Page 22 of Thrown to the Wolves

Ariadne gasps and coughs for air, throwing herself over so her face is out of the water. Blood still runs from the back of her head, spiraling down the drain as I watch.

Something soft hits my chest and I startle as badly as if it were a punch.

It’s a robe. I look up to see Grandmother standing a few feet away, observing me with an appraising eye. I scrunch the robe she tossed at me in my hands, confused.

“Get up,” she says.

I get up and pull on the robe, shaking so hard that it takes a while to get my arms through the holes.

“Follow me.” She turns and leaves without another word. I’m frozen, my gaze flicking between Ariadne crumpled on the shower floor and the door Grandmother left through. The dread churning inside finally pushes me to move—toward Ariadne.

She flinches away, terror in her eyes.

I feel something in me cracking. There’s an emptiness blooming in my fractured soul promising only destruction.

I blink, backing away from Ariadne, and then turn to hurry after Grandmother.

As cruel as Ariadne has been to me, what I just saw in her eyes chills me to the bone. A wailing despair deeper than any pain I’ve known. A place you can never come back from, only keep falling into endless black.

And in the shattered depths of my own soul, I can feel that same howling void threatening to engulf me.

CHAPTER 11

Scarlett

I shiver all the way up in the elevator to the penthouse suite. I speak only once. “Ariadne—she needs?—”

“To learn to take a punch,” is Grandmother’s cold reply.

But that wasn’t a punch that I gave her, I want to point out. That was a rage-induced, brutal beating that might have done permanent damage to her.

I feel sick and dizzy, and sway into the elevator wall as the nausea rises up. Grandmother takes my arm, her grip surprisingly strong for an elderly woman, and pulls me upright, then out of the elevator as it stops and opens.

My body aches from the pummeling Ariadne gave me all afternoon, every muscle screaming in protest with each step. But Grandmother’s pace is brisk, allowing no time for me to catch my breath—or even think.

We reach her private quarters—a sanctuary adorned with baroque furnishings and heavy crimson drapes that blot out the Chicago skyline. It’s gorgeous and refined, but I have learned to fear the sight of it—there is a room only accessible from here where we are taken for punishments when we disappoint Grandmother.

I’m terrified that’s where she’s taking me now, but instead, she gestures toward a chaise longue. “Have a seat, my dear.”

Slowly, not daring to lower my guard, I seat myself, watching as Grandmother retrieves a first aid kit and then returns to sit next to me. She gestures for me to untie the robe, and I obey, then sit there in surprise as her elegant, bejeweled hands gently tend to my wounds. The scent of antiseptic mingles with her perfume, an unpleasant combination that makes my head swim.

As she works, Grandmother speaks, her voice low and hypnotic. “If you channel the same rage and ferocity against Lyssa that you just displayed with Ariadne, victory will be yours.”

“But Ariadne…” I whisper. “I nearly killed her.”

“Ariadne has sorely needed a lesson for some time,” Grandmother says. “If you hadn’t provided it to her, Lyssa would have. Ariadne was next in line, you see, the next one I planned to send out, if Lyssa killed you. But I still thing you can do better.” She looks into my face. “Can you do better, Scarlett?”

I only have to tell her the truth, after all. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get justice for Adam.”

She smiles in approval and moves on to my shoulder, already turning purple with bruises. I hiss as she rubs ointment all over it and then settles an ice pack over it carefully. “Do you remember the day our paths first crossed, Scarlett?”

A lump forms in my throat. How could I forget?

Rain poured from the heavens, smacking off the black umbrellas held by black-clad mourners gathered around Adam’s grave.

I stood apart from them, numb and hollow, letting the rain soak me to the skin as the casket was lowered into the earth. The finality of it, the realization that I would never see my brother’s smile again, never hear his laughter, hit me then, and it was all I could do to keep standing.

The floral arrangements on the casket were torn apart by the force of the rain, petals smearing across the wood in a kaleidoscope of fragrant white that seemed to mock the entire proceedings.

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