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I fought to keep my breathing even, struggling to keep my shit together. Being asked about Marcy so directly was like a punch to the stomach. Losing her and Dasia cut me deeply.
They’d done nothing to deserve what happened to them. They were kind, obedient, and followed all the rules. Look what that had gotten them. Look where each of us ended up.
We’d always been
the core four.
In a matter of days, two of us were dead and another was missing.
Claire’s fate was up in the air. I still had no way of knowing where she’d wound up. I was essentially on my own.
The last time losing someone hurt this much, it’d been the day I was separated from my older brother. I had no real recollection of our mother, and my father had been absent from my life since I was eleven years old.
That hadn’t been either of our decisions. I missed him dearly, but that ache had become dull as time went on.
Feeling the wetness of tears on my cheeks, I used the heels of my hands to scrub them hastily away. Keeping grief at bay was a battle I needed to win.
If I allowed it to consume me, I wasn’t sure what kind of mental state I’d wind up in.
I had to be strong for my father and the girls, and more importantly for myself. It’s what they would have wanted and expected.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I took a deep breath then let it out slowly. Needing to focus on what was before me, I looked around the bathroom, belatedly realizing Cam was letting me shower alone.
I hadn’t been able to do that, well, ever. The girls of A.R.C always washed beneath a guarded eye. Our restroom wasn’t this nice either. The asylum was so old and run down that the showers were all in need of a major upgrade. Some didn’t have hot water.
I knew everyone was fortunate to have access to running water, so I’d never complained. It was a luxury.
I sat down the box Cam had given me and went to inspect the unit.
He had one massive square shower head attached to the ceiling, and a single knob instead of two.
It was a matter of common sense to operate. Red was clearly for hot while blue was cold. I turned the water on and stepped back to let it warm, removing my ruined gown. I didn’t see anywhere I could throw it away, so I chucked it onto the floor.
My reflection watched my every move, the dirty girl in the glass as unsure about this situation as I was. This environment was nothing like what I had been forced to become accustomed to. I wasn’t free, yet I had never been freer.
I traced over the barcode that was tattooed on my hip, the ink a permanent reminder that someone I didn’t know owned me. Or they thought they did.
Digging through the box, I found most of the things I would need. It was an even bigger eye opener. It’d been drilled into my head that the people outside of A.R.C were merciless and uncivilized.
Had I encountered a group like the woman from the old farmhouse, I would have agreed.
Whoever this faction was, they were accommodating for the most part. I could’ve done without being put in a cage, but they hadn’t harmed me, and I wasn’t afraid of them. I didn’t want to push my luck, though, so I gathered up what I would need for my shower and carried it all to the open cubicle.
By the time I’d fought with my hair to remove all the tangles and figured out how to use the powder in a tin can, at least an hour had gone by.
Cam never came in or called out to me.
The dress fit me better than I was expecting it to and lacked the smell the blanket carried. The top and middle were tight while the skirt flared slightly. It wasn’t something I would ever pick for myself, but it was better than nothing.
The moment my hair moved, my scars would be visible, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.
I ran my hands over the skirt, then returned to the other room.
He was still there, lying back on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. Without having to announce myself, he sensed my presence and slowly sat up, staring without immediate comment.
I took this time to study him. He didn’t look anything like Lucifuge. His hair was a cool shade of red and his eyes were silver. The tattoo beneath the right one was the same as Luce’s, but the number of tattoos he had in general wasn’t nearly as vast.
“You look good,” he finally said, rising from the bed.
