Page 31 of Thrown to the Wolves

Scarlett

I return to Grandmother’s house, the high-rise, my heart so heavy with the weight of my failure that I feel like I’ve left it on the first floor as the elevator swoops upward. The luxurious surroundings of the penthouse feel hollow and oppressive. As I step into Grandmother’s study, I steel myself for the inevitable punishment.

Grandmother sits there in her high-backed chair, her eyes cold and calculating. “Well?”

She already knows the answer, must be able to see it in my face. “I…” I let my arms rise and flop. “I failed.”

“Again, Scarlett?”

I bow my head, hoping she won’t see the whole truth in my eyes. Yes, I failed. But I also want to know the truth about Adam—about Lyssa—and there’s no way I’m telling Grandmother about my conversation with the Wolf. “I was too injured from the training with Ariadne. Lyssa managed to kick me in the same spot and I?—”

“Excuses!” Grandmother slams her hand on the desk, the sound echoing through the room. I jump despite myself. “I have no use for excuses, Scarlett. Only results.”

“I understand, Grandmother. All I can do is apologize.”

There’s a horrible tone in her voice when she says, “That’s not all you can do, girl.”

I suck in a breath and try to raise my chin, keep eye contact. I need to be brave. “I’ll accept whatever punishment you deem necessary.”

Her smile is cruel. “You will undergo the water treatment. Perhaps that will remind you of the cost of failure.”

My blood runs cold at her words. The water treatment—a more banal name for what it really is, water-boarding—is designed to break the will and test the limits of endurance. I’ve had it threatened before, but never carried out.

But now I have no choice.

Not only I have pledged myself to Grandmother’s cause in return for my own vengeance, I need to make sure she doesn’t think too deeply about what happened tonight with Lyssa.

Like why I’m still alive, for example. Though I’m not too sure about that myself…

“Yes, Grandmother,” I say. “As you wish.”

Hours later—or is it days?—I lie soaked and shaking on the floor of the torture room behind Grandmother’s bedroom, wracked with shudders, lungs burning with every breath. Water boarding is every bit as terrible as I imagined, a relentless assault, a drowning that never ends…

And oh how Ariadne enjoyed inflicting it on me.

My punishment was her reward. Maybe she feels she has her payback now for what happened in the bathroom. I hope so. I still feel bad about that, no matter how much I try not to.

As I stare at the ceiling and shiver, my mind drifts to Lyssa once more, our encounter earlier tonight. Was it tonight? Last night? Two days ago? I have no idea. There are no windows, no clocks in the punishment room.

But Lyssa is a constant in my mind.

I keep thinking about the concern in her eyes when she saw my injuries even as she had me pinned against the wall, stiletto point to my throat. The way she asked who had hurt me. It was a moment of genuine care, a flicker of humanity I never expected from her.

She’s…

She’s nothing like I expected.

I try to imagine Grandmother showing the same concern. But in the five or so years I have known her, Grandmother has never once asked about my well-being, never once shown a shred of empathy. On the contrary, she enjoys watching us hurt—all of us—and she enjoys it most of all when we hurt each other.

Is Lyssa right? Is Grandmother using me, manipulating me for her own ends?

I came into this assuming she would. Assuming that she was getting something out of this—the kills I made for her, the endurance under torture…

But Lyssa seemed to think there was a bigger plan in play.

At last the door unlocks, creaks open without a word, without sight of anyone at all. I drag myself through the thankfully-empty penthouse and go back to my rooms, limping from the fight with Lyssa and still nauseas and dizzy from the torture.

My apartment suite is a few floors down, vast but empty, the decor as cold and unforgiving as Grandmother herself. She says that comfort is a distraction for warriors, that we must focus solely on our training and get used to hardship.

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