Chapter 2
Ophelia
Our walk through the woods comes to an end.
The dirt path opens out onto the clearing where the water tower sits proudly in the middle, the flat roof reaching into a slowly darkening sky.
It’ll be night soon. I sense movement from up there and realize a couple of Cain’s father’s men are standing guard.
Beside me, Daisy draws to a halt. Her mouth is open as she stares up at the converted building.
“It’s like something out of a fairytale,” she says.
I can’t help smiling. “I thought the same the first time I saw it. Let me show you inside.”
None of us locked the door when we’d left. I’d run out of here like someone had been chasing me, and I guess the others had done exactly that. Not that anyone could have gotten inside with armed guards patrolling the perimeter.
Cain leads the way, opening the heavy wooden door, and holding it for Daisy and me to walk through, with Roman and Mal bringing up the rear.
“Is this where you live now?” Daisy asks, turning in a slow circle to take in the interior of the water tower.
It won’t be like anything she’s seen before.
Back in the cult, the homes are modest, except for the Prophet’s, and the church.
I find myself relieved that the Preachers got people in to make the place cozier, and relocated much of the gothic, voodoo stuff that had lined the shelves on the walls not so long ago.
If Daisy finds their altar room, however, she’ll probably freak out.
And why wouldn’t she? I did when I first came across it.
I make a mental note to tell the men we need to look at locking that room.
“It is,” I say.
“With these three men?”
Daisy’s gaze flicks between each of my guys, and a tiny line appears between her brows.
At seventeen years old, and having never lived anywhere but the cult, I can tell she’s unsure what the situation is between me and these three scary men.
If she stays with us, she’s definitely going to have questions I won’t want to answer.
But I can’t send her away. She’s scared and vulnerable, and maybe Cain is right.
Perhaps she has just given us a way to stop the Prophet for good.
The idea terrifies me. It will mean my Preachers going up against the Prophet, and the possibility that one or more of my men will get hurt or worse doesn’t bear thinking about.
“Yes. The four of us live here, together.” I force my mind back to her question and just put the answer out there.
She bites her lower lip. “Oh.” The word is simple, but the intonation makes it feel heavy and loaded with judgement.
A heated wave of shame flows through me.
I don’t want to feel ashamed for being with three men who love me, but it’s hard not to see my situation through Daisy’s eyes.
She’s younger, and innocent, and has been taught that love is to be between husband and wife, not in the many varied ways it takes place in the real world.
Within the cult, the hierarchy is simple and absolute.
God at the top, then the Prophet, then the husband as head of the household, and lastly the women and children.
Some men can take more than one wife if they want, but the other way around?
My situation would be beyond scandalous to them; it would be an outright sin and punishable in the worst way.
I remember seeing Vani and the Vipers the first time at that party when I’d only just arrived at Verona Falls, and how shocked I’d been, but also curious.
I’m not like Daisy, though. Not only am I older, I haven’t spent my whole life in the cult the way she has.
I had a life before I was taken there, and I’ve been exposed to real life since.
She only knows what the Prophet has told her.
And yet she must have her own mind, or she wouldn’t be here now.
“You must be hungry,” Cain says. “I’ll make something to eat and drink, then we can think a little more clearly about what happens next.”
He heads into the kitchen to make some hot tea—Roman’s penchant for herbal tea has rubbed off on him—and throw together some food.
A few minutes later, we’re all presented with steaming mugs of tea before he strolls back into the kitchen.
Within minutes, wonderful scents fill the air as Cain works.
He’s grilling chicken and slicing vegetables, then throwing it all into some large tortilla wraps.
Poor Roman is still on blended foods. He looks like he wants to throw the protein shake against the wall.
Cain returns with a couple of burritos. “Hope you’re not vegetarian,” he says, handing one to Daisy. “I probably should have asked.”
She seems wary of him, but she’s also too thin and takes the meal eagerly. “Thank you for your kindness,” she says.
“Of course.”
I realize I haven’t explained to Daisy who Cain is.
“Daisy, do you remember me talking about my life before I came to the cult?” It was something I’d done very rarely.
I’d always tried to block out memories of my life before, because they were too painful, but occasionally they slipped out.
