Chapter 3 Delilah
DELILAH
Who would willingly want to eat human flesh? Now the culty wedding breakfast makes sense. They all revel in it like being depraved is boring, searching for the next thing to outdo the other’s vile acts.
Resting my head against the stone wall, I stare at the joint of the ceiling and wall. Kane would make this better, make me feel less alone, kiss my forehead while I tell him why he was put in prison, wrap his arms around me—protect me.
Our lives are like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle, but we were too far away, wrapped in each other, so we didn’t see all the small joints making up the pieces until our families decided to send it into disarray.
Now, he’s left me to find the pieces alone.
For each one I manage to place, the more the picture gets distorted, and nothing was what either of us thought it was.
He was made to hate me.
I was forced to forget him.
Even our childhood wasn’t chance. My parents moved to spy on the Xandroses under Rowan’s command.
It’s the clearest memory I have after my father whipped me with his belt and he thought I was unconscious as he took a phone call with my mother at his side, both allowing me to hear their secrets without ever realizing.
Anna sheepishly enters the lounge. Stopping at the door, she asks, “Would you like help?”
“Fuck you,” I scoff, blankly staring at the wall.
“Delilah, I’m offering you help, not a snake.”
I snap my head towards her, glaring. “I’d rather have the snake. At least it hisses in warning, unlike you.”
She looks behind her before she quickly walks over to me. Dropping down to her knees so we’re eye level, she whispers, “I did give you a warning. I told you not to come home when you called, but you didn’t listen to me.”
“You fucking helped them. You shot arrows at us. You were beside that old bitch while she whipped Kane. You remember him, don’t you?
The little boy whose sandwiches you’d cut into triangles?
” Her eyes harden, the same way they used to when I was a child, disobeying my parents.
“I once wished you were my mother. Fooled me, because you’re exactly like everyone fucking else.
You’re as evil as them, and I know you were reporting back to Helene. ”
I laugh as her face falls, giving away my memories even though she’s going to tattle.
“What? Are you scared about what I know? Or is the fact you were in the hospital something you don’t want anyone to know?”
“I tried,” she lies. “I tried to protect you. But this world…” She shakes her head. “It’s not something I can protect you from when I’m the one who needs saving from you.”
My anger rises when she stands to leave. Grabbing her ankle, my fingers biting into the joint as I stare up at her, I grit, “I was the child. Not you. I was vulnerable. Not you.”
“You still don’t understand exactly what you were born into.
” Leaning down, she fits her lips by my ears.
“The stories are your legacy. You were always going to be the princess of your parents’ sins.
I will always be the one who serves them.
” She ghosts her hand over my hair as she lowers her voice further.
“I would have loved to have a daughter like you. Intelligent, strong-willed, and loyal to those she cares about. But the anger you carry comes from your father and the need to hurt from your mother. Use them wisely.”
I let go of her ankle and go back to staring at the wall since that’s more useful.
If Kane was here, what would he do?
Whenever I was scared, he would slip his hand into mine, fold his fingers over the back of my palm, and I’d instantly feel better. I try to replicate it with my own hands. Threading my fingers together, I press my palms flat against each other and squeeze, but the proportions are wrong.
Anna comes back into the room with fresh towels, a new bowl of water, gauze piled on a large tray with a stack of cheese sandwiches and bottles of water.
I move my bloody feet away from her as she kneels beside me.
Fucking twisted bitch. She’s not going to manipulate me into thinking she’s not like everyone else here.
“Where are we?” I ask as she wets a hand towel, before slowly wiping the dried mud off my face. I can use her, like she used me to do what Helene wanted.
“I was born here,” she whispers. “When the island was still inhabited, there was always laughter in the air.”
“Okay, do I give a fuck? Tell me where we are.”
Her shitty life story isn’t one I’m interested in. I’ve worked out for myself there’s no one fucking here, so it’s useless information she’ll bend to make me sympathize with her.
“Off the coast of England,” she says, passing me a sandwich and bottle of water before she wets another towel.
