Page 598 of Rage

Marguerite spoke for the first time since the stone door opened. Her voice sounded reedy and absent as she stepped down into the water. “Pa always did say women were better seen and not heard.”

Diana sniffled and the woman helping her brushed away her tears with such tenderness that my own throat tightened. Diana stood fully nude, but enveloped the woman in a tight embrace anyway.

“I’m so sorry. I’mso sorry,”she said.

“Don’t youdareapologize.”

I growled it with such ferocity that I didn’t at first realize that it had come out of me until the room went quiet and everyone looked at me.

I knew I should be frightened. I knew I should bedisconsolate.Instead, black, depthless, moltenrageconsumed me, body and soul.

Are you ready to become?

No longer would I apologize for the cruelty ofmen.I tired of tutting cautionary tales of girls who showed too much skin, or gave kisses too generously. I tired of laws that left sweet girls like Cassandre at the mercy of men like her brother because she couldn’t simply inherit her father’s wealth herself.

They stole your shiny Penny, but first they shattered her, didn’t they, sweet carver?

The memory of Penny’s broken body and glassy eyes flashed in my mind. Her sweetheart’s relieved tears as he hugged his solicitor when the judge let him gohomeafter he killed her and left her torotin an alley. Her pretty white dress with the eyelet lace…it soaked up the piss in the alley. Blood and skin stuck under her nails. She’d fought. She’d cried. And he’d killed her anyway.

I was a coin without a face. Unfinished and stripped of all worth. But I didn’t do that to myself.

I looked around the room and saw women of every color and background. Atreya’s anger and abrasive nature couldn’t protect her, nor could Marguerite’s obedient gentleness.

Diana’s illustrious writing career didn’t save her, even though she spent most of her time at home. Bella, all altruism and hard work–the smartest of all of us probably, and she’d still been had.

Cassandre’s wealth didn’t save her. Lily’s poverty didn’t either.

And me? I hunted these men. I carved them up like roasted pheasants. I rejoiced in their terror and danced on their graves. I didn’t fear them.They feared me.

And yet here I, too, had been captured.

They have forgotten that they spring from the very well they are poisoning.

A pawn. A sacrifice. Apossession.

That is what they think, isn’t it?

Yes. Thought that. But I would prove them wrong.

For that is Her dominion. Retribution, wrath.

Are you ready to become?

Chapter Four

Briar

At least the bathwater was warm. It felt good to soak the sweat and bile off of my skin.

In the end most of the women in the bathing chamber refused to fight. They were either too frightened or too weak from hunger and neglect. I didn’t blame them for their choice; I could only guess at the nightmares they’d experienced in their captivity.

The ones who hadn’t yet been broken got tips on how to defend themselves from Atreya, who proved as scrappy as she was cranky.

Cassandre had allowed me to undress her after I calmed her down. She sat next to me in the steaming waters and cried softly as a couple women brushed through and washed her hair.

She didn’t say anything to the effect, but I thought she looked a little more at ease as the two women gently coaxed their fingers through the snarls in her hair.

A curl of unnamable discomfort had me stretching my neck again as Cassandre sighed and Diana carefully worked cleansing oils into deftly divided hair, focusing her lathering on the roots of her dense, curling tresses. I didn’t have the mental faculties tokeep track of the rest of our virginal cadre as the sensation inside of me deepened.

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