Текст книги "Darkest distiny"

Автор книги: Pepper winters

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Chapter Nine

I MADE IT TO MY QUARTERS before the pain crippled me.

Her.

Why did she make the vitalsync core react?

Why did my heart spike, setting off the chain reaction that always happened if I couldn’t control my pulse?

My fingers clawed at the inserted device in my chest. Embedded in my skin, its cables wriggled through my body and were surgically attached to my heart, ensuring every secret I’d ever had, every misery, every hatred, every fucking heartbeat was captured and assessed by those holding my chains.

I staggered as whoever monitored my vitals pressed a button.

Ripping my shirt open, I snarled as the lights on the vitalsync core flashed from green to red.

I didn’t even have time to make it to the couch before the familiar haze flooded me, potent sedatives seeping directly into my bloodstream and stealing my consciousness—not because I’d been affected by a woman for the first time in my miserable life but because the pulse spike probably looked suspiciously like when I tried to kill myself.

Dropping to my knees, I clutched the silver circle stamped into my flesh, clawing at it as my lungs struggled for air and my thoughts bled away. My eyes drifted closed as the fog came for me—the sickening, syrupy smog full of demons and nightmares.

As my shoulder smacked against the ground and I slowly passed out, fragments of the day when they’d inserted this nasty device haunted me.

It’d been a few days after my ninth birthday.

A gift I definitely didn’t want.

The sharp sting of antiseptic, followed by the bitterness of anaesthesia.

They’d buckled me down even before the drugs kicked in. The man who I’d trusted stood over me with a kind, fatherly smile, his warm, firm hands on my shoulders.

They’d cut me open—

I’d come to after surgery, finding myself in this place.

A single nurse had been allowed to tend to my wound, and a technician monitored my newly installed vitalsync core—making sure it read all my bio-data correctly. Not one of them smiled at me, touched me, talked to me.

I was just a job.

And when I was healed enough, they left.

I’d been alone ever since.

Twenty long years, I’d endured unfathomable loneliness and near-constant agony.

If they weren’t harvesting my blood through the cuffs, they were administering poison directly into my heart.

I supposed it was my fault that they kept me living in total agony.

At the beginning of my incarceration, they’d left me to my own devices.

I’d grown stronger as I grew older and I learned my prison well enough to plot my escape. I came close a couple of times. I also almost died a few times.

But when I’d woken after scaling the wall for the fifth time and noticed my hands bandaged from shredding them on broken glass, a cloud of misery soaked into my heart and never left.

Every hour, the vitalsync core fed me another droplet of poison, scrambling my nervous system and adding fuel to my hate. A constant drip of agony that kept me weak and irritable, barely able to go for a walk without my heart pounding and head swimming.

They’d won.

And somehow, two decades had passed and I no longer knew what healthy felt like. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt strong and not burning alive with torment.

Until her.

Until the moment she’d touched me and something happened.

She’d interrupted whatever method they used to keep me subservient and miserable.

And maybe, just maybe, she could be the one I’d been waiting for...

Chapter Ten

I WOKE TO DARKNESS AS ABSOLUTE as the darkness of death.

Shivering so hard my teeth chattered, my soul slowly seeped back into my body, very, very reluctantly.

Where...where am I?

Lying on icy marble and staring into pitch black, I struggled to recall—

Wellness weekend.

Panther.

Him.

Sucking in a breath, I cried out at the bruises ringing my throat. I swallowed on reflex, whimpering at the throbbing agony left over from his fingers.

So he hadn’t finished the job.

And his oversized cat hadn’t eaten me for dinner.

Why?

Why had he stopped when he’d proven he was more than happy to take the lives of all of us for trespassing into his hell?

Forcing myself upright, I braced myself to see the corpses of the women who’d died.

But...nothing.

The cavernous, dark ballroom held no one but me.

Where had he put their bodies?

Why hadn’t he taken mine?

