by Susan Harris
I handed Atticus the note, watched as he read and understood it. Then he pulled out his phone and quickly typed a message. While he did that, I spun on my heels and strode into the bathroom, leaving the door open in case they worried. I brushed my teeth to rid myself of the taste of Dresden’s blood that I could still taste despite having eaten multiple meals since my escape. Or… perhaps this was my imagination as well? Only when my teeth bled from the vicious brushing and I tasted mint in my mouth did I set the brush down and leave the bathroom.
Atticus told me the halls were clear and the path to the medical bay was free of others. Heart beating like drum in my chest, I jerked my chin up and strode from the room. I heard Rose laugh behind me, telling them I would be fine.
Me? I wasn’t totally convinced.
I trotted down the stairs, forcing Edison to jog to keep up with me. My eyes kept darting to the doors as if someone would pop out and give me an excuse to go running back to my room, yet the halls remained eerily quiet. Once we arrived at the rooms dedicated to medical, just off the training hall, I waited for Edison to open the door and lead me inside.
Theodore St. Clair welcomed me in with a warm smile and asked me to have a seat. Raising a brow, I dug my heels into the floor, folded my arms over my chest, and let my eyes not-so subtly drift from the doctor to Atticus, who blushed as Theodore gave me a slight smile.
“Atticus, please come in and take a seat. I understand that Edison is not the only one Ryan is protective over.”
I growled low in my throat, and Edison chuckled.
Rose came in, closing the door behind her, then turned and focused on me. “Ryan, growling at the doctor is not going to make him accept Atticus. Let him look at you, and if you get strong enough that you don’t look like a gust of wind will knock you over, then you can contemplate kicking his ass into next week.”
Angling my head, I considered her words, then hopped up on the bed and let my hands fall to my knees. Theodore glanced at his sons for a second before I saw him switch to doctor mode.
I tensed with every poke, every prod, every draw of blood. I hissed when he pulled aside my shirt to listen to my heart, and the thing raced as if to prove it wasn’t working well. I inhaled when asked and exhaled when instructed to do so. The doc took my blood pressure and shone a light in my eyes. I drowned out the sound of his voice and just got through it.
Rogue Nickolai lingered on the edges, laughing, and I struggled not to snarl at him. I closed my eyes to chase him away. When I felt a hand on my arm, I shook my head to try and clear my mind before opening my eyes.
“My dad wants to check your throat, Ryan. We need to see if you have damage to your vocal cords.”
Because I wasn’t talking. Because I refused to speak. Because I was terrified that if I began to speak the screams that had been lodged in my throat for weeks would come barreling out, and I would spend the rest of my days screaming.
I pushed myself back in the bed and shook my head to emphasize I was not going to do that. That I was not going to let myself fall so deep I had no way of clawing my way back to life.
“We need to finish the exam, boys. We need someone that she has no choice but to obey to get her to comply.”
“Leave her the fuck alone,” Edison snarled as he stepped closer to me. “That’s how she got like this—a rogue who wanted her to comply tried to take away her free will. You lay another hand on her, Dad, and I will break it.”
13
“Edison, stand down.”
No, no, no. Anyone but him. I couldn’t bear for him to see me. How had I not heard him come in? I jerked my head around to glare at Atticus, who looked as pissed as I did.
Holding up his hands in surrender, he answered my silent accusation. “I told him not to come. You know better than most, Ryan; when Nico wants to do something, no one but you can stop him.”
Grinding my teeth together, I folded my arms across my chest and frowned, my eyes on the floor in front of me. Edison still hadn’t moved away, and I nudged him with my elbow to get him to move. My muscles felt tense, my skin tight as I continued to glare at the floor in hope that it would open up and swallow me hole.
“No one is going to make Ryan do anything she doesn’t want to do,” Nickolai remarked evenly.
I snorted. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get me to do shit I didn’t want to do. An easy chuckle danced through the air and caressed my skin.
