CHAPTER 35
STONE
My blood sprayedthe barn siding.
I stared at the splatter, connecting crimson constellations as blood filled my mouth. The metallic taste was warm when it pooled on my gums but instantly cooled when it dribbled down my chin. I only had a second to admire the macabre painting before his knuckles struck my stomach.
A jolt of pain surged into my gut. When my body was slung to the side, the chains around my wrists and ankles yanked me back into place. I pulled myself up, my boots finding the concrete floor covered in dead leaves and blood stains.
My coat had been ripped away, and my shirt was shredded, exposing my chest and stomach to the brutal winter. My joints were stiff and my muscles ached from trying not to shiver.
Four pairs of chains hung from the rafters, and steel plates were bolted to the floor—four more opportunities to restrain four other people inside this barn.
A single light hung from the center of the barn ceiling. It swung slightly overhead. If I craned my neck just enough, I was sure to see the night’s black canvas through a crack.
Though Adora warned me, I still couldn’t understand why I was here or what they wanted from me.
I’d learned that asking questions was useless. People lie. Whether to protect themselves or to protect someone else, they lie. Like how Adora lied to me for six weeks. However, I had to believe it was either to protect everyone from me or to protect me from everyone else.
I was glad she wasn’t here to witness another slash across my stomach and another blow to my back. The man they called Phoenix wasn’t tiring like the white-tailed deer I’d hunted in the mornings when I was younger. Both his eyes and fists were hammered brass.
Each person, I believe, was born into this world with both kindness and wickedness inside them. There was a choice, which to nurture and which to murder. For over a hundred years, I’d coddled the cold. This was how I knew the auric eyes I was looking into weren’t monstrous. Not really. They were deprived and filled with hatred. Whether this man hated himself or the world was still up for debate. Still, his attack on me had become a form of rotten pleasure to hide whatever he didn’t want people to see.
It fed him for the time being.
So he could keep going. But so could I.
It was freezing in the barn, but I kept my eyes open.
I kept them distant and indifferent.
It was agony to breathe, but I didn’t show it.
Though I missed her already, I didn’t let it affect my heart.
I remained solid—stone, not paper.
The three of them wore coats and slacks. They’d loosened the collars of their stark-white shirts, but my blood had stained Phoenix’s sleeves.
They’d demanded my name.
Though I’d refused to give it, I’d learned theirs.
Beck was the younger one. As he blew heat into his cupped hands, he could not watch the torture as he leaned against the barn wall wearing a hat that looked like a head sock.
And then there was Julian—the one I first noticed watching me at the manor from where they had taken me. He hadn’t spoken and hung back with his arms crossed and his knuckles propped under his chin.
Phoenix grabbed my jaw.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked me with spit splashing across my face.
I didn’t react, holding on to the image of Adora in my mind, where we were back at the lighthouse together, and I was watching her undress: her skirts sweeping across the old floors, where dust skipped and settled. She wore a smile, and I wondered if she ever felt freer than the moments she spent with me.
Julian dropped his stance. “Look into his eyes,” he said, taking a step closer. “He’s not human. He’s not even animal.” His attention slid to Beck. “Go find Zeph.”
Beck kicked off the wall. “I don’t know, Jules. His powers would’ve come out by now.”
Phoenix shoved my face to the side. “Or maybe he’s just better at controlling it.”
