“Tick tock goes the clock,” she told me. “What are you waiting for?”
“Every story has a twist, some even I didn’t expect,” I replied, turning from the hummingbird to the little sinner.
She was standing with her hands folded at her hips, her chin close to her chest, her breathing steady rather than short and heaving as it had been in that corset. “From the stories your brothers have told me, there isn’t much you don’t account for.”
My smile grew. “So, they do talk about me.”
“It shouldn’t be so surprising, considering what you’ve been doing. Those kids are all home now because of you,” she informed me. “Some will need a lifetime of therapy, but they’re with adults they can learn to trust again.”
“Hmm,” I hummed. “Don’t take it as my heart softening, dear wild rose.”
“You don’t have a heart, Azrael,” she commented evenly. “But you do have morals. Children are too innocent for you to just leave to the wolves.”
I angled my head, studying the way her unwashed hair fell in strands around her face and shoulders. She did her best to keep it out of her face, not wanting their scent anywhere near her, I assumed, knowing that she would rather have it down. “Braid your hair,” I told her, not wanting her mind distracted by anything that wasn’t me. “Did you call me just to let me know that they were gossiping? I always know they gossip, what else can they do butgossip?”
But the rose had gone very quiet. “You’re with her?”
I watched as Scarlett stepped around the chair and sat down. She grabbed the brush and began brushing through her hair, the ends already tangled again from the mess that was left. I needed a bigger water basin, perhaps a separate one for her hair. I hated seeing what they left behind just as much as she hated feeling it. Me being her betrothed now, it meant that I could be in here before and after her littlesessionswith the Leaders. It meant I could choose to be in the room with them while they had them.
Would I?
Yes.
I wouldn’t look away. I would watch what they did to her, count the seconds, memorize those grunts, because it’s what she had done. If I couldn’t stop it, I would allow it to fester within me, just as it was festering inside her.
“Yes,” I said simply, watching as she divided her hair into two sections.
“Tell me about her. Anything.”
“Why? So you can sympathize? So you can fester? So you can tell your precious husband all about it and sit and stew in your perpetual anger?”
“So I can know the girl who got your attention.”
I chuckled. “Nobody has gotten my attention, rose. Be still your romantic heart, I feel no such things.”
“Wait,” she said, as if knowing I was about to hang up. “Malachi wants to speak with you. He believed it was a waste of time trying to text you, so he asked us all if we could relay the message.”
The timing wasn’t optimal, but alas, how could I say no to father dearest? “Message relayed.” I hung up, sliding the phone into my pocket. I’d throw it away the second I stepped out of the church’s front doors. “Things are shifting, little sinner,” I told her, walking towards the table in front of her. “The spades are cracking, the castle slowly crumbling from the inside out. You must be patient now and listen. Do you understand me?”
She tapped her finger as she braided her hair.
“Good. I have unexpected business to attend to this afternoon, so I won’t be staying,” I told her, watching her shoulders fall a hair. “But don’t worry, you won’t have any visitors this week, and if you do, they will answer to me. Change into your clothes when you are done braiding your hair. Those braids will be a symbol of what we are doing.”
Without hesitation, she finished braiding her hair, using the ties in the drawer of her desk to tie them off before she stood and found her pile of church clothes.
Before I turned away, I watched as she hesitated, running her fingers down her stomach and the skirt, gripping the hem of it in her soft hands.
I turned away, wondering if she has hesitated taking off these dresses during our last sessions. If she loved them so much, she should have some of her own.
Minutes later, I heard the chair shift, and I turned just in time to see her removing her hands from the back of it.
I studied her carefully as she adjusted herself in the uncomfortable church clothes she was always forced to wear. “Surprised?”
She tapped her finger.
I lifted my chin. “While I am a fan of consent, right now, if I asked, you would say yes. Not because you wanted to, but because you have to. Until you are able to tell me ‘no’ when I ask you to do something, respect is all you’ll be given.”
I caught the slight tilt of her chin before she readjusted herself. To anyone else, she would have been as still as a statue, but I have spent years studying the human form, studying muscles, shifts in demeanor, energy, pupil reactions. I saw it all, even the small shifts of a person groomed into submission. “Watching someone change is not respectful,” I explained to her. “When was the last time you were out from under the view of a camera, besides the sessions you have shared with me?”
