by Esme Devlin
We’ve been silent for most of the journey, ever since he gave me that riddle for an answer. I clear my throat.
“This is where you live?”
Baron nods his head once.
“But not alone?”
“Awfully big place for me to rattle around in on my own, don’t you think? It used to be a Golf Resort.”
Golf… I did learn about sports when I was a child. I just get confused about which one is which. “Golf?”
“Tedious game. You hit a ball with a club — a long stick thing — and try to get it in a hole some distance away. My home used to be a hotel, where people would travel from all over the world to stay and play golf.”
I nod. “I know what a hotel is.”
He laughs at that. “I’m surprised. You are so very… sheltered.”
I glance over at him. I might not be able to recite every single old-world recreation off the top of my head, but I don’t think I am anymore sheltered about the way of the world now than anyone else is.
I don’t argue with him though. I’d rather he thought of me as sheltered if that amuses him enough to keep me alive.
We drive the rest of the way in silence, passing through a set of gates that open only when he presses a button on the roof of the car.
The closer we get, the heavier my stomach feels.
On the journey I’d felt… not exactly safe, but not in any real immediate danger either. I’d hardly expected him to pull over and maul me at the side of the road.
But here.
This is his home.
This is a place where his rules are law.
He is the Maxim of this show, and in this show I am not the favourite. I’m not the special one, the one who gets allowances made for her.
Baron stops the car in front of the main entrance. There are two men outside, dressed completely in black like him, and they have long pointed guns across their chest. Rifles? I think that’s the correct term.
No masks, though.
He gets out and says something to the two men, who both turn around and stare in opposite directions. Then he comes around and opens my door for me.
He’s peering down but not saying anything, and I’m not sure what to do. I have no shoes on, no proper clothing, and Baron makes no move to get out of the way and let me out.
“We need to fix this,” he finally says. “This won’t do at all.”
“What?”
“Hand me the blanket,” he orders, holding out his hand.
“I’m naked!”
“Quite,” he says with a chuckle. “Why do you think I told them to turn their backs?”
I look at him, confused about what he’s asking me to do.
He sighs dramatically. “If you are worried about me seeing you, may I remind you that I was the one who took the clothes off in the first place…”
I feel my cheeks heat at the thought of that, which is strange because I’ve never been one to care until now. “I don’t care if you see me. I care about being cold.”
Baron leans down into the car, positioning his head so it’s next to mine. “Precisely why I made the deal with you.”
He grabs a hold of the blanket, pulling it with him as he retreats. I’m half forced out, and half scrambling to keep up with him so I don’t lose it entirely.
“There’s a good girl,” he says, scooping me up into his arms and arranging the blanket so it covers me completely. Then he presses my head into his chest and casually kicks the car door closed behind him.
All I can see is his shoulder and the side of his mask. That smell envelopes me again, diesel and something dark.
He takes the steps leading up to the door quickly, turning around to open it with his elbow. Inside it is dark, but it doesn’t stop me turning my head and trying to look around.
“None of that,” he scolds me. His voice is a low mumble when he continues, “If there is one way to get yourself on my naughty list it’s reneging on our deals, and I assure you, you will not like my idea of punishment.”
Heeding his warning, I tuck my head back into his chest and feel him move as he chuckles. He enjoys this. Finding ways to threaten me. It’s like he takes a sick kick from it.
Lights go on and I peer around slyly to see we’re in a large entryway. There are countless doors on every wall, and a grand staircase lined with red carpet leading upstairs.
A man I can’t see greets Baron, who quickly orders him to get the others. “I want every one who lives here stood in front of me within the next five minutes.”
The man rushes away, and I expect Baron to set me down, but he doesn’t. He merely paces the long room back and forth with me wrapped like a bundle in his arms.
Eventually people join us.
They stand in a long line in front of the stairs. All men, and all wearing black. A final man joins us — I recognise him as the man who came to the carnival with Baron the other night — and he has a woman on his arm.
She is older, but not at all frail looking. Perhaps in her late seventies. One arm is threaded through the accompanying man’s arm and the other rests on a cane for more balance. She joins the others but stands slightly in front of them.
“Some new house rules,” Baron says, still pacing the room in front of them. “The girl in my arms? She is mine. You do not look at her. You do not speak to her. Hell, you do not even breathe the same air as her unless I explicitly allow it.”
His steps grow quicker as he walks and there is a murmur from the assembled people. “All of you need to lower your eyes. Right now.”
“Not you, silly woman” he continues.
I glance up to see he’s talking to the older woman.
“Oh sorry, I thought she was Medusa herself the way you’re ranting and raving,” the woman replies sarcastically.
I cringe at the gall of her. Every interaction I’ve seen with Baron has been tense. People lower their eyes. They follow orders. They never speak back.
Except this woman.
She must be a relative. His mother, or grandmother perhaps?
