by Kit Rocha
"Scarlet—"
"Fuck off, Dylan." She walked faster, though she forced herself not to run. It hurt, physically hurt, but so did everything.
It was one thing to be reminded that she wasn't important to Dylan. That had been part of their unspoken deal from the start—that they were along for the ride, that they'd tolerate one another as long as Mad and Jade were happy. That they'd put up with each other because it was worth it.
But hearing that Mad saw her the same way? Even if it wasn't true—he didn't deny it, did he? a tiny, traitorous voice whispered—it still tore through to the very heart of her, to that place where she knew she was nothing more than an interloper. Where she wasn't good enough for any of them, anyway.
She dragged in a ragged breath, the cold night air slicing through her lungs, and made herself silently repeat the words—I'm not good enough for them. Over and over, until they began to sink in.
Truth was truth, and denying it was dangerous. It made room for all sorts of hopes and dreams, the kind that existed only to be dashed against dirty brick walls and cracked asphalt. It made room for fairy tales.
Street rats could fall in love with princes, with queens and heroes, even in the sectors. But happily-ever-afters were indulgences they could never afford.
Chapter Twenty-Six
None of her rituals were working.
Jade bathed. She lined up her oils and lotions and balms—not the mismatched jars she'd left in her rooms in Four, the ones filled with Tatiana's handmade products, but pristine glass containers imported at dizzying expense from somewhere far to the south. She worked the lush assortment of oils and butters into her skin until the scent of vanilla and cinnamon pervaded the room.
When that didn't help, she turned to her hair. A hundred strokes and then two hundred, waiting for the peace and serenity, the slow satisfaction of knowing this moment was hers, that whatever else happened was fleeting because no one could touch her heart.
Except Scarlet. Scarlet had become part of the rituals. Her amusement and fondness as she watched Jade return from her bath and settle in front of her vanity. The tenderness in her touch as she took the brush from Jade and started the slow, careful strokes that could send Jade floating on sensual pleasure.
The laughing mischief when Scarlet plucked the lotion from Jade's hands and promised to help, and the shameless desire when her hands smoothed everywhere, until Jade couldn't think, couldn't care, could only sigh and moan and feel.
She wanted Scarlet. She wanted to crawl to her, cry on her, wrap herself up in the other woman until Mad and Dylan joined them and the rest of the world vanished. Because it would have to vanish. They'd have to freeze time so Jade could be the things they'd all fallen in love with. Soft and vulnerable and uncertain.
She'd sold them a fantasy, and reality was ruining it.
Power in a woman repels people. You must always possess it, Jade, but never show it.
It had been so long since Cerys's voice had haunted her thoughts. Maybe Scarlet was right and Two would chip away at her like this, with all its ghosts coming back to haunt her.
Or maybe she simply couldn't stop thinking about the woman who had drugged her.
The girls Valerie had doped up were in Sector One now, resting under Avery's watchful gaze. The healers were still trying to figure out what they'd been given and how dangerous detox would be. Jade knew the girls had resources she'd lacked—Ryder was an ally now, and if she reached out to him, he'd help—but that didn't diminish the horror of what they were facing.
And there were other concerns, more potential nightmares Jade would have to find a way to help them get through, because some of the girls had shown signs of rough handling. None were in any state to tell Jade what had happened to them, if they could even remember. A well-meaning nurse had assured Jade that perhaps they wouldn't, as if it was for the best.
As if violation was easier to come to terms with when you had to fill in the grisly details with the worst your imagination could conjure.
Bend, Jade. Always bend. I don't care how petty the request, you yield with a smile. Your job is to be utterly, consistently pleasing. An ill-timed frown could cost you everything.
Jade didn't need imagination. The drugs had fogged her senses and blurred the world, but the cruelty she'd endured always remained in sharp focus. Gareth Woods had loathed her to the very depths of his being. Loathed her because one day he'd made a petty request, and she'd frowned.
It wasn't as if it had been the first disgusting demand. He asked her to do petty things all the time. Sometimes they were meant to humiliate her, sometimes to put other women in their place. He set her against the defensive, frigid wives of his business partners, against tired-eyed whores hired for a fraction of what she cost and considered disposable by the men who would later deny having indulged themselves in such sinful pursuits.
Usually, she would smile and find a way to divert him—repressed men were simple to manipulate. So many desires left unexplored, so much thwarted frustration. But this time, it had been a maid in Woods's sights, a terrified girl whose hands trembled as she poured drinks for him and his inner circle. His booming request to Jade that she settle the girl's nerves before she wasted the precious liquor had been so coyly suggestive that the other men had leaned forward with glazed, eager eyes.
And Jade had frowned.
One slip, but it was enough. He'd glimpsed her power. It didn't matter how quickly she adjusted, how smoothly she distracted the other men. This time, he saw the diversion because he knew she wanted him diverted. No doubt he thought back to every time she'd deftly convinced him to alter his desires, how cleverly she'd manipulated him.
She destroyed his ego with that frown. And so he'd set about reclaiming it.
