Chapter 55
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Useless.
The word stings like a slap across my face as years of emotions come cascading over me, pushing me back down into the shell of the person I was before. It’s all I’ve ever felt.
Useless to my father, to my kingdom. Useless to my mother, unworthy of bringing the healing waters home to her.
My entire life has consisted of the driving need to prove myself, to be worth my place and worthy of notice.
Until now.
From the moment I stepped onto that ship, even before I saw it myself, I wasn’t useless. I became part of something, part of a crew, who saw me for who I was.
Lennox.
Someone who isn’t useless with a blade, who protects and defends those she loves, and who is a new part of this crew, this family, a place no one else can fill.
They never saw me as useless.
Because I’m not.
Dane may know who I am, where I come from, but he doesn’t know the real me.
Something deep inside urged me to hold that part close, to keep it hidden from him.
It urged me to hide things from him, not to tell him about the map, about meeting Weston, all things that completely altered the trajectory of my time on Dawnlin, and brought the truth to light.
Maybe it was the magic, or maybe it was me, but whatever it was, I’m grateful for it, even down to the nightmares that have plagued me, planting a seed of uncertainty about him that ended up being real.
Like Sig said before I left her and the rest of the Castaways behind, I know who I am.
I will not let him control me or influence me any longer.
And I’m going to fight.
There’s no one waiting for me outside, no one to count on if something goes wrong, no one to scream for. It’s just me and Dane, and I have a family to get home to.
I lunge quickly, rolling off the end of the bed toward the hearth with one sole focus.
My fingers wrap around the scabbard as I yank it toward me, trying desperately to pull the blade free, but Dane is too quick.
As if he read my intentions, he’s on me in a flash.
His thick arms wrap around me, pinning mine to my sides, and I thrash wildly against him, trying to get enough space to release the knife.
What justice it would be to use the same knife against Dane that he tried to strike Weston down with.
The thought makes me fight harder, kicking and elbowing, trying to break free. His arms cinch down on me as he reaches for the hilt, prying it from my fingers, before tossing it directly into the roaring flames.
“No!” I scream, reaching toward the fire, but pulling back immediately. The metal is already red hot, and useless to me now.
“Did you really think that would work?” Dane sneers in my ear. “Did you think you could use my knife against me?”
My bare feet glide across the wooden boards as I try to kick out of his grasp, but I can’t get any leverage. I need to get away from him. I need a weapon.
My boots. I need to get back to my boots.
“Calm down, Lennox,” Dane croons, his cruel voice barely recognizable from the one I’ve come to know, and it sends shivers of terror up my spine. “You’re going to listen, and listen carefully.”
My elbow collides with his abdomen, and he lets out a grunt, but his grip doesn’t loosen.
“Fuck you!” I scream and he squeezes me tighter, my training no match for his size and brute strength, especially without a weapon.
Dane drags me across the room, away from the hearth and anything that I could have used against him there. I thrash harder. My boots are so close; I just need to get out of his clutches and get to my dagger.
A sickening crunch echoes in my ears when I throw my head back and collide with Dane’s face.
He cries out, but I ignore it, because it gave me the distraction I needed.
Dane’s arms release me as he tends to his face, and I crash to the floor, my knees hitting the wood hard under the full weight of my body.
Crawling across the floor as fast as my limbs will carry me, I scramble to my boots and shove my hand inside, feeling for the familiar touch of the metal hilt, but my hand comes up empty.
Fuck! Wrong boot!
The thought barely gets through my mind before Dane’s bruising grasp is on my hips.
He drags me across the floor and tosses me as if I weigh nothing.
Pain erupts as my head cracks on the wooden frame of the bed, and I crumple in front of it with a thud.
Dark spots appear over my spinning vision as I try to push away the daze.
They clear as I blink rapidly, only to find Dane stalking toward me, blood streaming down his face into the wicked smile across his lips.
“You’re never going to win, Lennox. You can keep fighting, but you’re not in charge here.
