by Frost Kay
“Don’t,” Eve murmured. “You’ll pull the stitches.”
“I can’t even feel them.”
“You’re lucky,” Jer muttered. “Your back looks like hamburger.”
An image rose in her mind and nausea slammed into her. She bent over and puked right between Zune’s legs. “Sorry,” she croaked before heaving once again. Hands pulled her hair from her face and held it behind her head. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Allie wiped at her mouth and tried to smile, but it didn’t feel quite right on her face. “My mama always used to say I couldn’t throw up like a normal person. It comes from my toes.”
He gave her a weak smile and placed his hand on his knees to stand.
She leaned back and sighed as a cool cloth was placed underneath her hair on the back of her neck. Her hand slid back to thank Eve, but her fingers touched a calloused hand. Her muscles locked up.
“Get your hands off of me.” Her voice didn’t even sound like it belonged to her, but to a venomous stranger.
Slowly, she turned to stare down the Av, who backed into the corner he’d occupied for the last few hours. Blade’s black eyes held hers. She bared her teeth at him and twisted back to stare at Zune.
“I want to go home.”
“You need to be monitored,” Jer said. “You have a concussion, two broken ribs, more stitches than one of your mama’s quilts you talk about, not to mention you look like one giant bruise.”
Allie’s eyes moved to her reflection. A pathetic creature stared back at her from the window. Her fingers touched her bruised, swollen lips. She pulled her hand away and stared blankly at the gauze wrapped around her palms and the jagged, broken nails that tipped her fingers.
“There’s no one to hear you, sweet one.”
Her eyes slammed closed, and she panted for breath. He wasn’t here. There was no way for him to hurt her. She was safe.
Gentle fingers touched her wrist, causing her to open her eyes. Zune coaxed her to uncurl her fingers. Red had soaked through the crisp white bandages. A low growl behind her had goosebumps erupting along her arms.
Zune glanced past her as a whimper passed her lips, his brows slashing together. “Lock it up or get out.”
The growl abruptly cut off, and the Kiterran turned back to her. “You need to be careful.”
That warning was given much too late. There was no way to put that cat back into the bag now.
The infirmary doors hissed as they slid open, admitting four other males.
Virgil frowned, his face wrinkling more than customary as he plopped down on a stool. “Look at you. You’re a mess.”
Blunt as ever.
Her gaze moved from him to Kale, Lev, and Coal. The doors closed behind them, and the room descended into silence. For some reason, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Lev. There was no emotion on his face, or even a hint of what he was thinking or feeling. That’s what cracked through the numbness. It wasn’t red hot anger, but an icy rage. He’d sent her into the situation unprepared. He could have risked one of his Locks, but no, he’d chosen a gullible Human. An expendable one. One without a family.
“Get out.”
No one moved.
“I said,” she hissed, “get out.”
“There are some things we need to discuss.”
“You’re right. Like how you screwed me over and almost let me die.”
A flicker moved across his face too fast for her to tell what it was. But she’d got to him.
“You’re very emotional right now, and that’s completely understandable—”
“You mean because I was almost violated by the mass-murdering psychopath?”
“That would never have happened,” Blade said. “We never would have let that happen.”
She looked between Lev, Coal, Blade, and Kale. They looked like stone sculptures. Cold and unfeeling. “Look at me.”
“We are,” Coal said.
“No.” She shook her head. “Look. At. Me.” She slid off the table onto wobbly legs, her arm across her chest to hold her dress up. “You let this happen. I almost died.”
Kale stepped forward, and she skittered back a step. “You need to get back into bed. You’re not well.”
“You’re right. I’m not well, because of you!” Her gaze slid back to Lev. “No, because of you.”
“You did what had to be done, and we’re beyond—”
Before she knew what was happening, she’d taken several steps and had a scalpel in her hand. “Not another word.” Lev never looked at the weapon in her hand but stared into her eyes. “You used me. You lied.”
