Fourth Debt

by Pepper Winters

  Someone like me had the ability to seem as if we read the future. The perfect mystic able to decipher palms and speak with the dead—all the information you ever needed to know about a person was right there ready to be felt if more attention and empathy was used. Pity the human race was so wrapped up in themselves that they forgot to think about others.

  “Just a knack I have.”

  Edith blushed again. “You’re quite the interesting patient.”

  I managed to keep it together while she vibrated with more embarrassment.

  “Anyway, I have to start my rounds.” Giving me one last look, she slinked around the door and disappeared.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as the room quietened and the door shut me away from the outside world. The instant I didn’t have an audience, my heart crumpled. I gritted my jaw to stop the overwhelming pain from eating me alive.

  Only this pain wasn’t from the bullet but the terrifying fear that Nila had been hurt.

  She didn’t respond to my previous text.

  She had to have known it was me.

  I swallowed against more agony. I wished I could sense her from this far away—tune into her thoughts and find out if she was safe like Jasmine promised or needed my help before I was any use to her.

  My muscles quivered as I fumbled with the phone’s menu, inputting her number and opening a new message. I didn’t want to be reckless, but I also couldn’t lie there another moment fearing for her safety.

  The debts she’d lived through were nothing to what was ahead. I had to kill my father before that happened. Before he took her away from me. Nila hadn’t been told how many debts she had to pay and to be honest, I’d read paperwork where more were added and less were taken, depending on how bored or cruel my ancestors were.

  The Fourth Debt was coming. But the Fifth Debt…

  I shuddered.

  That won’t happen. I would never let it happen.

  Sighing, I forced happier thoughts and typed a message.

  Unknown Number: Answer me. Tell me you’re okay. I’m okay. We’re both okay. I need to hear from you. I need to know you’re still mine.

  I pressed send.

  I STOPPED COUNTING time by hours.

  One day.

  Two days.

  Three days.

  Four.

  Nothing had meaning anymore.

  I thought the Hawks couldn’t hurt me once I’d sunk to their level and played their games. I thought I’d be safe to plot my revenge and hold on until Jethro came for me.

  I was such a stupid, stupid girl.

  Bonnie proved that over and over again. Breaking me into pieces, scattering my courage, burning my hatred until there was nothing left but dust. Dust and cinders and hopelessness.

  Five days or was it six…

  I no longer knew how long I’d existed in this hell.

  It no longer mattered as they slowly broke my will, ruining my conviction that I could win. However, Jethro never left me. His voice lived in my ears, my heart, my soul. Forcing me to stay strong, even when I couldn’t see an end.

  If it wasn’t for the passing of autumn into winter, I might’ve thought time stood still. The ticking of clocks was only punctured by pain. The passing of night and day only pierced by Bonnie’s whims and wishes.

  I’m dying.

  On my lowest moments, I thought I was dead. On my highest moments, I still fantasised about killing them. It was the only thing that got me through the hellish week they subjected me to.

  My hate evolved into a living, breathing thing. There was nothing left but loathing.

  What else was there to feel when I lived with monsters?

  My mind often tortured me with thoughts of happier times…Vaughn and me laughing, of my father being so proud, of the sweet satisfaction I got from sewing.

  I wanted this to be over. I wanted to go home.

  Every time my thoughts turned to Jethro, I shut down. The pain was insurmountable. Every day, I stopped believing he’d survive and worried about the worst instead. In my rapidly unthreading mind, he was dead and I believed a lie.

  Jasmine tried her best to keep me from the worst.

  The Rack she’d denied.

  The Judas Cradle she’d flat-out refused.

  But there were others she couldn’t reject—she couldn’t disobey her grandmother, no matter that her eyes screamed apologies and our unspoken bond knitted tighter.

  Jethro was no longer there. But Jasmine was.

  And I learned to love and hate her for helping me.

  Her help wasn’t love and kisses and tender stolen moments. No. Her help was selecting the punishment I was strong enough to survive, carving my soul out dream by dream, keeping me alive as long as possible to find some way out of lunacy.