“Do you remember me telling you about my best friend, the boy I used to build dams with in the river?”
She nods around a mouthful of burrito. Her eyes widen as she chews, and I smile at that. She’s clearly enjoying the food an awful lot, and why wouldn’t she? We never got such tasty meals in the compound, and Cain is a good cook.
“Well, Cain is that boy from my childhood.”
Daisy’s eyebrows lift and her gaze goes up and down Cain’s massive form.
I chuckle, sensing what she’s thinking. “Yeah, he’s all grown up now.”
Cain throws me a wink, and I smile back.
Daisy swallows, her gaze flicking between us. “And what about the other two?”
“They’re both Cain’s friends.” I leave out the part about them being known as the Preachers, and I definitely don’t want Daisy to learn about the masks or the magic. It’ll completely freak her out, and she’ll probably go running back to the cult. “That’s Malachi,” I introduce, “and this is Roman.”
“What happened to your face?” she asks Roman.
I bite the inside of my mouth and answer for him. “My father happened.”
“What?” she exclaims.
“It’s a long story, and I think yours is probably more important.”
Cain takes a seat and rests his forearms on his thick thighs. “First things first, how long have we got?” he asks Daisy. “By that, I mean when is this mass suicide supposed to happen?”
“At dawn in three days’ time. The ascension is to happen at sunrise.”
“Does that give us enough time to get there?”
“If you have a vehicle. I walked and hitchhiked most of the way, so you’ll have time.”
“You hitchhiked?” I say. “Daisy, that was so dangerous.”
“I realize that, but what choice did I have? It was dangerous to hitchhike, but it was even more dangerous to stay at the commune. You understand that?”
I do. I know exactly how she felt, too. That fear of running, but equal fear of staying. That constant need to look over your shoulder, that mistrust of everyone around you, in case they recognize where you’re from and decide to take you back.
“You were very brave.” I offer her a smile.
She smiles back. “I learned from the best.”
I pull her in and hug her.
As much as I love being here with the guys, and also how the other girls here—Camile, Vani and Mackenzie—have made me welcome, it still feels good to have someone from my world with us. Daisy understands my history in a way no one else can, no matter how hard they try.
I still haven’t told the Preachers about the other part of what Daisy said.
I need to, but I’m scared. They’re going to say the one thing I don’t want to hear—that my dad was responsible for handing me over to the Prophet.
I can’t bring myself to believe that, though.
I get that he’s made mistakes—and looking at poor Roman’s face, they were some huge sized mistakes—but would he really have handed me over to the Prophet?
He knew what that would do to my mom. It almost destroyed her.
When I think back to the joy and relief he’d demonstrated upon my return, I just can’t see that being the reaction of a man who knew where his daughter was this whole time.
He’d literally fallen to his knees and cried.
Men in my father’s position don’t show their emotions easily, but that day he’d dropped all pretenses.
But then he was also the one who put me in that institute. He didn’t care about my mom’s feelings then. He made out that he was trying to help me, to keep me safe, but perhaps it had been a ploy the whole time and he’d put me there for the Prophet to come and find me again?
The possibility sits heavily on my chest, making it hard to breathe. It makes me question everything. What if my mom knew about this, too? No, I couldn’t believe it of her.
“If we have three days,” Malachi says, “it gives us time to come up with a plan.”
“It’s barely three days,” I correct him. “That’s not long at all when we don’t even know how to find the place.”
“We’re not going to be able to do this on our own,” Roman says from where he’s still standing at the kitchen counter. “We’re going to need help.”
Mal groans. “You’re going to say we need to ask the Vipers and Devils again, aren’t you?”
He grimaces around his swollen lip. “As much as it quite literally pains me to say it, yes.”
“We have Cain’s father’s men, too,” I point out. “I know they weren’t brought here for that, but surely they’ll help us.”
Cain considers this. “How many men does the Prophet have around him? I don’t mean like regular members of the cult, but men he relies upon.”
I answer. “There are five of them. Elders in the commune. He calls them his disciples.”
Malachi hisses air over his teeth with a word that sounds suspiciously like asshole.
“Okay, so there are five of them,” Cain says, “plus the Prophet. Those numbers aren’t too bad.”