Chapter Fifteen #2
I raise my voice. “You gave me little choice! Besides, I’ve seen you kill someone—two someones! Four, come to think of it! And there were plenty more I didn’t see.”
If I could stand, I would, even if I’d lose the cover of bubbles.
However, I can’t move with this tender ankle.
Broken ankle, maybe. I pull up my knees tighter, leaning away from him as far as I can, forcing the tears away.
I can’t tell if they’re angry tears or traumatized tears.
I flash back to what happened in the woods.
The men. Their deaths. I’m not sorry they’re dead.
Does that make me a monster too? I wish I could have killed them myself.
“I’m not going to harm you,” he repeats, scowling. “I was trying to help.”
I scoff—on his knees next to the tub, he is almost level with me.
“You kidnapped me. You’ve taunted me with nightmares and visions, been unbearably rude, and downright cruel.
You won’t help me save my sister. You don’t care about anything.
” Now, tears fall from my eyes again. I’ve never felt more naked, sitting here before him, weeping.
He doesn’t answer my accusations. I stare blankly while he reaches into the tub and pulls out my right foot. His fingers burn into my skin. “Broken?”
My poor foot, skin cracked open in more than one spot, toes bruised and blistered from all my years of dancing, and now this new injury, my ankle swollen and purple. No wonder it hurts so badly.
“I don’t know.” Why I don’t demand he release me, I can’t understand. Am I still afraid of him now? He did save my life, even if he was unbearably punishing about it afterwards. But why would he save my life if he was only going to hurt me?
Maybe I’m not afraid of him any longer. Maybe I haven’t been for a while. But I still despise him. I want him to leave. I want his hand off my ankle right—
He closes his eyes, pinches his brow and my skin gets hot, pulsing. I cry out and by the time the sound leaves my lips, the pain has ceased. I stare at my ankle in shock as the swelling goes down. The bruising is gone, and it no longer hurts. Not even a little.
“You fixed it,” I say. Somehow this makes me angry. Of all the magic he’s used against me, this is what makes my blood run hot.
He lets go on his own, and my foot sinks back in the water. “I’ll help you out now.”
“I can get myself out of the tub, and I could have put myself in as well!”
“But you wouldn’t. If it were up to you, you’d have gone to bed with bleeding feet and an empty stomach. Besides…you might pass out again.” He grabs a towel and holds it up before pulling me out, averting his eyes.
I snatch the towel from him. “I can take care of myself too!”
Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.
Look at what a mess I’ve made. Look at how I ended up here.
Tonight I would have come to a much worse ending than a hot bath in a mansion had he not been there to save me.
I would be dead if it weren’t for him. I know it, an ugly, terrible knowing.
But that doesn’t mean I forgive him for his cruelty.
Miserable, confused, I wrap the plush towel around myself, recalling how Mr. Brown said once that maybe he was tired of killing.
But, for me (was it for me?) he destroyed two people tonight.
Is that, perhaps, why he was so angry? For some reason, he felt compelled to save me, to make those men pay for what they did and what they might have done. Why, though?
“Are you hungry?” He stands across from me. “I can have someone bring food.”
I shake my head, hair dripping around my shoulders, and blurt out, “Why didn’t you have Mrs. Minthy bathe me?”
He hesitates. “She is asleep. Besides, this seems like my mess to clean up.”
“I’m not a mess,” I say with a bite to my words. “And I don’t belong to you, no matter what you’ve claimed me as.”
His eyes are never-ending, something in them making me shiver. “I’m well aware of that.” When I’m silent, he adds, “I’ll leave you, then. Rest.”
“Thank you,” I finally say, just as he is walking out.
“For tending to me.” Tending me after breaking me.
Helping me after harming me. I hate him, still, obviously.
Always. I add anyway, compelled to express my gratitude, “Thank you for coming to get me. I know they would have killed me. Maybe worse.”
He only stares at me, the look in his dark eyes inscrutable.
Maybe there’s something I’ve never seen there before.
I think for a beat it might be sympathy mingled with regret.
But that’s impossible. Demons don’t feel, at least not for others.
He felt something staring at that locket, though, didn’t he? About me?
As soon as he’s gone, I peel off the sopping chemise and throw it into the tub.
I pull on my nightgown and, tired, spent, climb into bed and burrow under the covers, my ripped-up sheets somehow already replaced with new ones, crisp and cool.
I try to sleep, I try not to let the images of tonight creep over my mind, and somewhere, in a small part of my brain, ignore the confusion dusted there that he saved me at all.
That he was even tender afterwards. Mostly, I let myself feel hope.
If the demon has changed in some way, if some seed of pity has been planted inside him in regard to me, perhaps he’ll now help me bring Aven back to life.
When I mentioned him saving my sister before, he didn’t say no.
He said that I’d never asked. Well, now I will.
I cling to renewed optimism.
I dream of my sisters.