Chapter 6
6
LUCY
“M ay luck always be on your side, child.” Grandma smiled sadly as she stroked the circumference of the small coin with the tip of her finger, pressing it harder to my chest. “God knows you’ll need it.”
The sad smile faded slowly when her eyes met mine. The light in them dissipated the longer she held her hand to my heart, and as though her touch held some special power over me, it raced. Every etched line on her face darkened as she puckered her lips in thought. The discord of voices filtered in from the garden party out on the lawn as she continued in deep contemplation.
“You hear me, my girl? Never forget who you are. What you are.”
“I won’t.” The retort left my lips in an attempt to pacify her and be done with the conversation. That wasn’t what I was expecting for my twentieth birthday, especially since we were also celebrating my early graduation. Political Science wasn’t my first choice for a degree. It was a whim to make my father look at me the way he looked at my sister.
He never did. Laura was always the apple of his eye. A meek little darling that knew the perfect time to smile and nod. Everyone adored her. Everything was about fucking Laura until he needed me. Turns out that pretty blue-eyed blondes are a dime a dozen, but freckled redheads are more of a delicacy. Enough that he finally looked at me. The prime minister finally had a reason to look at me and pause.
He needed me. The centuries-old society that held crown and politics together. The brotherhood that controlled the distribution of power made me something worth looking at.
“A role doesn’t define your destiny,” Grandma murmured, something between disgust and anger twisting her normally stoic features.
“Grandma…”
“Don’t interrupt.” She silenced me with a finger to my lips, looking around the room like the conversation was forbidden. “You do what you have to, but you never let a man determine your fate.”
“Mother—”
“Hush, Sarah!” she snapped at my mother, instilling silence between us again. “She has to know that her duty isn’t to a man or a cause…whatever it is they’re calling it these days.” Focusing back on me, she took a moment to breathe in a steadying breath before she told me, “It’s to yourself. Remember that because this world is too fickle for honest love. Always pick power. Always pick what will strengthen you. Do you understand me, child?”
“Yes.” The whispered reply caught at the back of my throat, making me choke on my lie because I did love.
As though the world were taunting me, the sun twirled its rays behind him. The cause of my heartache. The one person who I felt like I might actually die if he never loved me—Frederick fucking Emsworth and his glorious scowl.
His eyes found mine, and my already racing heart picked up a notch or two, winding me in such a way that the world faded to nothing but an uneven drum pounding through my veins and a heat that made me want to smile despite the sadness it constricted my chest with.
How can you love someone so much when you know they’ll never love you in return?
“Lucy?” Grandma stepped directly in front of me, blocking my view. “Child.”
“Yes!” I snapped before adding a little quieter, “I understand. Alright? I know that you don’t want me to…to…” Love him.
“No, you don’t.”
“Mother, come on. The walls have ears here.” Mum gave me a faint nod as she stirred her tea.
“I promise, Grandma. I get it. Okay?”
Nodding with narrowed eyes, she looked at me disbelievingly before telling me, “Not yet, you don’t, but you will one day.” A morose expression knitted her brows. “If on that day luck fails you…well, Lucy-Lou, you make your own. You are more than a Stanton. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“More than a bargaining chip or a game piece.”
Taking a step back, she smiled again while her eyes flicked over me from head to toe and back to mine. Something inside me warned me to be wary of her words. Wisdom and experience blazed in her eyes as my breaths faltered at the honesty etched there. Meanwhile, every cell of my being yearned for her to move so that I could see him again. The lord-in-waiting with royal blood thrumming through his veins. Beautiful and volatile. So much so that when he touched me, I could feel his violence seep into my bones, making my flesh beg for more and more of it.
“Am I right, Sarah?”
There was a silent pause as Mum took another sip of her tea and then stood, putting the bone china cup down on the saucer without the faintest clink. When she stepped beside my grandma, her hand lightly cupped my face.
“Yes, Mother,” she finally answered. “Love…duty…those things…” A deep sigh cut off her trailing thought. “They don’t matter. Not really. They’re just ties, and sometimes…when they weaken you ? —”
“What are you saying? Spit it out.”
“I’m saying that if they don’t strengthen you, then you should cut them. Regardless of what you are told or taught. You do what you need to see another day.”
“You’re a Mortimer, dear girl.” The stern line of my grandma’s lips softened into an almost grin. “We fight until the end. We do what it takes to stay alive no matter what.” Pausing, she side-glanced at Mum. “You did good with this one.”
With a proud smile, my mother fluttered her lashes at me. “I know.”
