Chapter 33
Everything was burning.
Asha’s skin felt ablaze, as though a fire was alive in her veins, but cool water brought no relief; it only sent her into uncontrollable shivers.
When Cade placed a damp cloth on her forehead, she cursed him, her teeth chattering.
Cade and Leo had traveled through the night to bring her back to Ashburn.
They’d had to hightail it out of there because there’d been some attack at the Post; Cade suspected the Order.
Good to know they’ve moved this far north and are rapidly colonizing the province. Comforting.
As a result, Asha found herself lying in a bed in Cade’s cabin, her hands bound to the bars of the bedframe.
Bacteria were rapidly colonizing her blood, and again, she welcomed the arrival of peace, of an exit from this world where people fought one another over a meagre, brutal existence, and where she, too, had succumbed to its savagery.
For safety, she had sacrificed everything.
Even her once-best friend. Even the first real freedom she’d ever known.
“I don’t…want your medicine,” Asha repeated for the third time, through gritted teeth.
Cade refused to untie her, lest she move and reopen her wounds.
He’d cut off her ruined clothes, so she lay naked under several layers of blankets.
She was vulnerable in a way she didn’t like, couldn’t afford.
Though she burned with fever, she’d bared her teeth at him and fought against her bindings when he attempted to inject her with a thin, silver syringe of clear liquid.
Antibiotics for her fever. The Regenerex had already almost closed her mortal wound, but it didn’t stave off infection, and now Cade was trying to force her to live—something she’d never thought she’d be so opposed to, but peace had felt so damn close.
“I did not come this far for this shit,” Cade shot back. He was far pricklier than he’d been yesterday. “Antibiotics are fucking liquid gold in these parts, darling.”
“You think that I—” –she paused to shiver— “don’t fucking know that?” Asha replied. “I still don’t want it.”
“If you don’t take it now, you’ll die,” Cade said impatiently. “And that’s not happening. Not on my watch.”
Her teeth were chattering uncontrollably now, but she still somehow mustered the defiance that’d marked her since childhood as difficult.
“Why do you c-care?” she asked. “You let me go. I could’ve d-died anytime since then, and you d-didn’t give a shit about me.”
He paused briefly, then let out a long, tired sigh before replying, his voice low and urgent, “I regretted it from the minute you left my sight. And I’ve spent the last six months trying to find you. The least you can do is not fucking die on me, my angel.”
“The l-least I can do? After everything you p-put me through, asshole, you have the n-nerve to lecture me—”
“I know, Asha,” Cade burst out, cutting her off. “I know I was an asshole. I know I have no fucking right to you anymore. I just don’t care. I’ll do far worse than tie you to a bed to keep you—lie, cheat, steal, kill. And you love that about me, because you thrive in the dark as much as I do.”
Somehow, that broke her open. He didn’t know what she’d done, how much she’d given up just for the chance to be safe and accepted again.
“You don’t know me anymore,” she murmured, traitorous tears threatening. “I found my friend that I told you about—Claire. And I betrayed her. Lied to her, and more besides.”
If this fazed Cade at all, he didn’t show it; instead, he merely shrugged.
“If you did that, it was because you needed to survive,” Cade said dismissively. “I told you: nothing is more important than surviving. There is nothing you can lose that’s worth your life.”
“I fucked someone else!” Asha burst out, unable to stop herself—she needed to make him see, to understand, that he didn’t want her anymore. That she was irredeemable and irreparably broken, that perhaps she always had been, and she didn’t deserve his defence.
Unlike the first revelation, this one did give him pause. He looked down at the floor, and she could practically see the wheels in his head turning.
“Who?” he asked a moment later. “I need a name, so I can kill them.”
“Fuck you,” Asha spat back. “I’m not your property. I left you because I’m no one’s property. And she was the best person I’ve ever been with.”
A flash of pain went across Cade’s features, quickly replaced by tightly reined anger.
“If that’s true,” he hissed, “where the fuck is she? Why isn’t she here, fighting for you?”
Asha’s tears fell, and she had to take a few deep gulps of air.
This conversation was wearing her out in her feverish state, and it seemed Cade realized it, because he took a deep breath and looked skyward, as though praying for patience.
It would’ve been funny if the situation had been less dire; she’d never seen him pray for anything.