“I stand corrected. I promise that this time, no one will force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”
I rewarded him with a huff in thanks, but the crown prince was not finished.
“However, unless Ryan gets a clean bill of health, she can’t go with us when we track down Maxim. Right now, she is an injured soldier who has not passed her physical. So, Ryan, weigh up the pros and cons of a simple, routine check-up stopping you from returning to active duty.”
My lips curled into a snarl as I beat my fists on the bed, snapping my head up to glare at Nickolai with as much venom as I could muster. Dressed in a simple black tee and jeans, his blond hair in his eyes, the firm line of his mouth made my heart skip a beat. My eyes clashed with his, and in his eyes I saw a turmoil that was not evident in his calm words. He looked at me with a mixture of heat, of anger, and of pain. There was no pity, shame, or grief there, just an intent to break through the barriers I’d erected to protect myself.
Dragging my attention back to the doctor, I scooted forward and closed my eyes as I opened my mouth. I counted my heartbeats as the scream struggled to get free, and as soon as the doctor declared he had finished, I clamped my lips shut and pressed my palms to my eyes to try and calm myself.
“Ryan is a little underweight, but two or three feedings from a vein should have her back to full strength,” Theodore began, and I listened intently as he continued. “She has some burns on her torso that will heal once she has drunk enough blood, though they may scar. You can feel that her bones were broken repeatedly. Her blood pressure is a little high, which is normal considering what she’s been through. Edison’s was the same when I checked it last night and again when he woke this evening.”
“Why isn’t she talking?” Edison asked, but I suspected he already knew the answer much like I did.
“Her voice is fine. I suspected it was fine since she’s been verbalizing through sound. Ryan is making a conscious decision not to speak, and that is not medical, it’s psychological.”
No one in the room spoke for a moment, and then Nicky’s voice slid though me like a blade. “What Theodore is saying is that for some reason, Ryan is refusing to talk. There is nothing wrong with her. She’s just being her normal, stubborn self.”
Anger and embarrassment flooded my veins as I got to my feet and brushed past him, suddenly overwhelmed by his scent. It clung to my lungs and assaulted my senses. I couldn’t stop myself from slamming my eyes shut and reaching for him. My fingers traced the sleeve of his T-shirt, and then I found the courage to place the tips of my fingers on his skin. I ran my hand down his arm and felt him tense until my touch.
Suddenly, in my mind he was kissing me, and I was on fire, his touch a brand, my life burning before me. I wanted to drown in the scent of him. Then I heard a chuckle in my ear, and a voice urged me to kill Nickolai.
After I snatched my hand back, I started to sob as I took off down the hall to the sound of my name. I burst into the foyer, not even checking to see if it was day or night before escaping into the open, suddenly thankful that the moon lingered in the sky. I kept on running until I could only smell the grass and the water.
Sinking down to my knees, I gulped in air, even though I wasn’t at all breathless. I realized then that my feet were bare, so I scooted closer to the edge of the water and sank my feet in. Cold sent a shiver up my legs, but I didn’t remove my feet. Instead, I let myself feel the sensation until I couldn’t take it anymore. Pulling my knees to my chest, I rested my chin there as I stared out into the water.
�
��I’m sure not even vampires can heal frostbite, Ryan.”
I reined in a smile and tilted my head to look at Krista. It was the first time I’d seen her since Dresden made her visible. I supposed I should have felt a small comfort that Krista was not a figment of madness; instead, I felt bone-deep sadness that she was stuck here and not resting in the garden with Eve or whatever iteration of heaven the humans believed in.
I wiggled my toes to show her my feet were fine, and Krista laughed and stretched her legs out in front of her. “I think you’ll be okay, Ryan. You gotta let them help you though. And before you go all snarly at me, telling me with that grunt you’ve perfected the art of taking care of yourself, I know you can. I’m telling you that you don’t need to. You have an army of people that would do just about anything to help you with whatever you’re struggling with.”
She was right. They would all bend over backward to make sure I’d get through this. But what if I couldn’t get through it? What if what Dresden did to me had broken me beyond repair?
