Like this is normal.
Like I haven't put my body through hell to know the exact amount of pressure it would take to snap my bones.
Like my throat hasn’t felt screams that left scar tissue behind as if it were confetti.
I'm falling forward until I slam into something soft, warm, and alive.
Arms catch me—small hands, trembling fingers that dig into my ribs like they're trying to keep me upright and push me away at the same time.
“Clean her!” He barks at the maiden, before something to his left catches his attention. He disappears, the door flapping shut.
“Merde.” The voice belongs to a girl. Young. Terrified. Her French slips out before she catches it, stuffing the word back down her throat.
My vision swims. Blood pools in my mouth where my teeth cracked against my tongue. Copper and salt. The taste of failure.
I blink, forcing the world into focus.
She's nineteen. Twenty at most.
She quickly grabs for the veil, shoving it over her head. Hair pulled back tight, uniform pressed crisp—one of the new ones they brought on in Monaco, probably.
“You need to—” Her grip tightens on my arms, nails biting through the thin silk of my dress. “Shit. Fuck!”
What is her problem? The maidens are usually calm. Demure. Sedated, most likely. They don't speak.
“Ivanya.” My name falls from her mouth and the world around me caves in.
Two years. Two years I've been gone. Who is this woman?
Gunfire cracks through the yacht.
One shot. Two. Three in rapid succession, the sound ricocheting off steel and glass until it's impossible to tell direction from destruction.
Her hands release me as she flips us around, guarding my body with her own. Another burst of gunfire rips through the deck above, wood splintering, glass shattering, men shouting in languages I stopped trying to translate years ago.
My cheek presses against cold marble.
“Get up!” She orders, grabbing me by the arm and tugging me to my feet.
“Who are you!” I yell, following her through one of the back doors.
She checks every way we go, careful, on alert. Almost professional.
She rips off the veil, grabbing my arm again. “I'm the woman who's going to save you, take you—”
She crashes into someone, causing me to land against her back.
“—hurry!” I look up to see him.
The burning man.
The maiden hesitates, her head turning over her shoulder for a moment, as if checking I was still there. “Yes! Lets go.”
I follow behind her. Behind him. Behind hope. And away from the past two years of torment at the hands of one man.
He releases his grip and air flows into my lungs, pushing memories away.
Asher's focus drops to where Parker's hand pressed into me. The temperature shifts. It’s subtle, but I feel it in the way Atlas goes still beside his brother.
