Chapter 19
Nineteen
Violet
After scooping me into his arms, cradling me to his chest and letting me soak in his warmth, Theo carried me through the trees, strong and careful, never wavering.
He seemed to know where to go even though we’d never been in these woods before, quietly telling me they had Margaret, that things on their end had gone to plan.
I laughed into his shoulder when he explained how pissed off Margaret was by the whole thing, but that brief glimmer shot down fast when Father’s face flashed back through my mind a second later. Things had gone well for them, I needed to focus on that. Not on what it had done to me.
Patricide. Vicious and gory. His blood and innards covered my body, my skin and clothes. I relaxed deeper into Theo, trusting him to keep me safe, clinging to him to shove those images away. He gripped me tighter.
When we reached a river, Theo washed us, setting my feet down on the marshy ground and guiding me into the cold, slow running water.
He wiped over my skin with such tenderness, chasing away the dried drops of blood splattered all over me with his fingers and palms, scooping and wiping, his gaze focused.
He stripped us both naked, bared to the moon and stars, and we pressed together, quiet and pensive as he worked and I watched.
His thumb swiped over my cheek, dipping into the cool water again, then back to wipe my chin, before rubbing behind my ear. I knew I’d… gone crazy in that clearing. Lost my sanity. Myself, in killing our father. But now I was renewing, slow and steady, with Theo’s reverence.
He knew me. He understood. My insanity wouldn’t break until he proved our father was dead.
Not for a second did he judge me or try to stop what I was doing. He just finished the job, brought me back. And how he was cleaning me up.
I huffed a shivering laugh when my skin pebbled, my nipples tightening to the point of pain, and my fingertips and toes beginning to numb.
“I’m not sure how much longer we can stay here,” I muttered, my teeth chattering as I caught his eye again.
Out here, it was like we were the only people alive.
Only us and the owls hooting, the bushes rustling, the fish I was terrified would brush up against my ankles.
His gaze softened as he took me in once more.
Theo frowned and ran his thumb along my bottom lip, tugging it down for a moment before letting it pop back shut. “I can’t tell if your lips are going blue or it’s from the moonlight.”
“I’m definitely bordering on too cold.”
Theo kissed my head. “Then let’s get you dry and dressed.”
I cried out, then caught myself and quietened down, when he scooped me up by my thighs, making me wrap my legs around his waist, before carrying me up the shallow bank to our clothes. God, I was bone-tired, each step a mountain to climb.
As Theo patted me dry with his jacket, he looked over my shoulder.
“What do you want to do with him?” he asked, nodding toward where we’d abandoned Father’s head with a scowl.
We’d turned it away because I couldn’t bear to see his open eyes anymore, leaving him shoved half in a bush, only a little of his hair visible if you knew where to look.
In case we had to run. Or whatever. We’d brought it along with us, but neither of us spoke about it.
We just did it. Left his mangled body. Brought his mangled head.
What I’d done to him… it didn’t haunt me, didn’t feel wrong, but I felt detached from it now it had happened.
Like it was another version of me. This…
monster that prowled around underneath my skin, always a few scant moments from bursting out and attacking, had grown quiet for now.
The violence I’d been able to do, the things I’d inflicted on the bodies of three men now, was something I’d only ever dreamed of.
Snippets of visions of brutality. Daydreams of shoving someone down the stairs or jumping off the top of a church spire. She’d become reality.
I didn’t recognize who I was becoming. But I didn’t dislike her. I wasn’t afraid. She settled into my bones like an old friend.
“Leave him to rot. I don’t want to bring him with us,” I said, refusing to look over my shoulder as Theo finished patting me dry and helped me into my dirty clothes.
I put my hand on his head while he slipped my socks and shoes on, then he stood and got himself dressed with fast efficiency.
I watched his body, the shadows his muscles caused along the masculine lines of him, moonlight glinting off his limbs as he shoved himself back into his dark clothes. He was beautiful. Truly.
His hands cupping my cheeks pulled me out of the moment of ogling, and when I caught his eye, he smirked. “You’re insatiable, you know that?” he said, coming in for a chaste kiss. “I could devour you whole.”
“Same to you, big brother,” I shot back, leaning into his kiss. Always on fire for him.