Krista flashed me a smile before she vanished from view, just as Nickolai came down the embankment to sit beside me. He said nothing as he sat, merely picked up a stone and skimmed it across the lake, the ripples in the water visible in the moonlight. I was hyper aware of him being so close to me, yet he still felt so distant. He looked tired, haggard even, the stubble that traced his jaw and surrounded his lips was a faint golden color that had my fingers itching to touch the bristles.
I lost myself watching him skip stones across the water, feeling myself calm in his presence. I tried to recall how I felt in the dreamscapes—if I was as calm as I was right now in this moment. I didn’t think I was, yet I couldn’t banish the thoughts of him kissing me, of me killing him. I wanted to—by Eve did I need to. But my mind was a place I was trapped in.
“There are times when the weight of what I will become threatens to crush me,” he said, breaking the silence. “The fears I have about taking the crown, of failing, they’re sometimes far too much for me to deal with. So, I wait until I’m alone, and I let all of that fear and pain bleed into one mass, and I release it into the night. Afterward, it’s such a relief that I’m incapable of doing much else.”
My heart beat a tattoo in my chest as I stared right ahead, even as Nickolai continued to speak so gently, so softly that tears filled my eyes. He skipped another stone across the water and then leaned back and planted his hands on the ground behind him. Nickolai sucked in a breath and then when he opened his mouth, he screamed in utter frustration.
I was startled at the sound of it and would’ve slipped into the water had I not righted myself at the last minute. I stared at Nickolai in shock until his scream died out and he peered over at me with an almost shyness I had never seen before.
Then he grinned at me, and I felt my lips curve into a smile. His expression was less haggard now, as if he had shed a burden with his harsh scream. I wanted to feel that sense of relief, too, from the nightmares that haunted me even in my waking hours.
As I blinked away tears, I inched myself closer to Nickolai, then dug my nails into the ground and opened my mouth. For a moment, nothing came out. Then, as I remembered the feel of my hands being broken, of the cattle prod on my skin, of the pain of being violated in my mind and of someone knowing all the fucked-up things in my head, I felt the scream bubble into my throat and I released it.
The sound wasn’t entirely human—a harsh sound that ripped through the silence of the night and shattered me. I screamed and screamed, and then I screamed some more, until my throat burned and my vision blurred. I beat my fists against the ground and clawed at the earth. I unleashed my anger and my pain on the night, and she accepted it with open arms.
My throat seized, battered and sore, shifting my screams into hoarse sobs. Nickolai didn’t so much as reach for me, yet he remained a pillar of strength by my side as my sobs slowly died down and I rescrubbed my dirt-covered hands on my leggings.
“You scream as much as you need, Ryan. You get it off your chest. If you need to fight to work out the puzzles in your mind, then you come get me. If you just want to sit and stare at the wall, you come get me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Then Nickolai was on his feet and striding away from me. I waited until he was back inside before rising to make my own way inside, taking the stairs two at a time. I pushed open my door to find Rose and Jack waiting for me, and I frown, wondering if they had heard me screaming. Color flushed my cheeks.
Rose had her sleeves rolled up, and she smiled as she called me forward. “The doctor said you needed to feed, so here I am. Now take that look off your face and come drink so Jack can take me home before the sun rises.”
I considered what Nickolai had said, that unless I was healthy, I would not be allowed to go after Maxim, and I needed to be there when we got him. I wanted him to suffer as much as I was suffering. I wanted him to bleed as much as I was bleeding on the inside.
So, I strode over to Rose, sat down beside her, waited a moment to see if she would comment on my dirty hands and clothing, and then lifted her wrist to my mouth and pierced her skin with my fangs. I swallowed once, twice, three times before I felt the rush of power in my veins, and then I retracted my fangs and sealed the wound.
Rose rolled down her sleeve, patted my cheek, and then got to her feet. I tugged on her sleeve, and she face me; whatever she saw in my eyes, she nodded in response.
