2. Chapter 2 #2
Frances pushes it toward me.
“It belonged to your family. We kept it for you.”
I pick it up and turn it between my fingers. It’s heavier than it looks, old and beautiful and carefully preserved.
None of that makes it mine.
“This proves you have an old ring.”
“It carries the Luftemilen crest.” Frances gathers the empty cloth in his hands. “The records will have to establish the rest.”
“What records?”
“Every family in this valley descends from a household that served Luftemilen. Guards, stewards, healers, cooks. They preserved letters, ledgers, family names, and testimony from the people who survived.”
“Then bring them to me.”
“Some of the documents are kept by the families. Others are too fragile to move. I can have the first records ready for you tomorrow.”
“You don’t get tomorrow. You kidnapped me today.”
His mouth tightens. “You’re injured and still under the effects of the tranquilizer.”
“Because of you.”
“I know.”
“Stop agreeing with me and doing nothing about it.”
Frances sets the cloth on the table.
“If you want me to believe a single word you’ve said, show me the evidence you already have and unlock the door.”
“I can bring you the first records, but I can’t let you leave.”
“Won’t.”
“We believe you’re still in danger.”
“And I believe the man holding me prisoner doesn’t have a clue about where I am safe.”
“That doesn’t make the danger outside this valley disappear.”
Frances looks at the ring in my hand.
“You said your family serves mine,” I say. “Prove it. Open the door.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You’ve decided not to.”
Frances stands. Before he leaves, he looks toward the man from the van.
“Benny, stay on this corridor.”
The young woman who enters carrying a tray is about my age, with dark hair clipped away from her face and her sleeves pushed above her elbows. Benny holds the door and starts to follow her inside, but she shakes her head. He hesitates before stepping back into the corridor and closing the door.
She sets the tray on the table.
“I’m Elise.”
She breaks the seal on a bottle of water and pours two cups. Without asking whether I’m suspicious, she drinks one, tears a piece from the bread, and takes a spoonful of stew.
“You always eat your prisoner’s dinner?”
“Only when she thinks we poisoned it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Elise glances at the untouched glass beside the bed. “You didn’t have to.”
She pushes the fresh cup toward me, then opens the first aid box she carried in with the tray. Clean gauze, tape, scissors, a small bottle of antiseptic.
“The dressing is already soaked through,” she says. “May I look at it?”
The question catches me harder than it should. Nobody has asked before putting their hands on me today.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Elise pauses with the gauze in her hands. “I am.”
“You came in without a guard.”
“Being afraid of you doesn’t mean I think you’ll hurt me.”
“I killed five people today.”
“I saw what happened at the gate.”
“Then you saw me kick one of your guards and bite another.”
“I saw you drugged, bleeding, and almost free.” She nods toward my side. “Tomas stepped directly into your path. You could have gone through him, but you threw yourself onto the stones instead.”
My side throbs at the reminder.
“Then one of our men raised a dart gun while Tomas was still beside you,” she continues. “You were the one who told him to get the weapon away from the boy.”
“He could have hit him.”
“I know.”
“Anyone would have done the same.”
“Not everyone.”
Elise waits. She doesn’t reach for me again.
“You can look,” I say.
She warms her hands before lifting the edge of my shirt. When she starts peeling away the bloody tape, she warns me first.
“You think stopping for Tomas means I won’t hurt you?”
“I think you had every reason to hurt anyone between you and that gate, and you still protected a child you didn’t know.” She cleans the blood from my side, working slowly around the torn skin. “I haven’t hurt you. I’m hoping that means you won’t hurt me.”
“That depends on what you’re here to do.”
“Feed you. Fix this dressing. Help where I can.”
The antiseptic hits the wound and I suck in a breath.
“Sorry.” She stops immediately. “Do you need a minute?”
“No. Finish it.”
She waits another second anyway, then continues.
“Why help me?” I ask.
“Because what happened to you was wrong.”
“Your people keep calling it a rescue.”
“Calling it something different doesn’t change what they did.”
Elise presses clean gauze over the wound and tapes it in place. Her hands are careful, but they don’t shake.
“There.” She sits back on her heels. “I hope that holds.”
Then she gets up, washes her hands, and moves the tray within my reach.
She doesn’t tell me to eat. She pours herself more water and takes another bite of bread.
I watch her for another minute.
Then hunger wins.
The door opens hard enough to strike the wall.
A large man fills the doorway. He looks about forty, broad through the shoulders, with bloodshot eyes and both hands clenched at his sides. Benny is behind him, reaching for the door too late.
“Why wasn’t this locked?”
“Elise is treating her,” Benny says.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Klaus,” Elise says. “Not now.”
His attention lands on me. His jaw tightens.
“My brother was one of the men you killed.”
The room goes still.
I don’t know which one his brother was. I remember the net, the poles, bodies moving through the grass. I remember fighting until the last dart took my legs out from under me.
“I’m sorry he’s dead,” I say.
“Are you?”
“Yes. But he came at me with a weapon.”
“He believed he was bringing you home.”
“He helped drag me into a van.”
Klaus takes one step into the room.
Benny moves with him. “That’s close enough.”
Klaus ignores him. “Four darts in you, bleeding through your clothes, and you were out of that van before the doors were fully open. You nearly reached the gate.”
“You kidnapped me. What did you expect me to do?”
“My brother expected you to understand once you got here.”
“Then your brother didn’t know me.”
His fists clench tighter.
I get to my feet. My side pulls beneath Elise’s fresh dressing, but I’m not staying seated while this man stands over me.
“If you came here hoping I’d apologize for surviving, you can leave.”
Elise rises between us. “Klaus, stop.”
He looks at her as if he’s only just remembered she’s in the room.
“She goes into the old storerooms,” he says. “Stone walls, one door, no windows. Somewhere half the valley can’t wander past to stare at her.”
“No,” Elise says.
“There are nineteen children here.”
“And moving her underground protects them how?”
“Her mates will come looking for her. So will the academy and the Council. We don’t know who else they’ll bring or what they’ll do when they reach the valley.”
Anyone with sense knows Luke, Torres, and Soren won’t simply accept that I disappeared.
“Let me contact them,” I say. “One message. I’ll tell them I’m alive and the children here aren’t responsible for what happened.”
“So they can trace it?”
“I don’t know where I am.”
“You know more than you did this morning.”
“I know you have a courtyard, a gate, and an old man who thinks kidnapping counts as protection. That should narrow it down.”
His face darkens.
“Jessica,” Elise warns quietly.
“No. He came in here threatening to bury me in a windowless room. He can listen.”
Klaus looks past me to the ring on the table.
“Frances bowed to you,” he says. “Now half the valley has forgotten that you killed five people before you ever crossed the gate.”
“They attacked me.”
“My brother is still dead.”
“And I’m sorry for that. I am. But you don’t get to make me responsible for the fact that Frances sent him after a direwolf with a net.”
Klaus flinches as if I struck him.
For a moment I think he might come at me. Benny must think so too, because he steps through the doorway and places himself between us.
Klaus turns his anger on him. “You were there.”
“Yes.”
“You saw what she did.”
“I saw what we did first.”
Something in Klaus’s expression closes.