“Because I betrayed her, too,” Asha finally managed to croak. “I never wanted her like she wanted me. Just used her to keep myself safe.”
She was choking on the truth of what she’d done, asphyxiating on the sour air of brutal, indifferent consequence. The bullet in her body had been the punishment, the retribution, she’d been seeking for herself. And now, Cade was trying to deny her what justice demanded.
“I don’t deserve to live,” Asha whispered. “Not after what I’ve done.”
Cade bristled automatically. “Stop. I don’t give a fuck what you’ve done. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t fucked up, you wouldn’t have had to survive like this, on your own. We’d have been together, like we always should’ve been.”
Cautiously, as though approaching a wounded animal, he leaned over the bed and brushed a kiss against her clammy forehead.
“Blame me, darling,” he murmured in a low, intimate tone, stroking strands of dark, sweaty hair away from her face. “I’ve got so many sins of my own, I won’t even notice taking on yours as well.”
He kissed her then, and the hollow ache in Asha’s chest that’d been there since she’d left him only intensified. His lips were familiar in their demand for her surrender, and she was so, so tired of fighting. She gave in to her weakness and kissed him back.
“Enough,” he said when they broke apart. “Let me give you what you deserve, my angel.”
Cade retrieved the syringe of penicillin, and she didn’t even fight him when he carefully shifted her onto her side and lifted her blankets.
“Fuck you,” she gasped out as he stabbed the needle into her left buttock and pressed down the plunger.
He chuckled darkly. “Curse me all you want. The devil knows I’ve done it every night since you left.”
He removed the syringe and climbed onto the rickety bed with her.
As he put his arms around her, Asha muttered, “I’m gross and sweaty.”
“Like I care,” he growled. “Not letting you go again. Now, go to sleep. You need rest.”
She let him cradle her, wrapped in a bundle of blankets, against his chest. His big body bracketed hers, making her feel secure. She rested her head, and though she didn’t deserve his mercy, she thanked whatever silent force had brought him back to her.
For the first time in a long time, she slept soundly.
Asha’s fever broke overnight, though she was still exhausted into the next day.
Cade untied her bonds and let her sleep, curled up in her blankets, waking her only to offer water or urge her to eat a few bites of roasted fish.
He remained gentle, stroking her hair away from her face or holding her hand on top of the blankets.
He didn’t kiss her again, but he sat by her bedside all day, fiddling with animal traps or washing foraged produce. He was always there when she awoke.
Nothing was settled between them. She should have been angrier with him, shouldn’t have let him touch her.
But after all she’d been through, all that she’d lost, his touch anchored her to something familiar: a rare time when she’d felt safe.
The simple fact was that he was all she had left, and she no longer had the energy to guard her heart against him.
Try as she might, she’d never stopped thinking about him while they were apart. Shutting him out of her mind and fucking someone else hadn’t stopped her from missing him.
As good as Kimmy had been to her, she wasn’t Cade, and she didn’t understand what Asha had needed.
She was too good, too sweet, too pure. She lived with a mandate to heal people, to walk a path of light, and she couldn’t understand the dark underworld that Asha now inhabited, and why she couldn’t simply choose to leave it.
And, Asha now acknowledged to herself, I blamed Kimmy for it.
For not being right for me. I blamed all of them for giving me a life I no longer wanted.
Regret filled her. Kimmy hadn’t deserved what she’d done.
Neither had Claire, and she’d never be able to apologize.
Even if she could, what good would it do?
Some things couldn’t be undone. Being haunted by her guilt, unable to dispatch it, would be her punishment.
All things considered, she knew she’d gotten off lightly.
When she woke for the fourth time that day, the light outside was fading, and Cade was nowhere to be seen. However, there was a large metal tub beside her bed that hadn’t been there before.
Asha yawned, too tired to care. Despite sleeping all day, she wasn’t motivated to move from her nest of blankets.
She dozed lightly on and off until she was awoken again by heavy footfalls entering the small cabin.
Cade reappeared at her bedside, hauling two metal buckets full of water.
Dominic followed him, carrying two more.
“Hello, Dom,” Asha said sleepily. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Dom shot her an incredulous look, and Cade suppressed a small smile. Both men set the buckets down beside the tub.
“Thanks,” Cade said to Dom, who merely nodded and left without a word. His usual manner of departure, Asha supposed.