Page 121 of Pretty Savage: Defy

The last thing he gave me was the truth.

I don’t know.

He didn’t call me a traitor. He didn’t say I caused the attack.

He also couldn’t tell me it wasn’t my fault.

A warning might have made them check the waitstaff. Stretson and Juliette might never have walked through that door. Rebecca might not be trapped behind a staircase. Every shot fired above me might belong to someone who would have been safe if I’d spoken.

Jack starts back up the stairs.

The torchlight stretches his shadow across the floor, then pulls it away one step at a time.

“Jack.”

He stops but does not turn around.

“If you see Carrson, tell him—”

The words vanish before I decide what I have any right to ask him to say.

Tell Carrson I’m sorry.

Tell him I love him.

Tell him I understand if love is no longer enough.

Jack waits another beat, then continues climbing.

Let Carrson blame me. Let him never forgive me.

Just let him survive.

I lower myself onto the cold stone beside the altar and wrap my arms around my body. I listen for the sound of gunshots, but all I hear are Jack’s footsteps walking back upstairs and the clang of the Vault door shutting and locking.

He leaves me to rot.

Maybe that’s what I deserve.

***

I don’t know how long I remain in the Vault.

At first, I try to ration the water. Small sips with long spaces between them. I set the bottles on opposite ends of the altar and tell myself that distance will make them easier to resist.

It doesn’t work.

Without food, conversation, or daylight to divide the hours, thirst becomes my only reliable measure of time. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Every bit of water sliding down my throat makes my body demand another until I tip the second bottle over my tongue and nothing comes out.

I spend what might be hours crying. Then I spend longer trying not to cry, because tears are another form of moisture I can’t afford to lose.

Eventually, I take the torch from its bracket and examine the Vault more closely.

There are words on the wall in Latin that Rebecca already read to me. The vow of The Order. I leave them alone and inspect the floor instead, crawling on my hands and knees, holding the flame low while my hair falls around my face. Up close I can see the carvings were made by different hands.

Some are crude. The outline of an animal. A crescent moon. Flames cut into the stone with hurried, uneven strokes.

Others are painstakingly detailed. An eye surrounded by individual lashes. A hand with the fingers lightly curled, wearing a ring with a cross on it. The same cross now branded on my chest. A flower with so many thin petals that whoever carved it must have spent hours hunched over this exact patch of floor.