Page 31 of The Pawn
I shake my head, pull farther away. I don’t want to go to bed. I know the nightmares that await me there in that drugged dark. I can hear the whispers now. I close my eyes to try to make it stop, but it’s like they’ve been there for years, just biding their time, like they knew this would happen again. Like they knew it wasn’t over.
“Where is it?” I demand too loudly. I turn to Jet who sets his drink down. I don’t like how he’s looking at me either.
I see it then. On Cassian’s desk. Sitting right there in the center of it, the diamonds still stained with her blood or my blood. Hard to say. He didn’t clean it.
I take a step toward it, but Cassian grabs my arm to stop me.
“Allegra. You don’t want that thing.”
I look up at him, his face is blurred. I wipe my good hand across my cheek, and it comes away wet. I’m crying.I’m fucking crying again. Like a good little victim. Just like a good fucking victim.
I shove him away, walk toward the desk. “It was my mother’s.” I tell him flatly, angrily. “It was the last finger they took and when they brought her back, she had it in the palm of her bloody hand like they gave it to her afterwards. Like they put it right there for her to hold except she couldn’t hold it. She couldn’t hold anything anymore. Her hand was a stump.” My voice breaks, my throat so tight I can’t breathe because I can see her. I can see her that last time after they’d taken her. I see her face, the ghost of her. What was left of her. How cold she was. How small in my arms. How she shook. Couldn’t stop shaking. I’m embarrassed to say how monstrous I thought her hands looked, all bloody and butchered with stubs for fingers.
Nothing matchy-matchy there.
I set my hands on either side of my head. “I can’t make it stop,” I say.
“Shit. Allegra,” Cassian starts, his hands on my shoulders.
No. No. I shake my head hard to clear the visions. To stop the whispering voices. Stalking the rest of the way across the room to the desk, I reach to scoop up the ring, but Jet grabs my wrist stopping me.
I meet his eyes, a forest to Cassian’s ocean. I try to pull free but only manage to stumble backward. Cassian catches me and holds me in his arms while Jet keeps my wrist in his and in that moment, I’m caught between both men. Just for a moment we all stand trapped in time the silence too heavy around us.
Jet’s eyes shift to Cassian and Cassian’s grip on me tightens. Jet’s eyes narrow. They’re communicatingsomething in their silence. There’s something between them, these men, something old, something that belongs only to them. Jet clears his throat, shifts his gaze to me and I think he might say something, but he changes his mind or maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t going to say anything. He releases me and stalks out of the study. He slams the door so hard behind him that I feel the rattle of it in my bones.
“Let me take you to bed,” Cassian says gently, but I whirl on him, reaching for that ring. He stops me before I get it and pulls me to him. I shove him away, struggling to free myself. “Stop. Allegra. Stop.”
I don’t stop. I fight him, pounding my fists against his chest, my damaged hand aching, red creeping along the white bandage. He’s gentle with me, holding me, taking the beating while holding back the wrist of my bandaged hand.
“You promised.” I hear myself saying over and over again. The room is a blur around him, blood pounding in my ears, my head. “You promised to keep me safe! You promised. You promised.” My voice breaks, my throat hoarse, my body tired, so tired. It must be the drugs.
He lifts me off the ground at the moment my knees give way, and I struggle against him twisting and turning and screaming bloody murder as he carries me back to his bedroom, back to his bed.
The woman, the nurse who’d been asleep earlier is on her feet the instant we’re back. She scrubs her face, mutters apologies. Cassian curses her.
“Get a sedative,” he commands, furious as he lays me down.
“No. No. I don’t want that. I don’t want it!” I shake my head.
“Shh, Allegra. It’s okay. I’m going to stay with you. I’mgoing to be right here with you when you wake up. I promise.”
“Liar! Liar!” I scream through tears as he holds me down and I feel the prick of the needle. “You promised and you broke your promise!” The effects are almost immediate, a sensation of cold, a relaxing of muscle. It starts at my toes and my fingertips and works its way inward. I would welcome it, the loss of control, but I know what’s coming when I close my eyes. I know and I’m terrified.
I shake my head as Cassian lays me on the pillow. “Shh, babygirl. Shh. I’m not going to leave you alone.”
“I’m scared,” I say, clutching his shirt. My voice is quieter because the drug is working. I’m going back into that darkness, those whispers louder, my mother trembling in my arms. “I’m so scared.”
He unravels my hand from his shirt.
“I’m here. I’m not leaving you. I won’t leave you alone ever again. I swear it. I fucking swear it.”
“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” I say as my eyes close, unsure who I say it to. It’s so quiet a whisper I don’t know if anyone hears.
“I’m real,” Cassian says as darkness closes in on me. “I’m real.”
11
CASSIAN