Maybe it should have spoiled sex for her. She'd certainly met people who felt that way, people who felt she should feel that way. But his methodical attempts to humiliate and break her had never been about anything other than power and injured pride. Six was the one who'd given her the words for it, one night over too much liquor. "I always figured people'd fuck with my body, and whatever. I couldn't stop that. But when the bastard started fucking with my head…"
The only thing Jade had ever considered inviolate was her mind. But the drugs had altered it, twisted it, confused the way it processed the input from her body, the way it felt pleasure and suffered pain. Even worse, the drugs stripped away her ability to deflect, to dissemble, to protect the parts of her she meant to keep private.
Nobody wants the messy reality of a woman, Jade. They'll love you when you're perfect, but your father taught you life's most important lesson, didn't he? They only love us when we're perfect.
Jade tossed aside her brush and dragged her fingers through her hair, as if she could pull the strands hard enough to pull Cerys's voice out of her mind. But she was stuck there now, taunting and victorious.
Cerys never would have shot Valerie in public. It would have been too gauche a display for such a refined woman. Too brutal. Too masculine. And it would have damaged her image by letting people know she viewed the woman as a threat. Cerys would have simply arranged for Valerie to disappear.
Just like Cerys had disappeared. Probably with advance notice of the coming strikes and enough money to start herself up somewhere far from the sectors, comfortable and safe and oblivious to all the people she'd put in harm's way.
Jade would never be Cerys. Sometimes she saw that fear in Mad's eyes—the fear that he would become all the things he'd hated in his grandfather—but she didn't share it. Because there was a line she would never cross, a line Cerys had so obliterated that Jade silently promised to spend her whole life teaching the refugees from the houses that it existed at all.
You didn't solidify your own power by selling girls who trusted you to men who would break them.
I let your mother influence your training for too long. I'm sure she loved you as best she could, but you see where she ended up. She wanted more for you. I'll
make you a star, if you let me. Alexa is stuck playing queen in some backward slum. You'll be an empress in Eden itself.
Jade's hands trembled. She slipped from bed and found her robe, wrapping it tight around her body. But that wasn't enough to fight the chill, not when she was used to the warmth of three more people curled around her. Loneliness had never troubled her before, but it hollowed her out now, as if her heart was small and weak and every beat echoed in the spaces they'd left behind.
She should have simply told them. She'd been preparing the words all day, laying out her reasons and her arguments, readying herself to send a message and meet their arrival. But then they'd shown up, all three of them, worried and frantic, ready to stage an intervention, so horrified because she was their sweet, soft, fragile lover, and she'd been forced to kill.
Even when Mad stepped up to defend her, it wasn't with confidence in her skills and her choice. It was a plea to the others to save her before she drowned.
They didn't really know her. And she couldn't blame them—she'd barely known herself, either. For so long, she'd imagined that Jyoti was the confused, sheltered part of her, the part that struggled with her desires, with the darkness of her life and the way she'd lived it to survive.
But that was Jade. Fractured, wounded Jade. Not the armor that protected her heart after all, but the chains she'd been wrapped up in for so many years.
Jyoti was the part of her that fought. The part that was strong enough to stare Valerie in the eye and decide that sparing her life meant too much pain for others, the part that was unflinching enough to pull the trigger and not look back. Because the lives that mattered were ahead of her, all the girls who still had a chance because Jade would shoot and stab and burn her way across this sector until every vulnerable person in it was safe.
Jyoti was the part of her that wanted to run Sector Two. Not needed to or felt obligated to. Wanted to. Because she was smart, and she was strong, and she trusted herself to use power for the right damn reasons.
Jyoti was the part of her that loved fiercely. Scarlet first, because she'd sung her back to life. And then Dylan, because he'd walked away from the darkness to be a hero and was the only one who didn't see it. And Mad. Adrian. Trapped, just like her, between two lives and two names, torn between the need to fight and the terror of becoming the evil people had to fight.
She loved them all, because they'd let her see them.
And when they'd finally seen her? They'd come running in terror, sure she was falling apart. When she'd told them she wanted this, they recoiled. They doubted. They discussed how to save her, because that was what she'd shown them. A woman who needed saving.
Power in a woman repels people. You must always possess it, Jade, but never show it.
Never show it.
Never.
The words pounded in her skull, mocking and cruel, until she drowned them with enough whiskey to let her close her eyes.
With her eyes closed, she could pretend she wasn't crying.
The world was tumbling end over end, spinning so fast that Dylan couldn't keep up. Only the door in front of him was solid, unmoving, even as he beat his fist against it.
Open it. Please.
Scarlet obeyed, as if she'd heard his silent entreaty—or wanted the blasted noise to stop. She stood there, her hair a perfectly blonde cloud now, all traces of blue and pink and black gone from the silky, luminous strands, and stared at him.
He willed her to smile. Instead, she spoke. "I should have known you'd find your way here."
Dylan leaned against the doorframe, tried to blink through the haze, and grinned. "Because you're that irresistible?"
"Because I'm all you have left." The words were flat, delivered more like a description of the weather than a heartbreaking condemnation of them both. "You're high."
She didn't pull punches, God love her. He loved her, and he still wasn't even sure why. But it knifed through him as he followed her into her sad, empty little room, the sentiment growing stronger with every step.