Jer slowly slid between Allie and the men, her hands held up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s okay. Put it down. There’s no need for violence. This isn’t you.”
Allie stared at her friend and then down at the shiny scalpel in her hand. Maybe this was her. She wanted to hurt them like they’d hurt her. Tears blurred her eyes. “They lied, Jer.”
“I know, honey.” Her friend nodded and took a step closer.
“No, you don’t.” Allie’s voice was colder than a frozen tundra. Jer had no idea of how deep the betrayal went. “They are the reason I’m hurt.”
“Accidents happen. No one is accountable but that monster,” her friend murmured. “They got you out and locked Sloven up.”
She flinched at his name and turned her watery glare on Lev. His turquoise eyes were stark against his complexion. “You manipulated, lied, and put me in danger all for the sake of a game that I had no business being part of.” She swiped away her tears with her left hand. “I know. I know.” Blade wasn’t the only one with an illegal distorter.
Lev didn’t blink, grimace; nothing but a blank mask.
“I want to see it. Show me.” She gestured to his wrist comm. “Show me.”
He nodded at Coal and Blade, then tapped his wrist. A shiver went through the air, and new faces appeared before her eyes. In Lev’s place was the green-haired Av pirate who had attacked her ship. Her gaze skipped to Coal, who now wore the face of the blue-haired Av, Asa, as he’d called himself. Finally, she moved to Blade, whose fake green Human eyes were pinned to her.
Jer gasped. “You mud-eating—”
“Jer,” Coal said softly.
Her friend snapped her mouth shut and turned back to Allie. Jer’s eyes scanned her and dropped to Allie’s feet. “You have wounds on the bottoms of your feet. You should get off them.”
Allie glanced at the floor and stared at the bloody footprints. The sterile white floor began to spin, blurring with the red smears, making them look like one of the king’s demented paintings. She wavered on her feet, and a hand smoothed over her shoulder. She glanced up into Zune’s eyes.
“Allie, you need to sit or you’re going to fall.”
“They hurt me,” she whispered.
“I know. Don’t worry. They were just leaving.”
She nodded, her head a swirl of colors and lies. Allie turned back to the mirages in front of her. They’d lied to her from the beginning. Messed with her mind, made her feel like she was going crazy. That was unforgivable. The scalpel dropped from her hand and clattered across the floor. She stepped into Lev’s space and planted a trembling finger against his chest. “You’re despicable.”
“I’m doing my job,” Lev said. Like it was an excuse for the hurt he’d caused.
She glanced to Coal and then Blade before focusing back on Lev’s foreign face. “I thought y’all were my new family. I guess I was wrong.” She swallowed the sobs threatening to drown her. “Hope it was worth it,” she said between her teeth.
Her legs started to go out from underneath her, but Zune caught her as Blade stepped closer. She stared at the Human visage he wore. “You forgot your face.”
A curse escaped him, and he touched his wrist, his Human façade disappearing. Familiar onyx eyes met hers, pleading. She stared at his face. His betrayal hurt the most.
“I trusted you.”
He swallowed hard
, his shoulders slumping. “I know.”
“I kissed you.”
“I know.” His voice was ragged.
“Never again.”
“Don’t do this,” he said, tone sharp. “I messed up. I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
She closed her eyes against the tears threatening to fall and leaned her bruised cheek against Zune’s chest. “I want to go home.”
Silence met her statement.
“She needs to stay here,” Blade said.
As if he had any say in her life! Allie ignored him and stared at Eve. “Can I leave?”
“You’ve been seriously injured. In my opinion, it would be best for you to stay here.”
“Will I live if I go home?”
Eve glanced at Lev, as if awaiting his instruction.
“His opinion doesn’t matter. It’s my health, not his.”
Eve blew her purple bangs out of her face and frowned. “You’ll live.”
“Jer?” she called. The redhead moved to her side. “Take me home.”