I am.” He crouches down in front of me, his icy glare and wicked smirk sending fear coursing through me.
“You’re going to bring me to the cure. One way or another, I’m going to get it.
I don’t care if I have to take it from any of the children at camp who worship the ground I walk on. I will get her back!”
“I’ll never show you where it is,” I force out, my voice echoing around me, feeling like it is separate from my body.
“You will,” he says, his eyes narrowing as he reaches toward me. He fists my shirt and yanks me to my feet, dragging my face toward his as he hovers just a breath away.
“I was going to let you get away with it, whatever your little plan was, but you’re hiding things from me. No one hides things from me on my island.”
My breath stutters as I stare into his eyes, the once comforting amber now hard and deadly. The glint of metal catches my eye as his arm lifts, and I see what is sparkling in the firelight.
My dagger.
Dane has my dagger.
I wasn’t wrong before; I didn’t choose the wrong boot. My dagger wasn’t inside because Dane found it.
The gleam in his eye shines as he brings the blade closer to my face, sliding the edge under my chin, far enough away that my skin tingles with the proximity.
“Tell me, Lennox,” he says with a tilt of his head. “If your story is true, and you were held captive and escaped, why would you have this?”
My instinct takes over, and I grab his wrist, wrenching the muscles in his hand and bending it just like Weston taught me, like Sig and I practiced, but it doesn’t move.
His hands are too large, his knuckles white as he holds the hilt in a death grip, making the muscles I targeted too taut to move.
My efforts only garner a depraved chuckle, just before there’s a flash of movement.
His hand wraps around the back of my neck, pulling me toward him as the cold blade settles across my throat. The face presses firmly against my skin, and my entire body stiffens in his tight hold.
My teeth clench as I bite back the panic. He’s won. He’s bested me. I’m at his mercy, and my only consolation is that he won’t kill me, because he still needs me.
But I failed, again. I failed the Castaways, I failed Weston, I failed myself. The sinking feeling in my stomach that threatens to swallow me whole, the one I’ve been so familiar with in the last twenty-one years, makes me question why I continue to try.
It’s for them. I’m trying for them.
I blink away the tears welling in my eyes and see something flicker in Dane’s. He thinks I’m afraid of him, that I’ve surrendered to him, but I won’t. I won’t stop trying to get out, no matter how long it takes.
All the love in Dane’s eyes has vanished, and I stare at him, raising my chin to avoid the cut of the edge, waiting for his next move. I’m nothing to him. I never was anything more than the means to get what he wants.
“I won’t help you. You’ll have to kill me,” I spit at him, and he pushes the blade deeper into my throat.
“You will,” he spits back. “Because if you don’t, I will spend the rest of eternity hunting down every single fucking Castaway, and making sure they know exactly who is responsible for their fate.”
My throat bobs at his threat. He chose the one thing he knows would make me suffer.
“You know,” he continues, “I thought maybe you would be enough and I could just have you instead. You were so willing and desperate. Since I couldn’t have her, I’d just take you.
You look enough like her that it was easy at first.” A look of disgust passes over his face and his lip curls up before he spits out the next words. “But you’re too much like him.”
My heart pounds in my ears and my body shakes as Dane’s fingertips dig deeper into the sides of my neck.
I’m too much like my father. Something that weeks ago I told Weston I never wanted, but maybe here, with Dane, that piece of me I tried to fight may have helped save me from being completely under his spell.
I open my mouth to respond, trying to find the right words to sling back at the obvious disgust he has for me.
My thoughts are muddled with everything that has happened and the throbbing pain in my skull, and I can’t find the right ones.
My throat works in silence, for barely a moment, before something happens.
Dane’s face changes before my eyes. His mouth falls slack and his shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t move, not even a hairsbreadth as a voice breaks the silence between us.
“I will plunge this sword straight through your gods damn throat if you don’t get your fucking hands off her.”