Baron stops pacing and stares at her. “That’s quite enough from you. Back to bed.”
She huffs as the man leads her away.
“Everyone else, do I make myself clear?”
There are nods and mutterings of agreement before Baron orders them back to work.
We take the main stairs, turn left, and then take another set before turning right. “Pay close attention,” he says. “My home is not the easiest to navigate.”
I look around him and try to seek out any distinguishable features, but it’s too dark to really see anything. I guess I will have time to learn it. Well, the fact he’s told me to pay attention and the big speech downstairs must mean he doesn’t intend to kill me tonight. At least that’s what I’m telling myself to stop from panicking.
We reach a room at the far end of a dimly lit corridor and Baron turns around to open the door with his elbow. Inside it is pitch dark, and I hear the click of the lights a few times as he tries to turn them on.
He sets me down and steps around me, moving further into the shadows of the room. “I’ll have them fixed tomorrow,” he says, sparking a lighter and drawing it to the candles.
The room grows lighter, but everything still looks dark.
I take a step in, caught somewhere between wanting to run for my life and wanting to see if my eyes are deceiving me.
Everything looks black.
Black walls. Black floor. A huge four poster bed complete with drapes that looms black against the dark shadows. It looks made for someone like him.
“This is your room?”
He laughs and turns his back, lighting a few more candles that are attached to the walls. “No. This is your room.”
I exhale a breath of relief. It appears it doesn’t go unnoticed by him, because he spins around to face me. “I’ll visit frequently though, don’t you worry.”
“Thanks,” I say dryly.
Baron takes a seat
in the corner of the room and nods his head towards the bed. “Sleep. It is almost dawn. You’ll find we keep strange hours here.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“Does it look like I’m leaving?” He brings his leg up and rests it over the opposite knee, leaning back in his chair.
“You’re going to watch me sleep? I’m not going to run. I have nowhere else to go.”
He lets out an amused sigh. “The place I fear you’ll run to, it isn’t the physical sort, my sweet girl. You’re on suicide watch.”
“You expect me to sleep with you watching me?”
“I expect you to do as you’re told.”
I stare at him from across the room, wondering how far I can push it. The other night I tried to disobey him, but that was different. I had a knife in my hand. And that was before he killed me.
That was a dream.
I need to remember that — he didn’t actually kill me.
“And if I don’t?”
He sighs and rolls his neck before standing.
I take a step back, clutching the blanket around me.
“All these questions,” he says, taking slow steps towards me. “So many questions. You really do test me, do you know that?”
I back up until I reach the edge of the bed. With nowhere to go, I glance around and try to find an exit. A place to run. But I said it myself a few moments ago — I have nowhere to go now.
Baron is up in my face, staring down at me. Since I’m trying to keep the blanket covering me, I can’t even push him away.
“Questions, questions, questions. Should I spell it all out for you? Write you a manual? No. If I were to do that, you would never learn.”
He pushes me back, hard, and I fall onto the bed but quickly recover.
Just as I sit up, his knee lands on the mattress beside me.
I don’t wait for the other one before scrambling back.
The blanket gets tangled in my limbs and panic runs through me as I realise that if I want to get away from him, I’m going to have to drop it.
Fuck it. He has already seen me. And it’s dark enough in here with the drapes.
I slide out of the blanket and can now get enough space between us. He follows on his knees until I reach the headboard, inches away from him.
“See. Now you are learning. It’s only a shame it was a moment too late.”
“I learned,” I say, my voice breathy from the panic of having him so close.
“Have you, though?” His hands snake around my ankles and he drags me down the bed towards him, just as he did the first time we met. My heart thunders in my chest. My legs are spread around him, his knees keeping me from closing them.
“Please,” I beg. “I learned.”
Even as I say it, I get the feeling it’s hopeless. It feels like this has been inevitable since we stepped inside the room. Him sitting in the chair was just a distraction, just another game to knock me off balance.
Could it be that no matter what I’d done, I would have ended up here… in a bed, naked, with him on top of me?
And he is on top of me now. His chest hovering inches above my naked breasts.
“Tell me, my sweet girl. How do you feel about me?”
What?
His question, yet again, sends my thoughts spiralling into confusion. I know exactly how I feel about him. I’m terrified of him. But I don’t know what the correct answer is.
“I… I don’t know,” I reply.
“Lies,” he says, his tone accusing. “I don’t enjoy being lied to.”
“Well I don’t enjoy your games.”
He chuckles at that and falls on top of me when his hand reaches up to cup my cheek. “Good. Then I shall take that as my answer.”
I feel the coldness of metal against my forehead at he leans down. “You don’t enjoy them now, but perhaps one day you will. We’ll have to see, won’t we?”
I don’t foresee a time when that will happen, but I do know when to shut up.
“Sleep now, for if you don’t then I will need think of a game to exhaust you… and you already told me how much you dislike my games.”
