I broke the rules, and all three of us ended up in the dark smelly room. I broke the rules, and Larissa ended up dead. I broke the rules.
I’m broken.
Wolf prowls as we wait for Patel, pacing from one end of the bedroom to the other, then back. He doesn’t want to be here. We came home from dinner, and he couldn’t get to his office fast enough. I didn’t get to tell him that I like the Andersons. That I like the person he iswiththe Andersons.
While Wolf worked downstairs, I thought about trying to find the Red Cap Raiders in Winter Reckoning, but they’re never there anymore.
They go behind the locked door of Ice Knight Castle. The numbers on the leaderboard don’t mean a thing—I have the highest score the game has ever seen, but no one will let me into the castle. No one wants me on their team. I’m an outcast. Lost.
Instead of trying the game, I took off my clothes—my black, black skirt, and my green, green top. I folded them neatly on the foot of the bed—a promise that I’m thinking straight, that I am in absolute control of my emotions.
I took off my pretty bra and my matching knickers. I folded them too.
Only when I was naked, only when I was clean, did I complete the rest of the ritual. I braided my hair. I washed my hands three times. I tested my scalpel against my thumb, and I swabbed my thigh with antiseptic—three times for that too.
I waited until midnight.
Patel arrives within half an hour. He keeps his face carefully blank as he studies the new wound on my thigh, same as he did when he saw my scars the first time.
“I use a sterile scalpel,” I say. “A new one, every time.” I sound like a child, fighting off monsters that live under the bed.
Patel clicks his tongue as he opens his medical bag. I look away as he numbs my leg, first with a wipe he tears out of a foil package, then with a jab. He does something to clean the wound—I hear liquid dripping into a plastic basin, then I smell something sharp and medicinal.
He takes his time, his breathing steady, as if he performs this sort of house call every day. For all I know, hedoes—just like the doctor Da keeps on call to treat Canton Crew soldiers injured in the line of duty.
Duty. It wasn’t mydutyto cut myself. It was my compulsion. My need for order in my life. My desire to test how much pain I can manage. And maybe—just maybe—my need to punish myself for wanting Wolf.
Because the truth is, Idowant Wolf. Every moment that I’m awake. When we’re in the dungeon. When we aren’t.
I want his calm, calculating orders. I want him to test my limits. I want him to make me feel alive.
It doesn’t have to be the dungeon. It can be like it was tonight, at the Andersons. We can eat pot roast and drink champagne out of juice glasses and laugh until my sides ache.
I just want my marriage to be real.
I didn’t understand that before tonight. I didn’t know that before I started to cut.
Patel rips open a paper packet. His hand moves into my field of vision, and I glimpse a curved needle, already trailing a line of black thread. I crane my head further to the right so I don’t have to see it.
But that means I’m looking directly at Wolf as Patel starts to close my wound. I don’t feel anything. My leg is completely numb. But I see each stitch on Wolf’s face—seven tiny flinches he may not even know he makes. I see Patel tie a knot at the end—the clench of Wolf’s hand into a fist. I see Patel snip the thread free—Wolf’s firm, decisive nod.
I can’t read the expression on Wolf’s face. His eyes are dark, all the gold flecks hiding. His jaw is set.
I look away first.
“Keep those stitches clean,” Patel says as he packs up his bag. “Any hint of infection—redness, swelling, pain—let me know, and I’ll come right away. Otherwise, I’ll be back in ten days to take them out.”
“Thank you,” I say. My voice sounds thin, like it’s made a journey from very far away.
Wolf says, “I’ll see you out.”
That means they’re talking about me, saying things Wolf doesn’t want me to hear. Otherwise, Wolf would let Nilsson manage the doctor’s departure.
Wolf set a rule—no cutting—and I broke it, shattered it badly enough that Patel needed to clean up the damage. I know what that means. I know I’ll be punished.
I fold my hands in my lap like I’m waiting outside the principal’s office. My fingers look very pale next to the dark thread Patel left on my thigh. Each stitch is tiny, a perfect little X.
I should go into the jacks and get a clean pillowcase from the airing closet.
