Chapter 22 #2
He drags the blade along the inside of my forearm, shallow enough to keep me useful and sharp enough to turn the skin into fire. My body jerks against the restraints, and the sound that tears out of me echoes off the walls before I can swallow it back.
I shake my head, tears spilling despite every last bit of pride I try to drag around myself. “No.”
Rook cuts again, parallel to the first. Pain explodes through me because my body knows what’s coming this time, and I try to pull away even though there’s nowhere to go.
The leather holds my wrist down, turning the attempt into another injury.
Blood beads along the fresh line, then runs warm toward my palm.
“Stop,” Varina says.
Canon doesn’t look at her. “Support pass.”
I breathe in, breathe out, and nearly lose the rhythm when Rook presses the flat of the blade against the cuts. The pressure turns the pain into something nauseating, a hot pulse that crawls up my arm and settles behind my teeth.
“No,” I force out.
“Saint won’t thank you for silence if it gets men killed,” Canon says. “You think you’re protecting him, but you don’t even understand the board you’re dying on. Give me the windows, and this changes.”
“It won’t end.”
His smile is small. “No. But it changes.”
The next blow lands in my ribs, driving every bit of air out of me. My body folds as much as the restraints allow. For several terrifying seconds, nothing comes back. No breath. No sound. When air finally drags in, it comes with a sob I can’t hold back.
Canon crouches in front of me, close enough that I can see the gray in his beard and the old disappointment in his eyes. “You don’t have to be brave, Oisín. No one ever expected that from you.”
The tears won’t stop. I look past him to Varina because some stupid, wounded part of me still wants my sister to choose me once before the end. “Please. Varina, this isn’t the way. You know it isn’t.”
She takes one step forward and then stops when Rook glares at her.
Canon follows my gaze and laughs softly. “She understands survival better than you.”
I stare at her until she looks away. “No. She understands you.”
Varina’s face folds around the words, but she still doesn’t move.
Canon stands. “Again.”
After that, pain comes in layers. A fist to the side of my face.
The knife reopening heat along my arm. Fingers yanking my head back when I sag too far forward.
Another strike to the ribs that makes breathing feel like trying to pull air through a locked door.
Canon keeps asking questions through all of it, while Rook does the work and the others watch.
I say no until the word stops sounding like language.
I say it through blood, through tears, through breath that keeps catching wrong.
Canon calls me worthless. Rook tells me Saint won’t want me once he sees what I gave up.
One of the men near the door laughs and says Obsidian must be desperate if this is the brain they’re protecting.
I try to hold the map in my head and keep the important pieces locked away, but pain starts pulling the shape of it apart.
The first piece slips out after Rook hits my ribs again.
A partial timing note from an older version of the adjustment, close enough to be useful if they already know where to look and wrong enough that I pray it buys Obsidian time instead of taking it.
The words leave me in a sob.
Canon goes still. “There,” he says softly. “See? You were always going to be useful.”
I shake my head, choking on blood and breath. “No.”
“What was that window again?”
I press my lips together. Rook grips my injured arm, and I scream before he does anything else.
That’s when the room learns what pressure works. I give them fragments. Old escort logic. A false route label that had been real three days ago. A support timing range broad enough to force guessing. I don’t give them the heart of it but I still give them enough to hate myself.
Canon looks pleased, which might be worse than the pain. He wipes his hands on a rag even though he hasn’t done the worst of the touching himself. That has always been his favorite kind of violence, the kind where someone else’s knuckles split and he gets to call himself controlled.
I turn my head toward my sister, every movement dragging pain through my neck and ribs. “You’re letting him.”
Canon follows my gaze, irritation flickering through his expression. “Don’t waste breath on her. She’s done more for this club than you ever have.”
I laugh, and it turns into a cough that tears through my ribs. “Then why are you still so afraid of me?”
The room goes still.
Canon steps closer. He looks at me with hatred, but there’s something under it now, something he can’t dress up as disappointment. He threw away a son he thought had no teeth, and now he’s bleeding from the place I bit him. “You’re nothing,” he spits out.
Once, that would have destroyed me.
Tonight, it doesn’t land because I have a club who has started realizing I’m more than just useful. I just hope that Saint will finally get his head out of his ass and admit it.
I lift my head as much as I can. “You should run,” I whisper.
He leans closer. “What?”
I taste blood when I smile. “When Saint comes, you should run.”
Rook hits me for that. The room tilts, and for a while there’s only sound without shape: voices, a door opening, Canon speaking to someone in low, urgent tones.
Varina says my name once, broken enough that it almost sounds like the sister who stole toast from my plate when we were children.
My head hangs forward, chin near my chest, blood and spit stringing toward the concrete.
The ring on my finger is red now, the silver barely visible beneath it.
Someone grabs my hair and yanks my head back and Canon’s face swims into focus. “One more time,” he says. “Eastern corridor. Real window.”
I can barely see him through the tears. “Fuck you.”
The last thing I hear before the next blow takes the room away is Varina saying, “Dad, stop.”
Too late.
Far too late.