With that, he gets off me and returns to the chair in the corner of the room. My heart is still racing from what just happened, and I fumble around with the bedsheets trying to get under them and cover myself.
I lie awake for what feels like hours, just listening.
The wind battering against the windows. The sound of water travelling through pipes. Baron breathing, or shifting his position. It is so noisy here. In the caves there was nothing. And this bed is nothing like my bed there. It is hard and flat, and not the mound of pillows I’m used to.
All I want right now is to go home, back to my silent cave with my pillows. But that place doesn’t exist anymore. I have no home now. Only uncertainty. Only threats and games. Only Baron.
I need to work out what all of this means. What is this place? What is my part in it? What does he want with me?
That is my priority now. I will try to be good. I will listen, and I will learn. And maybe, if I’m lucky, I will learn enough to get out of here.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SAPPHIRE
When I wake my eyes are drawn to two containers resting on the pillow directly in front of my face.
Weird.
I sit up, propping my elbow on the pillow.
It is light now.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, dim sunlight casts shadows in the room instead of candles.
I stare down at the boxes. They’re oval shaped and identical, antique silver with an intricate floral design embossed over each visible surface.
Too curious not to look, I prise the first one open and find white paste. Toothpaste? When I open the second one, the meaning becomes clear. This one is filled with black.
Makeup.
It’s only when I sit up properly I notice he’s been here the whole time. He’s still sitting on the chair in the far corner of the room, one ankle resting up on his thigh. He’s dressed as he always is, black everything except from the dark metal mask on his face. He says nothing as he watches me, and I wonder if he has been here the whole night.
But there is something more pressing I want to ask, something which may shine a light on the things I decided I needed to know last night.
“You want me to perform here as I did at the carnival?” My voice comes out rough. I need a drink and wonder if they have tea here. We always had tea at the carnival. Coffee was a rare luxury, but I was never a huge fan of that anyway.
“No. Well, perhaps. But that was not the original intention behind my gift.”
Gift? I want to laugh, but I’m struggling to find much humour in the situation. “Then what is the point in it?”
“Another silly question,” he says, his tone amused.
“Why?”
He shrugs. “Because you’ll be less than impressed with my answer.”
“And you care about impressing me?” I bite back.
Baron puts his hand on his chest and lets out an amused chuckle. “You are quite sharp for one so very young.” He gets up from the chair and walks towards the bed, pulling the drape back and holding out his hand.
I stare at it.
“It doesn’t bite.”
Slowly, as if testing steaming bath water, I reach up and take it. He pulls me out of the bed and leads me across the room, positioning us in front of his chest to gaze into the full-length mirror.
I wrap the blanket I grabbed around me and tuck the end between my breasts, forming a makeshift dress. Happy not to be naked, I look up at him in the reflection.
He’s so tall his mask is fully visible above my head, as are his shoulders and arms at either side of my own. If his intention was to remind me just how small and weak I am, it’s working.
His hand comes around to my neck, forcing me to stare at myself in the mirror. “I would have you wear it so no one else can look upon your face.”
I swallow
down the lump in my throat, feeling his hand move as my neck contracts. “A mask or a scarf would take considerably less effort, no?”
He shrugs. “Indeed. But then how would I see all those expressions play across your pretty face? I like you this way. You’re like a living nightmare. My very own little monster.”
I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I’d painted it last night, but that was before the water tank. Now the black has smudged in with the white, a mix of water and tears and rubbing at it in my sleep. And I think I probably sleep with my mouth open, judging by the flesh coloured patch around my mouth. I cringe at the thought. The whole look is freakish, and it’s not me.
I don’t recognise the girl staring back at me.
“And if I refuse?”
He laughs again, this one full of humour. “Yet another silly question. We really should start keeping a tally. This one, however, I’ll refrain from answering.”
With that, he removes his hand from my neck and takes a few steps away from me. “You’ll find a set of clothes in the dresser over there. Ready yourself and meet me in the sitting room directly across the hall. Need I remind you I am not the most patient of men?”
I choose not to answer his question, but since he doesn’t wait before heading towards the door I don’t think he was expecting one anyway.
Then a thought hits me. “Baron?” I shout after him.
He stops, holding the door open while he looks back and lets out an amused laugh. “You called, dear?”
I swallow, just as nervous as I always am when he stares at me. “Do you have pills here?”
Baron takes a step into the room and lets the door slide closed behind him. He says nothing, just stares at me while his head tilts to the side.
His breathing is slow and controlled, but something isn’t right. His hand is clenched tightly in a fist. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck as I wonder what I could have possibly done to anger or upset him.
Maybe he can’t afford all the pills that Maxim could? Maybe by bringing it up I’ve offended him?
“Pills?” He says the word as though it sickens him.
He begins walking towards me, his steps slow and calculating. Instinctively, I take a step back. Every time he moves, I move too, matching each one of his with another of my own.