“Smart, beautiful, and strong.”
“Yes, I know, Mother.”
“Most of all,” Grandma crooned, pinching my chin between her thumb and forefinger like she used to when I was little and she spoiled me with one of her treats. Sometimes a sweet, other times something for my piggy bank. “Cunning…aren’t you, girl? Sneaky, just like the rest of the Mortimer women before you. It’s what will keep you alive. What will keep you safe…”
“From what?” I asked, aware that she clearly knew more than what the brotherhood had told me so far about my task.
“This treacherous world, girl,” she told me with a shake of her head as she walked away, heading back to the party outside without a single glance back at me or my mother.
The memory fades as quickly as it came, leaving me with doubts about what will happen to me. When a person goes missing, they say that after the first twenty-four hours, the chances of finding them reduce to fifty per cent. Every day after that, they shrink and shrink until it becomes an impossibility. I may not know how long I’ve been here for certain, but I’m aware of time from the dips in the temperature and when he comes to me.
Tomasz sits there, tormenting me with his jibes at my weakness, taunting me over how quickly my body gave. He’s not wrong. The secret service trained me to be a killer, but the longer I remain in this bed…in this place, the more I doubt the confidence that was instilled in me.
Heroes never die. That’s what my father told me before he watched me walk away. If that’s the case, then they failed too, because that’s exactly what will happen to me. A part of me has always known that I wouldn’t see old age. I used to look at my grandmother and try to imagine myself with the same lines, but I never could.
Even now, I can see them all grow old. Every person who’s ever meant anything to me. Even Freddie, the man with death ghosting his soul, I can see him age into something formidable and fatally handsome. The sun beams down on me, brighter and brighter, the longer I hold him in my thoughts. My heart flutters as though I’m free again, and it is a beautiful dream as the stifling warmth numbs my body.
Then I hear the girl praying beside me again. She’s always praying for forgiveness and mercy and sins that she sounds too soft to commit.
“Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” she repeats. “For I have done nothing good in your sight. Heavenly King, Comforter…Spirit of truth. Holy God. Holy, Holy God…cleanse us and save our sou?—”
“Does he listen?” I croak, the sound of my voice foreign in my ears.
A sharp gasp echoes from her while I try to open my eyes for the first time in…I don’t know. It’s been impossible until now. The headaches have been insufferable, and the sedatives that they must have given me to force my body to rest have left me hazy.
I wish they’d left me out there. I wish they’d let me die.
This helplessness is worse than the brutality. The physical pain that he inflicted on me was easier to bear than this half-conscious state. Flitting in and out of memories and dreams. Drowning in make-believe and suffocated with reality. Watching it fade with every passing second.
Why haven’t they come for me?
“You’re awake?” The surprise in the girl’s voice is hard to miss as it sends a shooting crackle of pain around my skull, making me screw my eyes shut again.
This isn’t the kind of groggy I felt after Tomasz drugged me at the club. This cotton clouds fuzz I’m floating in is worse because it’s completely stolen my autonomy from me.
The familiar sound of expensive soles grows louder, and as I’m trying to get my body to move, I’m stuck in the same sludge as I have been since I first came to, silently listening to the voices come and go. A prisoner in my body.
“Close your eyes and don’t move. Don’t let them know you’re awake yet,” she whispers, squeezing my hand tight.
It’s the first thing I’ve felt in ages. A real touch, and it’s enough to make my throat swell and my chest burn with the tears that sting the back of my eyes.
Strength, girl. Never forget your strength. I’ve left my luck behind, hoping it would save me. That Freddie would find my penny and that he would make it his mission to find me. Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe I should’ve told him what they asked of me. Where I was going. Instead of telling him goodbye, telling him I loved him, I should’ve made him promise to find me. Perhaps I wouldn’t be floundering in hopelessness now.
“Shhh… Shhh…” she tells me.
I’m certain she’s wiping my tears as the shadow of her hand shields my face from the sunlight.
“I’m going to help you…I promise,” she coos affectionately.
The concern is palpable, and although I can’t see her face, the sound of her voice is sure and sincere. I can’t help but believe her.
When my eyes flutter open to look at her, she tells me, “Don’t fight him. Give him what he wants, and I promise I’ll get you out of here alive. Just a little while…” The blue of her eyes has a familiar glint to it, cool and dark like a midnight sapphire. “I’ll set you free. I promise you…”
A groan vibrates from me as I try to smile while she cups my face.
