15. Briar
brIAR
S omewhere beyond the haze, the world stirs around me.
The mist wraps around me like a wet cloth covering my face, heavy and sour. It seeps into every breath until I can’t tell where my body begins and ends. My eyes are so heavy and dry that each flutter of my lids feels like sand scraping against my cornea.
At first I notice nothing but sounds floating around me. Slowly they slice through the fog.
“What the hell do you mean, relieved of duty?”
I don’t recognize the voice. All I know is that I detect hints of anger in the tone, and instinctively my body wants to curl away from it. Anger in this place never ends in anything good for me.
“This isn’t optional. Move.”
Callum .
His voice threads into me, recognizable through the haze, even when my brain struggles to hold the shape of his name.
Another answers, deeper and edged in disbelief. “We weren’t told of any change happening. You think I’m stepping off this shift just because some rich brat–”
“Watch your mouth.”
Elias .
Clipped and cold. His tone carries a different kind of threat, like a verbal knife pressed flat against their skin.
“You’re already in trouble for not feeding her properly. Do you want to explain that to him? Or do you want to get out of the way and keep your tongue?”
Their words drift through me, fragments sinking too slowly for me to be able to piece together an understanding of what they’re talking about.
Does he mean not feeding me properly?
No, that’s impossible. They wouldn’t speak with such contempt to someone on my behalf.
My mind spins like an empty wheel, trying to hold onto the fleeting thoughts of Callum giving me blood bags earlier and the brothers fighting over something.
That missing piece feels important, but the harder I try to fixate on it, the further out of reach it drifts.
Silence stretches, thick and anticipatory as I strain to hear through the walls.
Then Callum’s voice sounds again, firmer than I’ve ever heard it. “Move.”
The scrape of boots squeaking against the tile follows.
Despite the sedative mist flowing, I can feel an edge creeping in that I shouldn’t have.
A better sense of awareness that allows me to fight through the haze.
My stomach doesn’t claw at itself, my muscles and bones aren’t pulsating with the pain that has haunted me every waking second since being dragged to this prison.
Even dulled by sedation, my senses reach further than they have before: the scrape of boots echoes sharper, the air tastes more metallic, and the feeling in my extremities is coming back.
I blink rapidly again, desperately digging through my mind for the memories.
It comes rushing back as my eyes open to track the mist pumping through the vents above me.
The brothers were arguing over the night shift guards not feeding me as my tears mixed with the blood bags I held onto tightly like an animal dying of thirst.
My brow knits together as my pulse echoes loudly in my ears.
None of it makes sense, though, despite those fragments falling into place.
My body sings with the feeling of my thirst being satiated for the first time since being here. Enough to make me feel the faint hum of strength I don’t think they want me to have.
Terrance wants to break me down, and I hate how good of a job he’s done.
But what I hate more than that is the gratitude I feel for Callum giving me those bags.
I hate that I feel better because of him. How could he just stand there as his uncle dissected me, watching complicitly, and then care if I’m hungry?
A groan slips from my lips.
None of this makes sense.
The hiss of metal cuts through the haze, low and grinding as the walls lift. My pulse trips even before I understand why, sluggish but insistent. My eyes squeeze shut as I prepare to see the lights before Terrance’s hands break me open.
A whimper rattles in my throat, too quiet to matter, but it claws its way out anyway.
No, not again. Don’t take me.
The thought skids jagged through my mind, unraveling into a hundred broken pieces. Every memory of being in that room compiles all at once.
The restraints cutting into my wrists when I tried to break free.
The sting of steel splitting skin while his laughter filled the walls.
The skin being ripped off of me inch by agonizing inch.
The haze still clouding my mind makes it worse, pulling the past and present into one tangled knot I can’t cut myself free from.
Then hands slide beneath me and my eyes sting with the tears I don’t want to shed for these monsters to greedily lap up.
My body folds uselessly into them, head lolling against the solid wall of a chest, but panic flares sharp in the fog, tearing through what little strength I have left.
My fingers twitch against the fabric, nails scraping weakly as I try to shove and twist away, to make the arms let go.
I push again, harder this time, though my muscles shake with the effort.
It does nothing.
