It dawns on me, again, that these Scorpions can do something I’ve never seen anyone aside from me do. I open my mouth to ask about it, but Skull steps toward me, and I tell myself that this isn’t the best place to get into it. I’ll get answers. Right now, though, I need to go. Scorpius wants me tucked away, nice and neat in their quarters, probably to keep me close in case things change and they decide I need to die.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
I need a safe place to figure out what Tilleo is going to do now. Gartox is dead like he wanted. The sanctum is, surprisingly, intact from the outside looking in, but thinking things are now going to work out for me is asinine. Slave masters and assassins don’t like loose ends. Like Scorpius said, they can’t save everyone.
Skull reaches out like he’s going to take hold of my arm, but before he can, I step back into the same shadow Scorpius just used and melt into it. I hear Bones shout out a curse before the shadows of Gartox’s room give way to the shadows of the girl’s bathing chamber. I wait, tense and ready for Skull and Bones to follow me. I know they can shadow walk too, but I don’t know how hard it is to track someone through them. I don’t even know how I’m using the shadows now to jump distances. Before, I could only slip from room to connected room. This jumping would have been seriously helpful before. Maybe I could have figured out a way to shadow walk all the way out of the ludere entirely.Not that I would have known where to go if I ever did get away from this place.
I sigh as the placid hush of early morning wraps around me like a thick cloak. The last of my fight drains away, and I’m left standing in the dark bathing chamber, feeling empty. My defenses seem to have more holes than the aged tin of the tubs all around me. I lumber from the dark spot I just escaped to and run a hand over my face, exhaustion seeping into my deepest recesses and making me feel worn and used up.
I choose a bathtub soaked in moonlight by the far back window and start to fill it up. Robotically, I pick Wilik’s braids out of my hair, massaging my sore scalp from where Gartox tried to rip chunks out. I can tell that the last dregs of night will heal the bruises by the time I’m done with my bath. I strip out of my bloodstained clothes. A knife drops to the ground as I pull off my chest plate, and I realize I forgot that I hid it there between my shoulder blades.
I shake my head, disappointed in everything that went wrong tonight. I let myself get overwhelmed and then pinned, but what’s worse is I forgot what weapons were on me that I could have used to end that fucking monster. Maybe if I’d remembered, I could have saved Sennet.
That thought floats around in my mind like the moon’s reflection on the water of my slow-filling tub. I absently study the dried blood on my pants that’s from my whipping earlier, and then I look down at the blood on my chest, unable to tell how much is mine and how much is Gartox’s. I feel numb. Like I need to play back every second of this day over and over again just to try to process all that’s happened. My life has completely changed, and yet here I stand in the bathing chamber of the ludere, and there’s nothing different about any of it. I’m still here. I’m still a slave. My future is still uncertain. And none of that means what it did before the Bidding started.
Threadbare washcloths in one hand, and soap and hair cleaner in the other, I step into the lukewarm bath. Water sloshes over the tin rim as I sink into the cooling liquid, hoping it will wash thehorribleof the day away. I scrub furiously at my body, wasting no time in getting the sticky residue of death and violence off my skin. My nose and eyes start to sting as the grime and blood are washed away, and for the second time today, I feel the need to break.
I don’t know if it’s the guilt over not being able to help Sennet and Taria, the brutal, tragic way they were killed, or the relief I feel that my life didn’t end like I thought it would. I shouldn’t be here in this tub, trying to figure out what comes next, but I am.
I am, when they’re not.
Tears trail down my cheeks and plop soundlessly into the dirty bathwater, as though my pain hopes to cleanse the pool of all the blood and anguish. I bite down on a clean rag to help muffle a sob that refuses to be swallowed down and denied.
I open the doors in my mind to the horrors of what happened to them. To me. To the others that have come and gone in my time here. Distress shakes through my limbs as images of Gartox’s sinister face and evil words flicker in my head. It adds new cuts to my soul. I’m already so scarred, so filled with wounds I have no idea how to heal from. I gave the Scorpions a peek, and I couldn’t even say why. The moment I mentioned what Tilleo had done, I unlocked and opened a vault that I should have left well alone. Now, I’m scrambling to shove all the loose memories and emotions back inside when they don’t want to go. I suppose I can’t blame them; who wants to spend their entire existence in a cage?
