9. Dove
nine
Dove
I lie on my side, cocooned under the warm blankets of a small bed. They moved me into a room—I’m no longer down in the basement—and I even have a window now. But the thought of seeing the light of day makes me want to die.
The slick feeling of blood lingers on my hands. I’ve washed them in cold water and rubbed them raw. My skin is burning, but the pain doesn’t come close to what I’m feeling inside. If I was hanging on to any hope of Rowan finding me and getting out of here, all of that is now gone. My body begins to sing the song of death, and my mind is finally coming to terms with it.
The same memory plays in my head like a broken record that I can’t seem to stop. It screeches against everything good left in me, bringing me down, down, down into a bottomless pit of despair.
“I c-can’t. Please don’t make—don’t make me do it.”
Magnus, the man they want dead, is chained to the wall in the basement, bruised, and bleeding, and barely conscious.
“I’m not making you do anything, darling,” the guard tells me. “You chose this when you asked us… no, begged us not to touch you. Remember?”
I shake my head, sobbing. My body isn’t worth more than the life of this man. I don’t know him, and I don’t know the things he’s done, but I can’t be the one who brings him his punishment. I’m just a girl. I’m just—
“Do it, Dove,” Magnus whispers, hovering between life and death. “I’m as good as dead, anyway.”
The guard kicks him in the face, then Magnus grins— grins , showing his bloody teeth. As if he’s accepted his fate ever since he stepped into my cell yesterday morning. My body is pulled forward, the knife shaking in my hand. I don’t want to do this. I can’t. But the guard’s hand wraps around the handle next to mine, giving me a strong enough nudge that Magnus’s blood splatters on my face, and his eyes lose their spark.
I blink fast and hard, tossing to the other side of the bed as I try to stop the scene from haunting me again. And it’s my stomach—empty and sticking to my spine—that pulls me back to the present just enough to shift the trajectory of my thoughts.
My skin tingles with the ghostly feeling of Rowan’s touch. I ache and think of him, conjuring soothing words in my mind… words that he’d say to me if he were here right now. I stretch my hand out, clutching the sheets, imagining he’s next to me. I imagine I could pull his arm over my body to hide. Only that… only his presence might pull me out of the hole I’m falling through. But he isn’t here, and I’m exhausted from hoping otherwise. Loneliness presses hard on me, and the thought of breaking that window and picking up a shard of glass grows larger and larger in my mind.
Someone calls out my name, but I’m too far away from the present to register the intent or the voice. A hand lands on top of my body above the blanket that covers me, and I shudder. Why is it gentle? Why is it not hard and demanding, like every other hand that touched me since being here?
“Dove,” the voice says. “It’s okay. It’s me.”
My eyes open in the dark, but I don’t make a sound. I know Cole is in the room, but I don’t know what to think about him anymore. He’s here, he’s alive, and he didn’t protect me. He walked away, knowing full well what they were planning to do to me.
“I’m so sorry, Dove. There was nothing I could do about Magnus. But I’m here now. Talk to me.”
He pulls the covers down and light inundates my eyes, making my eyelashes flutter and my body tense up. Something falls from his hand, but I can’t see it clearly enough. It disappears under the covers.
“Please,” he says. “I know it hurts. Believe me, it hurts me just as much to see you like this.”
I pull away from his touch. “I don’t know you anymore.”
“No, you don’t…” He sighs, and the mattress dips down under his weight as he sits down. “You don’t.”
A pause settles between us, as if he’s trying to find the right words. What could he possibly say to me to make it all right? There’s no explanation, nothing he could say to fix this. Where was he all these years? And why is he working with the people trying to ruin us?
“This whole town is run by the EFW. We’re in one of Salister’s homes right now. He wants you here because… he’s going to lure Rowan in and make some sort of deal. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Alarm bells ring in what’s left of my sane mind, and I get up, finally seeing him. “What do you mean, lure Rowan in? How can you let this happen? Don’t you know what these people do? I thought…” I let out a shaky breath. “I thought that’s why you, him, and Maddox started this. I don’t understand.”
“Come here. Let me hold you.”
And maybe because I’ve been deprived of affection for too long, or because I’m too broken to realize his true intent, I lean into him like I used to do when we were back home. His familiar scent brings back the tornado of memories—our childhood, my teenage years, the day he left… the day he died.
His eyes soften for just a second, and I remember this look. I’ve seen it countless times before, back when we were kids and he was the one taking care of me. Always there, even when he didn’t have to be, like that night when I wanted him to go out with his girlfriend and he refused to leave me alone.
He’d sat on the couch watching Titanic with me for the fifth time, his messy hair sticking out from under his oversized hoodie, grumbling about how annoying I was for insisting he just go. But he stayed anyway, even when I pretended I’d be fine on my own.
I glance at him now, and the memory twists in my chest. I used to think he’d always be there for me. But the man in front of me now... he feels like a stranger. Still, I fist his cloak and bury myself in his chest because just for a moment, I want to be held… to pretend he’s still my brother, and that he still loves me.
“You’ve grown up so much. I wish I could’ve been there to see it.”
Unshed tears clog my throat, but I get the words out. “Why weren’t you?”
Silence. I press against his chest, lifting my head so I can search his eyes.
“Who are you? What happened?”
A sigh. “I can’t give you all the answers you need. The truth is you’ll be out of here soon, and we will probably never see each other again. So right now, let me be here for you while I still can. I want you to eat, Dove. I want you to hydrate yourself, get some fresh air, and sleep. This is—”
“ No ,” I tell him. “No! You don’t get to show up after five years and all you have to say is that I need to eat. What the hell is this?”
His jaw clenches, and he lets out an annoyed growl, his true colors flashing before my eyes. “I am Commander Cole Finnegan of the Third Division of the EFW. I was brought here the day my death was faked and trained to run this division to the best of my ability. Don’t ask me why—there are bigger things at play. Bigger than you, and me, and Rowan, and everyone else trying to interfere with our mission.”
My body tenses at his words, and I move away from him, suddenly terrified.
“How could you… how could you let them bring me here?”
He stands up, heading toward the door. Hurt and betrayal flash through me, squeezing my heart, making me want to scream from the bottom of my lungs. My mind conjures up the words faster than I can stop them— it was better knowing he was dead.
“You can’t be dead when Rowan gets here,” he says as an afterthought. “Without you as a bargaining chip, they’ll kill him. And you’ll have both his blood and Magnus’s on your hands. Do you understand?”
I want to scream at him, but no words come out. The more he tells me, the more paralyzed I feel. Instead of calming me down, his presence stirs up more turmoil than I can handle. All I know is I want him gone.
“Get some rest and eat something. And don’t do anything stupid. We’re watching you.”