Page 22 of Cast Stones
She calls for me, her voice small and panicked. It’s all I can do not to lunge across the room and lay hands on the man bringing her fear and causing her pain. When she turns her head to seek me out for help, I lower my gaze.
I’m not her savior or her guardian angel.
I’m the ferryman to Hell.
However, with my eyes closed, I’m free to indulge in my impure thoughts. Thoughts driving the knife in my back pocket into Cyrus’s face, his heart, his throat. I imagine cutting off the finger that’s defiling Madi and shoving it up his ass. My dick gets hard at the phantom feel of his warm blood on my skin. Of its metallic tang on my tongue…
“Easy now, Mary…”
There’s something in Cyrus’s voice that draws me back. That pulls my attention back to the putrid scene playing out before my eyes. To him forcing Madi’s hand onto his hardened cock.
Dark and venomous rage explodes inside me. I change, and like the fang of a serpent, I become a hollow vessel of death. “Stop.” The word is spoken with a calm tone which contradicts the anarchy behind it.
It’s the first time I have ever dared to speak out of turn to one of the Twelve. It’s never done, an unforgivable sin punishable by death. But I don’t take it back. Instead, I challenge more.
I feed the chaos.
I breathe it in.
I fan its flames.
I shed blood for my insolence, but Cyrus doesn’t take my life.
This time.
When it’s over, I care nothing about cleaning myself or tending to my wounds. The only burning need I have is covering Madi’s violated body. Stumbling to the rickety old bed in the corner of the room, I drag a stained blanket off the mattress and drape it over her shivering body.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I’m sorry you’re pretty.
I’m sorry you caught my eye.
I’m sorry I had to take you.
I’m sorry I know how this will end.
“He t-touched me,” she cries, and the frailty in her tone is like a knife slicing my skin.
“I know.”
“You let him.” The accusation in her voice is brutal in its quiet power.
“I know,” I repeat.
“Why?”
Question after question spills from her mouth, and I want to shove them all back in. None of the others talked. Not once. “It had to be done.”
“I don’t understand!” she cries, life spilling back into her hollow eyes.
“You will in time.”
Unsatisfied with my answer, Madi throws the blanket off her body and clumsily pulls her panties up her legs as I avert my eyes. “I want to go home, Luca! Let me go home!”
“I can’t, Mad—Mary.”
“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” she screams. “My name is Madeline!”
