“It’s already done. Lower your gun, son. If I’m dead, you’ll never find her.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t draw a breath, yet I couldn’t stop the violent push and pulls of my lungs as I tried. I hadn’t protected her. I hadn’t fucking protected her, and now he had her. I knew what my father was capable of; I knew what he saw when he looked at my wife, but I’d ignored it. For months, I’d ignored it and now? Now she was gone.
Gone.
“So help me God, if you’ve touched her.”
“What, Elias? What will the great King of GRIT do if I’ve touched his precious harlot?”
“I’ll make you wish you’d never laid eyes on Trixie, or Abigail.”
“Is that so?” I nodded. I had no doubt I’d kill him. I’d kill him with my bare hands, drain every ounce of blood one drip at a time. I’d make him burn from the inside out. “I’m bored of this conversation, son. It’s time I took my kingdom back.”
The second gunshot of the night made me howl like a wolf. It made me scream as sweat sprung to the surface of my skin and soaked into my shirt. I suffocated in the soft cotton. I drowned in heat and sweat and guilt. I fell to the ground clutching my knee as blood seeped between my fingers, and my head grew light. Through blurred vision of the tears in my eyes, I saw my father stand over me. Through the muted sound of my blood roaring in my ears as I panicked and my heart beat faster, cursing the whole in my leg, I heard my father talk to someone. Who was here with him? Who else did I need to kill? Who else did I have to fight to stay alive? Who else did Trixie have to battle against to keep her life?
I tried fighting back when a dark figure loomed over me, and another. I laughed through the pain. They knew I was about to go nuclear…once I could get my body to co-operate and stop bleeding all over the place. They needed three of them. Three monsters to deal with the beast inside me.
I growled. I roared and screamed and slipped out of consciousness for a second when one of them doused my leg in something that made the fucking earth burn beneath me. I was no longer body and fight. I was blood and ash burning an inferno. I wanted to cut it off. I would have hacked at the leg and just taken it clean off if I could have, but the agony had distracted me. It had given them a window of opportunity. Hands covered my shoulders and pinned me to the ground as a wet rag covered my mouth. Closing my eyes, I held my breath against the chemical tingle that spread from my lips outwards, until I swear it could have knocked me out through ear-ingestion. I fought my body’s instinctual urge to inhale, to breathe and survive. I held my breath until my body convulsed with the physical fight not to asphyxiate myself. It was no good. If I held my breath, I was dead. If I breathed in the chemical that had now turned my lips numb, I’d be disarmed. It didn’t matter which option I chose, it was over.
I opened my mouth and took a large lungful of chloroform. I didn’t know what they had planned, these monsters who were about to make the biggest mistake of their lives, but I would go out with control. I would decide when I allowed them to knock me out…and I would wake up ready to tear them all limb from limb if they hurt one fucking hair on my Ashford’s head.
The fog moved in, bringing a cloud of white to coat my vision. My chest relaxed until deep inhales and soft exhales were all I was capable of. My mind fizzed, bubbles of resilience popping like the remnants of champagne in my blood. And my blood…it turned to sludge, no longer racing in panic and adrenaline. It slinked through my veins, oxidising cells and keeping me alive, but it weighted me down. It kept me pinned in place with its heaviness. It brought lethargy to smother me and, finally, my vision slipped, my mind shut down and I disappeared.
Heaviness. Artificial, fabricated heaviness. Itchiness around my legs, tightness around my waist. My entire body was swathed in something heavy and uncomfortable and alien. It smelled like dust and history. It felt like a punishment. It reminded me of something, I just didn’t know what.
I didn’t know what the time was. I didn’t know what day it was. I didn’t know where I was.
I didn’t know who I was.
“Ashford…”
I purred and shifted in my heavy outfit. I loved it when he called me Ashford. I’d hated it once, because I thought he said it out of disrespect. I’d thought he uttered my last name in disdain, as a reminder that I was not, and never would be, as powerful as him.
Children.
Captivity.
Contracted destinies.