“You’ll be fine, girlie. I’ll check on you in a few days. Kallum will stop by tomorrow night to feed you again.”
Then they were gone, and I was left alone with my thoughts and feelings, the door closing with a click behind them. I stripped, showered, and changed into another pair of leggings and a clean tee. Looking at myself in the mirror, I held out stands of my hair. I needed to feel more like me, like I had control and could be normal.
I brushed my hair, still a little damp, and dried it. Padding toward the bathroom, I stopped to open the cupboard and take out the first can of hair spray I came across. I ran my fingers through the ends of my hair and shook the bottle before starting.
When I was finished, I set the spray can down and looked in the mirror. Lavender eyes stared back at me surrounded by ice-blonde hair streaked in lime green. I smiled at my reflection, testing to see if I still could, and it somehow didn’t feel as foreign as I thought it should have.
Maybe everyone was right; maybe I would be okay.
I left my hair down and turned back to my bedroom. Suddenly, I felt like I was back in the cell—but this time I was on my own, with no Edison to keep me sane. I couldn’t stand to be in the room another minute. I recalled Nickolai’s words: “If you need to fight to work out the puzzles in your mind, then you come get me. If you just want to sit and stare at the wall, you come get me. I’m not going anywhere.”
I was out the door before I could stop myself, heading down the stairs and turning right at the bottom. I slipped past the doors leading to the royal residence, and my bare feet made no sound as I padded down the hallway to where the bedrooms resided. I knew which one was Nickolai’s by heart, and it wasn’t long before I was standing outside his room with my fist raised to knock on the door.
Laughter came from inside the room. It was a sound that wrapped itself around my heart to shield me, but I took a step back and lower my hand. The happiness in his laughter was such a pure sound I could not stand to taint it with the darkness trying to take me over and crush me in its grasp.
I took another step back, until I was standing in the middle of the hallway and staring at the closed door, my pulse racing. The rumble of voices in the room told me Nickolai was not alone, and I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt him.
A door opened down the hall, light spilling into the hallway, and suddenly I was trapped like a deer in headlights and couldn’t breathe. Queen Katerina Romanov stepped into the hall, and her eyes immediately found mine. Her smile was genuine as she took a step toward me, and I retreated another step, feeling t
he wall against my back.
“Ryan, darling. It is so good to see you. Are you looking for Nico? I’m sure he would be delighted to s—”
My legs were suddenly pumping as I fled the scene of my stupid, foolish error, my face burning as I raced back down the hall.
“Ryan, wait!”
The queen’s voice was loud in my ears, but I continued to run. Bursting through the doors of the royal residence into the foyer, I crashed into a body and reached out to steady my poor victim, jerking back when I realized it was Kristoph, Nickolai’s younger brother, who I’d bulldozed into, and unfortunately, he was not alone.
Natalya Smyrnoi glared at me with eyes that seemed more familiar now, and when she sneered at me, I saw a family resemblance that made me want to grip her by the throat and beat her against the marble floor. Then, Kristoph stepped between us, catching my attention again.
“I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. You make quite an entrance, Ryan.” He glanced over my shoulder, then smiled as he added, “Or is that an exit?”
I was breathing hard now, unsure how to get away, when Nattie sighed, dragging my attention back to her.
“I know you said she wasn’t communicating, Kris, but this is inhuman. Someone should simply put her down already. Her eyes are wild like a feral dog’s.”
I didn’t stop to listen to Kristoph chastise Nattie. I stormed off, darting back up the stairs. However, I didn’t go back to my room because I knew Nickolai would go there in search of me once his mom told him I had stopped by. On the second floor of the sprawling mansion, I took a right and veered into the soldiers’ quarters. I moved past Jack and Atticus's room and knocked on the door right next to theirs.
The door opened a second later to reveal Edison. His gaze widened as it landed on me, and then he opened the door without another word. I stepped inside, and he closed the door behind me. My eyes wandered around the room, and I was surprised to find it neat as a pin.