Chapter 6 Confession #3
The realization hurt more than anything else.
It really did. I had fought it so hard, had chosen to find little bits of brightness in the things surrounding me—even the darkest things.
Yes, even Halden. He was evil, but he’d put those boxes in my room, hadn’t he?
That’s how fucked my head was. Viktor, too.
What an evil man but he gave me my own room after awhile, let me leave the estate.
What a disgusting, vile thing I must’ve become to see the good in manipulation, in grooming and sadism, in constant, relentless suffering.
I was a corpse, and I was rotten, weak, a disgrace.
“Arden?” A voice cracked from somewhere nearby. Chains rattled, and I looked toward the noise as black gloves dragged me back to Room 82.
There he was. Thorne.
“Arden,” he said, more certain, as if he, too, couldn’t quite remember if the name was right or a word from some fever dream in a past life.
They were dragging him the opposite direction, just as naked, just as bloody.
Our paths crossed for only half a second, maybe less, but he’d said my name twice.
Twice. Once for me. Once for him. Neither of us could fight toward the other.
Halden had broken our bodies thoroughly.
But I felt my heart reach for Thorne in the same way it did when we were eighteen and in that clearing just passed the city.
I had only a flash to meet his gaze, but when I did, I saw Thorne Creed tell me with certainty that we could only remain on the threshold of death for so long. Eventually, we needed to make a choice, and that choice wasn’t going to be the end of Creed.
It’s incredible, honestly, the amount of fight we have inside ourselves.
I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone to discover it in the way we had, but it is there.
It’s our heartbeat, I think. Unsteady often but there to keep the time.
It’s death’s clock and life’s witness, and it demands to be heard even in the darkest hours of both.
I heard it then, beckoning me toward Thorne, toward them all.
Somewhere in Room 82, I’d lost myself, and when soldiers dumped me back on that mattress across from those boxes, myself looked a lot like that fucking lighter.
So I crawled one last time, bled across that floor knowing Halden likely watched on his cameras, uncaring if the Buyers came in at any minute because—I got it.
I ran my thumb over the V.S. on the lighter.
My eyes didn’t even carry over to the gun.
I just laid there on the concrete and flicked the lighter to life, watching the flame curl awake in the white light of my blood-covered box.
In that flame, all I could hear was my heartbeat and Thorne’s voice, You’re so bright. Like my little burning flame.
I didn’t want to be little, and in that moment, I really didn’t give a shit if I was playing exactly into Halden’s hands.
When the Buyers filed in the last time, they circled like sharks, but all I could see were their ties. The patterned, sleek fabric dangled from their necks when they hovered over me, the silk swiping over my skin with each invasion, like wicks on a bomb.
Their rasps filled Room 82, but my focus was on the quiet tink, tink, tink of my trembling, aching, bleeding thumb against the lighter.
Then the first tie caught.
It was small at first. So small the Buyer didn’t notice until the flame had crawled all the way up to his neck.
Then—finally—screams filled Room 82 that weren't mine. I flicked the lighter against the mattress. Smoke billowed, the flames ate hungrily, and the door remained bolted.
Halden was an evil, evil man, but I’d never been so happy to be locked in a cage.
I inhaled deeply, let my lungs feel the finality in the air and let my body feel how nothing was touching me except my own light.
My skin burned in places, especially my hands and thighs.
I peered up through the gray, not at all surprised when Halden was there with Dr. Davidson.
I faintly heard soldiers dragging the bodies of the Buyers out of the room.
Even fainter I remember the soft prick of a sedative against my arm.
I was lifted or dragged—one of the two—to our old cell, the one I’d shared with Thorne, Kane, and Rafe.
They placed me on my old cot, Dr. Davidson applying salve and dressing to my burn wounds.
It took her some time to pry the lighter from my hand, its metal burned into my palm, the shape of its square imprinted into my flesh.
Days passed before I was able to sit up and take full stock of where I was. The guys weren’t there. It was just me, the other three bunks empty.
The first bandage I unwrapped was my palm.
It was still healing, the skin nearly gone, but I couldn’t help my curiosity.
There, in the center of the lighter’s square, was Viktor’s initials stamped into my skin.
I wet my lips, releasing a shaky breath as I moved to unwrap the bandage over my left forearm.
I tugged the tape up gently, my chest dipping at the sight of thick black ink just below my DOLL tattoo.
CREED.
My fingers shook as I pressed the bandage back down, tears pricking my eyes as the door to the cell opened.
Guards shoved Thorne inside, the chains around his thin ankles and wrists clanking as he stumbled and fell.
He slammed down between the bunks at the same time the door clanged shut.
He was so malnourished. I could see his hip bone peaking through his skin, his ribs stark, but then he grabbed hold of the bunk opposite me, the one that used to be Rafe’s, and his arms shook as he dragged himself up onto the mattress.
A heavy sigh peeled out of him, his dark lashes fluttering, and his hair buzzed down.
The CREED tattoo on his throat rippled as he swallowed thickly.
Then—slowly, painfully—he turned his cheek into the pillow and saw me.
Nothing crossed his face, his green eyes so deeply hollowed that no light swam there anymore.
He just stared at me, and I stared at him.
The door opened twice more for Kane and Rafe.
They didn’t attempt to climb the bunks. Kane laid on the floor between Thorne and I, staring up at the ceiling, his blonde hair matted red.
Rafe collapsed in the corner by the door, his back to us and his forehead tucked against the wall, his CREED tattoo across his shoulder blades the same black as the bruises littering his skin.
Clothes were thrown in, but it took hours before any of us could get to them.
I was lying on my good ear when one of them tapped my spine.
I jerked around, wide-eyed, always expecting to find a Buyer before a friend.
I sputtered a gasp when Rafe took my face between his hands.
He peered down, one knee on the bed as he leaned over me.
His brows were drawn, his eyes flicking between mine, before he let go of my face with a small, wounded sound escaping his lips.
I didn’t understand at first until one of his hands came close again, his fingers gently brushing under my left eye.
He moved his hand to where a permanent dent was in my temple and then to my left ear.
He snapped his fingers, the sound coming to me dull and distant through my right ear.
He did it a few times, his face sharpening with rage as he came to terms with the fact I was deaf in that ear.
He pushed off my bed and left me as quickly as he’d arrived. He hunkered down in his corner of the cell, grasping his head and glancing my way a few times in pain.
I turned my back, tears burning in my eyes.
We were hopeless, wounded, vulnerable. Stripped. Cold. Capable of being, finally, beaten into something darker, more violent.