Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Lamb To Slaughter
L iam’s gorgeous eyes filled with shock at the latest red light. Normally, he would hold Scarlett’s gaze in the rearview mirror and affix her with the strongest emotions he could conjure. Today, when she’d signed the words to him, he thought it was a mistake.
“PREGNANT?” he returned with a twist of his hand.
A teary-eyed nod was his response. “JORDAN WANTS ME TO GET RID OF IT.”
The snort that left his mouth carried down the street. It was rush-hour, the worst time to be driving in Mid-Town for any and all reasons. But then, there wasn’t an hour in the day when the streets weren’t overrun by sleek black cars and Lowborns running between them, hoping for a coin or two.
“HE’S A FOOL. THE POWER HE COULD HAVE…” Liam’s hand hovered in the air, mind moving a mile a minute. “NOT MANY KNOW HOW DEEP AMINA’S TALONS HAVE SUNK. IF HE WAS SERIOUS IN TAKING THE THRONE, COMING FORTH WITH NEWS OF A CHILD WOULD MAKE HIM THE DEADLIEST HEIR THE BIRZAN DYNASTY WOULD EVER SEE.”
For a chauffeur to have known so much meant only one thing: Liam had a deeper connection with members of the Singh family.
“Interlopers changing alliances.”
Jordan’s words came to her just as Liam took a detour. He went left through an alley, the GPS on his car blinking rapidly.
RETURN TO YOUR ROUTE flashed across his screen before his steering wheel locked. Liam didn’t seem to panic, not the way Scarlett did, tensing in her seat, struggling against the seatbelt that felt more like a noose around her neck.
Whatever intercepted Liam’s car warped his screen. A static hum and a bar ran through the middle as if cracked. Only when the words started typing in real time did Scarlett realize they’d been hijacked.
“First the Tyrant and now you? Something big is happening. Make sure you stick to your allegiances, Interloper. Would hate scraping your guts off the sidewalk. - Lamb.”
But what startled Scarlett the most was Liam’s throaty laugh. One she had no idea he could make. “Ease up back there, Ms. Emerson.”
“Don’t tell me you?—"
“—were so enthralled by Josephine’s return that I turned my back on the First Heir? No. I’m not that cliche, but I do know the run-down.”
“Such as you would, Interloper.” Her eyes caught his in the rearview mirror again, this time through narrowed slits. “So, what, selling me to the highest bidder?”
His tone softened. “Jesus Christ. Of course, not. You’re my Darling and I’m your Driver. I just think you need to see what Jordan really had in store for you.”
Scarlett quieted then, thoughts running a mile a minute, gaze leaving his and easing over the screen. She allowed Liam to drive. He wasn’t the type to fill silence with menial ramblings, and they’d known each other–at least to an extent–for quite some time. Enough that he knew she would rather simmer in her thoughts and do the only thing she had a choice over: cry.
It was like that for the next thirty minutes.
From Mid-Town to Outcoast, if Scarlett had felt that Liam was delivering her to the ends of the earth, she didn’t have the energy to care anymore. At least not until she realized Outcoast was where Jordan kept his hidden trade routes. Usually, international cargo that docked on Port Nine was hauled there where a subdivision of the Birzan medicine men would conduct their screenings.
Arriving at the Slaughterhouse gave way to all her anxieties. Because this is where the Singhs would send their broken toys.
Scarlett met Liam’s gaze in the mirror. “No. Jordan wouldn’t do this. He said he wanted me to get rid of the child. I agreed?—"
“Agree or don’t agree, you’ve posed a threat. You either disobeyed the House Mistress and refused your tea, or you—Scarlett Emerson—were the only Darling with a penthouse suite that healed when she wasn’t supposed to.”
Nonetheless, it happened. One where the imposed Alteration of a woman still bore consequence. But that was the way the world worked. A man only ever held sin in their bones, and the women bore their sacrifice.
Liam pulled up alongside one of the outlying farmhouses. Under twenty miles, the motor turned quiet. The hum of the engine came to a stop, and the headlights that illuminated the grassy path layered them in darkness.
He sat back in his seat, gesturing to the cargo haul full of pregnant Dolls. Scarlett couldn’t look too long. Not when she realized some of them were only children, bare-foot and bright-eyed despite the terrible hand they’d been given.
According to Liam and the sight of the farmhouses, it was clear her time was up. Or, at least that’s what Jordan wanted.
“The First Heir lied to you.” Liam’s voice was a pin drop. It was almost lost to the howling winds that buffeted against the open windows in the back.
Scarlett set her elbow against the armrest, balancing her chin against the top of her knuckles with tears glistening in her eyes. “I loved him,” the words were merely a whisper.
“No, you didn’t.” That low, terrible voice didn’t sound so terrible today–the Jinn of Many Names. Josephine’s hands were in her pocket, her right shoulder leaned up against the back door. “Love doesn’t exist for women like you.”
Scarlett felt like she’d been slapped. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she pushed the door open with force. Josephine easily side-stepped the hit as Scarlett fumbled onto her feet, flinging her finger into the Second Heir’s face. “What do you know about love, Jinn? You, who built an empire from the bones of her enemies?—“
Josephine snorted. “ ‘Bones of her enemies’ ? What, you take enough of my brother’s dick to start talking like him? Does that make you feel powerful?”
The slap came quick, shooting Josephine’s head to one side. Scarlett’s hand burned, yet she relished the way strands of black hair fell over the Second Heir’s face.
