My heartbeat picks up swiftly, scaring me. I react badly to the sound of children screaming. It’s the most broken thing about me; the part of me I’m always trying to manage. I grew up listening to children screaming. Fell asleep listening to children screaming. Children dying. Children disappearing. Children being tortured, starved, abused. I was one of the lucky ones in the orphanage; I had a big brother who came back sometimes. Who sent food sometimes. Who eventually saved up enough money to get me out. But I was raised with the kids whose parents were slaughtered trying to fight The Reestablishment. There were so many children left behind we’d flood the streets like schools of fish. There were never enough beds. There was never enough food.
We were always, always unprotected.
I force myself to look around, light streaking across my vision as I survey the chaos: dented metal; smears of blood; flashing lights;input verification; crushed glass;input verification. My eyes home in on the gleaming edge of an automatic rifle.Input verification.
I tumble out the open door, hitting the cold ground with a thud, struggling to clear my vision.
Again, the girl screams.
The sound is like a strike to the face. I take a breath, grit my teeth. For years I couldn’t even be around Adam’s kids for too long. When Gigi or Roman cried too much I’d lose it; I’d lash out even though I knew, intellectually, that sometimes kids cried even when they were safe. I could see the horror in Adam’s eyes when I’d lose control. I could see how it killed him to realize I was so messed up.
Stillmessed up.
Eventually I learned how to fake it for his sake— timing my visits, dissociating from the moments I couldn’t escape—but I’ve tried for years to shake it off for real and never could. There’s a rage that lives inside me I’ve never been able to kill. A rage that lives buried, like magma, miles beneath still waters. The rage of a child still too young to fight the monsters when they came calling.
When I hear the girl scream for the third time, I stand.
My head is pounding; my heart is pounding; sweat beads along my brow. I squint at the crush of soldiers in the distance, my anxiety ticking up a notch, and in my haze it takes me a moment to realize they’re not facing me.
Hell, they’re not here for me at all.
They’ve surrounded one of the cottages, its front door flung open to reveal a child so thin she looks skeletal. I blink rapidly, my head steadying, and as my sight sharpens I realize she looks strangely familiar. White-blond hair, super pale skin. Two soldiers are forcing her out the door, handling her so roughly I’m worried she’ll snap in half. Her cheeks are hollow, her body shaking—but she’s looking at something with focused desperation, and when I follow her line of sight I nearly rock back on my heels. There’s a young woman on her knees in the dirt, thrashing violently against the soldiers pinning her arms behind her back. A broad, dark-haired man looms over her, his face in shadow. He’s half-bent, hands planted on her shoulders. And that’s when I remember—
Please
Tell them to be gentle with her
She’s just a child
When I die, they’ll throw her in the asylum
The soldiers aren’t pointing their guns at me, they’re pointing their guns at Rosabelle, and I should be thrilled. This is the perfect diversion. I don’t need to be here. I don’t need to listen to this. This is not my problem. I could run for it. Ishouldrun for it. Steal a vehicle, base jump into the ocean—
“You promised me,” she says, and her voice is unnaturally calm, on the verge of breaking. “Youpromised—”
“Rosa, enough—”
She spits in the man’s face.
A soldier slams the butt of his gun into her eye so hard I hear the crack of bone, and when her sister screams for the fourth time, it practically rewrites my DNA.
“All right, fuck it,” I mutter, grabbing Jeff’s gun from the overturned trike. “Let’s do something stupid.”
Rosabelle
Chapter 13
The impact takes my breath away.
Like a small explosion, light streaks across my vision. I can almost see the sparks as the gun strikes my head, a blinding pain spearing my right eye. The sound of Clara’s scream slows and stretches, warping in the slowing frame rate of the moment. I lift my head and everything blurs.
I regret nothing about spitting in Sebastian’s face.
At the same time, I regret it deeply.
Never have I displayed anything but careful respect for Sebastian, and now I’ve shown my hand. Worse: Clara will suffer for the small, fleeting satisfaction of the moment.
A pyrrhic victory.
