Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Pain.
So much.
It engulfed me so tightly I couldn’t decipher the source of it.
From my head to my toenails, it drove me awake with a brutal lashing.
Lying on my stomach, my face mushed into a flat pillow, I blinked, my blurry vision slowly clearing on a wall with a painting of a pinup model dressed in only a leather harness, covering nothing, whipping a tied-up man.
What the hell? Where am I?
Pain jerked my head up, and the sudden movement shot bile up my throat, my head swimming with agony.
I heaved over the side of the bed, right into a bowl placed on the floor.
Puking up mostly bile with nothing much in my stomach, the violent action made me more nauseous.
I collapsed onto the pillow with a whimper, already spent of energy.
But curiosity pricked the back of my neck.
I slowly looked around. Filtered light seeped into the room, making it hard to decipher the time of day.
The daylight unmasked the room, showing how much grime had been hidden in the magic of darkness and shadows the night before.
Not that I was complaining. The lumpy bed and pillow felt heavenly compared to sleeping on the ground.
And being here meant we had truly escaped Halalház. It wasn’t a dream. We were free.
“Warwick?” My voice came out weak and gritty, sounding like a scratched record, as pain slicing down my throat.
Raw. Sore. As if I had been strangled or had screamed until it gave out.
Oh right. Both happened.
Twisting to look over my shoulder, I saw my leg was wrapped up with gauze and propped on a pillow, blood staining the discolored whitish towel. Warwick Farkas had tended to me. What a bizarre idea when just a few days ago he was going to kill me.
Where was he?
Strangely, I felt unsettled waking up without him here.
“Warwick?” Pushing up, every muscle, nerve, and joint complained, telling me to lay back down, my head spinning in retaliation. Inhaling, I placed my feet to the floor, my knuckles curling into the duvet, trying to hold back the urge to vomit again.
A soft knock tapped at the door before it swung open. A pretty woman looking to be in her late twenties or early thirties with bright red hair and blue eyes poked her head in. She wore a corset, half-slip, and silky kimono.
“Hi.” She smiled, wrinkles lining her mouth, her teeth slightly yellow. Those things told me she was human, instantly easing my tension. “Thought I heard you.” A light British accent glazed her words like icing.
I watched her, my brain feeling slow and groggy as she stepped in, carrying a bowl and more towels. She trotted over to the dresser and set them down.
“Who are you?” I croaked out.
She moved to me, taking my face in her hands, peering at it from different angles, cringing as her thumbs moved down my bruised neck.
“I don’t mean to be rude, luv, but you look like hell.
” She clicked her tongue, shaking her head as she backed away from me.
“Nothing a nice bath and soap won’t help with.
Lots and lots of soap. Maybe some disinfectant?
I hope we have something that can handle this.
” She motioned over me, her eyes opening wider at my bloody sports bra and prison underwear. “Oh, my . . . good thing I’m here.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry, luv.” She batted her hand at me. “I’m Rosie.” Curtsying playfully, her voice was suddenly heavy with accent. “The English Rose.”
“You’re from England?” I couldn’t imagine leaving the glorious Western countries to be here. In hell. “And you left?”
She let out a trill of laughter. “Oh lord, no. I’m not English at all.” She put her hand on her chest, winking at me. “But they love the accent, and we all have our roles to play here. With some people, accents are their kink.”
I stared at her in confusion, my brain working through fog.
“I was an actress before this. Have an exceptional ear. I pick up on brogues easily, but now I’ve been playing this role for so long it’s become part of me.
Sometimes I forget I am not British.” She laughed, switching back to me in a blink.
“So, let’s get you a bath, fresh clothes, and some food.
Sound good?” She talked so quickly that my fuzzy mind struggled to keep up with her.
“Rosie?” I rubbed my head. “Where is Warwick?”
“You mean that virile, intense, dangerously enticing man?” She sighed heavily, fluttering her fingers across her breastbone.
“He has to be part beast or something. Hell, could you imagine him in bed? Oh lord . . . He’s one I would not charge.