Their grip only tightens, hauling me closer against them, and my breath is shallow and frantic. The familiar scent of cedar breaks through with each inhale pressed against this person’s chest.
I force my eyelids to part once more, the weight of them dragging like lead, and the initial blur clears just enough for me to see him.
Callum.
His arms cinch tighter around me, dragging me closer against his chest, and through the haze, I catch the quick curve of his mouth as he meets my eyes.
A smile.
The sight sends heat lancing through my blood, a spark of pure rage that cuts through the sedative fog sharper than anything else has.
Why the fuck is he smiling at me?
He may have shoved blood bags into my hands and mouth, he may have whispered one pathetic apology when no one else besides his asshole brother was listening, but that doesn’t erase the month he’s spent standing by.
There’s no reason for him to smile now, like we’re anything but a prisoner and her guard. He can’t look at me as though the simple act of holding me here, against his chest, somehow makes us allies.
The fury tastes heavy on my tongue, thick enough that it almost drowns out the fear still scraping along my ribs as to where he’s taking me. The anger festers, twisting with every memory I’ve been trying not to keep count of.
They watched me stripped of dignity, stripped of breath, stripped of blood until I wasn’t sure what was left. And not once– not once –did they even try to stop it.
Even the small fractures in Callum’s composure can be reduced to him having a weak stomach and not wanting to be a part of this. It has nothing to do with me or any of this sick cruelty by his uncle being an issue.
My stomach twists from the memory of Dante and how after that first torture session he cleaned my skin with such a gentle touch.
Ever since then, I’ve been mocked by the memory of thinking maybe a soft soul was caged in this prison with me.
Each time I’ve awoken to a new torture session, I’ve felt the grime of all the blood from previous days on me.
I can smell the rancid scent of the grime plastered to me as proof of what I’ve endured.
None of them are innocent. Not Callum with his sudden flashes of conscience. Not Elias with his steady silence. Not Dante with his calculated distance.
If anything, Dante’s and Callum’s half-gestures make it worse, because they prove they could have acted all along. They just chose not to.
As Callum takes me further from the mist in my cell, cold air scrapes down my throat in ragged gasps. My lungs convulse around it, coughing and clawing for more of it as physical sensation seeps in further.
My fingers tighten against Callum’s chest, dragging the soft material of his shirt into my hands.
“It’s time,” he mutters softly. “We can’t wait any longer.”
Every muscle in my body seizes at that.
No, no, no.
I don’t want to go.
Words that mean movement toward that room. Toward another day of fighting to cling to what little sanity I have left and holding onto the memory that my parents will burn down this world to get to me.
I just need to survive until then.
The small pocket of strength kindling in me sparks, wild and frantic. I thrash weakly against his chest, my fingers splaying against him in an attempt to push away.
“No–” The word rasps out of me, broken and barely more than a scared plea, but I don’t care if it makes me look weak.
The panic in me is all consuming, drowning out everything else.
Callum tightens his hold, his chin pressed hard against the top of my head like he can pin me into stillness by force alone. But the fresh air has given me enough fight to keep twisting, my limbs jerking sluggishly but determined, and the struggle drags Elias closer.
His shadow falls over me, and then his face twists into radiating fury. He leans in until his voice scalds directly against the shell of my ear.
“We’re risking everything to get you out with us,” he growls, low and lethal. “So stop fucking fighting.”
Stop fighting.
My breath stutters.
Stop fighting?
As if my fight isn’t the only reason I’m still whole and have refused to break.
The one thing I can be proud of.
My pulse hammers so hard it makes the edges of the world swim with black dots, but I force my eyes to meet his dark blue ones as he pulls back. His heavy gaze bites into me like he’s attempting to will me into obedience.
Obedience. That’s what they want. That’s what they’ve all wanted.
How dare he?
How dare he tell me to be still and surrender to whatever the hell they’ve cooked up.
He thinks I’ll just stop fighting them, the very people who’ve kept me caged and let me bleed.
I’d rather choke on the chemical mist until it rots me from the inside out.
My head tips against Callum’s shoulder, heavy with the effort it takes to angle it enough to see the source of the echoing footsteps drawing closer.
Dante.