Chapter 23
The next few weeks on the road flew by with surprising swiftness.
They passed through the remaining settlements to collect the rents, including a surprising number of weapons, but when Asha inquired about it, Cade merely shrugged and said that Angel had requested them. He wouldn’t elaborate beyond that.
Their final stop was the recently conquered Rockland, and though she tried to prepare herself for what they’d encounter, Asha still wasn’t ready.
The settlement was largely intact, save for a few homes that’d been reduced to rubble.
But it was the people—their furtive glances, simmering with resentment—that really bothered her.
They didn’t welcome the Blackguard the way the other settlements had.
Why would they? Asha thought to herself. We’re their conquerors.
Cade conducted his business with ruthless efficiency, even in the face of the residents’ icy demeanour.
He ignored them, acted as though it didn’t bother him one bit, and something about it disturbed Asha.
She didn’t like when he slipped from the warm, charming man she knew into this cold, calculated military commander.
She knew that that was how he’d survived this long, and that he’d achieved his rank back at the Delta because he was good at it.
Moreover, they’d deliberately hammered him into this blank, domineering shape, like soft metal.
But she still didn’t like it. It put her on edge and made her feel like she didn’t know him after all…
especially because he wouldn’t fuck her those nights that they stayed at Rockland.
He’d been perfectly happy to oblige her on their other stops, but here, he remained brooding and unreachable, even to her. Something was on his mind.
Asha discovered what it was on their final day. They’d packed up the wagon again and were preparing to return to the Nest when Cade approached the wagon with three young women in tow.
All three had their hands loosely bound in front of them, and they glanced nervously at Asha before climbing aboard the wagon and sitting on top of wooden crates of goods as though they themselves were cargo. It took only a split second for the horrible truth to dawn on her.
They were from the local slave market, and they were cargo, for all intents and purposes. They now belonged to Angel.
Cade gave the signal to move out, and the horse set off, pulling the wagon. The Blackguard surrounded it to guard the cargo. Everyone was acting like what had just occurred was the height of normalcy.
Because it is, Asha thought desperately. Because they do this every. Single. Time.
She ran to Cade, who avoided her eyes and kept walking behind the cart.
“You can’t be serious,” Asha said in a low voice, trying not to let the girls in the wagon overhear. “You can’t do this.”
Cade fixed her with an impassive stare. “It’s not my decision, Asha. I’m doing a job.”
“Like hell it’s not your decision,” she shot back in a furious whisper. “You could refuse. You could resist. You could do anything besides what you’re doing right now. Enabling this. Enabling him.”
“Sure, and I could also commit suicide,” Cade replied, deadpan. “But I don’t see how that would help either of us.”
“Don’t give me that glib garbage.” She felt on the verge of tears.
“At a certain point, you stop getting the benefit of the doubt, soldier. At a certain point, your inaction becomes an endorsement. You can’t act like you’re above all this, that you hate it, or that you care at all about me, when this is what you keep choosing. What you keep allowing to happen.”
This finally seemed to affect him. His eyes softened with hurt, then hardened again with anger, and that only inflamed her temper further.
“Of course I care about you,” Cade hissed. “I don’t like this, darling…but this is part of survival out here.”
The audacity of him acting wounded when he was literally giving these girls to Angel outraged her.
“Fuck you,” Asha spat. “You and the rest of them.”
She sped up to join the others and refused to look at him again for the rest of the trip.
Even when they arrived back at the Nest, things weren’t the same between them.
Asha refused to look at Cade, refused to speak to him.
Unfortunately, the effectiveness of her freezeout was dimmed by the fact that he was never home in the evenings anymore.
After training in the afternoons, he disappeared until bedtime and refused to explain where he was going or what he was doing.
She hated how much she missed him in spite of how angry she was with him. She hated that she was so hopelessly in love with a man who would save her from trafficking and then turn around and facilitate the same treatment for someone else.
Two of the women they’d brought with them went to live in the wider Guardian territory outside the Nest. Only one went to live with Lana and the other unattached women.
Her name was April, and she was a pretty brunette with cute freckles and a sweet smile.
Asha had seen her when she’d been visiting with Lana in the evenings.
“We’re looking after her,” Lana had said by way of reassurance. “She has a bed, and food, and a family now. That’s better than what she had before, Asha. I know you don’t think so—”
“It’s not that I don’t think so,” Asha said with a sigh. “It’s that I cannot accept that this is the best that any of you—or me—can hope for. That’s all.”
Lana gave her that soft, sympathetic look that she reserved for those moments when she thought Asha was being adorably na?ve. Asha hated it.
Finally, a week after their return, Cade came home with her at dinnertime, and she resolved to confront him.
“You look like you’re about to chew me out over there, darling,” he said wearily.
“Of course I am,” Asha snapped. “What—”
He held up a hand. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so much. I—”
“Don’t interrupt me. You being gone is the least of your crimes. We still haven’t talked about the three girls you brought here a week ago.”
