by J. K. Coi
The Ministry had wanted Jasper to find out what was going on. Find out how their operatives’ identities were being leaked to the French, and he’d been sent over the border to meet with the contact. Leaving his family vulnerable in a way he’d never even considered. But should have.
He glanced up at the table. The “tools” were black with thick, half-dried blood. By all accounts Callie should be dead, but she wasn’t. Thank God, she was still alive. Just barely by the looks of it, but she stirred when he touched her face and ran his hands lightly down her arms. Her lips cracked open on a whispered hiss of pain.
“Malcolm!” he shouted over his shoulder.
A moment later, the other man burst through the open door, but came to a sudden stop just inside. “Oh no,” he whispered.
Jasper’s gaze remained fixed on her. He couldn’t see anything else. “Give me your knife. I need to cut the ropes.” He refused to touch the knife that had been left behind.
“Let me do it.”
“Just give me your knife and then get out of here.” In the back of his mind he knew he wasn’t being rational, but the only thing he could think of was that he didn’t want anyone else seeing her like this.
“Let me do it, Colonel,” Malcolm repeated. “Those ropes are the only thing keeping her upright and she’s going to need someone to hold her once the bonds are cut away.”
He groaned. “All right. Just—God, be careful. And don’t…touch her.”
Malcolm came forward and stepped around the chair. He cut the bonds at her ankles first, and then moved to the rope wrapped around her waist and chest. Jasper got to his feet and grasped her shoulders gently until she was free and he was finally able to pull her into his arms, being extra careful of her broken legs.
She whimpered. “Shh, Callie,” he whispered against her hair. “You’re safe now. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.” She jerked against him as if shying away. Only semi-conscious, she reacted instinctively out of the memory of fear and pain. He didn’t want her to wake completely. Not here. Not like this. But he hoped his voice would reach her and somehow soothe her, and so he continued to whisper reassurances in her ear.
Her eyelids quivered, but the blood and gore had glued them closed. “Don’t try to see right now, all right? Not yet.”
Her hand and eye needed to be bandaged. There was a huge bump on her head, and he wanted to examine the damage to her legs. But first he had to get her outside. He couldn’t bear for either of them to be in this shack of terror and death for another minute.
Chapter Five
Jasper woke with tears running unchecked down his face, but that was nothing new. While he usually managed to keep it together in the daylight hours, there was no controlling himself in sleep.
However, the warm body curled into him was new—at least in this reality, the one where revenge and guilt were his constant companions and he was forced to live without Callie.
Callie.
Had he lost her? It seemed a lifetime since he’d left her in the doctor’s care and went in search of the men who’d hurt her. Even now that he’d returned to bring her home, Jasper still wasn’t sure.
She stirred at his side. He tightened his arm around her shoulder, but she shot upright suddenly and without warning. “Callie. Are you all right?”
She slipped from the bed without a word. The fire had died down to softly glowing embers while they slept and provided no light, but the sure-footed clunk of her solid steps on the wooden plank flooring suggested she had no difficulty seeing in the dark.
He scrambled to his feet to go after her, but realized she wasn’t actually leaving the room when the door remained closed. After a long moment he found his way to the dark hearth and put a few logs on the fire, stoking it back up until it provided a weak light to see by. Turning, he found that she’d curled up in the window seat once again.
“Callie, please come back to bed.” He was so tired. Tired down to his bones.
“Why did you finally decide to come?”
He barely heard her soft whisper. He took a few steps closer, but stopped when she looked at him with a raised brow that dared him to try touching her again.
At least she was talking, and seemed calmer than she’d been since his arrival.
“Callie, love. Do you recognize me? They said you might not…remember.”
“They’re right, I think there’s probably some of it that still hovers in the mist. Lucky me though, more and more has been coming back every day.” Her voice had changed. His Callie had the voice of an angel, her light soprano flitting across his senses to tease him when he was grumpy and soothe him when he was frustrated.
This Callie’s mocking voice was hoarse and rough…painful. He thought of the dark bruises painting her throat when he’d found her that night. Later, the doctor had told him that—in addition to her other injuries—she’d been strangled near to death, her trachea all but crushed, and every word she spoke for the rest of her life would be both a miracle and a torture to her.
“Ah, but how could I forget you, Colonel?” Her tone was heavy with a strangled outrage. She sighed and swallowed. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t know where all these scars came from, or why my body was then mutilated with iron?”
Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. The bounds of his self-hatred kept expanding, and as selfish as it was for him to admit, he thought it would have been better if she had forgotten. Better for both of them.
He cleared his throat. “Callie, I’m so—”
“You should have stayed away, Jasper.” She turned away.
“No. And I would have come sooner, but your recovery depended—”
She laughed, a broken sound that tore at his heart. “Recovery. Don’t you mean my resurrection?”
“You didn’t die.” He tried to see her reflection in the window, but only one pale cheek was visible.