He groaned, and for a second he deepened things, held me tighter, dragged our bodies closer together. Then he ripped away, standing right out of reach, looking very disgruntled.
“We can’t linger, baby,” he told me. “We have to get back. And you’re exhausted.”
I assented. There would be time later to hold him, to feel him.
“Leave him to rot,” Theo declared, repeating what I’d said earlier, his tone definite.
“I can do that for you.” He nodded, walking past me to the head, picking up a large rock without breaking stride.
I watched him yank the head from the bush and drop it on the ground.
Then he raised his hand above his head and brought it down hard, smashing into bone and flesh.
Coagulated blood splattered onto the bushes, the grass, almost black in the starlight.
Theo used the rock until it was all fragments of bone and brain, featureless, food for the animals. No longer someone who could cause pain.
Theo took a few heaving breaths when he was done, kicking the remnants into a messy pile, burying the remains in a shallow grave, before turning back to me, his eyebrows down but his expression relaxed.
It wasn’t hard to remember that he was a killer by trade. He wiped his hands together and nodded.
“Done,” Theo said, sturdy, resolved, striding away.
No one would mourn our father.
“We better get going.” Theo came back to me, tugging at his shirt and looking at the fresh stains with a frown.
It was too dark to really see anyway. “I need to get Connor to find us. C’mon.
” He took my hand in his and away we went, leaving the many piles of carnage in our wake.
Let’s see if the church, or Connor, can cover this one up.
Connor picked us up on the side of the road a few hours’ walk from where we’d left Dad’s head. Margaret was with him, sitting in the backseat, her arms crossed, her scowl firm, her haughtiness familiar. It almost made me smile. Almost.
I sank in beside her, behind Theo, wincing when our eyes met. She didn’t want to be here. That was painfully clear. She wasn’t trying to escape, though, so maybe there was hope for her yet. She just sat there, nose turned up and huffy. Weird.
Theo told me she’d fought them a bit, but soon settled right down when she realized it was hopeless to fight. It would be unbecoming to argue, I guess. Not elegant or graceful to kick and flail.
“Violet,” she spat, in that usual mocking tone of hers. How a sixteen-year-old could be so full of hate was beyond me. We’d been raised by the same people but were so different. Same with Theo and Charlie, I supposed. Connor and Dad. Dead dad. Dad dead.
“What?” Margaret asked, scoffing at me. I bit my bottom lip to stop myself yelling out what I’d done, who lay mutilated in the woods.
She must have known he’d been injured at least; the sight of the car crash was unavoidable, but that was all, she hadn’t seen inside.
As far as she was concerned, he’d walked away from that healthy and whole.
“Vi,” Theo murmured from the front seat, his voice tense. “You said that out loud.”
I frowned. Dad dead? “Oh, oops.” Then smiled at Margaret, but she recoiled some more.
Shit, I wasn’t making a good impression on the sister who already kind of hated me and I hadn’t seen for months.
Had never had a full conversation with through our whole childhood.
I blinked a few times to shove away the lingering darkness.
Maybe this was why it was so easy to be with Theo. Never any judgement from him, never.
“You’ve got red on you.” Margaret gestured to my hair.
I brought my hand up to where she pointed, but found nothing. “I fell.”
Connor looked at Theo in question, then at me, but kept his mouth shut.
Bloody hell, this was tense. All of us wanted to blurt out a barrage of words, but none of us would be first to break the seal, so we sat in silence. I ached to climb into the front passenger seat and curl up on Theo’s lap, have a little snooze, but I refrained. Company present and all.
The car started up, and we began our long drive to the safe house where Connor was keeping Amaryllis.
All living siblings back together again.
I picked at our father’s blood under my fingernails as the car trundled along in awkward silence, only the occasional muttering of Connor and Theo taking up any airtime.
My eyelids were finally beginning to get heavy when the quiet was broken.
“I need the bathroom,” Margaret blurted a few hours into the drive.
“We’re not stopping,” Connor said without even turning his head.
Margaret squirmed and tensed. “I need the bathroom,” she repeated. “You have to stop.” She looked at me, expression imploring, like she was trying to tell me something. “Please,” she mouthed to me.
Frowning, I spoke up. “I think she’s going to pop if we don’t,” I said, shuffling to sit up, swiping the sleep from my eyes.