Cade sighed. “I know. Trust me, I know.”
He sounded so defeated, and Asha hated the pang of sympathy it inspired in her.
Because she saw, if she tried, how he, too, was trapped now, ensnared in Angel’s web.
Angel wasn’t the sort of man to let anyone escape, or to tolerate disloyalty.
He played mind games, and he pitted people against each other on purpose to dominate them.
It didn’t absolve Cade. Not one bit. He had far more power than she did. But she could see how someone could get used to anything when they felt their survival was on the line.
“I just hate Angel so much,” Asha said, her throat thick. “I hate that he can ask you to do these things. I hate that he can dictate so much of our lives, and that he still has so much power over me. It’s not enough that he raped me, now he has to control my relationships, too.”
Cade reached over and took her hand, and the look in his eyes was deeply empathetic—something she didn’t expect.
“What if it wasn’t up to him anymore?” Cade said, staring hard at her. “What if we could change things?”
Asha took a step back. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said,” he replied, sounding more determined.
“Me, Leo, and Dom have been conspiring against Angel for months, darling. Gaining the loyalty of the people of the Settlements. They’re ready for a change, and the Blackguard are all on board.
That’s what I’ve been working on these last couple months: getting the green light, and getting the supplies to pull it off. ”
He began to pace the room. “Now that we’ve collected what we need from the Settlements, we’re ready to take them out—a coup d’état. We finally have the weapons we need.”
Asha suddenly remembered the alarming number of weapons they’d collected from the Settlements. That was what they were waiting for.
“Once we take out Angel and his closest people, the rest will fall in line. But…”
He trailed off, then gave her a pointed look.
“What?” Asha said, a sick feeling beginning in her stomach.
“But we need someone who can get close to him without him suspecting that she’s his assassin. Someone he perpetually underestimates. Someone he desires, who’ll finally give him what he deserves.”
His voice was quiet, and his words were calculated, but they hit her like a lead weight nonetheless.
“No,” she said, clipped, and she stood up and turned away from him.
“Asha,” Cade said—softer, sweeter, the way he spoke to her after they had sex. She hated that he would use it in this context, to wheedle her into doing this. “I know it’s a lot to ask. It’s personal. But that’s why it has to be you.”
“Why?” Asha demanded, whirling around. “Why the fuck would you put me through that? Having to face him again, alone? After what he did to me?” Her throat felt suddenly clogged, and her last words came out almost as a whisper: “After all those nights I shook in your arms, told you everything? How could you—”
Cade moved towards her cautiously, as though approaching an agitated tiger ready to pounce. He held up his hands, palms facing her, in a peace offering.
“Darling, I heard every word you said on those nights,” he murmured.
“I heard you, and I heard the space between what you wanted to say but didn’t feel like you could: that you want this raping, pillaging, murdering asshole to face some justice.
That you don’t want him to ever be able to hurt anyone again.
And that you wish you could see him suffer. ”
She trembled, hating herself for how emotional she still was about what had been done to her.
But Cade had read her right—of course he had.
He’d seen what was in her black heart. She didn’t want to be the ‘bigger person,’ in the end.
What good did that do? All her life, she’d let people abuse and take advantage of her, and she was done being a victim.
“I’m laying that justice at your feet,” Cade said, low and determined. “It’s not just that I’m asking a favour, Asha—I also want to give this to you. I want you to know, in your bones, that this piece of shit is dead, and that he will never, ever hurt you again.”
He put his arms around her, drawing her against him. He rubbed her arms, soothing the shakes that still wracked her body.
“I know what it is to kill a man who took something from you that you can never get back,” he continued, his touch gentle, his voice brutal and dark.
“How it feels to watch the life leave the eyes of your tormentor. There’s no peace quite like that, my angel.
The people who ramble on about the morality of revenge never had anyone who destroyed their whole world in one fell swoop. ”
He lowered his lips to her ear, and there was something sickeningly seductive in his tone as he said, “This is where you use your fire to burn the world, darling, and unlike some, I won’t resent you for it. Burn down this ugly world and we’ll make a new one together. I’m handing you the match.”
It was a pretty picture that he painted: Angel’s downfall, the end of his exploitation and cruelty.
She imagined him pleading for forgiveness, for mercy, begging her to spare him.
The panicked, desperate glint in his eyes.
Him feeling even a fraction of the pain and terror he’d inflicted on countless others.
And then, his blood pooling under him, his mouth slack, his eyes open and unseeing.
The knowledge that he was gone, and that even this post-apocalyptic hellscape was undoubtedly better off without him in it.
“What’s your plan?” Asha asked, folding her arms over her chest.
Cade let out a breath. “It’s simple. But it’ll require some acting on your part.”
“Will he suffer?”
He smirked. “Asking the important questions. I like it.”