After two sips, I stop him so it's not too much, and I watch him wince.
"You could've died," I whisper, trying to hide my tears by tilting my head back, but I know he's already noticed them.
His hand searches for mine, and I watch, mesmerized, as our fingers intertwine.
"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Roxanne."
"Maybe I don't want to get rid of you," I murmur self-consciously.
Heavy silence settles between us as I fidget with my fingers anxiously.
"I know, baby. Come here."
I settle gently beside him, but Damien pulls me closer until my head rests on his shoulder, drawing a pained groan from him.
"I'm hurting you, Damien. Let me stay like before."
"When are you going to understand that I'd rather be hurt and in pain than not feel you next to me, stubborn woman?" His voice is slightly strained.
I lift my gaze to him and see his eyes are closed. With a deep sigh, I force my thoughts to quiet until I slip into darkness.
Chapter 32
Damien
20 Years Ago
Every mistake gets punished. Every order left unfulfilled has consequences.
Those are the first sentences I learned to speak, but I'm never ready for them.
Yesterday, I broke a command from Marzena—I stopped calling her Mother a long time ago. When I watched her drag Berna to another man, my sister barely more than a ghost, passed around to someone new every month, the urge to take a knife and slit her throat nearly overwhelmed me. Except if I disappear, my sister and nephew end up in someone else's hands. Someone who might be even worse than my dear mother.
Can it get worse?I don't know.
"How hard was it to cut his carotid?" the woman in question asks.
I don't answer. There's no point. I learned long ago that her questions don't need responses.
While I sit motionless in the chair inside the cabin next to the house—the same place where so many have met their end—I feel a strange calm settle over me. It's going to hurt. It'll pass. I'll still be breathing tomorrow.
She wouldn't dare kill her own assassin.
Because no matter how many other soldiers she tries to train in these "arts," it seems I inherited her talent for blood and sharp blades.
Except I come with the added advantage of a physique that works in my favor.
"You know better than anyone that a shallow cut can result in a failed mission. And that's exactly what happened."
I was supposed to kill a twelve-year-old kid because his father didn't deliver a file on time. What did that boy do wrong if his father couldn't make the delivery? Nothing. And even though I could call myself a kid too, at fourteen, I knew when I saw his terrified eyes that I'd never known what childhood meant.
I've never known fear because I've breathed it since I learned to walk. I haven't run from pain because I understand that as long as it hurts, it means you're still alive. And that's all that matters, staying alive. For Berna. For Cas.
A friend of my father's promised he'd help us. He didn't give me a timeline, no other details. Just explained that at the right moment, when I'm ready to take power, he'll help me.
Who would support a fourteen-year-old kid in the Council? No one. Especially not an unstable kid with a taste for skinning people alive.
What my mother taught me is an art, an art I learned to use to mask the storm in my mind.