“Unlike you lot, I had no idea this long journey was ahead of me before I drank a large cup of coffee and a strawberry smoothie,” Margaret chided, crossing her arms and huffing back into the seat.
“Shit,” Connor replied. “Fine. Hang on.”
As Connor found a place for us to pull over — an overly bright gas station with garish green colors and bold adverts — Margaret’s hand grabbed mine, squeezing like she was trying to tell me something.
“Come with me, please,” she whispered. I nodded.
Weird. There was no chance she’d be going in alone anyway.
I’d have to be her chaperone, regardless.
Theo came with us into the station as Connor put unnecessary gas in the car to remain inconspicuous, and he stood outside the bathroom while Margaret and I slipped inside.
The second the door shut, she whirled on me. “Let’s get out of here,” she said with frantic urgency, her eyes darting around. “We can escape through this window.”
“What?” I asked in surprise. “No.”
She tugged on me, moving about like a frantic little bee, her nose scrunching up at the dirty counters, the pungent scent of a long since washed public bathroom.
“Come on, Violet, we need to get away while we can. They’re bad men.
” I watched her debate whether to touch the grimy counter, looking between it and the window above.
“And go where?” I asked. “Back to my husband?”
“Yes!” Margaret said, her cheeks turning red. “He misses you. Needs you. Everyone is worried, Violet. Theo has…”
“Theo saved me, Mag. He saved us both. We aren’t going back.”
Margaret’s face fell. “You believe it too? That Rafael and his church are evil? That’s what father told us, that you’d fallen victim to our brother’s beliefs, that we were wrong, evil. But no, it’s just not true. Women are revered in the church. Adored.”
I laughed, loud and uncontrolled, but she carried on. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.
“Everything the men do to our bodies brings us closer to salvation,” she spoke like she was under a spell, like she was giving a sermon. Like she wasn’t here in the room with me anymore. Her eyes went glassy. “It’s for us, for our own good. We have the vessels they need; we’re precio—”
I shook her, gripped her shoulders, and gave her a firm shake to bring her back down to earth. She was nuts. Maybe more than me.
“Do you want me to tell you the things he did to me?” I asked, my voice harsh.
“I don’t want you discovering them firsthand like I had to.
” She was pissing me off now. And not pissing.
It had all been a ruse to get us out of earshot of the men.
Should have been obvious. “You’re a baby, Margaret. You don’t know the real world.”
“And you do?” she scoffed, not wrong. “You’re less than two years older than me.”
Crikey, I felt older than eighteen. I felt like I’d lived a dozen lives in Rafe’s torture.
It hit me like a truck. I had old bones now, a weary heart.
And I only wanted to rest. I shrugged. She wasn’t wrong.
But eighteen seemed off, insidious somehow.
So much life left to live for someone so damaged.
“The indoctrination took much better on you,” I told her softly, leaning against the grotty wall. Theo would be getting restless soon, most likely pacing outside the door right now. “You had best do your business; we’ve gotta go.”
Margaret didn’t budge, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head. “You’ve got it backwards. You had it so good, married to the leader? What an honor.”
“Do you even know what the church does?” I asked, my voice strained.
“Because I don’t. Not really. Based on my experience, all they are is a front for beating up women.
I never saw anything to revere, never any sign that living this life was bringing me closer to divinity or whatever the fuck you’re spouting.
All it brought me was pain. And you’re too bloody stupid to want different. ”
At that, I turned and yanked open the door. Her yell to stop died in her throat. Theo’s bewildered face was right there, hand raised to knock. “She’s trying to escape,” I stated, then marched past him, leaving him to deal with that nonsense.
She was so, so wrong. So brainwashed. But she had made me realize something. Two things. She hadn’t had a Theo to show her any kindness, I’d been just as cold with her as she had been with me. We’d never really been sisterly towards each other. All by parental design.
And secondly. I needed to understand everything. I was done. Done not knowing what that bastard church was about. The mystery of it was growing old. Boring.
I thought it didn’t matter. I thought it was all about survival, getting out and getting healed. But I don’t think I’d ever truly heal until I knew what it was all for.
What Rafael was aiming for. Where was the divinity in my torture?