I collapsed back onto the floor, my strength weak and jittery.

I didn’t know how much time passed before I attempted to move again but at least the second time, I wasn’t as hopeless. Gritting my teeth against the pain in my throat, I managed to get onto my knees and from there, it was an exhausting fight to get to my feet.

My shivering didn’t help, making everything that much harder.

I didn’t know why I fought so hard to get moving again or why I even left the ballroom. I’d already attempted escape and found out the impossibility of such a thing. I didn’t know what had happened to my rucksack and I was terribly, horribly alone.

But instinct drove me onward, hope kept me trying.

Stumbling through the palace, leaning against the decorative walls for support and clinging to heartless statues and ancient furniture, I tried to retrace my steps from earlier.

I wanted out of this place.

Even if it killed me.

By the time I stumbled through the foyer and out the double oak-and-dragon doors, I had nothing left and collapsed to my knees right there in the crescent moonlight.

My thick black hair obscured my vision, falling in sheets around my face.

Breathing hard, I tipped up my chin, brushed back my hair, and...

Oh, wow.

The gardens had been set ablaze.

Hundreds of lanterns swung from branches and covered walkways, each flickering like they contained a small sun. Bronze braziers lined the pathways, sending orange flames dancing over the gravel. Pagodas and patios crackled with fire, destructive heat spewing from the tops of black torches.

For the first time since getting off the bus this morning, I finally understood why this place was called Cinderkeep. Not an inch of it was untouched by fire. From the bridges to the courtyards, to the trees and flowers, every inch turned into an ember. Wisteria and oaks were braided with strings of tiny flames. Even the lawn held lamps that looked as if comets had fallen to earth and continued smouldering.

No wonder the main palace had no lights on.

Who would want glaring electricity when magic such as this existed?

I knelt there, unable to look away.

My stress slowly melted, thanks to the meditative beauty of fire.

All I focused on was the flames, feeling as if heaven had somehow merged with hell.

A silhouette moved in my peripheral, wrenching my attention into the maze of flowers. The blackest shadow slinked through the foliage, the yellow and orange of a thousand fires glinting off its pelt.

Staggering to my feet, I braced myself as the panther left the garden and slinked silently up the steps to the front portico of the palace.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

My hair stood on end as the giant beast came close enough to sniff me, its whiskers tickling my forearm. I bit my lip as it prowled around me, its shoulders as tall as my hips, its tail coiling around me like a velveteen vine.

It huffed as it came to a stop in front of me. Its matching fiery eyes met mine and I swear it meant me no harm.

Not that I would touch it.

I wasn’t suicidal enough to stroke a panther and think it would appreciate it.

With a cough like spitting up a hairball, the huge predator spat something at my feet.

I backed up, my throat so bruised I could barely swallow, let alone scream.

With another huff, it nudged the small item it’d just delivered before leaping off the steps and loping into the garden.

It vanished amongst the fire and flame.

I didn’t know what was worse. Being judged by it where I could see it or being hunted by it where I couldn’t.

Another shudder worked through me, thanks to the icy English night.

Judging by the moon, I guessed it was close to two a.m.

I’d gotten used to telling the time based on the location of stars and sunshine. Mainly because I refused to have my cell phone attached to me and my inability to wear a watch. Just like I couldn’t handle corporate or charitable life, I couldn’t even handle the pressure of ticking time.

It reminded me that my only means of survival came across as lazy to other people. That every hour I napped or every minute I did nothing more than watch the clouds passing by was an hour and minute that others scrimped and slaved to survive.

Rubbing my goosebump-covered arms, I shoved those thoughts away.

None of that mattered now.

What did matter was finding shelter or at least a damn blanket so I wouldn’t freeze by morning.

Moving toward the stairs, I eyed the item the panther had dropped off.

Bracing against leftover vertigo from being half-strangled to death, I picked up the small tin box and gingerly wiped the feline saliva off it.

