Page 5 of Consume Me

The fact that she was behind one of these locked doors meant she might not be an ally, though.

Panic rose inside me and the baby began to squirm, reacting to whatever cocktail of hormones my anxiety was producing.

“Calm down,” I ordered myself. Alexander would be looking for me by now. Sarah saw what happened. Unless, she was here.

Unless she was with Norris…

Worrying about that—about her safety—wasn’t going to get me closer to figuring out where I was.

I had two things I needed to do: keep calm and find that girl.

The baby’s heart condition had to come first, but it wasn’t easy to be zen when I was locked away god knows where. It’s what I had to do, though, for both our sakes.

I pounded on the now-locked door I had awoken in. I was done walking around in a daze. I was done waiting for a door to open. I was done.

“Hello?” I yelled. “What kind of cowardly dickheads won’t show themselves? Is this some kind of joke?”

It wasn’t. At least, not the type that ended with finding out your friends were secretly filming you the whole time. I wished it was. I wished that a door would open and my best friends would step out, laughing, and proclaim this the world’s worst gag.

No, this wasn’t a joke. Once life and death were at stake, there was nothing to laugh about. I’d been here before. I’d faced death head on and I’d do it again now.

“My husband is coming for you!” I was screaming and my anger bounced back at me, fueling my rage. He would come. I knew that. The baby kicked hard as if seconding this opinion. He or she was defiant, too.

Good, the baby needed to be a fighter.

He was due in a few weeks and by then he would need all the stubborn tenacity of his mother and his father.

When he underwent surgery.

Which couldn’t happen here.

The realization crashed through me. I wasn’t racing against the clock. I was racing to diffuse a bomb. The baby wasn’t supposed to come yet, but if he did, what would happen?

There would be no one to help either of us. There would be no life-saving surgery. There would be no hope.

That’s what I was searching for: hope. I’d take anything. A scrap. A crumb.

But the longer I looked and found the same bedroom waiting for me, the harder it was to keep the panic locked down. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know why I was here.

Dropping to my knees on the threadbare rug in the little room at the end of the hall, I sent up a prayer.

I prayed for Alexander.

Chapter 3

ALEXANDER

I didn’t speak as I stumbled from the room and made my way to our private quarters. Clara was in every room I passed through and still gone. Her little touches were all over the parlour: red roses on the side table—a sentimental gesture, a book she was reading on the sofa, photos of us with Elizabeth. The bedroom was worse but I found myself there like a lost dog searching for home. Her perfume lingered in the air, her robe lay across the bed. I’d chastised her once for not allowing the housekeeping staff in here as often as she should, but Clara had wanted privacy, especially in the evenings. As I picked up the silk robe, I found myself thankful she was so stubbornly independent.

She wasn’t here. I knew she wouldn’t be. But here, in the most private room in the palace, I felt her presence most strongly while feeling her absence even more. The two sensations warred within me, pulling me in two different directions. I pressed her robe to my face, breathing in her scent—roses and vanilla and home.

I’d expected it to soothe me—to make me feel closer to her as I tried to process her betrayal. Instead, it brought me to my knees. I crumbled, unable to bear the weight of it, as I buried my face into her scent. Tears broke free as I spilled open clutching the silk as though I might find her there somehow.

But she was gone.

She was lost.

I’d failed. I’d promised to protect her, and I had failed. I’d obsessed and I’d planned and she had still been taken. And in her place there was nothing. Her absence stretched before me like a black hole, sucking me into it slowly. It took my control first. It took my faith next. Then it took my hope and left nothing but a shell concealing the splintered remains of my heart.