A conversation pinged in my mind, bringing a gentle fizzle of remembrance with them, but I didn’t know why. Something knocked faintly on my palace of mental peace, and I shook my head. No, I wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t remember why, but I wouldn’t leave.
I’d been here before; I remembered the smell. I remembered the cool air, and the rhythmic tap, tap, tap, of condensation, and leaks in an underground fort. An underground fort…why did it feel like the place I called home?
“Ashford…”
I shook my head again. No. I didn’t like to be called by my last name. It reminded me I was weak against him. It reminded me I had no power, no say. It made me remember who I was, and I didn’t want to remember. I just wanted to forget. I just wanted to sleep…
“Ashford.”
I growled. My mind wasn’t present, but my body was. I felt the cold tremors as another pale of water splashed my skin and soaked into my flesh. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to deal with Elias’ promise to break me, by shutting him out and staying inside my own mind.
“Ashford…”
Another splash of water and I woke up, gasping for air, drawing more and more wet oxygen into my lungs. I remembered now…the dinner. Ruby. My parents.
Ruby wanted me to be queen. She’d chosen me to stand beside the man I’d fallen in love with, and wanted me to run an empire that meant more to her than her only granddaughter’s life.
My life.
She wanted to kill me. She’d threatened to, if I didn’t agree to do whatever it was Elias did, and believe in GRIT without question.
Why would I believe in something without questioning it? I wouldn’t agree to sign my life over to Ruby Ashford.
You don’t have to.
She’d taken it. I hadn’t known that when I refused to acknowledge my existence during my first three days in the dungeon, but now it made sense. She didn’t mind killing me—she would have plunged the dagger in herself—because she had girls on standby. How many women had she chosen before me? How many women had she sent to Elias’ fuck pad, hoping they’d be the one he latched onto and dragged onto the throne of Hell beside him?
No.
It hurt too much. Switch it off, Ashford.
They’d paid for me. They’d bargained for ownership of my life. And now I was…where was I?
I opened my eyes. I saw nothing but darkness; nothing but the black world I lived in. I heard nothing but a whistle of air from a draught in the brickwork. I felt nothing but the heavy itch on every inch of my body. What was this? I ran my hands down my stomach, feeling rough lace beneath cold fingers. I slid my hands over my shoulders and felt airy balls of constricting material over my shoulders. I kicked out; the bottom of my fabric prison fanned out, catching air and billowing a breeze up my legs to stab me with goosebumps, before plummeting to my feet, helpless beneath its own weight.
“Ashford…”
“Go away!”
I couldn’t bear to hear his voice…the man who had received the gift of my hand over twenty years ago. His voice was still smooth like whisky, scratchy with dehydration and thirst. He still captivated me, making me aware of every cell in my body when he called my name, but it was different. He sounded pained, tortured, agonised.
Shut it off, Ashford. He owns you.
No. I owned me. They may have had the first twenty-five years of my life, but I would kill them and take control of the next twenty-five years of existence.
“Blackwood.”
My voice was not so desperate. It wasn’t so needy, tragic, pained
. I just said his name…but I felt nothing when I said it. He’d taken control of my life. How could I forgive him for that?
He exhaled in relief.
“I can’t see you.”
“I know.”
I couldn’t see him, either. Where were we?
“Come here.”
Two words. A fucking command I wanted to disobey. My body, my heart, my soul had different motives, the magnet jolting back to life and telling me exactly where he was. In the other corner. I could go to him…he was too far away to reach out to, but I had legs. I was a woman in control, and I would go to my husband, no matter how much I hated him. I would take comfort from his embrace, and punish him with my departure later. I didn’t respond to him; I forced my prison to move with me as I got from sitting to kneeling, and attempted to stand. Before my back could straighten and fully extend my body, something snapped tight against my neck and pulled me back to the ground. I yelped and gripped my throat, feeling the coolness of a metal cuff around my neck. It was smooth to the touch, warmed by my body heat, but it was unwelcome. I caressed it, feeling the first link of a chain at the back. I was chained to the wall like a dog.
