Page 15 of Deception

“Mother, come on. The walls have ears here.” Mum gave me a faint nod as she stirred her tea.

“I promise, Grandma. I get it. Okay?”

Nodding with narrowed eyes, she looked at me disbelievingly before telling me, “Not yet, you don’t, but you will one day.” A morose expression knitted her brows. “If on that day luck fails you…well, Lucy-Lou, you make your own. You are more than a Stanton. You hear me?”

“Yes.”

“More than a bargaining chip or a game piece.”

Taking a step back, she smiled again while her eyes flicked over me from head to toe and back to mine. Something inside me warned me to be wary of her words. Wisdom and experience blazed in her eyes as my breaths faltered at the honesty etched there. Meanwhile, every cell of my being yearned for her to move so that I could see him again. The lord-in-waiting with royal blood thrumming through his veins. Beautiful and volatile. So much so that when he touched me, I could feel his violence seep into my bones, making my flesh beg for more and more of it.

“Am I right, Sarah?”

There was a silent pause as Mum took another sip of her tea and then stood, putting the bone china cup down on the saucer without the faintest clink. When she stepped beside my grandma, her hand lightly cupped my face.

“Yes, Mother,” she finally answered. “Love…duty…those things…” A deep sigh cut off her trailing thought. “They don’t matter. Not really. They’re just ties, and sometimes…when they weaken you?—”

“What are you saying? Spit it out.”

“I’m saying that if they don’t strengthen you, then you should cut them. Regardless of what you are told or taught. You do what you need to see another day.”

“You’re a Mortimer, dear girl.” The stern line of my grandma’s lips softened into an almost grin. “We fight until the end. We do what it takes to stay alive no matter what.” Pausing, she side-glanced at Mum. “You did good with this one.”

With a proud smile, my mother fluttered her lashes at me. “I know.”

“Smart, beautiful, and strong.”

“Yes, I know, Mother.”

“Most of all,” Grandma crooned, pinching my chin between her thumb and forefinger like she used to when I was little and she spoiled me with one of her treats. Sometimes a sweet, other times something for my piggy bank. “Cunning…aren’t you, girl? Sneaky, just like the rest of the Mortimer women before you. It’s what will keep you alive. What will keep you safe…”

“From what?” I asked, aware that she clearly knew more than what the brotherhood had told me so far about my task.

“This treacherous world, girl,” she told me with a shake of her head as she walked away, heading back to the party outside without a single glance back at me or my mother.

The memory fades as quickly as it came, leaving me with doubts about what will happen to me. When a person goes missing, they say that after the first twenty-four hours, the chances of finding them reduce to fifty per cent. Every day after that, they shrink and shrink until it becomes an impossibility. I may not know how long I’ve been here for certain, but I’m aware of time from the dips in the temperature and when he comes to me.

Tomasz sits there, tormenting me with his jibes at my weakness, taunting me over how quickly my body gave. He’s not wrong. The secret service trained me to be a killer, but the longer I remain in this bed…in this place, the more I doubt the confidence that was instilled in me.

Heroes never die.That’s what my father told me before he watched me walk away. If that’s the case, then they failed too, because that’s exactly what will happen to me. A part of me has always known that I wouldn’t see old age. I used to look at my grandmother and try to imagine myself with the same lines, but I never could.

Even now, I can see them all grow old. Every person who’s ever meant anything to me. Even Freddie, the man with death ghosting his soul, I can see him age into something formidable and fatally handsome. The sun beams down on me, brighter and brighter, the longer I hold him in my thoughts. My heart flutters as though I’m free again, and it is a beautiful dream as the stifling warmth numbs my body.

Then I hear the girl praying beside me again. She’s always praying for forgiveness and mercy and sins that she sounds too soft to commit.

“Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” she repeats. “For I have done nothing good in your sight. Heavenly King, Comforter…Spirit of truth. Holy God. Holy, Holy God…cleanse us and save our sou?—”

“Does he listen?” I croak, the sound of my voice foreign in my ears.

A sharp gasp echoes from her while I try to open my eyes for the first time in…I don’t know. It’s been impossible until now. The headaches have been insufferable, and the sedatives that they must have given me to force my body to rest have left me hazy.

I wish they’d left me out there. I wish they’d let me die.

This helplessness is worse than the brutality. The physical pain that he inflicted on me was easier to bear than this half-conscious state. Flitting in and out of memories and dreams. Drowning in make-believe and suffocated with reality. Watching it fade with every passing second.

Why haven’t they come for me?

“You’re awake?” The surprise in the girl’s voice is hard to miss as it sends a shooting crackle of pain around my skull, making me screw my eyes shut again.

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