish struggles, but this time there is no profanity.
The bearded guy approaches my cage and kneels. He grips the wires of my cell. Up close he’s not that bad. Eyes of sapphire blue are framed by long lashes, and although his eyes are hard, I don’t see cruelty.
I shiver. Tish is not dead. She’s not dead. Kent hasn’t managed to kill her.
“Who are you?” he asks. I try to think.
“Don’t you touch her! Don’t you fucking touch her!” There’s my Tish.
I lay my head against the floor of the cage and cuddle the blanket. I manage to lift the corners of my lips. “My sister will always land on her feet,” I croak. “She’s strong. She’s got spirit.”
“Grit is good.” He cocks his head and eyes my wounds, my semifrozen state. He frowns.
I can’t walk, and even if those soldiers hadn’t pulled over, I don’t think I would have survived long. My fingers burn, and numbness has set in everywhere else. I can’t even feel my feet. Maybe if they’d given me socks…
I use the last of my strength to reach out and pass my hand over his. “It’s okay. It’s better this way.”
He sighs, nods sharply and gets to his feet.
“What are you doing? You can’t leave her like that. She’ll die!”
He swings my sister up over his shoulder, which is a good thing because she doesn’t have shoes either and her back is just as bad as mine. They tromp into the woods, and my sister’s cries slowly fade into the distance.
Two days ago my worst problem was feeling a little self-conscious. One day ago I was locked in my room. Today I’m going to die.
My wounds no longer hurt. I’m thankful for the cold. So thankful. In my mind I imagine antlered deer and spotted fawns grazing in a field. There’s a rabbit chewing on clover, and a medley of birdsong blesses them all. Kent holds me. He tells me he loves me, and the sun shines on my face.
It’s too bright, and it hurts my eyes. I blink. I try to speak, but I can’t. The sun goes out, and all I see is a broad smile revealing perfect white teeth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It tastes like chicken. The lukewarm broth slides down my throat, and another spoonful appears in its place. “One more. Just one more.”
I open my mouth, and in pops the spoon. I swallow. “That’s it. You did it. You took the whole bowl today.”
I blink. There’s a middle-aged man seated across the table from me. The smile he wears is anxious, and I don’t blame him. “Where am I?” I ask.
His smile is not un
kind. “You ask that same question every day. You’ve been with us several weeks.”
“How can that be?” But I feel blank. I feel missing.
The woman at the stove stirs something foul smelling. “You came to us with some pretty serious wounds. It’s time for your salve. Are you ready?”
She eyes me like I might have a fit. Weeks? Just how injured am I? I look for a window, and the movement pulls on tender spots I didn’t know I had. I grimace. “Will it hurt?”
The woman cocks her head. “Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on whether you’ve opened up your wounds.”
I allow her to lead me into a side room where she’s laid out a towel. “You’ll need to take your top off, dear.”
I gasp and my heart begins to race. I clamp the shirt to my chest.
“We haven’t hurt you yet. It’s up to you, dear.”
But I can’t, and I stand there, hesitating. The woman holds her hands out as though undressing me is an old drill. I blink at her, then raise my hands.
She lifts the long-sleeved knit shirt over my head, and I cross my arms over my breasts. She sets my top on the hope chest at the foot of the bed and gestures to the towel. “Just lie face down on that. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The towel is a faded green. Green isn’t bad. I do as she says. I turn my face to the side so I can breathe.
“Can you tell me your name?” she asks as she spreads the first of the salve over my upper back. I cringe when she presses too hard. I don’t answer but this doesn’t seem to bother her. She spreads the stink across the middle, then grabs a thick gob in her hand and traces it ever so lightly across the small of my back.
Ayden. Nico.
Kent.
I cry softly because I remember now.
The woman pats my head with her non-sticky hand. “You’ll be okay. It’s like this every day.”
The Other Brother (Snow and Ash Book 3) Page 15
