Chapter 24
To Reunite With Monsters
Lillian
THE FIRST SENSE TO return to me is my hearing; there’s the sound of talking and laughter and then the sweeping of canvas.
Taste comes next: salt from my tears, dryness on my lips.
Touch next. Flexing my fingers, I attempt to bring my wrists forward.
Ropes bite into my wrists harboring my movements.
Beneath me, the ground firm to the touch.
There is no life on the hardened earth beneath me.
I can feel a slight sting in my leg as if someone has cleaned and tended to it.
I wait for my sight to come back to me, but it refuses.
Only when I manage to blink several times to clear the tears do I feel the harsh fabric.
What’s surely a blindfold is pressing against my eyes and cheeks.
Turning my head from side to side, my theory is confirmed when I see the light at the edges of my vision dilute the darkness.
I know I need to steady myself; the panicked breathing is likely to cause me to hyperventilate. I call upon my training and attempt to enact a breathing technique that Ben taught me. Keeping me focused and grounded in harsh situations was a part of my instruction that Ben saw to personally. Ben.
All the work going toward calming myself falls to the wayside at the wicked thoughts of Ben being beaten in front of me.
Twisting my wrists and using all my strength to pull away, in a sad attempt at escape, I wince at the pain.
Still, there’s nothing to do but hope for a breakthrough, so I pull until my muscles ache with the effort.
Realizing I won’t be freeing my hands, I turn my attention to my blindfold.
I could call out since they elected not to gag me, but any information I can glean before they notice that I’ve returned to consciousness would be most helpful.
By shrugging my shoulders and laying my head to the side, I can just make contact with the knotted fabric above my ear.
A few nudges later I manage to push the blindfold free of my immediate sight.
The light burns at first, but I quickly adjust. I should have guessed I’d be left to myself in a tent.
They’ve left me sitting on the floor with a post at my back.
By the sparse dressings and no documents to speak of, I quickly come to the conclusion that I am not in either Ivo’s or my father’s tent.
Despite this revelation, I know I will be forced to face both of them soon.
Even with their current absences, it does nothing to give me any semblance of comfort.
Outside, their camp awaits me, as do several trials.
I’m sure of it. I hardly see a way out of it as things stand now.
Tilting my head back against the wooden pole behind me, I attempt to call upon strength.
I get no response from any deity. Shifting to find a more comfortable position that doesn’t affect my hurt leg, my necklace tilts and swings across my chest. The coolness of it stumps me.
Why had they not removed it while transporting me here?
A sound from close by outside pulls me from my mind going a mile a minute, wondering about the necklace. My wrists drag painfully up the pole as I scramble to my feet. I will meet my captors head on, despite the pain it causes me to put weight on my legs.
I don’t expect the first person to greet me to be my father. I had prepared myself for Ivo or any other vile creature they wanted to send to me, but not my father.
He enters and freezes. Not two steps away from the entrance of the tent, his hand slowly slides down from where it had propped the canvas open and drops to his side.
“Lillian,” he breathes. He has the audacity to offer me a kind smile, a smile so full of relief and happiness that I think he might throw his arms around me in a hug.
Thankfully for him, he keeps his distance. There is no part of me that will play kindly to any man that wants to approach me in this state. He seems to be waiting for me to acknowledge him in any way, but I can’t bring myself to do anything more than stare at him.
Oh, how he’s changed. He’s so much older than I remember him looking. I’ve seen photos throughout the years, of course, but this is different. His hair is disheveled, his clothes are in as rough of shape as mine, and he walks with a slight limp. I suppose we’ve never looked more alike.
“Lillian,” he states again, this time daring to step fully into the room with me. “My heart is truly filled with joy to see you join us.”
“Is joy the emotion that spurred you to allow me to be tied up and blindfolded?” I ask, jutting my chin high.
Not even a flinch by my father. “We need you to understand your role before we allow you out.” He maneuvers to the corner where he procures a canteen from a small leather bag. I recognize it as one of my mother’s satchels. “Are you thirsty?” he asks.
Of course my throat and lips long for a balm for the dryness, but Ben had seen me well-hydrated before we were separated. I can go a while longer without begging for any help. And if I get word that Ben has been killed, well, there will be no reason to do anything to keep me healthy.
“I understand you might be hesitant to continue forward after everything that has happened, but Lillian, this is exactly where you are meant to be. I’m so dreadfully sorry it took this long to reunite.
” He beams at me from the other side of the room as if he just saw his daughter married, not as though she sits bound before him wishing him dead.
“Don’t you see that this is the very same path your mother set forth so many years ago? ”
The mention of M?e sends me down a dark path. Everything she told me and everything she left for me to discover myself collides in a fit of tragedy. “M?e never wanted this.”
I know he hasn’t heard that title to describe her in years; it’s obvious in the way that his eyes flicker with root-deep pain. Just when I think the simple comment has broken free, his demeanor changes.
