Page 189 of The Sinner's Bargain

“Wait.” I dug my heels into the floor littered with dust and sand and mouse excrements. The naked foot rubbed raw against the concrete, but I kept trying to dislodge him. “Please, wait. I don’t want—”

“Stop!” His voice boomed like the crack of thunder. It shot through the cramped tomb, but it was nothing to the hard, vicious shake he gave me. “Please stop. I don’t want to hurt you, too, okay?”

I stared up into the round face peering down at me with such sorrow and heartbreak. There was such pleading in his eyes I would have reached for him if his words weren’t ringing in my ear.

“Too?”

He ignored me.

His attempts to drag me increased and I was pulled up to the door and through.

The room inside was a stone storage with crates and the stench of gunpowder and metal. He pushed me behind the pile to a corner that looked like the others but he pressed a raised brick and a metallic click unhitched a person sized door that popped open inward.

I had no time to think or react as I was yanked through. The only thing I managed to do before the door sealed us in was to kick off my last shoe; when Thoran came looking for me, at least he would have something to go by.

The room on the other side opened to a ... lab? There were two tables in the center that took up most of the room and shelves lining all the walls filled with jars and bowls, and containers filled with liquid and chunks of floating things.

“What is this, Oliver?” I gasped.

“My life’s work,” he said quietly. “Years of blood and sweat.” He dragged me to a chair and nudged me into it. “I have given everything for this.”

He still hadn’t told me what this was, but the stench of industrial cleaner, the rot, decay, and the coppery stench of iron made me feel ill.

“What are you doing, Oliver?” I rasped around the bile in my throat. “Where are we?”

His hands were shaking, rubbing over his face and back over his shaven scalp. The skin glistened with sweat ... and tears.

“I just ... I need you to know I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t. I still don’t.” He dropped his arms. They smacked into his sides, and I flinched. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m trying to fix things.”

Pain and fear twisted across my chest, around my neck. I was too terrified to swallow and ease the pressure in my throat in case it upset him. I could only sit and watch him sniffle and rub his sleeve under his nose.

“But no one will just leave me alone.”

I dared a glance in the direction of the walls. The filthy jars.

“I don’t know what I did...”

“Nothing!” he practically sobbed, and I jerked as if struck. “You did nothing, Naya. You are such a sweet person. So much like Abby. She would have loved you. You’re exactly the kind of girl she would want for her son and so do I. Thoran loves you so much and seeing him with you ... it makes me so happy.”

Tears, hot and endless slip down my cheeks and soak into my sweater. “Then why...?”

Another chair was pulled over and placed across from me. He lowered himself down. His warm, kind eyes bored into mine, desperate.

“Because Thoran wouldn’t understand. He’s so much like his mother that way. Abby didn’t understand either. I tried to explain to her I was trying to help people. I was doing the right thing. She got so angry. She threatened to tell Aerys.” He mopped at his face with his damp sleeve. “I never wanted to hurt her, Naya. I swear. I swear!” His massive shoulders heaved with a sob and the ground beneath my feet cracked as his implication hit me in the gut.

“Oliver ... what did you do?”

He gasped for air and fell back against his chair. Rimmed eyes fixed on the low ceiling overhead.

“She followed me down here. I got sloppy. She thought I was messing around with the cargo, but I don’t like guns. I don’t like violence.” His chin wobbled. “She called me sick. She said I wasn’t her brother anymore. That I betrayed her by bringing my work into her home with her family.” He rocked his head slowly from side to side as tears fell down his face. “I only wanted her to listen. I didn’t mean to grab her that hard. Her stupid heels slipped...”

“Oh my God!” my hands flew up to cover my mouth. “Oh my God, Oliver.”

He burst into heaving sobs that bent him over as if the pain was eating him up from the inside.

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. I would never hurt Abby. I loved her so much. She was my world. My best friend.”

I was crying with him. The pain in his voice. The agony tearing through every word. I felt each one as if they were burrowing into my heart and becoming mine.

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