Chapter 54
SUTTON
I’m falling.
Tumbling straight toward an abyss, unable to stop as my body picks up speed, hurtling into an endless sea of nothingness.
That’s what it feels like when I extract Elle from Tartarus, instructing a few fledgling members to get the injured members whatever medical assistance is necessary based on their condition.
Beckett had the decency to offer to stay somewhere else tonight—just as well, considering I have half a mind still to kill him.
He’d been withholding the fact that he’d seen Elle heading for those fucking caves again with one of her friends, and I could’ve throttled him then and there for not telling me immediately.
Then again, I suppose he couldn’t have known I’d be interested in her whereabouts—not for certain, at least. I’d told him everything, begging him to reveal whatever he knew, and that’s why I wound up walking in when I did.
Any later, and who fucking knows what the Director would’ve done.
If I would’ve had a body to extract at all.
Now, as I get her settled on my couch to assess her injuries, I ignore the erratic pulse in my throat. Reaching out, I push some of the hair from her face and instantly recoil. The entire right side is swollen and quickly turning purple.
Crimson stains mark a huge portion of her body, soaking the fabric of the cloak I wrapped her in. Cuts and bruises decorate the skin I’ve spent so much of my time cherishing.
Heart in my throat, I force my hand out again, this time just gently palming the back of her head.
She sucks in a strained gasp, shoving me and twisting out of the way. When she bursts into tears, curling against the railing, I just blink, my hand suspended in midair.
“Elle?” My voice is soft, barely above a whisper. My fingers tremble; I let my hand fall to my lap, not wanting to make things worse. “Elle, baby, it’s okay. It’s just me now. You’re safe.”
It takes a second for those beautiful hazel eyes to focus. She vigorously wipes her tears, staring at me as if she’s looking at a ghost, and then launches herself into my arms.
I catch her easily, wrapping myself around her. She clings to my neck, stiff and unyielding.
“Elle, baby. Let me clean you up.”
She doesn’t respond. I gently pry her arms from around me and go to the kitchen to prep a warm rag.
When I return, she’s just blankly staring at the coffee table in front of her. I crouch between her legs, dabbing lightly at the corner of her mouth where her bottom lip is split in two.
She doesn’t react at all, though I’m certain it can’t feel good having me poke at her wounds.
She pinches her eyes shut, leaning away as I begin dabbing at the stains on her skin. Patches of dirt, streaks of blood, crusted saliva—I wipe it all away until only the cuts and bruises are left to mar such a beautiful picture.
“Elle,” I say softly, pushing her hair off her shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”
A tiny sob escapes her, and she shakes her head. “It was so stupid. I found a note asking to meet at Lethe’s, and I thought it was you. Since we haven’t exchanged numbers or anything, I just assumed…”
Agony pierces my chest. Why didn’t I text or call or bother giving her my number?
To keep up the farce that there was nothing going on with us, just in case our phones were compromised.
“So I went, because I was really happy that you wanted to see me. And I sat at the bar, the same seat I sat in the night we met, and waited. Then waited some more.” She pauses, wiping the corner of her mouth with her knuckles.
“I had to pee, so I went to the bathroom when you still didn’t show, and someone—they grabbed me from behind, put some bag over my head, and drugged me. ”
I freeze, my hand on her arm, mid-swipe over a cut there.
“So fucking stupid.” Her laugh is hollow. Devoid of humor entirely. “If you’d wanted to see me, you would’ve just come to my dorm. Right? But I wasn’t thinking, and then…”
When she trails off, I pull away, dropping the rag onto the floor and folding my hands in my lap.
“I don’t know how long I was out for, but when I came to, I was in Tartarus. On that stage, surrounded by a sea of cloaked, masked figures.”
Her voice cracks a little, and she lifts her chin, though she still won’t meet my eyes.
“I know you didn’t want me to do it. To be the Maiden. But that snake mask lady? She said if I didn’t accept the role I’d volunteered for, she’d…”
My heart pounds like thunder in my chest. “She’d what?”
“Kill me and my friend.” She inhales a stuttered breath, her voice trembling with the memories. “Percy… They dragged him out on this pyre, and I said…I said I would do it. I’d participate. I tried to save him.”