“This trek without her has been setback after setback.” He approaches me for the first time and places an arm over my head. Resting his palm on the pole above my head, he leans in close. “When we first disembarked from the river, we had over 200 men. We now have fewer than 50.
Without a Daughter of the Colony to guide us, we have seen terrors beyond your comprehension.” Something in my brain triggers at the mention of the colony.
Daughter of the Colony. It was something that I recognized, something I must have heard in a dream. Buried, but emerging with the knowledge.
“Your light would have saved us so many men in those godforsaken caverns, Lillian. But you are here to guide us now, the most important part. The end.”
“M?e never wanted this,” I answer again.
This seems to wake him from whatever trance had him spewing such ridiculous things. “Whatever you believe, Lillian. You are the key, the answer. We won’t rest until all of this is finished.”
I shift from both feet to the one good one. “And if I refuse. Refuse to act as your precious key?”
“I simply would not make that decision.” Ivo has arrived with a woman in tow. It takes me three seconds of studying before I realize that Margaret is the woman in question.
My first instinct is to run at her, but of course I’m contained within the first step. Betrayal looks good on her. She’s been given a matching uniform to Ivo’s, though she traded pants for a skirt. The outfit is complete with an armband signifying her allegiances.
I had torn one of those armbands free from where Ivo had hidden it on his arm years ago. Now, they wear them without any type of disguise. It is nothing but a reminder of why they cannot retrieve the dagger before I deal with it.
Margaret bats her eyelashes and greets me in German, a language I expect was her first and finest.
“I’m surprised you found your way out,” I answer, only wishing she was still stumbling around in the dark.
“Thought we would leave our most trusted set of eyes alone to perish in that cave?” Ivo laughs at his own question. “She was free of that place the moment you fled.”
My eyes have not left Margaret since she entered, which is something Ivo doesn’t particularly like.
He steps in front of her and raises a hand toward me.
He doesn’t strike like I think he might.
Instead, he puts a finger beneath my chin and tilts it side to side.
Feeling his touch on me again sends a shiver down my spine, which he laughs at.
“Nothing has changed, has it, little flower?”
“I suppose so,” I say with more strength than I feel. “You still need a woman to do all your work for you—’’
Ivo leaps for my throat before I’m ready for it. Without a way to combat him, there is nothing I can do but do my best to wiggle free.
“There is a war coming, Ms. Bach. You are the only way through those damned gates. If there were any other way through to that dagger, trust me, you would never have made it off that boat.” He squeezes harder before finally letting me go.
Weak from the lack of oxygen, I collapse to the floor in a pile all while trying to inhale precious air.
“Behave, or I will track down the rest of your friends and have them killed one by one until you obey.”
With that, he and Margaret turn to leave. She doesn’t glance back. It’s not that I expected her to; I only hoped there was some piece of our friendship that had become real for her.
My father, who did nothing to stop Ivo from hurting me, kneels to my side with a canteen, which I again refuse. “You must do as he says, Lillian.”
“Why don’t you just blow it to smithereens?” I ask through the pain of a tortured wind pipe.
I swear I see just the tiniest sign of sympathy on my father’s face, but it seeps away just like before.
“There is no way through without the gate unlocking. Your mother believed that any action against the land would bring consequences.” The question on the tip of my tongue is answered in the flashback of terror on my father’s face.
“We sent a full force of men back into the caves to look for you, to break open the corridors.” He pauses to collect himself.
“Those that set the explosives came back in balls of flame, or they did not come back at all.”
I flinch at the picture he’s painted. I don’t know if M?e had told him the truth, but after the landslide on this excursion and the rising of the dead on the last, I’d believe it without any further proof.
Father digs into his pocket and procures something in his hand. I mean to push away, but when the thing is dropped into my lap, I’m enamored. Even as he moves around and cuts my hands free, I can do nothing but stare at the key in my lap. The key from the first amazonite box.
It all suddenly clicks as my stiff fingers pluck the iron key from in front of me. It had never done anything, but now it seems to sing in harmony with the necklace. It’s for the gate; that much is clear to me now.
“Your mother believed she could control it. That belief extends to you.” I’d managed brief control in the cave and then again on the deadened land.
Father’s hands cover mine, and the touch surprisingly gives me comfort.
“One thing I did learn from your mother is that this land gives as much as it is able. Those here, including myself, only know how to take, Lillian. But you and your mother, you give so willingly.” His warm touch leaves me as a swelling of whispers force themselves upon me.
A gift, a voice whispers.
Yes, a gift to be traded for permission, another says.
“What did you say, Father?” Looking up, I expect to find my father watching over me. He’s already left.
A gift? I run it over and over in my mind as I turn the key back and forth. What do I have to give but myself?
M?e’s voice fills my head next. Heal the land, minha flor.
Heal our home.