Page 340 of Coal Hearts

“Run.” He put his head down and dragged me. I ran as fast as I could beside him, but he was faster, hauling me to speeds I’d never reached before.

“W-Where are we going?” I panted over the wind.

“I have to find the gemstone with the Diamond Kiss in it. I deliberately didn’t put it out. I put it back in the cupboard where all his sick prizes wait, but...he noticed.” Sucking in a tattered breath, he ran faster. “I don’t know where he hid it, but I have to find it before a Master does.”

“Why?”

A crack of lightning lit up his body. Brown hair sopping wet, white tight boxers turning transparent between his legs. His back held a crisscross of swollen ligatures.

I tripped. “Oh my God, your back.”

He winced. “Ignore it. Keep running.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I have to find that gemstone!”

I couldn’t take my eyes off his fresh lacerations as he ran as fast as he could, dragging me like I weighed nothing.

Someone had whipped him.

Recently.

A horrible Master had chained him up, punished him with a whip, and then—

I stopped my thoughts before I could picture him being abused any further.

My teeth ground together; the fury that’d manifested in my heart grew sharper claws.

This place had changed me.

It’d rewired my pieces, and I hated that I couldn’t afford to care or cry or be nice anymore. The storm couldn’t wash away the filth in my blood, but it did drown the old me.

It choked me and suffocated me and my rage chose that moment to spill over.

“Enough!” I yanked on his hand.

Our rain-slippery skin broke apart.

He shot forward; I reeled back.

I rubbed at my knuckles where his nails caught me. “I’ve had enough, Peter. We need to get out of this place. Now. Tonight. Immediately.”

Breathing hard, he locked his knees and stopped his trajectory. With shaking hands, he opened the large gemstone he’d scooped from the grass and angled the piece of paper toward an uplight aimed at a hedgerow of a squirrel.

Instantly, my mind shot back to Henri, thanks to one of the Masters calling him a hibernating squirrel.

God!

Grabbing my dripping hair, I tried to yank him out of my head.

Enough.

Enough.

Enough!

Screaming under my breath, I stomped toward Peter and balled my hands. “We have to do something. I can’t stay here. You can’t stay here. No one can stay here.” I shoved him in the chest. “I heard jewels being hurt out there. Someone is having sex in the orchard. Someone screamed. They’re monsters, Peter, and they’re turning me into one. We can’t stay here! A-Are you listening to me? We need to fight. There are thirty of us, and I only saw fifteen or so of them at dinner. We can...” I shrugged as the hopelessness of everything sat like a rusty anchor in my chest. “We have to try.”