Chapter 22
Yara
Yara, it’s okay. You are stronger than you know.
It was the ghost of Kazi’s voice that sliced jaggedly through my nerves.
That caused my hand to wrap around the shard of mirror, bringing it up above me.
I didn’t bother to aim for my father. Instead, I cut off my hair, freeing me from his hold.
“Yara.” His tone was still level, but I could see the tightening of his eyes, the flattening of his lips.
My attention went anywhere except to him. To the mirror circle behind us that I had broken through, to the harsh lights fifty feet above us, to the otherwise empty space of a large warehouse.
“Where are we? Why are you here?” I attempted to keep my anxiety under control and speak evenly, but the words seemed to ignite his anger.
A kick landed across my face, whipping it to the side. My cheek throbbed in fiery pain. “You will speak when spoken to! You are not some belligerent girl. You are my blood and you will act as such.” He huffed. “Eve! Take her to your room!”
Metal clanked from the distance, rapidly approaching, but I didn’t move. Didn’t dare take my eyes off of my father.
“I will see you when I have the last players of this game,” he said before marching away.
Finally, I shifted my attention to the sound.
To Eve. To the shackles that were locked in place on her ankles, to her swollen cheek, to her black eye.
She waited until my father’s steps were distant before bending down to offer me a hand up. This time she held my eyes and what I had seen in them before was reflected a thousand times between us.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she helped lift me up. She was smaller, younger than I was, but she managed to support most of my weight.
Wincing at the pain as all the cuts and bruises throbbed with the move, I offered her my best reassuring smile. She had brought me here, I knew that. I remembered that. But I doubted she had a choice. She was just another one of my father’s victims. “You’re his doll?”
“An ugly replica,” she confirmed my suspicions.
“So was I,” I murmured, my eyes glistening in unshed tears. My father didn’t want either of us. We were both replacements, imitations, copies of the one he really wanted.
The one he had killed.
Because of me.
Eve didn’t speak again as she carefully led us over the broken mirror, towards the back of the warehouse.
Just when I thought we might leave altogether, she led us to a hidden door, which opened to a long hallway of doors.
Taking the first to the right, it opened to a spiral staircase that we climbed.
At the top, she continued further back until opening a door into the pinkest room I had ever seen. A windowless bedroom fit for a child.
She helped me carefully to the bed. “He wanted me to make sure you would stay in this room. Can you promise not to run? At least not while I’m in here. I’m hoping he’ll—he’ll let me go…after.” Eve swallowed down a sob. “I will be in the room next door. He will come for us when he is ready.”
My hand moved to my stomach, cradling it. “Does he know that I’m—”
Eve covered my mouth with her palm, leaning as close to me as she could before whispering in my ear, “No.” The warning in the word was clear.
Shutting my mouth, I inclined my head and she released me.
“It will be okay. It has to be,” she stated firmly, her shackles clanking as she stood to leave. A reminder that she was a prisoner here. That she had been trapped with my father. “Soon. He will be done with us soon.” And then she left, the lock clinking into place behind her.
My mind was reeling, the shock of seeing my father unearthing memories I had submerged as deep as I possibly could. But in this pink room that reminded me of my own as a child, with the knowledge he was nearby?
They bubbled their way up and out of me. Forcing me to recall the darkest and worst parts of my origin story.
The matches I stole. The toilet paper I wadded up. The fire that slowly crept up around me, waiting patiently for it to take me from that life.