Chapter 10 #3
I wanted to tell her I was already cowed, but I swallowed hard, lifted my chin, and continued slowly down the stairs. Sam gave me an encouraging nod when I met his gaze. As I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, Nemo approached.
“Well, howdy, Bones,” he said, his voice warm. “I’m so glad to see you on your feet.”
I didn’t know what to say, frozen like a deer in a floodlight.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need,” Nemo continued, and when I glanced up at him, he smiled. “I’ll let you get back to it. Just wanted to say hello.”
I nodded, feeling awkward. Raven looped her arm through mine and started pulling me toward the door.
When we stepped outside, the cool air filling my lungs made me feel like I could finally breathe a little easier.
It looked like it was about midday. Several people stopped at the sight of me, smiling and waving.
Some took a step toward us like they wanted to come over, but their eyes flicked to Raven, and they quickly continued what they’d been doing.
I looked at Raven, too, catching her glaring fiercely at anyone looking at us. My heart ached.
I was shaky and breathing hard when we made it to the outhouse. Raven helped me sit and then frowned at me.
“You’re so fuckin’ skinny, Boney. When are you gonna start training?”
“Training?” I repeated.
“Training. We gotta get some muscle on those bones since you attract more trouble than shit attracts flies.”
My face warmed, but her voice was matter-of-fact, not cruel.
“When you feel better, we’re gonna start, alright?”
Training with Raven sounded like torture, but I nodded, anyway. I wasn’t dumb enough to argue in my current position.
When we stepped out of the outhouse, Raven abruptly stopped. I followed her gaze to see Jax running toward us, his face panicked.
“Raven,” he gasped as he neared. “We need you.”
Raven swore under her breath. The worry in her eyes made my stomach clench.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“Nothin’ you need to worry about, right now,” Raven snapped.
“What?”
“Can you make it back to Nemo’s house by yourself?” Raven asked, ignoring my question.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping it was true. “But what’s wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” Raven insisted sharply. “You go back inside and tell Sam I had to run. He’ll take over.”
“But—”
“ Now, Bones.”
I glared at her, but she just took off running. Jax hesitated momentarily, then startled me by throwing his arms around my neck and giving me a quick hug that almost knocked me over.
“Hi, Bones,” he said with a shy smile as he pulled back. “Glad you’re awake.”
“Jax!” Raven barked from where she’d stopped and turned back.
He winced and took off after her. I stood there and watched them disappear, my stomach churning anxiously. What the fuck was that about?
A shadow fell over me, and I turned just in time to see Wolf’s eyes glinting as he seized my arm and dragged me behind a nearby cabin.
“Let go of me!” I demanded furiously, trying to jerk away.
He didn’t release my arm, looming over me with a fierce glare.
“What the fuck?—”
“Did Dune know?” Wolf demanded, his voice sharp.
“What?”
“Did Dune know what you could do?”
I tried to jerk my arm away again, but his grip tightened painfully.
“Ember.” His tone grew dangerous. “Did Dune know?”
I swallowed hard, trying to calm down and think. “Yes.”
Angry pain filled his face. “You told him, but not me.”
I pressed my lips together, my legs feeling even shakier.
“Why the fuck did you not tell me?”
“I wanted to?—”
“You did not,” he practically exploded. “How hard would it be to say, ‘I have magic healing powers?’ Why didn’t you tell me when you were in that cell? When I was?—”
“You would’ve thought I was a witch,” I hissed, losing my temper.
“Ember,” he snapped, “I never would have?—”
“Dune thought so, too! He made me promise never to tell you!”
He snapped his jaw shut so hard I heard his teeth click together. The raw hurt in his eyes made mine burn. We stared at each other for a few breaths.
“Do you have any idea how things would’ve been different if you’d just been fucking honest with me on that rooftop?” he finally asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” I snapped, “I would’ve been burned alive by the Ministry.”
He reared back like I’d hit him. “What?”
“Dune told me.”
“Dune told you what? ” He was staring at me with an intense expression I couldn’t quite read.
“That the Ministry burns women alive if they suspect they’re a witch.”
He said nothing for several breaths, and unease started creeping through me. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.
“Em, that’s not true.”
I blinked at him, my brain struggling to process what he said.
“That’s not true,” Wolf repeated, his brow pinched together like he was in pain.
“What’s not true?”
“The Ministry doesn’t burn anyone alive.”
I stared at him.
“They don’t burn anyone ,” he repeated, hurt creeping into his voice again. “You thought I knew this and was just fine with it?”
“You’re lying,” I snapped.
“I’m not. I swear,” Wolf said, his face gravely serious. “I swear, Em, that’s not true.”
Wolf had to be lying. Dune would never lie to me. I remembered the fear in his face. That was real.
My hands started trembling. “What about the nights when Pa would come home smellin’ like ash?”
“He probably smelled like ash ’cause he was standing next to one of the fires on his watch shift.”
“Dune said you told him this, that when he turned ten, you told him he was old enough to know!” My voice was rising, anger creeping in.
