Page 3 of The Mask Falling

“I need to— to shower.”

The stutter. The hitch in my breath. Whatever it was, something made him look back at me.

“Perhaps a bath would be more sensible,” he said, after a silence.

Somehow he knew. A bath would feel less like the waterboard than being drenched from above.

“Yes,” I said.

He left. I listened to the swash and gurgle of the taps, the liquid oozing through the pipes.

You sound thirsty.My hands scrunched into fists.Perhaps the Underqueen would care for a drink.

“Paige.”

I looked up. Into Rephaite eyes, demonic and soulless. Suhail Chertan, come to drown me on dry land again.

My muscles seized up. I was chained to the waterboard again, smothered by sodden cloth. Before I knew what was happening, I had scrambled away from those terrible eyes and smacked into the floor, and then my skeleton was made of glass. The impact splintered me. I reached for a breath that refused to be drawn, groped for a knife that was no longer there.

A familiar aura called me back. When my vision had throbbed itself clear, Warden crouched beside me. Not close enough to touch. Just enough for me to sense him. To remember him.

“Warden. I’m sorry.” My voice shook. “I thought—”

I wished I could find the words to explain.

“We are likely to be in this apartment together for some time.” Warden held out a gloved hand. “Perhaps we should begin by agreeing that there need be no apologies between us.”

It took a moment to muster the courage. When I placed my fingers into his grasp, he got me to my feet and helped me hobble to the bathroom.

“Warden,” I said quietly. “No matter what you hear, don’t come in. Not unless I call you.”

After a moment, he nodded. I closed the door behind me.

A row of lavender-scented candles lit the bathroom. Once more I was unsettled by the cleanliness, the space. Stone floor tiles, warm underfoot. Fluffy white towels and a starched nightshirt. With my back to the mirror, I removed the jacket and sweater, the trousers, the bloodstained shift I had worn in my cell. The sweater pulled at the sneer of stitches on my upper arm.

When I turned to face my reflection, I knew why Warden had chosen to light the room with candles. Even the faintest illumination was too much. South of the chin, not an inch of my body had been spared.

Little by little, I absorbed my reflection. As I counted my injuries, I relived each one. Hands around my throat. An armored fist striking my stomach. Hobnailed boots against my ribs. Anything to make me talk. All of it in a blinding white room—white walls, white floor. Surgically clean, at least at the start. Nowhere to hide from the laughter and questions.

Blood streaked me where shards of glass from Senshield had torn my skin. I traced a cut above my eye, a shock of red against my pallor. My chin pinched. I had seen myself in bad shape before, but this was different. The work of people who had viewed my body as an instrument of torture.

It had taken months to scrape back the strength I had lost in the colony. Now I would have to start again. I would have to live as a house of cards, so fragile that a breath could knock it flat.

The bath was sinister in its stillness. When I touched its surface, my arms bristled with gooseflesh again, and my shoulders ached where I had pulled against my chains.

I needed to get the blood off. If I didn’t nip this fear in the bud, I might never be able to stand water again. Taking a deep breath, I submerged one foot, then the other.

As I lowered myself into the bath, my arms shook and my wounds stung. When I was up to my waist, I exhaled. I was warm. I had almost forgotten how good that felt—to be warm all the way to my fingertips. They had left me soaked after each session on the waterboard, with the cold skin of a corpse.

My shivering worsened. Before I could stop it, a heaving sob racked my whole frame. I had tried so hard to be strong. I had said nothing under torture. I had not broken. Now, at last, I folded in the wake of all that time in darkness, stripped of my name and pride again.

Warden honoured my wishes. He never came in. When I had wept until I was hoarse, I leaned against the side of the bath and held myself with both arms, fingers pressed into my bruises.

The water had almost cooled by the time I forced myself to sit up. Slowly, I cupped the bathwater in my hands. I brought it to my face. It covered the tip of my nose. Then my lips.

It was too far. In an instant, every muscle in my body turned to iron. Darkness ruptured before my eyes, and I was hauled back to my cell, down to the basement. Frantic, I groped for the edge of the bath.Filth, Suhail hissed from my memory.Drink.Black waves reared over my head.No one is coming for you.I crashed onto the floor, slick as a fish, and threw up into the toilet.

There was nothing solid in my stomach. Each retch mangled icy sweat from my pores. By the time I was done, I felt as if I had been ripped inside out.

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