That makes me feel powerful .
Josephine’s low chuckle hadn’t prepared Scarlett for the way those horrible, yellow eyes flashed when they swiveled back to meet her. “It should. Not many can land a hit on an Heir and still have their life.” Scarlett gasped when Josephine struck. Like a snake entrapping a field mouse, her hand wrapped like a vice around her neck. She squeezed so hard, Scarlett could see black spots dotting her vision. Even the small little ember in Josephine’s eyes burned bright, red churning in its depths. “You owe me your life now that I’ve let you have it.”
“Bullshit,” she seethed.
“No?” A tilt of the head, a mocking laugh. “Your chauffeur put his life on the line turning his back on the First Heir. If not for the quick involvement of the Guild’s most enthused hackers, a bullet would’ve killed you faster than the Pigs.” Josephine tipped her head towards the farms, the line of laughing women and young girls finding solace in each other. Lambs led to slaughter.
“You give me my life and you forsake theirs. You’re not as kind as you think you are,” Scarlett wheezed.
“Who said anything about kindness, Little Dove?” Josephine wrenched the woman into her embrace. With Scarlett’s back to her front, she turned, forcing them to watch men in lab coats and poised smiles coming to collect their victims. “You’re all pretty pawns pushed to their limit by shadows that care little for them. You gave your love to Jordan Singh, a man who has done you no favors.”
Scarlett shook her head. “He loves me too.”
“Is that what he said when he raped you?”
Her eyes watered. “He’s not some Pig.”
“All men are pigs if you stab them just right.” Her gloved hand carefully moved from her neck, easing Scarlett’s hair over one shoulder. The cool touch of leather grazed the woman’s skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. “They squeal loud enough to make you wonder where they get their power. The same power used to break your wings, to make you think the cage they put you in is locked while the door remains wide open.”
Scarlett wrenched out of Josephine’s grasp and whirled on her. “So that’s it? Show me the truth and make me submit before you? Oh, how grateful I am! How merciful you are! Should I worship you like I would my Creator?”
“You are your own Creator. You worship only yourself.” Josephine said it so casually, it pulled a scoff right from Scarlett’s mouth.
Worship? She only knew how to worship the men who bargained with her body. She only knew how to worship the First Heir who had given to her gifts that he could easily take away…
The Silver Tyrant’s mischievous eyes had since grown full. They were soft—willfully so—but not pitiful. “I brought you here so you could see how easily disposable you are in my brother’s eyes. I brought you here because you know why Broken Dolls are sent to the Slaughterhouse. When they heal from their Alteration, when they bear the consequence of men and are regaled as filth for merely being able to carry the essence of life…” She shook her head, turned away, flashed a simple color of emotion that made her so terribly human it all but tore Scarlett’s heart in half.
“So, you brought me here to see all that and more. You also hope that I’ll change my mind; that I’ll take your hand as you asked.”
“You’re smart, Little Dove.” Josephine smiled as she said it, head still turned away. “You play pretend and live in your head. It’s kept you alive all these years, but aren’t you tired of hiding? Don’t you want to see your true potential?”
“A businesswoman through and through,” Scarlett laughed. “You may have won all of Europe, but you won’t win me so easily.”
“I offer you an easy way out. All you have to do is marry me. If you wish to keep your child, you will be protected. If you wish to get rid of it, I will have the best of the best at your service come morning. No matter how it ends, you would live in my estate.”
“As your prisoner.”
“As my wife.”
“And if I accept all that and choose to disregard your hand?”
“Then it’d be your choice.”
Scarlett shook her head. “You lie.”
“I’m not the curator of a Doll House. I’m not a Mistress that makes you balance books atop your head, tightens the strings to your corset, makes you dance for men as old as your grandfather. I’m a businesswoman,” she parroted, lifting her head coolly. “You are a wonderful creature, Little Dove. Men look at you and see a shell. I look at you and I see what lies within.”
“What do you see, Jinn?” Scarlett asked, her brows knotted with grief, her top teeth sinking into her bottom lip to still her pain.
“I see a queen. Someone who can turn those chains into jewels. Who can fill the streets with scarlet blood.”
Scarlett said nothing. Her hand merely rose, settling on her collar and its dainty little charms. She watched Josephine’s gilded eyes drop to her bosom and turn away, the reality of their dance as depressing as the truth.
Little Dove and Silver Tyrant.
Slave and Liberator.
“Fine,” Scarlett said, startling herself as much as Josephine.
The silence between them grew so loud, they could hear the faraway echo of those that came and would not return. The laughter of girls and the ancient sound of serpents treading over dirt.
Eventually, Josephine straightened her posture. She stood shorter than Jordan by a few inches. Six-foot-three, maybe taller with the set of heels she had on now. She carefully fixed her suit, the padding on her shoulders making her look bulkier than Scarlett knew she was, what with those lean muscles carved from hours of training, and a body that she had only known from their dance just a mere night ago.
Finally, Josephine rapped her knuckles against the driver’s side window. Liam rolled it down without thought. “Take Ms. Emerson back to the Willow Estate.”
“Your brother will call for Inter-War when he finds out she didn’t make it here, Heiress.” It was the first time Scarlett had seen Liam look worried.
Josephine, however, glanced at the woman from the corner of her eye. “Good. I’ve been waiting for a fight.”