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“Ah, yes, actually. I’ve a foil one which might help a little. I’ll see if I can get something else for her tomorrow. Rufus wants her punished, not dead.”
He grabs out the folded-up blanket and hands it to me. I give him a smile of appreciation, and then Jude and I unfold it and spread it over our sleeping beauty.
They’ll all pay, Dove. Every last fucking one of them.
Lark
“Dancer in the Dark” by Chase Atlantic
Pain flashes across my body, waking me up with a grunt and a rustle of foil as I move.
“Hey, Dove. How are you doing?” Aeron’s soft voice filters through the fog in my mind and I try to sit up, hissing as my side protests and a sharp flare of white-hot pain rips through me.
“Take it easy, Nightingale. You’ve got a couple of fractured ribs and lots of bruising,” I hear Jude command, and I turn my head in the direction I think it came from. Blinking slowly and breathing shallowly to avoid any more of the burn from my ribs, the cage opposite gradually comes into focus.
“There she is,” Knox comments, his voice hitching slightly, and as he comes into view—he and the others are all sitting close to the bars—and I have to suppress the gasp of horror at the mottled purple and red all over his face.
“You look like shit,” I tell him, the words burning as they leave my ruined throat, though they sound hella sexy and deep. Silver linings I guess. I don’t need to ask what happened. I know Soldiers’ work when I see it.
“Thanks, beautiful. You still look fine as fuck, if a little busted up yourself,” he replies, amusement lacing his tone as he looks at me through one eye, the other swollen shut.
“Yeah, Dean is a fucking sadistic asshole,” I tell him, and a chorus of growls greets my ears at the asshole’s name. It warms something in my solar plexus to hear them, to hear and see their anger on my behalf.
Pushing the memories of the bastard into the box in my mind where all the shit I’ve suffered at the hands and dicks of the Soldiers goes, I decide to deal with what happened later. Soon, the small box will burst at the seams, but for the moment, I can keep it contained.
“Doc said that you should try to drink something, and maybe eat one of those bars,” Tarl orders, and his voice is strange, like the words are coming out but there’s no feeling behind them. Like he doesn’t care if I eat and drink or not. I tilt my head slightly so that I can see him, his beautiful, mismatched eyes fierce in his almost blank face.
“You doing okay, Tarl?” I bite my lip, worry leaving my mouth drier than it already is. The foil crinkles again as I play with it in between my fingers.
He takes a deep inhale, shutting his eyes and letting the breath empty out of his plush lips before he reopens them.
“It should be me asking you that, beautiful bird,” he sighs, his tone full of sorrow and his chin trembling slightly. “I sometimes disconnect when things go to shit,Koshgelam. It’s a coping mechanism I developed after everything with my family,” he tells me, and I can see he’s fighting against going back to that place of numbness. Hell, I can’t blame him, the box in my head rattling as if in sympathy.
“I push everything into a little box to try to erase all the terrible memories from my mind,” I reply, watching as he moves closer so that he’s opposite where I’m lying. “And I used to go numb when they…” I can’t finish the last part, knowing that I can’t afford another breakdown now, not with how vulnerable we already are. I won’t make it out of here if I do.
“Can you sit up, Nightingale?” Jude questions me after a moment of silence, and I tear my gaze away from Tarl’s to look at my psycho, Disney-loving Tailor. “You really should try to eat and drink something.”
“Always with the orders,” I tease, my heart skipping when a small smile tugs his lips upward.
I place my right hand on the floor, using it to push myself upward. Of course, as soon as I do, my ribs scream in protest, and I have to clench my teeth to hold in the cry that wants to leave my lips. Fuck, that hurts. After much huffing and puffing, I finally lean my back against a bar, pausing as I pant and breathe through the dizziness that threatens to overwhelm me. This isn’t my first rodeo, one Soldier cracked a rib back when I was newly their Darling, so I know a little of what to expect.
“How are you now, Dove?” Aeron asks, and I can hear the concern lacing his tone even though now I can’t see them with my back facing their cage.
“Pretty shit, but still alive,” I answer as the agony subsides enough for me to speak. Sweat beads on my brow and tremors have overtaken my body, but it feels better to be up and not lying down like I’m waiting for the next shit thing to hit.
“You should still be able to reach the water and protein bars,” he tells me, and I roll my head against the bars to see the bottle and a pile of five bars within arm’s reach inside my cell. Luckily, it’s closest to my right arm as I can’t really move my left without breath-stealing agony racing through me. “And you need to move, staying still isn’t good for you.”
Gingerly, I reach out and snag the water first, then a bar. The packet crinkles like the foil blanket around my legs and I pause before opening it.
“Do you guys have anything to eat?” I ask, knowing that my father isn’t the most generous host at the best of times, let alone with his prisoners.
No one answers for a long moment, which is answer enough, so I grab the other bars, then take a deep breath and shuffle my legs around so that my left shoulder is leaning against the bars of the cage. My body protests, waves of pain leaving me a little dizzy, but I’m used to ignoring it and I’ll not let it get the better of me now.
“Dove—” Aeron warns, a growl in his voice that I’m choosing to ignore like the brat I am as I look him straight in the eye and throw four of the bars at their cage, gritting my teeth against the flare of agony that races from my ribs.Fucking Dean.
It's a terrible throw, but luckily, they all slide through their bars, the slithering sound loud in the silence. Not one of them bends down as I rip open the pack of my protein bar and take a bite, all the while holding Aeron’s stare. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, making the deep blue color of his irises almost black.
“I’ll only throw them again if you try to give them back, and it’ll hurt my ribs more, so I suggest you eat them like good little boys.”
