Chapter Eleven #2
“What’s happened—?”
“Be quiet.” He raked a hand through his hair, unable to hide his shaking. With effort that etched his eyes with stress lines, he sat back down and painted another bruise on my hip.
He kept his eyes trained on my injuries. Lips pursed. Chest heaving. His insides screaming so loudly he deafened me.
You need to get him to talk...
Doing my best to ignore the creeping fear that he was slipping away, I scrambled for something to say. Something he’d find interest in. Something that would cease his descent into whatever nightmares he fought.
I came up blank.
My mind danced with sparks.
Yes, sparks!
Blurting, I said, “My wand.”
His forehead furrowed. His grey eyes flickered to mine. But he didn’t speak.
My mind filled with memories of that day.
A happier time. A safer time. Those happy feelings bubbled over, and I found myself doing exactly what he’d said I would: I willingly shared a piece of who I was in order to bring him back to me.
“I was nineteen when I got my tattoo. I got it the week after I passed my gemmology degree.”
I waited for him to ask for more details.
He didn’t.
Instead, he hyper-focused on another bruise, and another, and another. Making a personal vendetta against them as if by removing them he could erase everything that’d happened.
“I got a wand because Krish drew me a picture when I went to sit my exams. He said to imagine my pen was a wand, and it would write all the correct answers.” I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. “It worked. It brought me luck. And I decided I wanted to keep that luck with me forever.”
No response.
Yet I had the sense he was listening...clinging to every morsel I gave him.
“You might say that my luck didn’t work. That it ran out, and that’s how I ended up here.”
Nothing.
His lack of conversation and the wrongness of his silence forced me to continue filling it.
“But luck works in mysterious ways...” I closed my eyes for a moment, tapping into that endless knowing within me, letting it guide what I said. “I think...I think my luck drew me here. Drew me to you. To the jewels. I think—”
“Enough,” he snarled. “Stop it.”
I didn’t flinch this time at his scolding.
I saw it for what it was.
Agony.
I overflowed with druggy forgiveness.
He’d killed for me. Twice.
Because of him, I hadn’t been raped or mutilated.
He’s good.
Peter was right.
He saw that light.
It’s still there.
I pointed at the dinged-up watch on his wrist, needing to make him snap.
His eyes followed my finger, his shoulders stiffening.
“Why do you get all sad when you look at your watch?”
He gritted his teeth and moved farther down the bed, smearing cream on my thighs.
No reply.
I longed for his secretive whispers.
I craved for him to speak.
“Tell me,” I urged.
Nothing.
“I gave you a piece of my past—”
Still nothing.
“Do you miss her?”
His eyebrows flew into his hair. “What?”
Finally.
I kept digging, deliberately stabbing him with memories.
“Your mother. Do you miss her?”
He choked and shook his head. “How...how could you possibly know she gave this to me?”
The drugs in my system made me float. “My magical powers of deduction?” I winked.
The room spun. My heart thudded sleepily, making my tongue far too loose.
“Someone you loved gave you that watch. I can tell because that love lives in your eyes when you look at it. It can’t be your dad, and you said you haven’t had much success in relationships, so... it must’ve been your mum.”
He bared his teeth. “Shut up, Ilyana, before I lose my temper.”
Do it.
Lose it.
You need to break.
He couldn’t keep bottling everything in.
Gagging on his darkness.
The softness in my head arrowed straight at his discomfort. I didn’t try to second-guess. I trusted the nudges inside me. “You’ve missed her your entire life, haven’t you? There’s no difference between missing someone alive or missing them when they’re dead.”
“Fucking hell.” He glowered as if he wanted to smother me with a pillow. “Shut up—”
“Or what? You’ll hurt me?” I giggled. Even to my ears, I sounded a little—a lot—crazy. “You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. Not sure I could handle anything else.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he snapped through clenched teeth.
I laughed again, finding everything freaking hilarious and horrible.
“But you will hurt me again.” The drugs chose that moment to swarm me.
“You’ll hurt me because that’s your loooove language.
” I shrugged with an unbecoming snort. “Your love language is pain.” I burst into peals of giggles.
“Wonder if there’s a love bible for a sadist?
Lesson number one on how to show affection for your slave: whip them until they’re moaning for you, then kiss them stupid. ”
I moaned with need, then laughed and laughed and laughed.
If I didn’t laugh, I’d try to seduce him.
And I wasn’t that far gone...yet.
Unfortunately, Henri did not find me the least bit funny.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
So tortured.
So beautiful.
So wrong.
“Come closer and kiss me,” I murmured.
Ily, stop it!
I didn’t care.
I wanted his lips on mine.
I needed his body filling, stretching—
“Please, kiss me.”
He shot to his feet and latched his hands behind his neck. “I can’t be around you when you’re like this.”
Poor man.
Poor tortured monster.
“I’ll kiss you and make it all better. How about that?” I drifted around on my cloud made of GHB. “You’re so hopeless, Henri.”
He staggered.
I struggled to focus on his stony face.
I frowned. “No, wait. Am I the hopeless one?” I tried to make sense of the syrupy swirls in my head. “After all, you’re the one who stole all my hope.” I sighed with a relieved, happy chuff. “Buh-bye hope.”
I waited for him to speak.
I’d grown so used to him chattering away with his confessions.
I didn’t know how much I’d miss it when faced with aching quietness.
I drifted again.
Mollie popped into my head. Behind her, Victor’s stronghold went boom, thanks to one of her bombs. Then Rachel was there, grinning and dancing, her pregnant belly almost ready to pop.
I stiffened.
“She can’t have her baby here.”
“What?” Henri dropped his arms, raw panic carving his face as if I’d lost my mind.
“Children weren’t allowed in here.” I couldn’t look at him, remembering Victor asking him to exterminate Rachel. “But now, thanks to you making Victor keep it, he’ll probably decide to breed all of us.”
Tears bloomed.
Fresh laughter bubbled.
I didn’t know which would win—sobs of horror or peals of inappropriate delirium.
In the end, they cancelled each other out, and I tried to roll onto my side to curl into a ball.
I started to crash—
Henri clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Stay on your back.”
My nervous system tried to warn me a bruise existed there, but the magic of drugs said...who cares?
My eyes tore open, locking on his. “You...you won’t expect me to have a baby too, will you?”
“Fuck, Ilyana.” His face shot ghost white. “No, of course not.” He stumbled away from me, pacing the bedroom and raking cream-smeared fingers through his hair.
I tracked him for a little while, but he made me dizzy. “Oh, good. Because if you ever got me pregnant, I’d jump off the parapet.”
His feet slammed to a stop.
Marching back to the bed, he loomed over me. He panted as if he’d run a four-day race. He looked utterly in pieces. “Y-You’d kill yourself rather than carry my child? You hate me that much?”
“I’d kill myself so our child never knew horror.”
He winced.
Another wave of numbness.
I sank into it.
The sensation of lightness promised me the ability to float right out the window and soar all the way over the sea back to Krish.
A pinch in my heart.
The only pain I could still feel.
Krish...
God, I missed my older brother.
I missed the way he used to say my name. The way he’d say it in that special wonderful way, reminding me how loved I was.
Love.
The exact opposite of hate.
Love...that was the biggest monster here.
The hulking elephant in the room.
I could never hate you, Henri...and that’s the problem.
“Ily—” His hand grabbed my chin, his fingers gripping hard. “Open your eyes.”
Ily...