Page 31 of Their Will be Done

Heat floods my body.

I try to lean into what I think is a kiss, but he drops his mouth to my chin, then the side of my jaw, then my ear.

“There’s something else you should know, pretty thing.”

I freeze at the sinister tone in his voice. He moves my hand deeper into his lap, until I brush against something long and hard.

He nips my ear. “We’ll never be jealous of each other, because wealwaysshare our toys.”

Chapter Thirteen

Trinity

I’m staring up at the ceiling later that night, toying with my curls as I try to make sense of the day, when Jasper slips into our room.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks awake while everyone else was sleeping with thoughts swirling around my head like water going down a drain.

It never gets any less frustrating, especially when I know sleep could whisk me away to peaceful oblivion for a few hours.

“Hey,” I greet him, going onto my elbows.

Jasper walks stiffly over to his bed, kneels on the mattress, and lowers himself down with his back to me.

“Everything okay?” I ask. Pretending not to know what happened to him is as difficult as straight-up lying.

“Fucking peaches,” he mutters back.

I wince in sympathy, and then I’m glad it’s dark and he’s not facing me because I’d probably have given myself away.

My ointment is still in my top drawer. Should I leave it out and hope he notices it, or did Miriam give him his own bottle?

Twenty lashes.

Should have been thirty.

No one can survive thirty.

Fuck.

“I know you got lashes,” Jasper says.

I sit up straight. “What—why would you think that?”

“For the drawing,” he says without turning to face me.

My heart is suddenly beating too fast. “What drawing?”

Jasper maneuvers around until he’s facing me. If it wasn’t for the moonlight streaming through our tiny window, I wouldn’t have seen him rolling his eyes at me.

“The one of Rutherford banging you.”

I say nothing as my cheeks start to warm up.

I’d forgotten about Cass’s prank. “Yeah. So what?”

“He likes it, you know.”

“What, the drawing?”

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