She was beautiful, sure. Smart and tough. All traits he admired, but it didn't come close to explaining the panic that seized him when he thought of her silence, of her turning away and slamming the door in his face instead of letting him in.
He couldn't say it. Not until he figured out why, so that it could be a statement of fact, a declaration, instead of a desperate, clumsy apology offered in his defense. "I'm high. Is that a problem?"
"Not for me. I'm not your mama." She dropped to the low couch against the wall. Rather than half-empty liquor bottles, it was covered with pens and scattered sheets of paper, some half-filled, others crumpled and tossed aside.
Letters. It was quaint and a little wasteful. Paper wasn't easy to come by, even for an O'Kane, and a digital message could be written and sent in the blink of an eye.
But there were things on those pages that wouldn't translate into email. The trembling lines, words scratched out when her mind had worked too quickly for her fingers to keep up. The blurred spots where tears had fallen onto the paper and smeared the ink.
He really was a bastard, wasn't he?
His throat ached. "I came to—"
"Shut up," she cut in, then tilted her head to the couch beside her as she gathered up the papers. "Sit down."
The cushions smelled like Jade, along with a softer floral scent that took him too long to place. It made him think of floating, of warm water and cool breezes, and when he closed his eyes, all he saw was a wash of bright pink edged with yellow.
Hibiscus. He'd only ever seen them in hothouses, and he opened his eyes to ask Scarlet where she'd found the fragrance, only the words dissipated like smoke, because she was watching him, sad and hungry all at once.
"I'm so angry with you," she whispered.
I know. He almost said it, along with I'm sorry and I swear I'll do better. But what came out was, "I didn't mean it, Scarlet."
"Yes, you did. Every single word."
He had and he hadn't, but it was all so mixed up that he could barely wrap his own head around it, much less explain himself. So he opened his mouth and let the confession come, without thought. "I wanted to hurt him."
She waited, watching, her eyes the clearest, deepest blue he'd ever seen. Fathomless, like the sky or the sea, and full of things he longed to discover.
Dylan took a deep breath. "He hurt me. When I mentioned him taking over Sector One, he didn't say—he was supposed to say—"
"That he wouldn't," she finished, a tear slipping down her cheek. "I know."
Mad was supposed to choose them. Dylan had always known that he wouldn't be enough to sway him from his grand, divine destiny, but being with Scarlet and Jade meant things were different. They were enough, they were everything—
Scarlet moved closer and touched his face, her hand cool against his flushed cheek. "Can I ask you something?"
He'd never believed in God, but that one touch—welcoming, calming—was changing his mind. "Anything."
Closer still, until he could feel the warmth of her breath on his skin, see the tiny flecks of gold that rimmed her pupils. "You could have made them stay. You know you could have." Her breath hitched. "So why didn't you?"
Her pain was his, magnified. Reflected. "Because…you can't, okay? You can't make someone do something like that, not if they don't want to. It isn't worth shit if you do."
She leaned her head on his shoulder. "That makes sense."
It was a deceptively casual gesture, one that made something in his chest lurch into place. He hadn't come to her room expecting forgiveness, but here she was, offering it to him just the same, and without any of the groveling apologies she deserved.
That was Scarlet—open, not only about sex or love but the darker things, too. The rest of them would hide their faces, let their doubts beat them down, but Scarlet accepted people as they were…and moved on.
He wanted to comfort her, to be the man who deserved this generosity. "It'll be okay. It will," h
e insisted when she made a soft noise of denial. "I'll sober up, and we'll go see them both in the morning. I'll make it right."
"I hope so." Her rich voice sounded thin, lost. "They're…the very best parts of everything I ever wanted to be."
It hit him like a sucker punch to the chest, the perfect description of the Mad- and Jade-shaped holes in his heart. "Yeah. Sounds about right."
Scarlet stroked his arm. "How's the hospital coming along?"
There it was again, that stab of panic, only this time it was entirely practical. "Too slowly. It needs to be done before things get really bad."
"If you need help—"
"I know." He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. "You're here."
"I'm here."
Dallas
There'd been a time when Dallas refused to roll out of bed before noon.
Those had been the good times. After they'd gotten established enough that the sector ran itself on an average day, but before they got so much power that everyone in the godforsaken world was banging on his door. The days of hard fighting, lazy drinking, and fucking that went on until dawn.
Preparation for war was fucking with his sleep. And his fucking.
But some things were worth dragging his sorry ass out into the early morning sunlight. The hospital qualified, especially now that they'd shifted from clearing out the tunnels to actual construction.
Not that you could tell from above ground. Some of the ways they'd gotten supplies in without being obvious were ingenious, and Six was having the time of her life pointing them out as they made their way from the Sector Three headquarters with Bren a step behind them, watching their backs. "We're staging supplies in the warehouses to the south, since most of it's coming from Five. And when they drag rubble out, the shit they can't use goes in the warehouses to the north and east. All through the tunnels, all invisible."
"Clever," he murmured, and that was all it took to win him a grin. Six had come a long way from the girl who'd stumbled into his life in chains, which meant Lex was right. As usual.