3
Perfecting Avoidance
“What was that?” She was vaguely aware that her roommate had said something. At least, she thought it was directed toward her and not the movie Jer was watching.
The redhead scooted off her bed and clasped her fingers loosely between her knees, her blue gaze narrowed on her. Usually, that sort of look made Allie nervous, but not today. She wasn’t in the mood for Jer’s lectures.
“It’s like you’ve been gone the last three days. There’s been no one home. I’ve excused your behavior, because I understand what you’re going through.”
Allie’s eyebrows furrowed as she stared blankly at her roommate. The words spewed like venom from her mouth: “You have no idea what I went through.” She slapped a hand over her lips, hating that she’d spoken in such a way to her friend. Her mama would’ve washed her mouth out with soap if she’d heard Allie speak to someone like that. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken that way to you.”
Jer reached out and clasped a hand over Allie’s cold fingers. Allie blinked at their linked fingers, Jer’s warm, hers freezing. For some reason, she just couldn’t get warm. Even as the thought went through her mind, she shivered and pulled the blanket tighter against her chest.
“It’s okay. I know you’re hurting. I understand.”
Allie gently pulled her fingers from her friend’s and flipped her hands over to stare at her abused palms. Scabs were forming, starting to itch terribly. Her fingers curled into fists, so she didn’t have to look at the wreckage from three days ago. A weak laugh fell from her lips. As if she could hide what had happened. No matter what she did, her body hurt, but mirrors were the worst. They showed the brunt of the damage. Her skin bore the story of betrayal and brutality.
“I’m okay,” she said softly, her fingers moving along the thin blanket lying across her legs.
Jer nodded. “You’ve used that word a lot. It’s all right to not be okay. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to talk. Just know that it’ll get better, day by day. I love you, and I’m here for you when you’re ready to talk.”
She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to talk about it. Every night, she had nightmares. The worst part was that she took medicine just to fall asleep, but once she was asleep, she couldn’t wake. It was a horror in and of itself.
Allie blinked, realizing Jer was waiting for a response. She gave Jer a weak smile and knew that her friend saw right through her. “I’ll be able to talk about it soon enough. I just need to decompress.” Her words sounded hollow, even to her own ears. ‘Liar’ was probably tattooed across her forehead.
The door hissed open as Jer strode into the apartment, her red hair tangled and messy, not at all resembling the sleek braid she’d plaited before she left for her shift at the Scarlet Kiss. Allie blinked slowly at her friend. The redhead was like a storm. She didn’t do anything quietly.
“What happened to your hair?” she blurted. Allie cleared her throat. That was the most she’d said in a couple days.
Jer smiled crookedly and patted her wild red locks. “We had a crazy one tonight,” she said, tugging off her floor-length black jacket and throwed it haphazardly over her bed.
Allie nodded and then went back to her book.
“Are you kidding me?” Jer muttered. Her roommate trudged across the floor and jumped onto her bed.
She clutched at her blanket; her tablet jiggled from her fingers, falling to her lap. An annoyed sigh escaped her. As much as she wanted to continue her book, if she didn’t acknowledge Jer, the redhead would pester her until she did. The sooner she listened to her friend, the sooner she could escape back into the historical fantasy she was reading.
Allie arched an eyebrow at her friend. “Are you going to tell me about your crazy night?”
Jer glanced from the tablet to Allie’s face. “Forgive me for my shock. I haven’t seen your face in a while. It’s been glued to that screen.”
“Are you going to tell me or not?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Who was Jer to chastise her?
“Touchy. But, despite the tone, I’ll tell you anyway.”
“How magnanimous of you,” Allie muttered.
Jer ignored her and launched into her story. “It was a wild one. You wouldn’t believe it! As you know, I was on bouncer duty tonight—”
“You just said duty.”
“Seriously? You went with that joke?” Her roommate scowled at her. “No interrupting. It’s my story.”
Allie waved her hand. “Get on with it.”