For the first time in a long time, I try to force my way past the wall in my mind that keeps me from going further than the night I woke up in the room of cages. Maybe it’s knowing that the Scorpions remember that has me trying so hard to be able to do the same. But nothing I do or try uncovers anything new. Just like always, everything beyond that night is gone.Thisis all that I am, no matter how much I might wish otherwise.
I wipe at my eyes, drain the tub, and fill it back up again. I try to find solace in the routine of washing my hair and my body until everything on the outside is once again a perfect mask for what’s going on inside. Fading moonlight kisses my skin, healing the last of my physical wounds and helping to fortify my defenses once more. Brick by brick, I sit in the cool water of the tub and shore myself up. I breathe through the sorrow until, once again, it’s a quiet hum at the back of my mind. And then I step out of the tub and ready myself for whatever is going to come next.
ChapterEighteen
Istare at Wilik’s stool in the dark of the adornment room, wondering if I can smash it without anyone hearing. Arched windows leak pre-dawn light across the table that Figg is usually perched behind, and I can barely make out the togs on the shelves at the back of the room. I move silently and pick out a pair of leather trousers and a tunic from the piles she usually pulls my clothes from. I add chest bindings and underwear to the collection, and then I step back to the other side of the table and start to pull everything on.
It’s strange to be in this space while no one else is here. It feels dead without Figg and Wilik and their fussing and walloping. I hate that their abuse and griping feels normal, that I feel off because they’re not in here with me to administer it. The tunic fits snugly, but I’m too tired to try to find a bigger size. I run a comb through my hair until the teeth can’t find any more tangles, and then I break it. I can’t get away with shattering the stool we’re forced to sit on while she pulls and yanks and slaps at us, but I can ruin her tools well enough. I leave the pieces all over her station in the corner, wishing I could see her face when she waltzes into the room in the morning.
A self-satisfied smile is stretched wide across my mouth as I slip out of the adornment room and turn and run hard into a large body. I reach for the dagger at my back that’s tucked in the waist of my leathers, ready to cut down whoever this is, when a familiar voice whispers down to me.
“What are you doing here?” Leto asks quietly as his arms reach out to steady me.
Relief warms me as I look up into a gaze I would know anywhere.
“What are you doing?” I demand instead, pointedly looking around at the female end of the hall.
Behind me is our bathing chamber. The males bathe on the other side of that, and their quarters are all the way down at the end of the hall.
“I was looking for you actually, but you weren’t in bed,” he admits, and I’m both surprised and confused by that. He rubs at the back of his neck, and a sheepish gleam enters his stare as he shrugs his shoulders, aiming for flippant but falling short. “The final day of the Bidding is later today, so I just thought…”
I study his face, too tired to feel enticed by what he’s saying. Then again, maybe my sleeping quarters aren’t the wisest place to wait out whatever Tilleo or the Scorpions might send my way. Actually, now that I think about it, I’d be dumb to think that isn’t the first place someone would look for me.
It’s the time of day that isn’t quite night or morning, and a purple tint paints the walls of the hall around us. It won’t be long before the sun starts to inch closer and closer to the horizon, and who knows what the day will have in store for me after that.
“Okay,” I offer softly, and amusement flares in my chest when Leto looks pleasantly surprised.
“Really?” he presses and then shakes his head as though he’s a dolt for even questioning it. He grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall and out into the inner walkway of the ludere.
I stiffen when he guides us around a corner without even pausing to check for a guard, and Leto smiles at me over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, the guards were pulled a little while ago. I was up to piss when something happened up at the manor. They were pulled in to help with it,” he assures me, and my stomach drops. “That’s why I thought I’d come get you; no better time to sneak off than when there’s no one around to notice.” Leto smiles, and he’s so genuinely happy about this turn of events that it makes me want to feel it too.