Wolf closed his eyes briefly, his throat bobbing. “If Dune told you that, he was lyin’. I never told him that, Em.”
“Why the fuck would Dune lie to me?” I demanded, and I could hear the desperation in my voice. I didn’t understand what was happening. This didn’t make any sense.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, then his eyes focused back on me, and the pain in his voice speared through me. “How could you think I would just let the Ministry burn you alive?”
I was dangerously close to falling apart and gripped my anger like a lifeline. “Because you let them drag me away and throw me in a fuckin’ cell when I was only ten years old! ” I hissed.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “What were you doin’ with Madame in the dungeon?”
The change in subject threw me off balance, and the nausea surged back.
“You said you were torturing people, so what were you doing?”
I could practically smell the blood and that awful, sickly-sweet smell?—
“You can hurt people with your powers, can’t you?”
I knew I should say something to explain myself, but the shame seemed to seal my mouth shut.
“How the fuck am I supposed to trust you when you still aren’t tellin’ me the whole truth?” Anger sharpened in his voice again. “How do I know that whole story about Dune isn’t another lie?”
I tried to shove all the emotion down before I lost my shit again, trying to tap into the old Bones who could do that on command.
“You wanna know how we found you?”
I glanced back up at him, startled.
“We met up with a woman who claimed she’d seen you. She told us all about how her crew rescued you from mercenaries, but you got her brother killed, and then, if that wasn’t enough, you turned her crew against her and got her exiled .”
Lana.
My mind flashed back to that morning when I was attacked in my own clinic.
I could see the two men’s sneers and the eager anticipation in their eyes.
I could feel the hands that groped my body.
I sucked in a desperate breath through my nose, trying to keep from being sick.
Part of my mind was raging that she was twisting the story like that, but the majority of me was just so damn tired—tired of trying to prove myself, tired of trying to explain myself, tired of trying.
And I could not process the knowledge that Dune, my best friend, had potentially lied to me.
“Well?” Wolf demanded impatiently.
I couldn’t do this. My mind and body started shutting down again. The numbness rushed over me like a cold blast of wind, leaving nothing in its wake.
“What do you want to know?” I asked woodenly.
There was a brief silence.
“I want to know where the fuck you’ve been?—”
“With the Reapers.” I forced myself to look at his face as I said it, and sure enough, horrified recognition appeared.
“The raiders ?”
“Yes.”
“You joined the Reapers? ”
“You taught me to survive.”
He stared at me.
“So I survived.” It was so much easier to talk when I felt empty like this. “I did whatever I had to do to survive, just like you taught me.”
“I did not fuckin’ teach you to kill and torture people, Ember!” He looked at me like he’d never seen me before, but all I felt was hollow.
“I did what I had to do.”
His jaw worked furiously as if he was so angry he couldn’t get the words out.
“So you joined the worst gang you could find? The one that raped and killed for fun? The one that tore families apart and sold them to slavers? That’s how you recognized Sable’s brand, isn’t it?
Cause you helped traffick people like him to Mad Dog? ”
I felt removed from my body as if I were watching this play out from somewhere above.
“He was a child when he got taken. A child when the slavers put that brand on him. A child when the Reapers shoved him in a trailer packed with so many people they couldn’t even sit down…for days .”
I had been a child, too, but I couldn’t get my mouth to move.
“Do you know what Mad Dog did to his slaves? The lucky ones were crushed by collapsing tunnels underground. The pretty ones like Sable’s sister, though?
He collected them,” he spit the words out like they burned on his tongue.
“Sable got to see her body before they burned it, and he barely recognized her. He would’ve died in those tunnels if he hadn’t escaped.
And Juck just kept bringin’ him fucking truckfuls?—”
He cut off abruptly, sucking in a breath, and I tried to brace myself.
“Juck. Is that ‘J’ on your chest for ‘Juck’?”
It felt like I’d fallen into that icy river again, my body numb but somehow still thrumming with pain at the same time.
“Ember,” Wolf growled, “tell me you weren’t Juck’s Angel.”
I flinched.
“Is that why you didn’t want us to see it?” He was so angry his voice shook slightly. “Are you tellin’ me you were Juck’s whore?”
All the blood rushed from my face at that horrible name.
It never seemed to matter how often the Reapers sneered it at me; hearing it always made me sick.
The brand on my chest felt like it was burning into my skin all over again.
I could see the person Wolf saw, and it wasn’t me, but I had no energy to fix it.
No matter what I said, he just kept seeing the worst possible version of me, and I was done trying to fight him on it.
“At least Mom isn’t alive to see what you’ve become.” Wolf’s voice was harsh and bitter.
I remembered Madame slowly shoving her knife into Mist’s shoulder and twisting it. I imagined this must be close to what that felt like. I wanted to scream and cry, but I silently bore the pain—just like I always did.
“I have to go,” I said numbly, trying again to jerk my arm free.
To my surprise, he let me go, watching me back away with disgust and fury and pain clear as day on his face. I turned my back on him and walked away as quickly as my legs could take me.
That chasm between us felt like it split so wide we might as well have been on two different worlds.