“Anyhow,” Jer huffed. “A Kitteran male came into the bar with a few friends. It just so happened that there was a girl at the end of the bar who had been nursing a drink for a couple hours. A Human girl.”
Oh boy. She knew how this story would end.
“Well, Sid happened to be sitting by her. He was charming her like he does with every woman. The snake. Well, to make a long story short, the Kiterran male caught a whiff of the pretty little Human, and bam!” Jer clapped her hands together. “It was a super match. He about ripped Sid apart.”
Allie straightened. “Is Sid all right?”
The redhead waved a hand at her. “He’s fine. That scaled skin makes him impervious to most damage. I think his pride is the most wounded. But back to my story: he was so aggressive that it took Bastian, Elijah, and myself to wrestle him out of the Kiss.”
“I bet Elijah just loved that.”
Jer smirked. “That man is so overprotective some days. Good thing he’s not my boss or I wouldn’t get to have any fun.”
Fun. Jer’s idea of fun was getting thrown into walls and pummeling guys double her size. It wasn’t a healthy sport.
“The best part was the tiny Human girl who stormed out of the Kiss to yell at the Kiterran male and his friends. You should’ve seen the look on her face when she shook her finger in front of his face and he licked it.”
Allie froze as a memory washed over her. She remembered Blade doing a similar thing. Disgust churned in her belly. Blade was a snake in the grass. A liar.
“Needless to say, he’s banned from the Kiss, and I got to have a little fun.”
“Lovely,” Allie said.
Jer untangled her hair from the loose braid and cocked her head, her blue eyes studying Allie in that peculiar way. It was like her friend could see inside her, see the fear, the pain, the rage.
She flipped her scarlet hair over her shoulder and picked at the shiny black pants encasing her legs. “Sebastian’s been asking about you.”
“I don’t know why he’s asking about me. He knows that I’m coming back to work next week. He’s even been here to see me.” They were all gossips, and her boss was the worst.
Her roommate slung a leg across her bed. “That’s true, but you haven’t exactly been yourself. And you haven’t really talked to anybody. Said anything.”
She’d said things, just not what they wanted to talk about
. “Talking doesn’t make it any better. It just makes the nightmares worse. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Can you please drop it?”
“I promise you, it’s only going to make it worse,” Jer said softly. “I know how these things go.”
“You know how these things go? How could you possibly know how these things go?” Allie threw the blankets off her legs, her tablet smacking the wall with a thud that she barely noticed in the heat of her anger. She stormed across the room, and then skidded to a halt with nowhere to go. She spun on her heel and stomped back to Jer, pointing a finger at her friend. “You think you know what it’s like to think you’re going to die? To think that a murderer is going to torture or rape you?” Even saying the words made her sick, but she soldiered on. “Or maybe even try to reenact one of his atrocious paintings with you as the prisoner?” Her hand shook as she pulled it back.
Jer’s eyes rounded with pity.
“No,” Allie hissed, sweeping her hand across her chest. “You don’t understand, and you don’t get to judge me or needle me into speaking about something I’m not comfortable with. If I want to talk to you about it, I’ll talk to you. But for now? Now, I need you to leave me alone!”
Jer’s lips thinned, but she nodded and stood, towering over Allie in her high-heeled boots. She didn’t say anything, only wrapped her arms around Allie and squeezed. At first, Allie stiffened up. She didn’t want to be held or touched. But, after a while, her panic unwound in her chest. It felt good to be hugged. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She wanted her mama, her family, the people who loved and cared for her, to be here.
“I want my mom,” she whispered. “I don’t care if it makes me childish or weak, but I want my mom.”
Jer shushed her and ran a hand down her hair like her mama used to. “Everything’s going to be all right, sweetheart.”
“I want to go home.”
“I miss my home, too. I wish I could give all that to you, but there’s no possible way. I’m so sorry for that.” A hitching breath. “I can be your family and your friend if you’ll let me.”