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I’m at a breaking point.
We need food.
“What happens when the cages open?” Warrose asks me.
I don’t take my eyes off my girl. “I’m staying here with her.”
“We all will,” Ruth adds, looking almost as tired as I am.
I can’t deny her this. Any of them. They love her, too.
I nod once.
“I can see if there are any supplies to clean her up. Maybe take away the pain,” Niles offers with wide, naïve eyes coloring with desperation to be useful here. Even though it’s not a bad idea, I can’t let him go out there on his own.
“I’ll go with him,” Marilynn says reluctantly.
I study her. The bags under her deep blue eyes, the dryness of her freckled skin, the way she holds her stomach to fight the hunger pains.
“Fine,” I grumble.
“Try and find alcohol so we can disinfect these wounds. Bandaging, capsaicinwhich is found in chili peppers for the painwater to get her hydrated, and fuck, if you can find a blanketshe’s still so cold.” Warrose adjusts her in his arms.
I have to remember to thank him for this with my life. He stepped up for her last night. I wanted it to be my cage that opened, obviously, but I was just happy she made it back. That someone was able to take care of her.
“We’ll find Helga Bee. That one prisoner had his hand chopped off. They were disinfecting it with alcohol, remember? I bet she knows where we can find medical aid.” Niles paces his cage, waiting for those bars to open.
I’m itching to be let out, too. The second these cages open, I’m running to her. My chest feels broken, cracked open like an egg, my heart gushing out of me.
“Maybe I can ask Kaspias for some food for her? Just this once,” Ruth suggests hesitantly.
The last string of patience I had snaps loud enough to ring in my ears.
“Do you have fucking brain damage? He’s the one who did this to her! He’s the one who is relishing in making us suffer. Look at her face!” I’m standing now, gripping the bars with every ounce of strength I have left.
Ruth drops her wide eyes to Skylenna. We both scan the blackening bruises on her face, the forming scabs, the drying blood, the swelling forming in stiff lumps. It makes me want to obliterate all of humanity.
“That’s what he did! You need to drop this fantasy of that man being a hidden saint. He’s not one of us, Ruth! He’s not my brother!” My voice echoes through the halls of this prison wing. It booms across the brimstone floors, waking every last prisoner who was still asleep.
A rumbling of groans and voices bounce back to us.
“Back off, Dess!” Warrose growls. “Just because her instincts aren’t the same as yours doesn’t mean she’s wrong.”
I glare at him through lowered lids.
“Don’t give me that look. We’re going through hell together, alright? Doesn’t give you a pass to take this on alone. To be a dick and shut us out.”
My fury rises to the surface. He thinks he knows what’s going on in our head? He thinks me being a dick is what matters right now?
“The woman I love is lying bloody and broken in your arms! You really want to pull this card right now?!” Blood rushes to my face. Heat prickles under my skin.
“Yeah. I do. Because I had to watch you lying bloody and broken in her arms!” Warrose’s voice breaks at the word her. “I had to watch her go up in flames, beg you to come back, kiss your lifeless body, and ask someone to save you!”
It’s as if he’s swinging that sickle through my chest all over again.
“And I couldn’t say a goddamn thing to comfort her! I couldn’t tell her I was going to try to bring you back to life. I couldn’t tell her this was all a part of a grand plan. I made a promise to my best friend. My brother. It was literally your dying fucking wish.” He fights to gain control of his tone, his hoarseness. But the tears come anyway. Those hazel eyes well with pent-up grief, and he tries to blink it away.
“I had to look at your corpse and attempt to give you that crazy ass spring water, which had a pretty good chance of not working. And then at your funeral? Seeing your casket? She lost it, Dess. She fucking shattered into a million tiny pieces. And all I could do was watch.”
