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“I won’t ever compromise on keeping you safe.”
Her silence stretched awhile. “I don’t know if I will ever get over what you did.”
My stomach seemed full of cement. She hated me right now, or at least the part of me that had killed the boy. Though ever, like never, was a silly word. People could get over a shitload more than they gave themselves credit for, if they tried.
“Killing a boy in front of me, a boy who was helping us, will never seem right. Even if there is some horrible logic to it.”
There was the never word too. How did I fix this? A boy? He was a guard first of all and a young man, an adult. She was ignoring that. A criminal who’d likely maimed a few in his rise to becoming a guard here. That he’d baulked at women being tortured, or men being skinned, was a point in his favor but he was no angel.
“You’d have died, if I’d done anything else.”
This time she remained silent.
A few times during the night I felt her tug to get loose but I woke and held her to me.
Nevertheless, when I woke at the approach of boots outside the door, she was huddled in the corner of the room, her head hung low, as if she tried to sleep sitting up.
“C’mon!” yelled a guard. “Gregor wants you chained up again, Pieter. To the door, if you please, sir.” He laughed at his aping of Gregor’s voice.
Kak. Jazmine was awake too and staring at me.
I went to the door, turned, and shoved my wrists at the hatch. Once I was manacled, Gregor himself entered with three of his guards. Overkill, as always, but I guess being sure of men like me was how he stayed alive. It wouldn’t help him in the end. I would kill this man one day, unless he killed me first.
“Good morning, you two!” His booming voice brought Jazmine to her feet, wary.
She was right. The more cheerful Gregor was, the nastier his surprises. From the neatness of his scalp, he’d recently shaved it. His blue eyes fastened on me while his men added more leather to my bonds and shook out the bag they used on my head.
Fok. What was up?
“You are wondering, sir? Hmm. Today is Saturday!” He swept his arm about to include Jazmine. “Tomorrow the client arrives for a show. And, after I told them of your little ruckus last night, they were most happy to try something I suggested. You.” He prodded my chest with his leather-gripped cane. “Are going to do something special. Hmm?”
What the fuck did special mean? If there was one man who could scare me, if I relaxed an inch, it was this one. The client probably just nodded a yes to all his ideas.
Though she was trying to look calm, I could see the fright in Jazmine’s eyes. They were taking me away from her so she’d be terrified when next she saw me. I hadn’t even managed to explain the killing to her yet.
I dared a comment to her. “Don’t worry.”
“The bag, please.” Gregor whacked his cane across my chest. “Quiet, Pieter, or I shall do something to her now.”
I seethed inside but I smiled as they bagged me again.
This bastard deserved death like no one else. I’d never before spent so much time imagining so many ways to kill another human.
Chapter 16
It was Sunday.
They didn’t bring me breakfast, though the cleaning lady came in and quietly left a paper plate with a pile of bandages, gauze swabs and iodine over against the wall. I didn’t go closer but I thought I glimpsed a needle and thread too. She’d smiled sadly before leaving.
No breakfast? To make me hungry? Or were they afraid I’d throw up when they did whatever they were going to do to me?
The boy’s death never left me, but it receded before this new threat.
My headache vied with the nausea and the trembles. I was a big ball of cheerful healthiness.
Obviously, the bandages weren’t needed, yet. They were to make me nervous. Despite resolving not to look at it, the plate drew my eye. Gregor was capable of anything, both deliberately scaring me for no reason, and getting Pieter to do something that would hurt me terribly.
What was it to be? Iodine could mean wounds. Cutting. Piercing.
