Page 10 of Pretty Savage: Defy

The crowd inhales as one.

Sam’s reached me now. She grips my arm so hard it’s painful and drags me, shoving people aside. With both of us working together, slowly we reach the front.

What I see nearly shatters me.

Carrson.

Kneeling on the ground, shirtless, head bowed, with his back toward me. Behind him stands a dark-haired man who raises his arm and then brings it slashing down.

Crack.

A whip. That’s the sound I heard.

The lash kisses Carrson’s skin. A red line blooms and crosses a dozen others. Blood threads and merges, running in thin streams until his back is a road map of suffering.

“The High Father.” Sam lets out a ragged sob. “Carrson’s dad.”

The words slam into me, wrenching the air from my lungs.

Carr Ashford.

Returned at last from whatever mission in the Middle East had kept him away. The day Carrson has dreaded has finally come.

Carr looms before me, but I don’t let myself look at him. I can’t. Instead, my gaze stays on Carrson. His arms hang loose at his sides, unbound yet limp, as if shackled by something worse than rope.

“I don’t get it,” I whisper to Sam. “Why is he just sitting there? Why isn’t he fighting back?”

“When you’ve spent your life on your knees,” her voice wavers, “you forget it’s possible to rise.”

Carrson’s dad raises his arm again. High above his head, poised to strike.

I don’t think.

I move.

I hurl myself between them. Throw up my hand and yell, “Stop!”

The coil of leather snaps downward, and I squeeze my eyes shut, every muscle bracing for the explosion of pain. I can almost feel it already, the air splitting, the sting about to tear across my skin—

One second.

Two.

Nothing lands.

Silence swallows the hall. Deprived of vision, my other senses sharpen. I can smell it. The bite of oiled leather. The iron tang of Carrson’s blood. Long minutes pass until I look.

He stands before me.

Carr Ashford. More legend than man.

Rich brown hair. Eyes black as obsidian. Carved jaw. His features are achingly familiar, but this version is older, colder.

He’s Carrson.

If Carrson were made of stone.

The resemblance is so striking that my stomach lurches. Bile rises in the back of my throat. My body wants to recoil, but Carr stares at me with an anticipatory gleam in his eyes like he can’t wait to watch me break.