Page 54 of These Monstrous Ties
I recognize the voice, and fear ripples through me. I need to move. I need toget up. But I can’t. Everything hurts. I grit my teeth, and push myself over, rolling onto my back, so I can at leastsee.
A man stands over me.
It isn’t Lucifer.
“Lucifer,” I whisper anyway, hoping he’ll come out from the trees. Surely, he’s still here. He had promised me he would be here.
I swallow past the dry knot in my throat, and taste blood. I wonder if it’s my own, or his.
The sky is pink and blue above me, and I shiver. It’s only then, as a breeze hits my chest, that I realize I’m not wearinganything.My bodysuit is in tatters on the ground beside me, and even my boots have been ripped off. I can’t feel the weight of the horns on my head, and my hand flies to my face, but I don’t know what I’m checking for.
Bruises? Cuts?
The man standing over me smiles. It chills my blood.
I know him.
Jeremiah.
The one who followed me last night. The one Lucifer took me from.
“You’re in one piece,” he croons. “But barely.” He’s wearing a hoodie, but the hood is off of his face now. I squint up at him, trying to think. Trying to put together the pieces of what happened last night.
But the only thing I remembered after making promises to Lucifer is…blacking out. I’d blacked out. I don’t know if he had known that; I know sometimes people can’t tell. It isn’t the same as passing out. I have no idea what happened after that. But I’m naked. I feel dirty.
The man standing over me seems to sense my confusion. He crouches down beside me and grips my hand. I let him hold it, but I don’t squeeze back.
“Do you remember me?” he asks.
I make to shake my head, to pull my hand from his. To cover myself. But then I see his eyes.
Pale green, like the lightest jade. Like a blade of new grass. And his hair, dark and thick. Heavy brows, perfectly arched, like my own.
I bite back a gasp.
“Jamie?” I whisper. My throat hurts with his name, but I need him to tell me it’s true. I need to know.
My brother’s hand on mine tightens. But a shadow crosses his face. “Yes, Sid. Yes.”
* * *
He had carriedme out of the asylum in his arms. At first, he had had to drag me away. I had scrambled to stay, to look for Lucifer. To fight. But there’s only Jamie and two guards with him—the latter of whom thankfully has clothes for me to pull on. I had willingly worn the hoodie and sweatpants, looking at the scraps that remained of my bodysuit on the forest floor.
But I didn’t want to leave.
There’s blood in patches of grass and dirt among the ground. I don’t know if it’s mine, or Lucifer’s, or Jamie’s. My brother won’t tell me anything. I had hit his back as he tossed me over one shoulder, as if I was nothing. I had looked for the gun. For the entrance to the asylum. For anything to tell me that last night had been real. That it hadn’t been a dream. A hallucination. But I’d seen nothing. We were deep in the woods. There was nothing to confirm that anything at all had happened last night, except for the fact someone had cut off my bodysuit.
I remember Lucifer doing it. I remember him on top of me. And I had seen the cut on my thigh, which was streaked with blood.
That had been real.
But what else? What else had happened? How had Jamie found me? After all that time…fourteen years. Over a decade, an entire country had been placed between us.
Jamie says nothing.
And last night, they had called himJeremiah.I also hear one of the guards call him as much.
He says nothing. He offers no explanation. Instead, he takes me into the hotel, puts me in the bathtub, takes off my new clothes himself and scrubs me clean. I scream at him. I cover my breasts with my hands. But he is clinical, methodical, scrubbing me down with a loofah. He hasn’t spoken a word, but he has nearly scrubbed my skin off. I’m pink by the time he’s done with me.
