Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
If the nurse wakes, she’ll call Cassian. They’ve been sedating me. I don’t want to be sedated anymore, and I need to get that ring, so I’m quiet as I push the blanket off and slide my legs over the bed. Someone dressed me in a white nightgown of the softest cotton. My bare feet touch the carpet by the bed, and I stand. For a moment, I’m dizzy. Swaying. I take hold of the post nearest me until the spell passes.
Focus. The ring. I need to get the ring.
I walk slowly toward the door, warm carpet giving way to cold stone. I open the door with my good hand, keeping the other at my side, not wanting to look at it. It throbs, feels like it weighs a ton. If anything, it should feel lighter.
The church is dark. Moonlight filters in through the stained-glass windows here too. A light is on over the stove. I look for movement. For soldiers. For someone to stop me, but there’s no one. For a moment, I think I’m alone. I think maybe he left me here alone.
A panic begins to rise at the thought, but then I hear voices. Two men.
I know them both.
Cassian.
Jet.
They were both there at the Maestro’s house.
A sliver of light spills out of the study door which stands ajar.
I make my legs move, needing to walk close to the wall for support, fingertips brushing it as I make my way toward the study. Dead lie beneath my feet. Bones in boxes inside the earth. I try not to think about them.
Cassian and Jet are talking in lowered voices. I can’t make out what they’re saying. I’m not here to eavesdrop though. I just need the ring.
I push the door open the rest of the way.
They turn at once, conversation abruptly stopping.
Cassian’s back is to me, so it’s Jet I see first. He’s facing the door. His jaw tenses and he tries not to look at my bandaged hand.
Cassian’s shoulders tighten, shirt stretched tight over them as muscles flex. He turns to look at me and the air shifts. Something crackles between us as Cassian takes me in.
I blink. I can’t get lost in those eyes. Not now.
“Allegra.” Cassian sets his drink on the edge of the desk and comes toward me. “You should be in bed.”
He’s so tall. With my combat boots the difference is a little less, but barefoot, I need to crane my neck to look up at him. He scans my face, gaze shifting to my bandaged hand. I don’t like what I see in it. I don’t like his pity. I was a good little victim, wasn’t I? The one thing I swore I’d never be again. I was exactly that. Malek took me back to that place, back in time and I was exactly that.
“The ring,” I say, my voice sharp, not like me at all.
“Let me take you back to bed, Allegra.”
I shake my head, pull out of his grasp. “I need the ring. Where is it?”
“Tomorrow. It’s late now. Let’s go to bed.”
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.