14. Sawyer
SAWYER
The moon glints against the glass of my bedroom—full and bright with clouds decorating the sky surrounding it. It’s the third full moon I’ve seen since I arrived at the Shadow Sanctum, and if everything goes according to plan, it’ll be the last.
I stare at the snowy ground below while nudging the bar repeatedly with my shoulder. It groans with a bruise that’ll no doubt be purple by morning.
Yelling starts.
At first, it doesn’t break my concentration. I count seconds while my drooped eyes watch a Keeper stroll a line in the grass.
There’s no pattern to their movements that I can find.
A Keeper shows up; hangs out for a bit; moves on. Within twenty minutes, another appears, but the interval changes randomly. Sometimes, it takes two minutes for the replacement to show up, sometimes it’s ten, and on one occasion—nineteen minutes seventeen seconds.
There’s no pattern. Nothing to dissect.
Every time my count begins, I pray for normalcy. For some sort of shape to emerge.
But there is none. It’s chaos by design, by her design, and though I may be delirious after hours spent staring out this window, I’m beginning to think she’s doing it to drive me mad.
It’s working.
The muted sound of shattering glass or ceramic pulls my gaze from the window. I stare at the wall while the volume rises—Aurelius’s voice, I think.
Closing my tired eyes, I listen closely but only pick up meaningless fragments, clipped words punctuated at the end of his sentences: wealth, useless, idiot.
He must be in Luna’s room.
Opening my eyes, I peer out the window and return to my count, adding on twenty-one seconds.
Something crashes against the wall. A fist, maybe a body, maybe—
Focus.
I shake my head and shove my shoulder harder against the bar. The ping it makes hardly compares to the commotion coming from down the hall.
Seven minutes nineteen seconds.
Twenty.
Twenty-one.
Is he hurting her?
My brow furrows at the thought. Air bursts past my lips in something close to a laugh.
Who cares?
Twenty-four.
Twenty-five.
A door slams. I turn as someone stomps past my room.
Numbers trail as I turn back to the window, my count slowly fading. The soreness in my shoulder pauses my movements, and for a minute, I stand as steady as a ghost behind the glass. My ears perk for the silence that’s somehow even louder than the crash.
Fuck.
With a groan, I push off the bars and walk to the door. Stiff hinges sigh as I open it just enough to peek into the hall (as if there isn’t a camera watching me anyway).
No one.
I creep toward Luna’s room while each familiar step wrinkles my nose with the bitterness that curls at the back of my throat. The last time I stepped through this bleach-scented threshold, I was ‘rescuing’ Luna.
I press my ear to the door. Hear nothing.
My knuckles rap twice.
No answer.
My gaze drifts to the opposite end of the hall where a thin mattress waits for me, its center worn deep by the last body that occupied it.
I could still leave.
Instead, I blow out a breath and open the door.
Luna sits on the side of her bed stroking a familiar black cat nestled in her lap. Pepper, as I’ve been calling her since she first nuzzled my leg on the porch of the training house.
She jumps from Luna’s lap to greet me with a rub along my shin.
“Cinder!” Luna admonishes while I bend to pet the cat.
Cinder.
She purrs as I lift her into my arms and kick the door shut with my heel.
I sit next to Luna, my hand stroking soft fur while the cat nuzzles her head in the crook of my elbow.
Cinder’s purr vibrates through my arm, but it’s the flicker of discomfort across Luna’s face that pulls a dark smile from me.
“I should’ve known she was yours… She kept showing up outside the training house.”
Luna’s lips form a thin line as she forces Cinder out of my arms. The cat protests but relents when Luna smooths her hand over its back. She hugs the cat to her chest. “I suppose I’m lucky you didn’t let her inside then… She was supposed to stay with Raven.”
“I wouldn’t have let her inside.”
She’s been content to stare ahead, but now, she looks at me.
“The only source of comfort a captive can have must come from the captor.”
She just stares at me for a few moments, then, “Hmmm.”
“So…” I gesture to the thick shards of glass spilling over the nightstand, a million glittering fragments scattered on the floor. A drinking glass, I think—thrown at the wall. Too impulsive to have been Luna. “What the fuck was that about?”
Looking away, she urges Cinder off her lap in the opposite direction as me then gets up to begin picking up the glass. Cinder is quick to jump back in my lap, but Luna doesn’t turn around to scold her. With her back to me, I take the opportunity to look around.
In some ways, her room is familiar—sickeningly clean, the smell of chemicals overpowering a potted moonflower perched on the windowsill. In other ways, it’s a museum of my incompetence, a mosaic of all the shit I should’ve seen but didn’t.
A computer with three monitors (they wouldn’t have given their fucking captive a computer).
