Chapter 14 - Azrael
Azrael
I had no choice but to bring the rose home with us and watch through the cameras as Scarlett, with Havoc trailing behind her, showed her everything except for the basement.
Including the rooms she had the most fun in.
But now, Scarlett was asleep, cuddling with the rabbit after showing it to the rose half a dozen times, and the wild rose was making her way to the offices, but not without my help.
So, when she finally arrived, she knew that I had been watching her.
“I won’t ask why you have the entire inside of your castle filled with cameras and security measures, I understand it.”
I watched her from my chair, my mask still on, although Scarlett had taken hers off the moment we got to the house. “When did you get a bike?”
She looked around the room, taking it all in. “A few months ago, February.” Her eyes found mine. “How did you get those recordings of our voices?”
I remained silent.
She nodded, expecting it. “I would have started learning sign language a long time ago had you said I’d need it to speak to my sister.”
I clicked out of what I was doing as she took her seat. “ASL is an important thing to know. It will be required in your Claim’s new school.”
She watched me for a long time. “You’re still hiding things from us.”
“If I told you everything, there would be no reason for me to stay.”
She rose her brows. “That sounds more like an excuse to remain then it does a threat to us.”
I searched her eyes. “Don’t think I’ve grown a heart just because you saw this world through her eyes,” I warned icily.
She shook her head. “Never.” She angled her head. “She wouldn’t take me to the basement, why is that?”
Because she realized I had never mentioned a thing about Marla. Not even a whisper. Smart girl.
“The brothers like their privacy.”
She didn’t look like she believed me at all and that was fine, I didn’t need her to believe me, I just needed her to accept that I wouldn’t tell her the truth.
“Where did you meet them?” she asked. “I’ve been wanting to ask you since Bishop started helping us on the build.
And Alaric? He doesn’t speak. It looked to me like he and Scarlett have an… understanding.”
“I met them a long time ago, but don’t worry your pretty little head about them, wild rose, they are nothing like me.”
Her eyes narrowed.
I smiled. “They are so much worse.”
“You had to learn from somewhere,” she replied, looking around the room again. After a moment, she turned back to me. “You mentioned sending her to Absolution, which is where Rae was taken for those four months.”
I went very still, every atom of who I was concentrated on her.
“From the stories you’ve told us, Scarlett seems incredibly smart, so I’m sure this isn’t something you’d have to tell her, but have you two discussed what’s going to happen once you send her there?”
Every second of every day since the moment she volunteered.
When I didn’t respond, the rose’s eyes softened and then quickly hardened.
“You told her she would never have to suck cock again. That’s a promise, coming from you, and you don’t break promises, no matter how difficult they are to keep, but it’s so much worse,” she went on, her voice a whisper in the night.
“Because she is their Chosen One. The one they’ve coveted for a very long time. ”
“You survived,” I said quickly.
But she shook her head. “Olivia Rose did not survive. She became me. I am the product of everything they did.” She straightened, her strange eyes burning fiercely.
“She’s going to be raped and beaten and tortured.
It doesn’t matter how much you trained her because if you want your information, she has to comply, she doesn’t have a choice. ”
“Do you worry for her, rose?”
“I worry for you, Azrael,” she replied. “From your stories, the people who are sent there are never seen again. Rae was released for a game. They will never let Scarlett go.”
I felt that smile sharpen around the edges. “They have never met me.” I had a plan. I always had a plan. Always.
Always.
She watched me for a long time before she shook her head and leaned back. “Who is the true heir?” she asked instead.
Good. Let her ruminate in the questions she would never have the answers to. My little sinner was a monster, trained by other monsters. I was simply going to unleash her in the cage they created. “You don’t have an assumption?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not Everett. You said ‘true’. We all know the rumors of the blood relative. Malachi has a son or a daughter, and you believe they’re behind this.”
“Ah, ah, aahhh,” I hummed. “I never said it was our father.”
Her brows furrowed and then smoothed. “Beckett?”
I didn’t twitch a single muscle as I stared at her.
She frowned. “You keep giving us half-answers because why? You told us her story. You told us what you found, everything you’ve been working on, excluding a few details, but you won’t tell us who you think started this place besides the fact that we know him. How does that help?”
I pushed myself to a stand, grabbing my cane as I did.
“We have lists,” I began, turning for the windows.
“Each of us. Lists of people who we want to take our sweet time on when the time comes. Scar is willing to give the daffodil’s father over to her, but the list of the condemned is a long one in her eyes.
Me? I have only two. It doesn’t matter who I slaughter before or after that, so long as those two are mine. ”
“Implying that those two wouldn’t be yours if we knew their names?”
I stopped in front of the windows, watching the rain fall across the dark woods, listening as she made her way over.
The rose stood beside me for several minutes in silence, listening to the rain, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the view made her miss her own home.
I certainly missed her being there.
“Have you been encouraging Ev to finish the University by Fall because this world is falling apart?”
I lifted my chin. “It is not this world that is falling apart, prickling rose, it’s the people.”
“And you’re trying to correct it?”
“I am trying to cleanse this world of tar.”
She pondered over my words. “You’re trying to protect your family from the pain they’re going to feel when they find out it’s the person who raised them that started the Church of Daylight,” she said, my hand tightening around my cane.
“I am not—”
“It’s okay if you need to protect yourself too,” she interjected, her voice soft.
“I’m not going to get sentimental with you, I’ll leave that to the girl who took that heart you convinced us you never had, but I will say this,” she went on, turning away from the window to face the door, “I will tell the others that they’re yours, whoever they might be, but you have to promise me that you and Scarlett will make it agonizing. ”
“We know no other way.”