“Part of me did,” she muttered. “The rest should have followed, and would have if not for…” She trailed off with a shake of her head.
He wanted to pull her into his arms, but her stiff posture forbade it. Or take her hand, but she’d hidden it in the folds of her skirts. He wanted to put his fingers in that short, curly hair of hers, but it looked too soft to be real. He desperately wanted to kiss her, but very much feared she would jerk away from him in hate.
Instead, he stood before her like a statue, the tornado of emotions he was trying to hide leaving him torn. “Callie.”
“You should have let me die.” She lifted her gaze. Her sorrow and pain were plain even though she shed no tears. “Damn you. How could you let them do this to me?”
“I love you.” As if that said it all. As if it could excuse his need and his desperation, his refusal to give her up to such a brutal end.
She recoiled.
“I could not have borne it if you died.”
She snarled and rose to confront him. “But this…this you could bear? A broken thing for a wife? A monster, barely human?”
She lifted her arms out at her side, forcing him to look, but Jasper was done reacting to her appearance. That had been a mistake he wouldn’t repeat again. He understood her anger, but letting her see just how much he hurt for her wasn’t going to help either of them.
“Don’t ask me to agree that you would have been better off dead, because it’s not going to happen,” he snapped, stubbornly taking a step forward.
He’d never seen such an expression of disgust on Callie’s face as she glared at him. It made her look more of a stranger than any of the physical changes. “Get out.”
He squared his shoulders. “I’m not leaving.”
“I can force you out, don’t doubt it.” She held her artificial hand up and closed it into a tight fist. “Did you realize that the operations you agreed to would make me faster than you? Stronger than you? Do you know that I can see the sweat beading on your forehead right now with this new eye? That this hand could snap your neck in an instant? You wouldn’t even see me move. Y
ou wouldn’t have time to whisper a plea for your life.”
“Is that what you’re going to do? Kill me? Or do you just want to make me hurt? Make me bleed?” He took another step. “Will it make you feel better to take from me what was taken from you?”
“You bastard,” she hissed. “Do you think I don’t know that what happened to me was your fault?”
“Yes, it was my fault.” His heart hammered. Could she somehow sense that too? “It was my fault you were left alone. My fault for not getting to you in time. My fault for lying to you about where I was and what I was doing. Those lies put you in danger, almost got you killed.”
“I wasn’t even safe in my own home.”
“I know.” He rubbed his hand through his hair roughly. “And nothing I say could ever express how much I regret it. I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for my mistake.”
“Mistake?” She choked out an angry, painful laugh. “Oh, is that all it was? A mistake?”
He came around the bed. As exhausted as he was, he couldn’t give up. He knew she was waiting for him to do just that, digging into every chink in his determination until she found a way to push him out of her life for good.
He dared take the final step toward her, reaching for her hand. “I should have told you what I was doing. I should have been there to protect you. I’m sorry. I—”
She jerked away. “I told you to leave.”
Everything in him roared that this was a fight he needed to win. He had to stand his ground if they were going to have a chance together. But this wasn’t a war, and his heart just couldn’t bear to see that look on her face.
“Fine. I’m too tired to do this with you tonight.” He sighed, shoulders drooping. He felt battered and heartsick, like in those first days when he didn’t know if she was going to survive.
Jasper understood. He’d seen this before in soldiers who’d been injured and could no longer serve. They felt as if their value had been stripped along with the blood and pain they’d given for their country, and often acted out in frustrated anger, believing it was much better to drive everyone away than suffer the pitying looks of friends and family who knew how useless they had become.
He also understood that he should have fought harder to stay during Callie’s recovery, or at least returned sooner. His absence wasn’t the sole reason for this anger and distance between them…but it certainly hadn’t helped. And now his battle back to her was that much harder. “I’ll be in the next room,” he reminded her. “I’m not going to leave you again.”
She sneered, opening her mouth to disabuse him of that notion, but the sound of feet clomping down the hall at a run distracted both of them and they moved together to the door. Jasper opened it to find Murphy shrugging on a jacket as he made his way to the stairs. “What’s going on?”
Murphy stopped, his gaze falling first to Callie. He seemed to examine her too carefully, but then Jasper remembered Murphy hadn’t seen Callie since their arrival.
The former lieutenant snapped his attention back to Jasper quickly, as if realizing that he’d been staring. “Apparently the doc’s got a new patient,” he said. “I’m on my way to see if they need a hand getting the kid into a room. He’s not exactly cooperating.”
“A kid?”
He nodded and slid another glance at Callie. “Lost both his legs in a suicide mission for General Black.”
The bastard’s recruiting children to do his dirty work now?
While the war had officially ended on a shaky truce three years ago, underground plots by both French and British forces alike continued to claim casualties. Jasper had issues with the notorious General Black’s methods of warmongering in particular.
A blistering yell and the sound of something crashing to the floor echoed to them from the foyer and Murphy hurried down the stairs.