  The worst part of my punishment was Vaughn saw it all.

  He witnessed what the Hawks did.

  He knew now what I was subjected to.

  His screams were what undid me; not Bonnie’s laughter or Cut’s smug chuckles—not even Daniel’s demented cackles.

  Love was what ruined me the most.

  Love was the ultimate destroyer.

  But no matter how much I tried to let go…I couldn’t.

  “Do you repent, Nila? Do you agree to pay the Final Debt?”

  I squirmed in my bindings, choking on terror as Daniel marched me toward the guillotine. All around me stood ethereal figments of my exterminated family, their detached heads hovering above their corpses.

  A wail howled over the moor. Was it death? Was it hope?

  I would soon find out.

  “No, I do not repent!”

  Cut came toward me. His face was covered by an executioner’s black mask. In his hands rested a heavy gleaming axe, polished and sharpened and waiting to sever my neck.

  Bending toward me, he kissed my cheek. “Too late. You’re already dead.”

  “No!”

  “Oh, yes.” Daniel chuckled. Shoving me forward, the guillotine grew from simple bascule and basket into something horrendous. “Kneel.”

  I crashed to my knees, sobs suffocating me. “Don’t. Please, don’t. Don’t!”

  No one listened.

  Bonnie pressed my shoulders, forcing me to lean over the lunette and stare at the woven basket below. The same basket into which my head would roll.

  “No! No! Stop! Don’t do this!”

  “Goodbye, Nila Weaver.”

  The axe swung up. The sun kissed its blade.

  It came slicing down.

  A bell woke me.

  A tiny tinkle in the heavy swaddling of darkness. My heartbeat clashed with cymbals, and my hands swept up my throat. “No…” The diamonds still imprisoned me. My neck was still intact.

  “Oh, thank God.”

  I’m still alive.

  Only a dream…

  Or was it a premonition?

  I coughed, chasing that question away.

  My fever had brought many hallucinations over the past day or two: images of Jethro walking into my room. Laughter from Kestrel as he taught me how to jump on Moth. Impossible things. Desperately wanted things.

  And also dread and dismay. The torturing didn’t stop when Cut had had his fun…my mind continued to crucify me when I was alone.

  The bell came again.

  I know that sound…but from where.

  I was tired and sore. I didn’t want to move ever again but deep inside, I managed to find the strength to uncurl from my nest of bedding and reach under my pillow.

  Could it be?

  My fingers latched around my phone, my heart trading cymbals for drums. The rhythm clanged uncertainly, drenched in malady and doing its best to keep me alive. My nose was stuffy, eyes watery, body achy.

  I was sick.

  Along with my hope, my body had given in, catching dreaded germs and shackling me to yet another weakness.

  I’d come down with the flu four days ago. A day after Bonnie told me what would happen. Twenty-four hours after
I’d seen what’d happened to Elisa in those feared photographs. But none of that mattered if the bell signalled what I so fiercely needed.

  For days, I’d hoped to hear from him. But every day, I was disappointed. I drained my battery so many times, trancing myself with the soft blue glow, willing a message to appear.

  I squinted in the dark, malnourished and fading from what I’d endured. Luckily, the fever had crested this morning. I’d managed a warm shower, and changed the bedding. I was weak and wobbly but still clinging to Jethro’s promise.

  I’m waiting for you. I’m still here.

  The screen lit up. My heart sprouted new life, and I smiled for the first time in an eternity.

  Unknown Number: Answer me. Tell me you’re okay. I’m okay. We’re both okay. I need to hear from you. I need to know you’re still mine.

  I dropped the phone.

  And burst into tears.

  For so long, the world outside Hawksridge had been dark. No messages from my father. No emails from my assistants. I’d been dead already—not worthy of vibrations or chimes of correspondence.

  But I wasn’t dead.

  Not yet.

  No matter how many times I died in my awful nightmares, I was still here.

  Jethro had found a way to text me.

  Sniffing and swiping at tears with the back of my hand, it took a few minutes before I could corral my fingers into replying.