Settling back on my heels, I scrub a hand down my face. Tried.
Despair storms across her features, anguish twisting them into tight spirals. She looks down at her hands, opening them slowly, her eyes so wide I think they could fall from the sockets.
“I didn’t…I didn’t want to do it, but I thought they’d let him go if I did. Then she stabbed him anyway.”
“Christ.”
She looks up, and I press my fingers gently to her mouth, swallowing hard when she flinches.
“All I could think about was how it was my fault Percy was there in the first place. They knew my name. They threatened my friends. He tried to leave the basement the night we… He wasn’t supposed to get caught up in any of this. ”
None of them were.
“But…I d-didn’t want to d-die,” she utters, so broken that listening feels like being stabbed with shards of glass. “I didn’t want to die, so I…I did it.”
My chin lifts. Discomfort wedges between my ribs. “Did what, baby?”
Tears fall freely, splattering across her stained fingers, sluicing through the cuts on her palms. She stares in horror, like she can’t recognize them, and a wet noise of absolute misery rips from her throat.
“I killed that man,” she sobs, trembling now. “I killed him.” There’s a long, pregnant pause. “I killed them. I killed them. I killed them. I killed them.”
At no point do I think to ask her to clarify who exactly she means—her assailant, Percy, Bellamy. It’s likely she means all of them.
The sentence repeats on a loop, a record skipping on the one spot you hate most. I close my eyes, opening them at the exact second she crumples, falling to the floor with the weight of shock and exhaustion, still repeating those words over and over like a compulsion.
“I killed them. I killed them,” she cries, even as I wrap my body around hers, tucking her head into my chest to let my shirt soak up her tears.
We sit there for so long that I convince myself the words are coming directly from me. So long that she tires herself out, eventually falling asleep within the cocoon of my embrace.
Picking her up as gently as possible, I move us to the bedroom. As soon as I set her down on the mattress, her eyes spring open, panic striking those beautiful hazel irises. Her hands whip out, clutching my shirt and dragging me close.
“I’m here, Elle,” I say, pressing my lips to her forehead.
It takes a few more minutes for her to fall back asleep, and when she does, a part of me wishes Death’s Teeth would just end my goddamn life.
Agony colludes with anxiety in my chest, bearing down like a thousand-ton weight, threatening to crush all the organs inside.
This is my fault. I was so dumbfounded by that fucking journal that I didn’t think about how vulnerable I was leaving her by asking for space.
And what the hell kind of space did I need anyway? This girl could shoot me in the chest, and I’d forgive her over and over.
I look down at the bruises scattered across her face and chest, the cuts and abrasions on her knuckles, her cheeks, her jaw. Taking one fist in my hand, I bring it to my mouth, kissing each finger softly.
“I’m sorry.” Closing my eyes, I let the misery mix with pure rage, unable to keep either of them at bay. “I fucked up big-time.”
She stirs, her eyelids peeling open. “I fought back,” she whispers, a glassy look carrying her far away from me. “I won, right? It’s over… I’m… I did it. I’m yours forever now…”
My heart pinches.
“Yeah. You did so good, baby.”
The words taste like acid, even if there is a modicum of truth within them. I didn’t want her to get involved, but if she was going to, I can’t deny the sliver of satisfaction I feel knowing she held her own.
That maybe she’s not as helpless as some believe.
No, she’s not helpless at all. She’s kind, funny, talented, and honest when she trusts someone. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve ruined the last bit for us—that the ease with which I’ve touched her previously is gone, replaced by the skittishness caused by ghosts you can barely remember.
A feeling I know all too fucking well.
I remain in the bed with her for another hour, focusing on the soft, regulated sound of her breathing deeply. As if just to reassure myself that she is in fact alive.
Something about her recounting of the evening niggles in the back of my mind, though, and I can’t let it go.
Beckett said he’d seen her go to the caves voluntarily, but she said she was attacked and dragged there against her will.
Eventually, once I’m certain she’s in a deep enough sleep, I leave the room, closing the door behind me, and make a few calls.