Cracking it open, a single pill rested inside. Quite a large pill. Round and silver and glossy.

Snapping the lid closed, I peered into the garden again.

Why had it brought me this?

Was it poison or a painkiller?

Surely a panther wasn’t intelligent enough to know I hurt and delivered help which meant...did Lucien Ashfall give me this?

Peering at the box again, I clutched it tight and headed into the flaming garden as if I could outrun the memory of his eyes, his touch, his fury.

I didn’t want to think about him.

I never wanted to see him again.

Then hide, before he finds you.

Walking as fast as I could, I headed toward a pavilion in the distance.

* * * * *

Stepping through the round hole in the whitewashed wall, I eyed up yet another pavilion. I’d searched all night. I’d fallen twice thanks to dizziness and wedged a fist in my snarling belly as hunger became unbearable. But no matter how far I’d travelled, each place had been already taken by the twenty-nine—wait...twenty-seven—other women who’d fled into Cinderkeep and vanished.

A few pavilions I’d stumbled into hadn’t had lights on but as I’d hauled myself to the front door and stepped gratefully over the threshold, a vase or curse had been thrown at my head, proving it already had an inhabitant.

I’d almost given up hope.

I’d travelled so far, I couldn’t see the main palace this far across the meadow, but...I might’ve finally gotten lucky.

Sneaking inside the walled courtyard, I cut through the pretty garden with a babbling stream. A covered patio protected a table and chairs, and the roofline of the pavilion swept toward the stars with wing-shaped eaves.

No one shouted at me for trespassing.

No porcelain was thrown my way.

Cracking open the carved door, I hesitantly stepped inside. “Hello?”

And nothing.

Blessedly, thankfully nothing.

My relief almost sent me crashing against the wall.

I’d had dreams of taking a hot bath. Of raiding the cupboards for food. Of drowning my worries in wine. But the exhaustion I’d been fighting ever since my headache first appeared barely gave me enough time to bounce my way off the walls and into the large open-plan suite.

No walls separated the bedroom from the living room. Oriental embroidered cushions littered the floor by the huge window, and the bed was piled high with white fluffy blankets.

With a sob, I staggered across the carpet and crashed face-first onto the mattress.

Pain snatched my broken consciousness, hurling me into sleep just as my fingers went lax.

The tin box with its strange pill tumbled from my grasp and clattered to the floor—

Chapter Eleven

TWO DAYS PASSED.

I spent most of it asleep and healing.

Occasionally, a shrill scream would sound on the breeze, sending my stomach churning. Was that him slaughtering another woman? Was it his panther picking its new favourite snack?

If I was a better person, a stronger person, I might’ve ventured out and tried to help the other captives hiding in their own places of refuge. But...apart from the four or five other girls who were like me—dragged into this unfortunate place by sheer accident—the rest seemed to have come here willingly.

They knew this man.

They knew enough to want to kill him.

That group, I could understand. I didn’t condone it, but I understood it. It was the others who wanted to sleep with him and have his illegitimate child that I didn’t get.

Who was this man who invoked such attempts? And why did I keep remembering the way he’d shuddered as I’d crashed against him? The way he’d groaned with pain as he’d bellowed for everyone to scram.

Not my problem.

Shoving such thoughts far, far away, I worked my way through the fresh grapes I’d found in the fridge. Turned out, Marcus Ward had been telling the truth. Each pavilion was fully stocked with food and if I could forget what happened two days ago and put aside my constant terror, I could almost pretend this was yet another resort in another nameless location, designed to protect me from a world I wasn’t equipped to exist in.

And the best part?

The cupboards had wine.

Unique and fancy wine, not just red and white. Earthen jars labelled with apple-blossom, sour pear, and cherry. Each fragrant and floral. And really rather potent.