  Needle&Thread: I’m okay. More than okay now I know you’re okay.

  I pressed send.

  My sickness and fever no longer mattered. If I ignored it, it would go away. I didn’t have time to be sick now Jethro had given me an incentive to get better.

  Is he coming for me?

  Could it all be over?

  I wanted to say so much, but suddenly, I had nothing to share. I couldn’t tell him about the past few days. I would never share because I didn’t want to hurt him any more than he already was.

  My mind skipped backward, forcing me to relive the horror ever since Bonnie showed me Owen and Elisa’s fate.

  My door opened.

  Jasmine sat with one hand on the doorknob and the other around her wheel rim. “Nila…”

  The moment I saw her, I knew something awful was about to happen. My spine locked and the beaded fabric I’d been working on fell from my hands. “No. Whatever it is, I won’t do it.”

  She dropped her eyes. “You have no choice.”

  I shot to my feet. “I do have a choice. A choice of free will. Whatever that witch thinks she can do to me, she can’t!”

  Jasmine huddled in her chair—an odd mix of apologetic frustration. “She can and she will.” Her bronze gaze met mine. “I’ve kept you out of Daniel’s hands but I can’t keep you out of Bonnie’s. I’ve given you all the time I could.” She looked away, her voice filling with foreboding. “It’s going to get worse, Nila. I’ve never been told the exact details of the debts—I’m not a man, and therefore, Bonnie insisted I be protected from such violence—but I do know Cut is planning something big. I need to find a way to save you before…”

  I didn’t want to listen but her anguish gave me strength. “You need me to stall by giving in...”

  “Yes.” She sighed heavily. “Forgive me, but I have no choice—just like you. No matter what you think.”

  I had no reply. But my body did. A last ditch attempt at fleeing.

  My feet moved on their own accord, backing away until I stood against the wall. I wanted to scream and fight. I wanted to shove her out the door and lock it forever.

  But there was nowhere to hide. No one to save me. Only time could do that. Time that neither Jasmine, Jethro, Vaughn, nor myself had.

  “Have you heard from him?” My hands fisted against my denim-clad legs. The large grey jumper I wore couldn’t thaw the ice around my heart. My mind kept splicing images of Jethro and Owen. Elisa and myself.

  Their demise had been terrible—especially hers.

  Bonnie told me my punishment would begin immediately. She hadn’t lied.

  “No.” She rolled further over the threshold. “We agreed to minimum contact. It’s for the best.”

  That made sense, even though it was the hardest thing in the world.

  If only I could talk to him. It would make me so much braver.

  “Nila, come with me. Don’t let her see your fear any more than you have to. It will hurt but it won’t harm you. I give you my word. You’ve withstood worse.”

  “I’ve endured worse because I knew it hurt Jethro to hurt me. It gave me strength in a way.”

  She smiled sadly. “I know he’s not here to share your pain, but I am. I won’t leave you.” Swivelling her chair to face the door, she held out her hand. “I’ll take his place. We’ll get through it together.”

  My shoulders sagged.

  What other choice did I have?

  I’d made a promise to remain alive, waiting for Jethro to return. His sister was on my side. I had to trust her.

  Silently, I followed Jasmine away from the Weaver quarters toward the dining room.

  We entered without a word.

  Jasmine’s wheels tracked into the thick carpet as we made our way around the large table. Unlike at meal times, the red lacquered room was empty of food and men. The portraits of Hawks stared with beady oil eyes as Jasmine guided me to the top of the large space where Cut and Bonnie stood.

  They smiled coldly, knowing they’d won yet again.

  Between them rested a chair.

  Bonnie had said the first punishments would be easier.

  Once again, I’d been stupid and naïve.

  The chair before me had been used for centuries to extract information and confessions. A torturous implement for anyone—innocent or guilty. It was a common device but absolutely lethal depending on its use.

  Did Bonnie suspect I was hiding something?

  But what?

  Was this her attempt at ripping out my secrets?

  She’ll never have them.

