“There you are,” Gale huffed. A giant claw mark dripping with blood went across his chest, and I assumed the trap had almost been fatal for him. He waved for me. “Come here.”
“You can’t do this! This is against our beliefs.” I went over to him, pushing his shoulder. “Leave. I’ll wait until you’re gone and release him.”
“He took you from me.” Gale’s mouth warped into an ugly shape.
“I can’t be taken from you. I don’t belong to you.” But the way his eyes tightened with my words disagreed with my assessment.
Thrashing came from behind me, and that animalistic look was in Rot’s eye. The man inside him was gone. The boys struggled to secure the cage to the ground.
The scene flickered away, letting a memory take over my mind.
I was in a cage a lot like this one. Made of wood and sage. The bars burned me when I touched them.
I’d been made to be strong, and yet I was powerless.
A woman with an old style dress, a tight gray bun, and eyes the same shade of blue as mine glared at me with disdain that made me want to shrink.
I was face to face with who I assumed was Levicy Rinah, I’d never come across a person with the same sky blue as mine. I swore her eyes pulled me to her like a magnet.
“I need a real monster.” Her smirk grew.
My chest radiated with agony that wasn’t mine. That I’d never be good enough. I was a defect. And everyone needed to pay for the torture she put me through.
But underneath that anger was fear that made the spit in my throat thick. The kind of fear that made people put fortifications around their hearts.
Even while his eyes were dim in this feral state, I realized he was the only person here I related to.
I didn’t understand these people, but I understood him all too well.
The need to defend him hit hard enough to make my voice break. “Let him go!”
I saw the ragged book clutched in Gale’s hands. The one that went missing while I slept. “You stole that from me?”
The sear of my skin redirected my focus to Rot. The cage he was in was wrapped in sage. Flashes of pale skin showed where it touched him and the cage was smoking.
Gale had used me to hurt Rot.
I tackled Gale. He hadn’t expected me to do that, and we toppled into the mud. The book flew out of his hand and into the swamp with a loud plop, where it would hopefully be lost until the end of time. I hadn’t gotten to read all of it, but that didn’t matter.
So long as another asshole like Gale never laid eyes on it again.
He flipped us until I was under him. His fingers squeezed around my throat, cutting my air off. “You’re so passionate, Talia.”
His eyes narrowed on me, and something about them didn’t sit right with me. Fear I hadn’t felt in a long time welled in me. His normally coiffed hair fell into his eyes, making it worse.
Why did everything inside me shake with fear?
“What are you doing, Gale? She’s one of yours.” One student left his post of tying down the cage.
“She needs to finally learn.” He grunted.
What was he talking about? I’d done everything he wanted from me. Something in the back of my mind nagged at me, but the need for oxygen drowned it out.
I kicked my feet, trying to get him off of me. The young man came up and pulled him away. “Get off her!”
Gale pulled a gun from his jacket and pulled the trigger with a cold, clinical expression that shook me to my core. The explosion when the gun fired made my ears ring painfully. Hot blood coated both of us as the guy hit the ground with a sickening thump.
I froze, hoping to sink into the mud and disappear. The entire time I’d known him, he’d preached against firearms in the field. He barely even approved of the tranquilizer gun. “What are you doing?”
