Chapter 29
Quill
Present Day
“Well, go on. Do your worst.”
I’m sitting in the small cell on the sub-sub basement level, right below the one that’s publicly known and has all the fake medieval rumors about it. Spikes, walls that will crush you slowly and fully, a torture machine that pulls your limbs apart, entombment.
None of that’s true, but it’s closer to being the case in the cell below, the one that was designed for soldiers who don’t do what they’re told.
There are leather shackles on the wall, various whips and other torture devices in the corner, and an actual bow and motherfucking arrow, and I’m feeling like Ivanhoe right now, or whatever that book was that I once caught Piper reading, during her occasional mystery novel breaks.
It all makes me snort, because it looks pretty silly. But Tragen gives me a glare.
The thing is, when you don’t give a fuck about taking human life, you usually don’t give a fuck about yours being taken from you either.
At least, that’s the way I always felt about it, until Piper.
And now, in spite of the fact that I’m back to hating her guts like I did before I fell in love with her, I realize maybe the insect was right about the silent protector shit.
Because my one regret about being locked in this cell, faced with my potential impending doom, is that I’m helpless to protect her.
Relief at knowing I left her gagged and bound and she can’t get into trouble turns into dread as I realize I left her gagged and bound, and she might just starve to death or something.
Though I also have to begrudgingly admire that she’s not the kind of girl who would let a little detail like duct tape prevent her from getting revenge on her parents’ murderer.
I’m back to feeling relieved about that, until I realize that getting revenge means going back to Devil Tower, and if she does, she’s as good as dead.
Basically, no matter how I look at it, her life will end soon if I don’t get the hell out of here, and that feels like a much worse prospect than the one currently facing me.
A punch to my face makes me focus, at least temporarily, on my current predicament.
I’m not sure why I’m sitting in a chair on the other side of a table, facing Tragen, rather than shackled to the ceiling as he tortures me.
Maybe he wants to talk in a more or less civil manner before he kills me slowly and painfully.
“So?” I mutter, spitting out the blood that’s just filled my mouth at his version of a civil discussion.
I look up at him and am kind of surprised to see the expression on his face. Not anger. Not coldness, the way he looks at others who’ve fucked up. No, if anything, this is… disappointment.
The kind of look he’d give his son, but I’m not his son. And my own father has never looked at me like that. If he looks at me at all, it’s with a sort of cowering rage as he seems to struggle with his desire to beat the shit out of me, without getting killed.
“I warned you about this, soldier,” barks out Tragen, stressing that last word a little too much in his apparent desire to not name me.
Soldiers are supposed to be anonymous, interchangeable, but I’ve never quite been that to him, and I realize now, probably too late, that if anyone’s been a father to me in my life, it’s this bloodthirsty man.
“You’ve risen through the ranks, you’re at the very top, and you’ve gotten sloppy.”
I grit my teeth, but I’m relieved in a way that he thinks of me as sloppy. Even though it would be an insult at any other time. But better he believes that than knows about—
“Sloppy in other areas, too,” he adds, and I swallow, realizing he’s reading right through me. Like a proper father might.
“You’ve let yourself get hung up on a girl, and that’s unpardonable.”
Fuck. Me. He knows.
It feels like my world is crashing in slow motion as he continues, torturing me far more with his words than he could with any torture implement. “Piper Day. Even now that she’s ruined your life, you’re still hung up on her. Getting sloppy because of a tangentially-related contract.”
Then he waits, clearly expecting an answer.
I run a thousand possible ones through my head, but realize there’s no point in lying.
He knows. I might be thinking of myself as slick, bugging every inch of the insect’s dorm room at college, hiding cameras everywhere, stalking her bank account and occasionally adding just a little money to keep her from going into overdraft, knowing she’s so bad with her finances she’d never notice.
But this guy has me beat. He clearly knows everything about me. The only thing I’m wondering is why he didn’t kill me before, because I’ve clearly broken every rule in the soldier handbook, and then some.
“How did you know?” I ask stupidly, and he looks away, clearly finding my question just as stupid as I do.
He just knows. Who cares how? He’s the most powerful man in Devil, after its founders. If he wants to know, he will.
He doesn’t bother to answer, instead saying, “I’ve allowed you a lot of leeway, because you’re my best soldier, and I won’t let some stupid girl get in the way of what you can become.”
I tense at him calling her stupid, even though I’ve called her far worse. But he ignores my reaction and continues, “Ever since she came back to town, you’ve been spiraling. The latest contract was a test to see if you could detach yourself from her. Clearly you can’t.”
“I don’t give a fuck about her,” I spit out.
“Wrong. You hate her, and that means you do. You’re still in love with her, too. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone hate and love someone at the very same time, and so intensely.”
I grit my teeth so hard together I wonder if they won’t become dust. My hands are restrained behind my back, and that’s the only reason I’m not lunging at him and turning his face into a pulp.
Even if he is my commanding officer. Even if he has rapidly risen through the ranks, far more rapidly than me, to become the commanding officer of all the Devil soldiers.
And even though I’m just realizing now that it’s too late, that he actually cares about me.
Not about the soldier. About me. Quill Nelson.
But none of that means a thing when he’s got her name on his tongue, telling me exactly how I feel about her.
And he’s right.
That’s the worst part. He’s fucking right.
“I don’t believe you’ve ever cared about anyone but her,” he says steadily, watching me.
“Every emotion a normal person might feel for any number of people, love for family and friends, appreciation for acquaintances, dislike or even hatred of others—you experience none of that. Or rather, you focus it all on her. No wonder your obsession is all-consuming.”
By now, I’m a ball of pure unadulterated fury, wondering if I can actually break out of these metal manacles just from the uncontrollable nature of my own rage. I can’t, but I’m sure trying to, and my wrists are feeling raw and wet, probably from blood. I don’t feel a thing but anger, though.
“I know all this about you,” says Tragen, observing me quietly, “and I also know you’re my best soldier.
Not one of the best. The best. Because you feel nothing.
Not love, not hatred. That’s what makes you good, soldier.
And if this girl is the vessel in which you pour everything that keeps you from feeling even a speck of emotion about your contracts, then so be it.
I’ve allowed it, because I think I understand how your brain works.
Now, though, the vessel is full, and the emotions are spilling out. That’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”
“So kill me and get it over with,” I spit out.
There’s a long pause as he eyes me in a way that feels almost sad. “That’s what I should do, Quill. Anyone else guilty of your sins would have died a long time ago. You’re my best, though, and my weakness, too. I’m going to give you another chance.”
Another chance. My heartbeat races at those words, not for me, but for her. For the girl whose guts I hate, and who I need to protect. Even though it makes no sense.
“I’m going to make your last chance easy for you,” adds Tragen, and I stare at him in confusion.
He slides an envelope over to me, then walks around the table to unlock my manacles. My first instinct is to lunge at him, but my second is curiosity as I eye the familiar-looking envelope that I know contains my next contract.
“Carry out that contract, soldier, and you might just live.”
I frown in confusion, because I’ve never refused a contract before, and I don’t see why I should now of all times.
But it’s with a mounting sense of unease that I bring my hands, covered with the blood dripping from my wrists, to the envelope, opening it and dying the fringes of the paper inside bright red.
I blink at the words that are, as usual, on the top of the card.
Destroy. Obey. Kill.
That kid who spoke up during training years ago was right.
This slogan makes no fucking sense, and I can’t help but repress the usual eyeroll as I read it.
But then, the unease comes back, mounting to actual dread, crushing at my lungs.
I slowly train my eyes downward to read the name of my next victim.
Piper Day.