“Where is she?” It came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Sophia…”
“Tell me, Lucas.”
His hand tightened on mine. “She’s dead.”
I blinked several times, trying to make sense of those words. She couldn’t have died. She was taken to the House. I’d pictured her in a brothel.
Ice spread through my veins, froze me in place. My lips and the tips of my fingers tingled.
He was talking, but my shock smothered the words. My body shook as I visualized her beautiful face, smiling, always watching over me.
“—Sophia?”
I focused on his eyes. “How?”
He hesitated, worry softening his expression and brightening the aquamarine. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
He pressed his lips together, and after a tired sigh, he said, “She was captured with several others. I remembered her as soon as I saw the cause of death. I was going to send them to the Stability bloc, but she spit at me, and the other colonels decided she needed correction, so they—” He shook his head, closing his eyes a moment and swallowing.
“I tried. They—they’re—I didtry, but they wouldn’t stop. Afterward, they decided she should go to the House. She was hauled off toward the transport truck. They pushed her around as they went. She was limping after they—” He shook his head again.
His hand gripped mine so tight his knuckles blanched, and his other lifted like he thought to wipe my tears. Except he didn’t. He let them fall. “Paul pushed her toward the ramp to the truck. She stumbled and caught her foot on the edge. Her hands were tied behind her. She had nothing to brace her fall. She hit her head on the metal platform. We thought she’d knocked herself out, but I went to check on her, and she had no pulse.”
My throat closed, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Stifled and smothered, I gasped for several seconds before I jerked off the couch to run for the door, the open air, the rain. I had my hand on the doorknob before he caught me.
Strong arms circled me, pinning mine against my sides, unbreakable as I struggled to free myself.
“You cannot go out there.”
But I needed air! I needed it.
“Breathe, Sophia!”
I couldn’t. Icouldn’t.
“You can’t go outside like this. It’s storming. It isn’t safe.”
A strangled breath caught in my throat as I choked on the absurdity of the wordsafe. None of us were safe. I’d never besafe.
Tekqua’s voice echoed in my head.
“You my girl.”
“Sisters?”
“Sisters.”
Lucas wouldn’t release me, as if he believed with absolute certainty that his arms were safer than the world outside. His front pressed against my back, body chained around me like iron bands, voice trickling through my panic.
I tried to picture the forest. Warm rain. Cypress.
His scent drifted into my nose instead. Peppermint. Incense.
“Shh. Just breathe. It’s okay to be upset, but you have to breathe. Focus. In. Out. Good. Like that, okay? Keep breathing.”