“Go back to sleep and trust me. I’m your friend, okay?” Sweeping her hand over my face, she forces my eyes shut. “He won’t hurt you while you’re asleep.”
I don’t care if he hurts me—a part of me wishes that he never stopped. That his visits weren’t so quiet because I need something to pull me from this lull. The need to feel something other than this placid humdrum is making me desperate. If there’s anything I’ve been taught it’s that desperate people make reckless decisions. I can’t afford to be desperate or reckless.
“I’ll come back later,” she murmurs.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” The deep timbre of Tomasz’s voice fills the room, his heavy footfalls coming to a stop and his presence stifling the air.
Light fingertips trace over my hand before her soft footsteps disappear into the distance that he stormed from.
“Wake up, Little Red,” he orders gruffly, his shadow a tangible weight over me.
A man’s presence has never made me feel the way his does—small and destructible. Yet, the only time he breaks his silence is to coax me out of my haze with the promise of warfare. Tomasz wants a fight from me, and when he’s near me, I want to give it to him. As breakable as I am, his belief in my strength makes me desperate to prove it to him. He’s become a light in my darkness. A beacon pulling me from no man’s land.
The creak of the window beside the bed echoes before he pulls the chair closer to the bed and sits. The smell of ink and newsprint wafts over my face when he shakes out the newspaper and then reads the headline aloud. Shortly, the scent of fresh coffee follows, making me believe it’s morning. A potential new day.
His first visits of the day are bright and tinged with caffeine. While the last are pungent with the scent of his cigar and the sweetness of the vodka, he savours in the dark. Then there’s her and her prayers. It’s an endless cycle that I’m lost in.
“Economic crash of export set to devastate businesses and cost thousands of jobs across Russia.” He pauses with a dubious murmur before taking a sip of his coffee. “It’s not exactly news, is it?”
My mouth waters at the smell, and if I don’t swallow, I’ll choke on my spit. The sound of my throat constricting makes me cringe as he comes closer. His breath flutters over my face, so hot that my scalp tingles with the needy, euphoric buzz that courses through me.
“Petrushka…” he whispers low, his finger plucking at my Cupid’s bow while he carries on singing, “Puppet on a string.”
The heat of his breath across my bare skin feels good enough that I want to pray for a quick death with every forlorn shudder that rolls through me. The movement fills the surrounding air with an excitable crackle.
He knows I’m awake.
My toes curl, pulling at the cuts and scrapes on my feet. Another cold lance of my predicament stabs through me. Guilt and resentment coil around my chest as I relish the feel of the rough pads of his fingers trailing from my palm up to my elbow.
“I’m getting bored with waiting.”
The whispers and breezes of his touch and presence are worse than the violence I keep internally begging for. I need to feel something. All this numbness is wreaking havoc with my sensibilities. It’s making me crave more of his touch in ways that I shouldn’t.
Never forget who you are, child.
My grandmother’s words murmur in my muted thoughts as I pry my eyes open, ignoring the sting and the stab of discomfort that rolls through me as I glance up at the painted ceiling. My eyes trace over the intricate paintings and mouldings. In the spotted haze, heaven appears so close. Tangible. Real.
I keep staring as the ghost of my captor’s touch burns over my flesh. Angel wings flutter above me with a scorching glow, paradise and salvation blazing to damnation.
“Little Red,” he utters, delight ringing mockingly in his voice as he grips my hand hard enough that I feel the power of his hold deep in my bones. Standing, he lowers to lean over me as he rumbles in my ear, “Welcome back.”
With a deep inhale, he presses his nose into my hair. Meanwhile, his stubbled skin scratches over the curve of my neck. It’s impossible not to feel the tug of his smile when I gasp at the sensation tugging and twisting deep in my belly. My senses have been in the dark for so long that now they’re sparking with eagerness at every brief touch, leaving me bereft and yearning for more contact, more of his touch as he pulls as away and stands to stare down at me. His hand flattens over my open palm and presses it to the bed.
“Rarity wins admiration,” he chuckles darkly, followed by his swift departure.
Tomasz leaves me with nothing but the buzz of the outside world in the distance and the deafening pound of my heart. I recognise his words, but my brain is still too fuzzy to pinpoint where from as I keep staring at the painted ceiling. His scent lingers in the air long after he’s gone, and I wait for fear to find me, but if anything, I’m relieved.
Now that I’ve had a taste of death or near death, I know what to expect, and it’s not half as frightening as I made it out to be. The knowledge that I escaped its grasp is thrilling. If I can survive death, I can survive anything.