Plopping another grape into my mouth, I braced myself for the pain of swallowing and self-medicated with another sip of apple-blossom wine. The bruises had steadily changed in colour, lacing my throat with an unwanted necklace from his fingers. But as long as I didn’t look in the mirror and stayed a tad tipsy from the wine, I could forget.

With my head slightly swimming and lingering pain gnawing, I took my feast to the cushions by the window.

Stress tried to remind me that lounging around was the exact opposite of what I should do in this scenario. Fear tried to make me normal by whispering I should return to the ballroom and see if I could find my rucksack so I could call my bodyguard to get me out.

But...I’d reached critical overload.

And, from prior experience, if I encountered even an ounce of discomfort now, I’d probably die of a stroke or heart attack.

And so, I did the only thing I could do.

I snuggled up in a puddle of sunshine, polished off the exotic wine, and drifted back to sleep where monsters couldn’t find me.

* * * * *

I stretched where I lay outside on the lawn.

The English sunshine did its best to be as warm as the tropics and I took full advantage by dragging a few cushions outside and parking myself in its golden glow.

Another day had passed, and I still hadn’t dared set foot out of my sanctuary.

Guilt tried to stress me out and panic at having my freedom stolen did its best to ruin my attempts at staying calm, but realistically...how was this any different to my life out there?

I lived in a prison of my mind’s own making, even as I travelled and seemed to live the lifestyle of an arrogant, spoiled heiress. I might flit from place to place, searching for that one spot that could cure me, but nothing felt safe. Nothing felt right. And I’d existed in this cage for seven long years.

In a way, I was already well used to captivity.

At least my bruised neck felt better, and I no longer felt as if I’d pass out if another surprise appeared.

The past three days had given me plenty of time to go over my situation. I’d drawn a quick map of the estate from my hazy memories and couldn’t understand why there were so many separate buildings all connected with a network of gardens, corridors, and pathways.

The only explanation I could come up with was...this wasn’t the first time a bunch of women had been thrown in here. The sprawling accommodations were designed to...I didn’t know. Give each girl space? Provide a sense of safety? Separate her from the others so when Lucien and his panther went hunting, no one heard her screams?

I shivered and squeezed my eyes tighter.

You promised you weren’t going to think about it.

The only thing I should focus on was lowering the crazy amount of cortisol still in my system and finding a way to be somewhat normal. Once my heart no longer palpitated and I wasn’t borderline passing out, then I would be brave enough to return to the main palace, request an audience with a killer, and see if rational conversation could enable my release.

After all...it was Tuesday.

The spa weekend was only meant to be for a weekend.

God, Rook. How did anyone mistake you for a savant? You’re an idiot.

I exhaled heavily.

My ideas of walking out of this place were as fantastical as having a panther for a pet.

My ears twitched, latching onto a sound I hadn’t heard since the night in the ballroom.

Footsteps.

Soft and deliberately quiet as if someone was well used to stalking.

I had two choices.

Sit up and meet my end awake or...play dead and hope it didn’t hurt too much.

I hated my lack of courage as I forced my body to completely relax, sprawling on the grass like I didn’t have a care in the world. Softening my face and keeping my eyes closed, I focused on keeping my breathing low as a shadow fell over me.

Not a cloud.

Not a bird.

A shadow as tall and as cold as the Grim Reaper himself.

Something wet touched my hand, followed by the needling brushes of whiskers.

It took every trick to stay ‘asleep’ and not cower away from the quiet chuffing of the panther as it sniffed its way up my arm. Its huge paws caught in my long hair that I’d fanned above my head, the gentle tugging on my scalp sending a wash of goosebumps down my spine.

“Sleeping?” Lucien hissed, his voice barely above a pissed off whisper. “How the hell is she sleeping? Why isn’t she whimpering or plotting my demise like the others?”

The panther huffed as if replying, the heavy thuds of its paws circling me to return to the shadow’s side.

My heart pounded as the air changed, turning sharp and potent the longer Lucien stood over me. With a quiet curse, he padded toward my commandeered pavilion.

