Page 145 of Ashes

If someone had asked me anytime before this year if I’d call to Seth for help, I’d have told them they were nuts, but Sin had done something to me that had shattered my very being.

He was the reason for my current trauma. For Stitches’s. For all this madness.

Seth and Asylum had been there to guide me through that darkness while Sin. . . I didn’t even know what he’d done while I’d suffered. While I’d hid. While my body had been exposed to those disgusting monsters behind the mirror.

“Fuck,” Sin snarled, his warm hands lifting me.

I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take his touch.

A scream tore from my lips as he held me against his body.

“Siren. Stop. Come on,” he whispered frantically as I continued to scream. Cady covered her ears, tears trickling from her eyes.

“Sinful! Sinful!”

“Fuck. Baby—come on,” Sin continued as he rocked me in his arms. “Don’t. Don’t scream. Damnit! Fuck! Siren—”

The door to the room slammed open and I was torn from Sin’s arms.

“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Seth snarled. I gripped around his wrist tightly with one hand.

No.Asylum.

I clung to him and buried my face in his neck, his arms moving to wind tightly around me.

“Shh, firefly. All is well. No more tears. No more screams.” He was on his knees as he whispered to me. “It’s Asylum. I’m here. Your screams belong to me, remember? They’re mine. You’re giving them away for free and that’s unacceptable. Shh. Quiet. There you go. There you go, my love. We’re OK.”

I stopped screaming as I breathed heavily.

I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I’d been trapped in a coffin overnight with Asylum. He’d tried to kill me years ago… and yet, he was who I wanted. Seth. Asylum. I’d snapped. I’d completely lost my damn mind in that box.

That was the only reasoning I could come up with that made any sense to me.

“Get the fuck out of my room,” Asylum said in a dangerous voice after a moment.

“No. I’m taking her with me—” Cady choked out, her voice trembling.

“And where would you go, my dear Cady cat? Huh? That old cottage your father used to take you to when you were children?” Asylum tsked as I twisted my fingers tighter into his uniform. The white button down strained against his neck, giving way to a red welt from my grip, but he didn’t seem to care.

I loved my sister so much. . . but I couldn’t leave. We had too much to do here. If Sin was going to be there, I definitely couldn’t go.

“H-how did you know?” Cady asked thickly.

“Because we fucking do,” Asylum snapped back. “The road trip into Canada? The detour if you need it? The friend you have in Chicago? What’s his name again? Trent?” Asylum scoffed. “His time isn’t now. He’s much too busy weaving his own web. You would be caught within hours of taking her from here.”

“You don’t know that,” Cady said. “We could make it—”

“Everett would get you, Claws,” Sin said softly. “He would. He has eyes everywhere. You’d both suffer then. His underground stretches across the country. No place is safe from him if he wants you.”

“Fuck Everett Church. I’d get you first and believe me, you don’t want to be caught stealing from us. Unlike Everett Church, we don’t take prisoners to keep. We take them to kill.” Asylum tensed beneath me.

I pressed against him harder, wanting him to stop talking to my sister that way.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to me.

Don’t talk to her like that.

“We just don’t want anyone taking you,” he murmured quickly. “We just got you back, and we have no plans of ever letting you go again.”

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