Page 12 of Ramshackle
I raise a brow in a mock challenge. “She did thisfor you,” I remind him. Raegan sacrificed herself to give Dane this time with Vera, and all it looks like is a waste of time. “If she’s being tortured or hurt wherever she is just for you to sit and listen toyour sister complain, then you’ll be lucky if I don’t do the same to you.”
His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t argue. Hmm, interesting. Is he feeling guilt over Raegan being gone? Is he wondering what she’s going through for him to have his sister back?
I drop Vera while my eyes are still locked with Dane’s, letting gravity yank her down to crash on the floor. Dane rushes over to her and tries to help her up, but she swats her arm.
“If Raegan is Gordon’s prisoner, then you’re ours. Remember that the next time you think to complain about being bored, because I can always give you far worse things to do.”
She looks around the room for a friendly face. Even Dane’s is tight, like he doesn’t completely disagree with some of what I said.
Vera turns and speed-walks out of the room, slamming a door in the dorm hallway.
Aiden sighs and runs a hand over his head. “So much for subtlety.”
“Fuck subtlety,” Kellan chimes in behind me. “Now, let’s get our girl back.”
Chapter four
Raegan
I lose track ofthe days when all it seems I do is use my gift, get shocked awake, and use my gift again with brief intervals of eating food and taking a shower while sitting on my ass.
If I want to look for a silver lining in anything, it’s that the lightning from the sky is not as painful as it looks. Sure, it feels like tiny needles stabbing me from head to toe until my entire body is a ball of pain and I can’t move after it stops. But that’s where it ends. There’s no lingering aftereffects other than the temporary paralysis. No visible wounds or deeper damage.
It sucks, but only in the moment.
I can handle that.
What I can’t handle is how Gordon is apparently set to wear me to the point of exhaustion each and every day.
He has some predetermined goal in his mind of where he wants me to be or what he wants me to accomplish by the end of a day. If I meet that goal, he’ll ask Holt to carry me back to myroom. If I don’t, he’ll leave me in the training circle to crawl back myself.
One night, I couldn’t make it up the hill, and I passed out there, too tired to move or so much as breathe.
The next day, without any dinner or breakfast, was the worst in all my time here so far.
I’ve promised myself to never let that happen again. Even if it takes me hours to crawl back to the mansion to get some food, I have to do it.
I’m back in the training circle at the end of the day, working on a new trick I’ve learned. I can already see the improvement in my stamina and the decreased time to activate my gift, but this one is…well, the possible applications of it will be terrifying, but I try not to think too hard about it.
I’m trying to convince myself that I’m just in a training boot camp. That my life isn’t in danger, Gordon isn’t going to use me as his weapon like he’d planned before, and I’ll eventually be going home and I’ll be stronger for it.
It’s the only thing keeping me going at this point. That, and the fact that I have no other choice.
My hands press into the concrete slab at the same moment I’ve called on my gift so that the response is almost instant as soon as I make contact. Instead of throwing everything I have into that single piece, I focus my gift into a steady stream, holding half of it back and directing it to reach out to everything that this slab touches. Cracks appear in the current slab and stretch outward, dancing out to every connecting piece of concrete until I’ve reached the entire pile.
And then I use the full power of my gift, and everything I’ve already connected to crumbles to dust.
The pile that took me days to destroy in my early time here is now gone in the span of minutes.
Gordon scribbles notes on his tablet. I don’t know why I look to him for any sort of positive feedback, so I know if I’ll be crawling back tonight or catching the Holt-Express, but I do anyway. He finishes his notes and then looks at me. “Too slow. That took three minutes and forty-nine seconds. You need to stop thinking about the steps in your head and just do it. Go to the next pile and do it again. We’ll keep going tonight until you’re at least under three minutes.”
I release a shaky breath.
Then I move to the next mound and get back to work.
I must make it under three minutes by the time the sun goes down, because Holt has me cradled in his arms and is walking me up the hill to deliver me to my room. I hate that I actually look forward to this. It has nothing to do with the brute who's carrying me and everything to do with the fact that my arms and legs are jelly and I couldn’t bear weight on anything if I wanted to.
I’ve tried talking to Holt before. Maybe to gain an ally or get him to see things from my side. But the guy’s an absolute, stone-cold dick. I think he gets off on shocking me and then insults me for the fact that I have to be carried after my training sessions.
