Nausea splashed at the back of my throat, but I fought to keep my expression harmless. Worked to keep the horrified disgust contained, behind that sterile, white wall where it couldn’t lash out and sign our death warrants.
The Lieutenant General shrugged, and in a slow, cultured drawl, added, “But now that I have assessed her for myself, seen just how deeply she’s been affected by the death of her would-be mentor, I’m not entirely certain you haven’t gotten a punishment and a trophy all in one.”
At this, a shaky, breathless huff of laughter puffed over the captain’s lips. “An apt description, sir.”
“Right.” The Lieutenant General beckoned to Colonel Viridian, and readied himself to depart. “A guilty conscious does not make a murderer. And once we get her fitted with suppressors, the issue of her instability will be moot. Oh,” he added. “You’ll have to put in a request for a full-time carer for her, and I suggest you start filing that paperwork now, unless you’re keen to change soiled garments yourself.”
Clearing his throat, the captain’s brows furrowed as he said, “Thank you, sir. I’ll do just that.”
And then he stood, seeing his superiors to the door. Exchanging tepid pleasantries with the man who’d just promised me a living death.
“We’ll see you at the funeral, Rawlings,” the Lieutenant General said from the hall. “Deepest condolences for your loss.”
As I sat there listening to the low buzzing hum of horror as my blood roared in my ears, I couldn’t quite decide which loss the Lieutenant General was referring to—the death of General Tilcot, or…
…Me.
9
Asher closed the door with a measured, steadysnick.
Forehead bumping against the oaken grain, I watched him simply breathe. Eyes closed. Shoulders hunched as he took several dozen steadying inhales, forearm braced against the dark wood as he retreated inside himself.
Alone in the privacy of his mind, where I could no longer sense his every flicking emotion.
And then he laughed.
It was a single bark of sound that did little to bring comfort.
Incredulous, teetering toward outright madness, he laughed without bothering to lift his head from the wood. Shaking with mirth and the release of pent up tension.
“Fuck,” he breathed at length, and scrubbed at his eyes hard enough that I winced for him. “Fuck.”
I swallowed, brow damp with a sickly sheen as disgust rolled through me. The Lieutenant General’s words echoed inside my head, over and over and over until I had to swallow back the acid splashing at the back of my throat or be sick right there in my nest.
“I have to say,” Asher drawled after another series of unhinged, breathless bouts of laughter, “that was fucking incredible, Mila. Brilliant, even.”
It was my turn to shrug, but it did little to quell the horrified nausea still rippling through my system.
Setting his back to the door with a thump, he turned to watch me from beneath the fan of dark, inscrutable lashes. Arms folded behind his back, jaw bunching at the corner as if he’d started several sentences only to bite them in half. “What I’m trying to say,” he said when the silence dragged on, “is that you’ve impressed me, Mila.”
I sneered. “Enough that I might avoid the privileges of being rendered a living corpse?”
A tight, uneasy little grin played at the edge of his lips. “One day at a time, pet.”
“I wonder,” I rasped, and began to peel back my layers with arms that were far,farweaker than anything I’d ever known before. Getting tangled in the sheets as the edges of my temper began to fray at last. “Who gets the profound honor of playing nursemaid to my corpse? Will it be Alicia? I’m sure that green-eyed little traitor would take some sick satisfaction from that. She’ll get to bask in my victimhood and weep big, messy, extravagant tears over the injustice of it all. Or perhaps Beau would enjoy seeing me in such a state. Or perhaps—”
“Mila.” He pushed off the door, arms still loosely clasped behind his back as he approached with careful, measured steps.
“Perhaps you’ll just leave me to rot in the cellar on a bed of spilled rice,” I spat, too tangled up to scramble back. Heart in my throat as the emotions that had been uncorked began to boil over. “Nice and out of the way. It’s cold enough down there that my corpse might last for quite some time without you having to so much as worry about any unseemly messes I can’t help but—”
“Mila,” he said again. Quieter this time, despite the added force he applied to the word.
“Indefinitely comatose!” I hissed, my voice splintering as I clawed at the sheets and only grew more tangled. Kicking and thrashing, I screeched at the fabric that clung worse than the sticky grease of dead elites. “You fucking parasites are sick, Asher,sick—”
He took my wrists in strong, rough hands and bade me to still without filling my veins with molten force.
I wanted to tell him I’d prefer death. Wanted to scream and wail and beg, tell him that he could ask for whatever I had left—ask for whatever lurked in his darkest, most depraved fantasies and I’d give it to avoid such a horrific fate as what the Lieutenant General Hastings envisioned for me.