  My heart thundered faster. My blood thickened in my veins.

  The chair wasn’t smooth or well-padded with velour or satin. It didn’t welcome a comfortable reprieve. In fact, the design mocked the very idea of luxury.

  Every inch was covered in tiny spikes and nails, hammered through the wood. Seat, backrest, armrest, leg rest. Each point glittered in the late afternoon sunshine. Every needle wickedly sharp, just waiting to puncture flesh.

  I swallowed hard, forcing myself to hide my terror. Jasmine was right. Their satisfaction came from my reactions. I was stronger than this—than them.

  I won’t let you get pleasure from my pain.

  “Do you know why you’re paying this toll, Nila?”

  My eyes flew to Cut. He stood with his hands by his sides, his leather jacket soaking up the dwindling sun.

  I shook my head. The power of voice deserted me.

  All my courage at killing them vanished like a traitor.

  “It’s because you must be stripped of your nasty plots and wishes to harm us. It’s because you caused the death of two Hawk men.” Bonnie shuffled closer, rapping her cane against the horrific chair. “Along with the repayment of the Third Debt, you must endure a few extras—to ensure you are properly aware of your place within our home.”

  I flinched as Bonnie closed the gap and stroked her swollen fingers along my diamond collar. “You’ve lived in our hospitality for six months. The least you can do is show a bit of gratitude.” Grabbing a chunk of my long hair, she shoved me toward the barbaric contraption. “Now sit and be thankful.”

  Jasmine positioned herself beside me, holding out a hand to help me lower onto the spikes. I thanked my foresight for wearing jeans. The thick denim would protect me to a degree.

  Trembling a little, I turned around to sit.

  Unfortunately, Cut must’ve read my mind. “Ah, ah, Nila. Not so fast.” Gripping my elbow, he hoisted me back up. “That would be far too easy.”

  My heart stopped.
r />   Laughing, he tugged at my waistband. “Clothing off.”

  Jasmine said, “Father, the spikes will hurt enough—”

  “Not nearly enough.” His glare was enough to incinerate her.

  Sighing, Jaz faced me. “Take them off.” Holding out her arm like a temporary hanger, she narrowed her eyes. “Quickly.”

  Gritting my teeth, I fumbled with the hem of my jumper. I should be comfortable being naked around these people—it’d happened often enough—but being asked to strip brought furious, degrading tears to my eyes.

  Breathing hard, I yanked my jumper off and undid my jeans. Shimmying them down my legs, I shivered at the biting air. The dining room had a fire roaring in the imposing fireplace, but the flames hadn’t extinguished the wintery chill.

  A resounding thud landed behind me.

  Oh, no!

  Cut’s eyes dropped to the ruby encrusted dirk lying in full view.

  I wanted to curl up and die. I’d become so used to it wedged against my back, I forgot the knife was there.

  Cut gave me a sly smile, bending to pick it up.

  Quick!

  Squatting, I scooped up the blade before he had chance. His eyes widened as I brandished it in his face. “Don’t touch me.”

  He chuckled. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Nila.”

  My mouth watered at the thought of somehow stabbing everyone in the heart all at once.

  Jabbing the air between Cut and me, I snarled, “I should’ve done this months ago. I should’ve murdered you the moment I met you.”

  His body stiffened. “Just try it.” His eyes flickered behind me. “You have two choices. Try and attack me and pay. Or hand over the knife and pay.”

  “I’d rather kill you and win.”

  “Yes, well, that will never happen.” Snapping his fingers, he ordered, “Colour, take the knife.”

  I whirled around but was too late. Colour, a Black Diamond brother who I’d seen once or twice, yanked the dirk from my hand like a rattle from a baby. My fingers throbbed with emptiness as Colour handed the blade to Cut.

  My fight evaporated.

  I’d tried.

  My one rebellion was over, and what was my reward?

  Pain and humiliation.

  “Thank you, Colour.”

  Colour nodded, retreating back to his hidey-hole by the fireplace. The large rococo style fire-surround hid most of him from view, giving the illusion of privacy.