I just need to get to England. I’ll swim across the water, find an embassy to get home. They’ll be able to help me get away from whatever the fuck this place is. I’ll need my strength, so I check the sandwich for any poison then alternate my bites with sips of water.
“Everyone left with a pact to never speak of this place again because they weren’t able to ignore what Helene was doing anymore,” Anna says, cleaning me.
“They’d spent years accepting that their people may disappear, telling themselves it was an offering to the island for every amenity they could wish for under the Kobalts. ”
She looks up, eyes red-rimmed, her fingers wrapping around my wrist. “They allowed her the time to practice, to grow and perfect her ways. When they left, she only became more powerful as she grew her family after denying us the ability to fend for ourselves because nothing could grow here.”
She’s talking as if this all happened centuries ago, the lore passed down from generations, becoming a myth. So, I ask, “I thought you said you were born here?”
“My father was a farmer.”
“You said nothing grows here.” I swear to fuck she’s annoying.
“It doesn’t. He was in charge of rearing their meals, not growing them.”
My face pinches in disgust as I slowly lean away from her, whispering, “Are you a cannibal?”
I’m going to be sick. She used to make my food when I was a kid. She could’ve been putting human flesh in it. But she shakes her head with a small smile. “No, the staff don’t eat the same meals as the masters, remember?”
“I’m sorry, I always hated that bullshit.”
The way my parents treated her is disgusting and I hated it when I was a child. I hate it even more now, even if she is a traitorous bitch.
“I remember, Delilah.” She pats my hand. “You would always cut your food in half to share with me.”
“Why did you hurt me then?”
“You see the hurt you’ve received, but you don’t see the pain I’ve saved you from.”
Anna slowly wraps her arms around me and kisses the side of my head, hiding her whisper, “I never told them about Kane because I wanted you to keep him. I wished for you to escape, to run away from all of this—together.”
“He’s dead.” Tears slip down over my cheeks, stinging the raw patches of broken skin.
“He’s a Kobalt,” she whispers back. “They won’t allow him to die when they need him.”
I want to scream that he has nothing to do with Helene. He’s a Xandros. Mine. But that means he’ll be dead, so I swallow the urge as I take the gauze. She’s been using new towels each time so none of the dirt has mixed into the water, and I ignore her presence as I tend to my wounds.
Kane will come back. He’ll be a dick, the new Kane, and he’ll speak to me like shit.
I’ll be able to argue with him with the full power of my memories.
He’ll apologize, promise not to hurt me again before we swim across to the nearest country together.
We won’t repeat the same arguments, now that I remember everything.
I’ll make him be my Kane again. Not the new bitter, hateful version—the old one who was kind. The best part of my life.
I keep repeating it as I wipe the dirt out of the shallow cuts on the bottom of my feet. I’m so fucking tired, I can’t wrap them in gauze. I leave them exposed to the air and drop the towel in the pile beside me as my eyes close.
Anna gently moves around me to lay a blanket over me. Her hand is equally soft, stroking my hair back, sniffling with each pass. I’m on the brink of sleep, my head slowly dropping to rest on my shoulder when Anna tearfully whispers, “I’m sorry.”
There’s a sharp scratch against my bicep and my eyes snap open to see the end of a syringe sticking out of my arm.
The drugs slowly work through my body, taking my ability to move first. I try to fucking scream at her, but it only comes out in a mumble as she stands.
Walking backwards to the door, she lifts her chin, announcing, “She’s ready now. ”
Tapping.
Helene.
This fucking traitor has betrayed me again.
I can’t even protect myself as the monster walks into the room, followed by three guards in mirrored masks. She taps her cane in an odd pattern as she looks down at me slumped against the wall. “Silly girl.”
My mumbling turns more erratic as the guards step around her.
I manage to move my foot from side to side as the wall keeps me up, but it’s not enough to stop two of them hauling me up to my feet by my arms. The third pulls a bag over my head, securing the bottom portion of my face with a thick, harsh band like they’ve wrapped a belt around my mouth and buckled it at the back of my head.
I can’t breathe, black dots dancing over the small pinholes of light the hood allows.
It all stops.
No sight, no feeling.