“Father?”
They flatten again, punching my gut full of disappointment.
“I went too far,” he repeats, and I sigh, dragging a hand down my face.
“It’s okay.” I step over the line, making for the dead woman. “You did nothing wrong. You sent her to a better place.”
I remove the key from my pocket and crouch next to the body, unlatching the shackle around her wrist, her hand still warm and floppy. Tossing the iron cuff upon the stone, I pause to massage my temples.
Fucking hell.
Perhaps I’ll just move her back to her cell? He won’t be able to see her from there. I can leave her until tomorrow night and just pray she doesn’t stink up the place.
“I went too far. I went too far. I went too far—”
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, wiggling the key into the second lock.
The sound of chains whipping across stone wrenches my stare sideways, a gasp powering into me at the sight of him,right there—an inch from my face—his eyes an inky blaze of horror.
I fall back, landing hard on my elbows.
He crawls atop me and fists my shirt, his putrid breath blasting my face as he drops so close our noses crush together. “I went too far!”
A bolt of fear snaps through me, making my lungs seize.
I swallow, forcing myself to breathe. Think.
Speak.
“It’s okay, Father. It’s okay. I’ll take care of it … I always do. Always will.”
His eyes soften.
“It’s okay,” I repeat, my words slow and soft. “You’re okay …”
He blinks, frowns, then folds back and scurries across the floor. He snatches an old shirt of Mother’s from his twisted nest of rags, crushing it close to his chest before he bunches up at the edge of the circle and tries to make his body small. Once he’s nothing but a trembling knot of muscle and sinew, he begins to rock back and forth with a tortured swing, the glassy cracks in his skin shining silver in the moonlight, threads of crimson dripping down his back.
“Bring her to me. Bring her to me. Bring her to me—”
Letting my head fall back against the stone, I sigh and wipe his spit from my face. “You know I can’t do that. What if you break her? You’ll never forgive yourself.”
And I’d lose you entirely.
“Besides,” I grind out, rolling sideways, pushing up. “You don’t need her. You haveme.”
His constant chant is a fucking axe to my brain as I release the remaining cuff, grab the dead woman by her ankles, and drag her toward the hallway—her long, strawberry hair a wispy trail in our wake.
Everyone watches us pass, their stares burning holes in me from all angles.
Lumping the woman in the corner of her cell, I snatch the catchpole I left leaning beside her door. I don’t bother to lock her in, moving down the hall, dragging my hand along the bars as I scour each quivering inhabitant, pausing by the child with curly red hair.
I frown.
She’s in the middle of her cell, bound on her side with her eyes open but sightless. I hardly believe she’s breathing until her chest expands with a jagged inhale.
Guess she didn’t take well to watching her mother get mauled to death. I probably should have considered that before I put her in the cell right beside the feeding arena. A look like that … she’s practicallybeggingfor death. I doubt she’d even run if I put her in the chains.
I’d have as much luck snapping him out of his spiral if I threw her mother’s corpse back in the arena.
