Page 35 of Dance with Death

I move toward the bed of twisted sheets, eyeing the pile of pillows I had set for her to ease the swelling from her injury. I lower to sit on the edge and the fuchsia gown on the carpet calls for my attention.

I bend to pick up the dress from the floor, clutching it in both hands. I bring it close to my face, press it to my nose, and inhale deeply, slowly.

The scent of her remains.

Roses.

Sweet but strong.

Soft but heady.

My lungs stutter, forcing a burst of air that rushes out of me as a sob. The sob shakes me and forces unwanted tears to spill and I feel weak…so fucking weak without her.

I drag the dress along with me as I roll to lay on the bed. Hugging it close in my arms, I cry out my ache, breathe in her scent, and lose myself in the precious wreckage our love has left behind.

Chapter 10

Anya

I lay awakein my cage, looking up at the ugly gray ceiling. You could hardly call the thing I lie on a mattress. It’s worn and thin, and I swear I’d probably be just as comfortable lying on the concrete floor.

I rest my arms behind my head as I stretch, flex, and rotate my foot. I kick my leg into the air, trying to work through the healing sprains and regain something resembling flexibility.

I’ve been nursing my injured ankle for the past week, forcing myself to rest it as much as I force myself to move it, knowing I need to engage the muscles and tendons to get them healing properly. It’s getting better slowly. The swelling has gone down and the pain has decreased, though my mobility is still quite limited. I still wonder whether it might be fractured, though there isn’t anything I can do if it is.

I’m not walking normally yet—not that I’ve had much opportunity to walk—but I practice as often as I can, pacing the three steps it takes me to get from one side of the box to the other.

Vigo has only taken me out of my box once since we arrived. He had left me inside with the dead slave while he slept comfortably in his room my first night here. He returned the next day to remove the dead body with the help of his younger cousin, Lorenzo, and the driver who brought us here from the helipad.

While they worked to dispose of the remains, Vigo had taken me to a walk-in shower behind the staircase, something I hadn’t noticed—couldn’t have noticed—when I’d first come down the stairs.

He’d stood and watched as I scrubbed myself clean of the blood that coated my skin. He took my clothes from me but never brought them back. Instead, he dressed me in a plain, baby-blue cotton dress. It has an empire waistline and flares out softly from beneath my breasts, which stops just above my knees. It has cap sleeves that draw tight around my bicep with elastic through the hems, causing the sleeves to pleat and puff over my shoulders in a youthful way.

I wasn’t given a bra or underwear, just the blue dress that was a better fit for a child than a woman. And I’ve been wearing that same blue dress ever since.

There’s another household slave who brings us food and water once a day. The uniform of his slavery is clear and consistent. It’s always blue jeans, bare feet, naked chest, and a black leather dog collar.

Things here had been otherwise uneventful. Though every part of me still ached and seared with the burning need for space to walk and leap and dance, I found myself wondering why the girl had killed herself rather than use the knife to stab me, to attempt to survive.

She’d thought death was a better alternative.

As for me, I suppose I had already endured slavery and uncertainty for so long that I struggled to wrap my mind around why that girl so quickly chose death. It’s not that the thought of taking my own life hadn’t crossed my mind in the past.

It had—ofcourse,it had. Especially on the worst days with Nikolai. But I couldn’t imagine making a split-second decision to slit my throat.

What had Vigo done to her?

How much longer before he does it to me?

I have to force my mind away from the thought whenever it pops into my head. The vision of her body on the floor, blood spurting in pulses as her heart beat it out through the gash in her throat…it threatens to break my sanity.

As much as my mind wants to know, wants to be aware of what is to come to protect me when it finally does, I refuse to ask the other girls. I don’t ask and they don’t offer. Mostly, they cry or scream or try to talk with each other and with me about plotting an escape.

I have no interest in deluding myself into that false hope. I wantnothingto do with an escape plan because I already know it’s impossible. Escape will only lead to punishment and torture when they’re inevitably caught.

Hoping is dangerous and these women are dangerous thinkers.

I’d learned that the blond in the first box next to the staircase had been here a month before I arrived. The brunette in the middle had been here for nearly three months. The girl who committed suicide before my very eyes had been here for a year.

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