” She fanned herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, is there something going on with you two? ’
“No—”
“Oh good.” She cut me off. “That would be terribly awkward. He’s been a patron here before I even started, which feels so long ago. But I have yet to get him in my bed. I will, though. I am determined.” She shimmied her shoulders. “Grrr. Just to have one night with that man.”
“Rosie.”
“He’s terrifying and so sexually charged. Gods, he must know how to fuck . . . He makes my brain melt. He has to be fae, right? There’s no way he can be human.”
“Rosie!”
She exhaled, shaking her head. “See? That man fries my brain.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.” Her back-length, dyed red hair slid over her shoulders.
“He left a couple of hours ago, saying he had something to do. Practically demanded Madam post one of her guards at your door to watch over you. He was very insistent. You do not order Madam in her house, though. They were about to have a brawl when I volunteered.” Her lids tapered, and she paused for a moment.
“You sure there is nothing between you?”
“No.” I scoffed, my head waggling. “Fuck no. Definitely not. Absolutely definitely not.”
She tapped a painted fingernail against her teeth, her gaze rolling over me, her lips puckering. “Mmmm-hmm.”
I glanced to the side, feeling chagrin flame my skin—good thing no one could see it through the dirt and blood.
“What is that smell? Ohhhh.” Her nose wrinkled as she bent down to pick up the bowl on the floor. “I’ll take this out, get the bath ready, and come back for you, all right?”
“You don’t have to do that.” I tried to stop her from retrieving my vomit. “It’s my mess.”
“Please, luv.” She rolled her eyes, stepping back with the basin in her hands.
“If you think a little vomit even fazes me, you have no idea what I’ve had to clean up here.
” She arched her perfectly curved eyebrow, winking at me before her heeled boots clunked across the floor as she headed for the door.
“I’ll see if I can scrounge up a painkiller. I’ll be back in a few.”
The door clinked after her exit, and my shoulders dropped with fatigue. My frame curled back up on the bed, needing to sleep and hide from the pain.
Shutting my eyes, my mind buzzed with the information she told me.
Warwick and I had been free barely a few hours, so what had him running out of here so early? Weren’t we supposed to be hiding? What was he doing?
The questions swirled around in my head, falling down the black hole as my body succumbed to sleep again.
Tipping my head back, the cool water lapped just below my breasts as the liquid slowly sloshed around the old claw tub.
I had been in here for at least an hour.
Rosie already changed the water once because of the blood and dirt that had come off me the first round.
Plumbing worked for the most part in the Savage Lands, but only cold water came out of the pipes and not always frequently, according to my new friend.
She brought buckets of hot water up from the kitchen to get it warm enough to scrub my body and matted hair before leaving me to soak.
She had let me sleep most of the afternoon, stirring me around four so I could get the bath before the house woke up.
This world woke with the darkness. Fae were naturally nocturnal but had conformed to rules of human society, fitting into our world unnoticed at one time.
It was still this way in most places, but in this seedy world, they clearly preferred the darkness to veil their deeds.
Opening their arms and curling their fingers, they beckoned the disheartened folks coming off their shifts who wanted to escape from life.
“It’s hard to resist the call of the night when the day is so brutal and cruel.
Getting lost in the pleasure of flesh, drink, drugs, and greed is a mistress no human or fae can resist,” Rosie had told me before she left.
“Be careful, luv, it is an easy hole to fall down, especially with that man around.” She blew me a kiss and shut the door.
Rosie was a lot, but she had been very kind to me. I kept forgetting what she did for a living. Where I was. In the daylight, the house was still quiet, most still sleeping, slowly coming to life again.
It was a struggle to be here without judging everyone I saw and not being grossed out or acting above such things.
In Leopold, there were no prostitutes or whorehouses.
Those were for the poor class, the vile and depraved.
Though I heard murmurings from Leopold soldiers about slipping over here.
I had never witnessed it or talked about it.
It was shunned and deemed disgusting and lowbred by the elite.
Instead, the rich just opened their legs for power and dominance.
Games of deceit and treachery while dressed in finery, sipping expensive liquor.
Weren’t arranged marriages the wealthy’s version of a whorehouse?
Selling your daughters and sons to the highest bidder?
Were we any better than the men and women here trying to survive?