5. Six Days Until Bonding #2
That infuriates me beyond words. Laurel cannot be measured against money, property, power, or blood. There is nothing I own that I wouldn’t surrender for her. Every estate. Every alliance. Every future my father built for me.
All of it.
Jackson reduced her to a transaction. A pinch of black powder small enough to scatter across a table, to spill onto the floor and grind beneath someone’s shoe. He looked at Laurel, weighed her life against a few hours of oblivion, and chose the drug.
Violence, I understand. I know the satisfaction of making another person hurt. But this was colder. He made a calculation. That she was cheap.
To me, Laurel is priceless.
I pick up the blowtorch.
“Looks like you’re bleeding a bit over here,” I say conversationally. The sheets beneath him are stained red now. “Let me cauterize that for you.”
I ignite the flame. It appears with a low rush, blue at the base and orange at the tip. I adjust the dial until it narrows.
Then I lightly apply the flame to his side. The blood bubbles, and the skin crackles. Jackson thrashes hard enough to pull the bed several inches away from the wall.
“Stop,” he begs. “Please stop.”
The fear in his voice satisfies a part of me I’ve spent years pretending belongs only to my father.
“Were you going to stop with Laurel?” I ask. “If Silas let you go alone with her?”
A scab is forming. I get the pliers and rip it off. I want him bleeding.
Jackson sobs. Actual tears slip from the corners of his eyes and disappear into his hair.
“You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
“You’ll be removed from the path for this.”
“They can’t remove me. No man can harm a Brother without just and proven cause,” I recite the rule we’ve been taught since childhood. “You fucked with my Bonded. That’s number one on the just-cause list.”
“She’s not your Bonded,” he whines. “You haven’t done the ceremony.”
I light up the blowtorch again and hold it where he can see it. “What’d you say?”
“I mean.” He licks his lips. “You bonded her verbally.”
I move the flame closer.
“Which is just as good,” he rushes out. “Yeah, totally. She’s your Bonded.”
“I’m so glad we established that.” I turn off the blowtorch with a click.
For once, Jackson’s right. The ceremony won’t create the bond. It will only make The Order acknowledge what already exists.
Jackson lets out a whoosh of air, his body relaxing into the mattress.
I pick up the healing spray.
The mist settles over the wound, cool and nearly translucent. Torn skin draws together beneath it. The angry red edges pale, the lines close, and within minutes his side is unblemished except for the blood surrounding it.
The healing fascinates me every time I witness it. Flesh remembers the shape it held before injury and returns to it as though pain was never there.
People are less cooperative.
We may heal, but we always remember.
That's fine.
I want Jackson to remember every detail of today.
My pliers make a metallic click when I open and close them.
He looks toward the sound. “What’re those for?”
“The spray has limitations.”
I move to the foot of the bed and take hold of his right ankle. Jackson kicks, but the cuff prevents him from reaching me.
“It works beautifully on skin,” I explain. “Not so well on nails.”
“No.”
I grip the nail of his largest toe.
“Carrson, wait.”
I pull.
His entire body lifts from the mattress as the nail tears free. The scream that leaves his throat has no words. Blood beads at the exposed nail bed and runs down the side of his toe.
I hold the nail where he can see it, then place it on the pillow beside his head.
“That hurts,” he gasps.
I could have taken a fingernail. That would have carried more symbolic weight after he struck Laurel, but missing fingernails invite questions. Toes remain hidden inside shoes.
The second nail comes away less cleanly. Jackson begs while I work it loose, promising money, loyalty, votes, anything he believes an Ashford might value.
He can’t comprehend that there’s nothing he possesses I would exchange for Laurel. Not his loyalty, his family’s wealth, or the Beaumont influence Jack has spent years cultivating.
By the fourth nail, Jackson’s threats have vanished. By the fifth, he is crying too hard to form complete sentences.
I stop because I’m running out of time, not because he has suffered enough.
He will never suffer enough.
I wipe the pliers on the sheet and lean over him, bracing one hand beside his head. His face is slick with sweat. The arrogance he carries through Ashford House is gone, leaving a frightened man strapped to a bed in a room where he believed only women were supposed to feel powerless.
“What I need you to understand,” I say, “is that Laurel belongs to me.”
He nods frantically.
“You won’t speak to her unless she speaks to you first. You won’t enter a room she’s in without my permission. You won’t say her name while you’re fucking women you selected because they resemble her.”
His eyes widen, and I know I’m right.
I wrap my hand around his throat.
The pulse under my palm beats fast and fragile. It would take very little pressure to stop it. Jackson recognizes that too. His body goes still despite the pain in his foot.
“I won’t do it again,” he whispers, voice raw from screaming.
“No, you won’t.”
“I swear.”
“Your promises have never impressed me.”
I lower my mouth near his ear, close enough that he can feel my breath.
“If you touch her again, I won’t come here with a time limit. I’ll take you apart slowly enough that the healing spray becomes the worst thing ever invented, because every time you think you’ve reached the end of what a body can endure, I’ll put you back together and begin again.”
A tremor passes through him.
“This is the warning.”
I release his throat and straighten.
Jackson watches as I pack the torch, spray, dagger, and pliers into the kit. I leave the nails on his pillow. They belong to him, and I want him to see them in case he wonders whether this was a drug-induced nightmare.
At the door, his voice stops me.
“Aren’t you going to let me go?”
I look back at him, naked and bleeding, his arms and legs pulled toward the corners of the bed.
“No.”
“Carrson.”
“Someone will find you eventually.”
“Who?”
I glance toward the empty space where the two women were lying. “Maybe one of the women you were with. I’m sure you treated them nicely enough that they would come back to check on you.”
Silence from him.
“That’s what I thought.” I close the door behind me.
Carrson Ashford. Art by: Runfeng Wu