“I’m chained up, too,” Elias said, his voice a whisper that threatened to trigger my own undoing.
“Are you in the dress?”
“What?”
“I’m wearing a dress and it isn’t mine. It’s heavy and thick and…”
“Does your back hurt?” he interrupted, rage flaring into his voice.
All I could do was hear him, and feel his presence. All I could do was focus on the pain in his voice and allow it to manipulate my emotions.
“I…”
I sat back against the wall to test my body. Pain roared into my flesh, cursing me for moving, punishing me for waking up…despising me for being alive.
“Trixie, stop!”
I cried over and over. He’d brought awareness to the burning sting all over my back. I couldn’t switch it off. I wanted the marble palace to let me in, to numb me to this pain. It brought me to my knees—literally—and I threw myself away from the wall to curl up on the floor.
“Baby, stay still.”
“What did they do?” I sobbed into the gap between my thighs. “What have they done?”
“Ambrose.”
“Your father.” I gasped as memories filled me. The stench of blood joined the lingering scent of sandalwood and ginger. The sharp nick of bone penetrated the dress. The lumps of brain splattered my face. “He killed Mae. He killed her!”
He was going to kill us. God, he was going to kill us.
“Shh,” Elias whispered. “He can’t come back until I’ve figured this out.”
“Are you chained up, too?”
I felt his devastation. His own father had taken him captive, just like he’d killed his own sister-in-law and stolen his only son’s wife, impaling her back with…
“He’s sewn the dress on.”
“Trixie…”
I panicked. I screamed and screamed and sobbed and sobbed, until tears and snot and sweat streamed from me, and I threw myself back against the wall to loosen the stitching. He hadn’t just dressed me in something that made me feel like a stranger in my own body…he’d made sure I would never escape this new role.
“It’s okay.” Elias tried to comfort me beyond my sobs, but I couldn’t control them. “Ashford, it’s going to be okay.”
“Stop it!” I screamed, fisting my hair and pulling until the burn in my scalp matched my back. “Stop, stop, stop! I need to go. Help me! Someone, help!”
“Listen to your husband, harlot.”
Ambrose’s psychotic voice seeped through the cracks in the door and I whipped my head to the side to try and see him. Then I looked back to Elias as his father opened the door and granted us a second of light. Elias stared back at me, ever my warrior, until Ambrose sheathed us in darkness once more.
“Shall we have a little light in here?” he asked.
He struck a match and lit a torch on the wall, filling the cell with orange warmth that made me choke on a sob all over again. Elias was sick. He tried to hide it by hooding his eyes with his monumental stoic expression, but he couldn’t hide from me. His left leg was extended out on the floor and I saw the shadow of a rip in his trousers. He had a cuff around his neck, his back to the wall, his hand fisting the chain from an earlier fight to remove it. He’d grown tired and now his arm hung limp. He was shaking. Quivers tore through him and a feverish sweat spread over his body, dripped from his hair, lined his top lip and trickled from his brow to his temple. His eyes…they no longer held the light of a hundred Eli’s. They held the agony of one Elias, sunken and rimmed with sickness and exhaustion.
“What have you done to him?” I reared up on my knees, tugged on the chain and tried to stand. I fought against the choke, the shortness of breath, the power of my lead, but I didn’t give up. “What did you do?”
“It’s nothing a course of antibiotics won’t fix,” he said, shrugging as he took a step closer to me. “Did you know antibiotics were discovered in the 1920’s?”
“Yes.” I answered his question, but kept my eyes on Elias. He was dying. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Septicaemia.”
“No!”
“We can fix him…I’m just waiting for him to get a little better acquainted with death first. Watch this.” Ambrose crossed the cell and gripped a handful of Elias’ hair. My husband snarled, his lip curling back like a predator. Ambrose punched him square in the jaw, snapping his head back against the wall.
Elias lost consciousness and I cried out. I reached for him, knowing I wouldn’t touch him. What could I do? I was helpless to save him.
“You’re sick,” I spat, finally looking at my uncle when he returned to stand in front of me, leaving his son in a huddle on the floor. “Why are you doing this?”
“Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotics. He noticed the production of natural mould—penicillin—had killed some bacteria he’d left a petri dish.”
“I know this. What’s your point?” I pointed to Elias. “Fix him with them!”
“Oh, I can. And I will…but I want you to do something for me first.”
"What do you want me to do?"
I hadn't answered him right away; I'd spent a minute looking at Elias, wondering if there was anything I wouldn't do to save him. His life relied on me. If I didn't obey Ambrose, Elias would die, and both of our lives would be over. The clink of the chain made me jump, when Ambrose freed it from the wall and wrapped the end around his fist.
"Crawl to him, harlot."
I did. Ignoring the excruciating burn from the holes in my back, I crawled across the cell to where my lifeless husband lay bleeding. The second I was in touching distance, I threw myself at him, ignoring the choking hold of the cuff around my neck and the sting as the obsidian necklace Elias had given me cut into my skin. I cupped his face, dragging him to a sitting position from where he had slumped forward, and smacked his cheek.
"Baby," I cried, stroking sweat-matted hair away from his forehead. "Baby, wake up."
His head lolled forward, his chin resting on his chest, and he groaned.
"Find the bullet." Ambrose tugged on the chain, wrenching me away from my dying husband.
"What?"
"Stick your filthy fingers into the hole and take the bullet out."
"Why?" I scrambled backwards, but Ambrose tightened the chain and held me in place. "What if it makes him bleed more? What if it hurts him? What if it kills him, Ambrose?"
He smacked the back of my head, shunting me sideways. Punishment for speaking his name. I shook my head to get rid of the pain, and looked once more at Master Blackwood. I'd never seen him look weak. I'd never seen him in less than anything but complete control. Now he was helpless. He was dying. He was vulnerable, out of control, and he couldn't fight for his life. I had to do it for both of us.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to his contorted face as he
began to come around from the knockout. "I'm so sorry."
Pinching my thumb and forefinger together, I pried the wound open and sunk my fingers inside the hole. Fresh warm blood pooled inside his leg, spilling over and making my hand slippery as I dug for the bullet. I tried to be gentle. I tried not to hurt him, but when I'd forced my way through abused muscle and found the bullet wedged into bone, I shuddered. The sudden vibration of my fear sent pain shooting through him and he roared to life. One monstrous hand gripped my wrist, the other grabbed my hair and when I looked into his eyes, they were an inferno of rage and torturous intentions.
"I'm sorry. Just hold tight, it'll be over soon." My other hand peeled his fingers from my wrist as I tried to get a firm grip on the small bullet lodged inside his body. "I'm so sorry."
I pulled. I didn't pull gently; I wasn't soft or forgiving. I tore it from him, praying I hadn't hit an artery, and tossed the bullet across the room. Kneeling up, I shoved the bottom of my dress into the wound, applying as much pressure as Ambrose's tight hold would allow. My back tore, pain lanced through my body and licked my soul with agony, but I refused to scream. I refused to feed the monster with my weakness. Elias heaved for breath and growled in torment, but I held firm.
"Enough," Ambrose barked, yanking on the chain.
I yelped as hair tore from my scalp, and fell back, finally allowing a tear to fall as Elias lazily reached for me. He wasn't fully awake and it killed me a little more inside to be wrenched away from him when he needed my help.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I can." Ambrose secured me to the wall once more, and again I was trapped, staring at Elias as he smacked his own face to wake himself up. "Because happy ever afters don't exist in GRIT." He laughed, stepping back to stand between his two prisoners, and folding his arms across his body. "You failed, and in turn you earned my son his punishment, too. You couldn't just keep your mouth shut. I warned you, Ashford. I told you I would have you out of my house and look at you now. A pathetic excuse for a lady. A sad excuse for a wife. Your mother would be disgusted."
I growled like a feral beast and lunged for him, snarling when he laughed as the chain held me back. It didn't stop me. I grabbed at thin air, impregnating it with my claw marks as I tried in vain to reach him.
The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2) Page 31
