Instantly, my legs feel heavy. Numbness spreads out in a strange, cold wave. I take a step, another step, and the door’s right there.
“Oh, shit,” I mumble, reaching out. But I don’t make it.
Instead, I sink to the floor, twisting so that I don’t end up on Rosie.
“Mama,” my little girl says, squirming in my numb arms. She pulls herself free and wails.
Satya looms over me. The old woman kneels and scoops Rosie into her arms.
“Shush now, baby, I’ve got you.” She rocks Rosie, staring at me impassively. “Don’t worry. I was told to bring her back alive.”
I try to say, “No, you fucking bitch, give her back,” but the words come out like mush. My face feels heavy and numb. My tongue is a cinderblock. I reach for Satya, but the old woman lightly kicks my hand away.
I can’t stop them. I can’t even move. I don’t know what she did to me. Maybe I’m dying. Which means I’ve failed my daughter and I’ll never see my husband again.
I try to crawl after them, but I can’t move.
Satya slips out the door with Rosie in her arms as blackness takes me.
MASS
My fist cracks into Gabe’s face. His head lolls as spit and blood leak from his mouth onto the bare concrete floor. “Tell me how you did it.” I hit him again. He only groans in response. “Tell me how!”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles and manages to spit. A tooth rattles onto the floor. “Allie… is Allie alive…”
I grab him by the hair and press a blade against his exposed neck. “What the fuck do you care about your sister? You sold her to Medved. You gave that bastard my daughter.”
“No.”
“Make me believe you.”
“I wouldn’t…”
I snarl and flick the knife across his face, slicing his cheek and straight back through his ear. I lop off the top half, leaving an ugly stub behind. He lets out a garbled moan as blood rolls down his face, soaking into his sweaty and ruined shirt.
I kick his chair over and leave him to bleed.
“He doesn’t know shit,” I say to Lucy, throwing the knife onto the table. It rattles against an array of torture devices. I might regret disfiguring my brother-in-law one day, but right now, I have no room in my heart for anything but finding my daughter. “Not a goddamn thing.” I’m tempted to reach for a particularly well-used pair of pliers just to ease some of this rage.
Lucy only shakes her head. “She’s awake. You should go to her.”
A pulse rips down into my chest. I hurry past Lucy and practically run to the medical wing. I have one focus and only one focus right now.
My wife. My Allie.
She cuts through the pain.
How could this have happened? When I’ve worked most of my life to build a fortress worthy of a Dragon? Only for it to be infiltrated by traitors and spies.
I was too soft.
I let myself trust the people around me.
Never again.
I burst into her room. A nurse is there checking a line and making a note in her chart. I ignore the woman and throw myself down at Allie’s side, taking her hand in mine. It’s warm and smooth.
My wife blinks at me, confused and still only half awake. “Mass,” she whispers.