I sighed heavily as I had a short reprieve while he investigated whatever he’d come to see.

“She’s even eaten most of the food and drank the wine,” he muttered, his shadow returning to block my sun. The panther grumbled as if commiserating with my oddness, only for Lucien to add, “How does she even have an appetite?” He toed my ankle, our bare skin prickling with connection.

He must be barefoot again.

No wonder I’d barely heard him arrive.

“Where did they find such a useless spy?”

Spy?

There were spies now? Seducers and assassins and now spies?

Anyone with eyes could tell I didn’t fit into any of those categories.

My stomach tightened at how I must seem to him: a mentally unstable woman who’d made herself quite at home, stuffing her face, drinking her fill, and lounging about in a negligee.

I’d found clothes in the wardrobe—beautiful gowns and skirts, blouses and trousers, but when my system was this strung out, anything tight or restricting only added to my misery. So I’d opted for a cream satin nightgown with long flowing sleeves and a hem long enough to trail on the floor. Its matching robe had embroidered peonies on the front. It covered a lot, yet was undeniably feminine and offered no protection whatsoever if he wanted to hurt me.

“She’s drunk,” he spat. “She drank so much, she’s passed out in a stupor.”

The panther grunted and sniffed my foot.

“You’d think they’d get sick of this after twenty years. I won’t fall for their tricks, and they can’t kill me. Yet they keep fucking trying.”

It took all my effort to keep my eyes closed and continue faking sleep, especially as curiosity scratched to know more. To look at him. To see why his tone held both exhaustion and fury, despair and wrath.

His shadow suddenly dropped beside me, shading half my face and leaving the other growing warm with sunshine. I did my best not to react, even as his fingertips landed on my brow, ran down my nose, and traced my bottom lip.

“She looks so weak,” he breathed as if he truly believed I’d passed out from too much alcohol. “So useless.”

My heart took offence even though I thought those things on a daily basis.

“Their little games are getting so tiresome,” he sighed, pulling his hand away.

I expected him to rise to his feet again, but he didn’t move. Time ticked past and his closeness made my skin prickle. The longer he looked at me, the more I felt him in every part. My bones. My blood. My breath.

His panther slinked to my other side, hemming me in and making my pulse thunder in my ears.

Lucien’s fingertips suddenly brushed my wrist.

My body betrayed me; a small flinch escaped.

He didn’t seem to notice as he leaned closer. So close I could smell him. Cedar and citrus and the bitter bite of blood.

Blood?

I froze.

Had he killed another girl before coming here?

If I opened my eyes, would I see his hands covered in red and ready to spill mine?

“It’s happened again,” he muttered. “The pain is less when I’m near her...”

The panther hmphed, making it seem as if this man and beast actually held a conversation.

“How is she doing that?”

The way Lucien spoke to it hinted this wasn’t the first time. The memory of what the other girls had said about him raising it as a pet made it seem as if he’d been living alone for a very long time with nothing but a predator for company.

My heart pinched.

Was that true?

Had he been trapped in this brutally beautiful place for twenty years?

“I should kill her,” he suddenly snarled, making my muscles tense. “Get it over with.” Soaring to his feet, his shadow drenched my body again.

I stopped breathing.

I fought the urge to brace.

How would he do it?

What would Frank and the board of Snowflake Corp think when no one could find me?

Please, be quick.

I hovered on that precipice, waiting for the end to come but...he didn’t strike.

Endless minutes ticked past as if he studied me, judged me, and found me not worth his time.

Finally, he exhaled and backed up. “Ugh, forget it.”

The panther sniffed my shoulder as if assuring itself that I was still alive before padding toward its master.

“I’ll wait to see what game she’s playing. I can always kill her tomorrow.”

The panther huffed.

Their shadows vanished.

And my body turned to soup on the grass as I gave in to the shaky relief that I’d somehow survived another day.