Jasper worried how this was affecting Callie, but when he turned back to her she shut the door in his face. He stood looking at the dark oak panels for a long moment before deciding they’d both had enough for one night. Instead, he followed Murphy downstairs to see if the doctor needed more assistance with the boy.
Callie leaned against the door and closed her eyes. She had to concentrate on her breathing, on the tight breaths that pulled at her throat until it ached.
In and out. In and out.
This up and down between uncertainty and confusion made her sick to her stomach, like the one time she’d gone up in an airship with Jasper and had been so afraid of the sudden lifts and dips that threatened to toss her right into the sea.
She’d been doing just fine until he arrived. All right, maybe that wasn’t quite the truth. Anger and bitterness still swirled inside her, but Callie believed she’d come to terms with a lot. She hated that the sound of his boots on the stair could turn it all around so quickly, and just like that she was twisted up with even more impossible emotions.
She clenched her fist open and closed. The strength coursing through her body continued to terrify her. She was made up of more than flesh and bone, and more than metal and gears. Something else lived inside her now. Something that fed from her. It had crawled into every deep, shadowy corner where the fear and pain still lurked, and changed her almost as much as the horror which had necessitated it in the first place.
Another pained shout rose from the main level. Callie didn’t want to hear the suffering of the poor boy, but couldn’t shut him out. She paced the confines of her room, to the window and then the fire and back, wincing as every thudding step sounded louder and louder, at least to her ears.
She turned to the door for the fifth time and spun away again. Why the sudden urge to venture downstairs? It wasn’t as if she wanted to know what was going on beyond this room. That would involve caring about something, feeling part of a world that had continued on and left her bleeding and broken in its dust. She hadn’t felt that way since waking up and realizing she hadn’t died back in that dark, bloody cottage.
Even returning to the window didn’t ease her agitation. The simplicity of the soft, pure flakes covering the rooftops in white couldn’t soothe her, not tonight. Not since he’d arrived.
When she had learned Jasper was on his way, she hadn’t thought she would care. Her heart was as still and frozen as the winter landscape outside this clinic, and that’s just the way she’d wanted it to stay. But it was as if her soul could track his progress, and the closer he’d gotten the more it seemed life was returning to her, and with it a windstorm of devastating emotions that threatened to undo all of the equilibrium she’d fought so hard for. As soon as he had come through the door, her skin tingled and her heartbeat quickened, sending the blood—and whatever else thrived in it now—rushing through her.
She was still trying to deny the way he made her feel. For the good of everyone, she had to.
The next morning, Callie ignored the insistent rapping at her door. She had no doubt Jasper stood on the other side of it. The nurses and Mrs. Campbell knew better, they’d long ago given up trying to lure her downstairs. And Helmholtz only came to see her once a week now that he considered her rehabilitation complete. As she no longer required fixing, his interest had quickly faded, and he spent most of his time with his research, conducted in a laboratory down in the cellar at all hours of the day.
But now he had a new patient for his experimentations. She didn’t like to imagine what fresh opportunities the boy would provide to whet the good doctor’s rather occult curiosities.
The knocking ceased, but only because the door was being pushed open.
Without turning around, she said, “Am I to no longer have any privacy, then?”
“Good morning, Callie. You look lovely.”
She huffed, unimpressed, although he probably considered anything other than her nightdress to be an improvement.
Callie wasn’t even certain what had possessed her to rise and dress this morning, as if it was still part of her daily routine, but the idea of facing Jasper again was difficult enough wi
thout having to do it in softly flowing cotton. So she wore a pair of military breeches and high black boots with a crisp shirt and vest. The breeches concealed her legs without hampering her movement, and the boots had been custom made with thick rubber soles to keep her steady.
While she couldn’t exactly feel the ground beneath her feet, she’d learned to be aware of it, and didn’t necessarily need the boots anymore, but they would help if she found herself walking on potentially slippery surfaces like staircases or ice-covered cobblestones.
She tugged at her vest, refusing to look at Jasper even though the fresh scent he’d brought into the room drew her. He’d been outside already…not that she should be surprised. Everything else had changed so drastically, but Jasper would never really change.
The man never could sit still longer than it took to decide on his next step.
When she refused to acknowledge his presence, he came closer. She was still surprised every time he did that. He hadn’t been able to hide his shock and horror when he’d taken that first good look at her, even though he’d covered it up quickly and pretended it didn’t affect him.
She glanced at him when he reached into his hip pocket. She knew what he held before he pulled it out, but still held her breath when he reached for her hand and laid the watch in her open palm.
Callie looked down at the tarnished steel pocketwatch as her throat tightened. It was old and cheap, and the name that had been engraved on the back was long gone. She flicked it open almost against her will and sighed at the tiny, faded daguerreotype of a young ballerina that had been tucked inside.
Her mother was that ballerina, and the watch had once belonged to Callie’s father. Why was Jasper giving this to her? And why did she feel panic at the thought that it was because he had given up and would be leaving again? Isn’t that what she wanted?
