CHAPTER 38 FAE #2
“I followed him,” she whispers, shame flickering across her face as if trusting someone was a crime.
“There was an SUV outside. It was black, with tinted windows. I remember thinking it felt… dramatic. Like who has an SUV like that in Coggeshall, right?” She tries to offer me a weak smile as her fingers tighten in my jumper.
“As soon as I got in, someone grabbed my arm. I didn’t even see the needle.
I just felt it.” She closes her eyes. “Everything went quiet after that. I woke up somewhere like this,” she continues.
“Concrete walls. One light and no windows. I thought it was a nightmare. I kept thinking if I go to sleep, I’ll wake back up.
I kept thinking you’ll come home and I can laugh it off… but it… it never happened.”
“They’ve moved me,” she says softly. “Every few weeks. Sometimes more. I don’t know where. Sometimes I could smell petrol. Sometimes hay. Once I could hear water but they don’t keep me in one place for long.”
The Warehouses.
The guilt hits like a blade sliding under my ribs.
Were we close? Did we search somewhere she’d just been moved from?
Did we clear a warehouse and walk past the wrong locked door?
My stomach turns. I should have found her or I should have burned everything down until I did.
Instead, I was warm and loved and tangled up in the arms of Roman.
A heavy suffocating feeling sits in my chest as the soft memories of Roman flood my brain.
“What have they done to you?” I ask, though my voice comes out thin.
She starts shaking before she answers.
“They come in,” she whispers. “Sometimes they are the same, sometimes they are different. They call it training.”
The word lands like acid as I remember all my training. The irony was she was the person who told me how wrong it was and now she is the one having it done to her.
“They say I have potential. That I need to be corrected properly.” Tears spill down her cheeks.
“They hurt me, Fae. They come in and…” She falters, her eyes closing as she takes another breath.
“They take turns. Sometimes they test how long I can suck a dick. Sometimes it’s how many cocks I can take.
If I don’t do it correctly, they make it hurt more and… and he sits there.”
“Who?” I ask, my heart stuttering. “Who sits there?”
“A man called Corbin Fisher.”
I sneer, my body trembling at the thought of that fucking monster. All the warmth drains from me at the implication. I go to speak, but she opens her mouth and continues.
“He watches. He says it’s important I’m corrected the right way.
That I learn obedience. That I am doing right for my bloodline.
” She barks a laugh as my stomach heaves.
“Bloodline? What bloodline? I was put into care because no one from my blood wanted me, but… but that’s not true. He’s my father, Fae.”
Robyn’s eyes lock onto mine like she’s bracing for impact as the words hang between us.
I chew on my lip, taking in her appearance.
I can’t believe I once questioned her loyalty.
I can’t believe I was so blinded by rage that I even thought it possible she could have known.
In a world full of darkness, she is my light.
She didn’t choose this; she is not him. She is his victim just as much as I am.
“Do you know who Fisher is to me?” I ask and her eyes widen.
“Please don’t tell me he’s your dad too, because I have flirted with Felix and I have enough weird incest shit going on without that.”
Against my better judgement, I bark out a laugh and she chuckles. Smoothing her hair, now brittle and dull, I just shake my head.
“No, girl, you’re safe to date Felix when we get out of here, but just don’t fuck where I can hear you.
” She gives me an odd look. I’m not sure if it’s the idea of sex or freedom, but I want to give her some sense of normality, some kind of hope.
“We will get out of here, I promise you,” I say instead.
Robyn nods as I brace myself for my next words.
“Fisher… he’s the one who did that stuff to me when I was a child.”
Robyn gasps and sits up quickly, knocking the blanket off us. Her whole body trembles harder as a small hand covers her mouth. Tears fill her eyes as she stares at me.
I once believed we were soulmates, two people destined for one another, but as I look in her eyes now, all it does is hurt my already broken heart.
If we were destined for each other, does that mean I brought this suffering onto her too? I’m not meant to have nice things. I’m not meant to have love. If I could sacrifice ever knowing what life was like with a friend just to spare her pain, I would.
Friends are meant to share secrets, stories, parties… not trauma.
“No,” Robyn gasps.
“Yeah,” I whisper offering a small smile. “I found out he was related to you when we went looking for you. We haven’t stopped. I want you to know that Robyn. None of us have given up on you.”
Robyn’s eyes drift somewhere beyond me, unfocused and distant, like she’s watching memories replay against a wall only she can see.
The silence that settles between us isn’t empty but heavy, thick with everything she’s just confessed, with everything I now know and cannot unknow.
It hangs in the air like dust caught in weak light, refusing to fall.
I force myself to look around properly, to anchor myself in something tangible instead of drowning in the weight of her pain. My gaze traces the concrete walls, the single flickering bulb, the thin mattress on the unforgiving floor.
A cold recognition creeps through me because I have stood in rooms like this before.
I have walked through spaces that smelled of damp, neglect, and violence.
I have found girls like Hazel curled in corners, trying to make themselves smaller.
I know with a sickening certainty that this is one of the locations Jack warned us about.
One of the shadows on the map we thought we were hunting down fast enough.
The cruelty of it lands slowly but decisively. On the same day I shattered things with Roman, on the same day I let anger and pride push him away, I finally found her. The symmetry feels almost deliberate, like the universe carving balance out of my chest with a blunt knife.
I exhale shakily and stretch my legs out in front of me, trying to ease the stiffness from my body and the ache in my skull.
Before I can spiral any further into guilt or regret, I feel Robyn’s hand slip into mine, soft and trembling but real, grounding me in the present.
I turn toward her fully, needing to see her face, needing to remind myself that she is here, alive, breathing beside me.
“He sits in the corner,” she whispers with a haunted look over her face.
“Sometimes he doesn’t even speak. He just…
watches to make sure they’re doing it properly.
He coaches them if they aren’t hard enough, cheers when they make me bleed, he will spit at me or piss on me…
I hate him Fae” she breaks out in a sob and I rush over to pull her into me.
That sick fuck.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe as my own tears spill freely. “I’m sorry, this is because of me. Because of my Father. Because of—”
“No.” She grips my top fiercely. “This isn’t you. Don’t you dare carry this.”
But I do.
I carry all of it.
We jump apart as the door scrapes open. The sound slices through the room like a blade. Robyn turns towards it and then freezes as a small whimper escapes her. I’m on my feet before I realise I’ve moved, pushing her behind me instinctively.