A single photo frame with what looks like a younger version of Thorne with his arm around a tiny girl with long white hair and self-conscious posture—odd for Luna, but obviously her.
Two of the four walls are lined with bookshelves just like the library, only my guess is these are more personal. I squint to read the title of a thick spine on the bottom shelf. Psychology: Foundations, Principles, and Applications.
No university, but she wasn’t lying when she said she was a student of psychology.
“How are the women doing?” I ask, turning my attention to Luna. Knelt on the floor, she scoops dusty glass into her hand and transfers it to her nightstand. A maneuver both strange and reckless.
“Not well, I’m afraid.”
My breath hitches. I take a second too long to respond. “Oh?”
Brushing off her hands, Luna turns to me. “I’ve ordered for Liberty’s execution to take place at dawn. We’ll see in time if Aubry can acclimate, but I won’t waste our time on the other.”
She looks me dead in the eye as she speaks with the same credence as if she were relaying the weather. Her expression is almost as neutral; but not quite. Her gaze is a bit too intense. She’s watching me, observing my reaction.
Do not react.
My blood feels as though it slows, tiny cells caught in the clutches of frost. Each pump of my heart slams and jolts.
As my face cools, I picture my skin paling to the same shade as Luna’s, but I don’t change my expression.
Brow smooth.
Cheeks lifted.
Eyelids a quarter-way closed.
Luna sits next to me on the bed while I try not to suffocate in her presence.
Do not react.
I take a breath as quietly and calmly as I can and let my hands sweat onto my jeans. “You gave me your word they wouldn’t be harmed.”
“And they won’t be. I will not harm any serious prospect you bring me, provided you’re capable of acclimating them. If you give me women who will be problems, I’m faced with no choice but to eliminate them.”
Her voice: unfeeling. Devoid of any semblance of humanity. There’s no uncertainty in it, no hint of retreat.
She’s serious.
My neck feels stiff as I nod. I flip through a hundred different conversations in search for the right response. It isn’t begging—I know that—but I just barely bite my tongue.
“She asked me to kill you,” Luna says, her voice finally holding the first bit of emotion.
I don’t know what it is. My brain swirls too much to decipher until she speaks again.
“Whatever debt you feel you owe her is paid. She’ll no longer be tortured by her master.
You’re still helping her, and you hold no guilt for this. ”
Compassion.
Compassion, not for the woman she’d kill in cold blood, but for me. For my guilt.
Jesus Christ.
I want to gawk at her.
Instead, I lower my gaze to my lap.
Don’t beg. Do not beg.
“Thank you,” I say, relieved when my voice doesn’t shake. “It’s unfortunate, but… I understand.”
When Luna’s hand lifts toward me, I tense. She pauses mid-air, but I can’t tell if it’s because she noticed my reaction. I don’t think so. I hope not.
Her hand rests back in her lap. The air shifts with an inhale, but before she can ask me to leave, I reach for her.
Another inhale—this one sharp as my fingertips trace the thin, satin strap of her top. A night shirt, with satin pants to match. When I trail my middle finger over the laced edge just above her breasts, she shudders. But doesn’t speak.
“Did he see your neck?” I travel her sternum to a yellowing bruise the shape of a finger. I hover over the space. A perfect match.
“Who?”
“Aurelius… Or Thorne. Whoever you were fighting with.”
Her hand closes over mine and guides it to the mattress. “My father has little concern for a bruise. I’m sure he assumes he did it himself,” she says with a huff that could be a laugh. Of the humorless sort.
An old train of thought slips in my mind, one of my first reads on Luna. Abuse, mental or physical.
Now it’s confirmed. Both.
“So it was Thorne you were hiding it from.”
Another attempt at a laugh. “My choice of dress is not nearly as conspiratorial as you’re assuming. I wear turtlenecks when it’s cold.”
“Everything you do is conspiratorial,” I volley back. “The way you brush your teeth is conspiratorial.”
“And I suppose your hand grazing mine isn’t.” She looks down pointedly as my pinky pauses its slow climb over her thumb. When she pulls away, I don’t stop her.
“I’m sorry.” I drop my tone low. Just enough to sound remorseful.
She waves dismissively until I catch her wrist and yank her gaze to me. “No,” I say, mimicking the way she looked at me just the other night. The words she said, the way she said them. Just another lie shed between us. “I mean, I’m sorry.”
When I drop my gaze to her neck, her hand floats to a bruise. For a solid count of three, our eyes stay locked.
Then she looks away. “I have work to do, Dreg… Go back to your room.”
I pause—just long enough for her to mistake the hesitation as concern. Or remorse. Or whatever emotion she wants from me.