Page 101 of Thirst
“Sweet Luna.” I pressed my free hand to my mouth.
Everything I’d been wrestling with—my freedom, forgiveness, my stupid, fragile hope—collapsed in on itself, suddenly unimportant.
“Nyx—” Cain started.
I drew a ragged breath. That tiny, reckless optimism I’d let myself feel—that maybe, somehow, we’d get our happy-ever-after—dried up like a salt-soaked plant.
Because while I’d been sitting here sketching moonflowers and imagining a place in his world, Perla had been suffering.
Because of us.
“You should’ve never brought me here,” I told him, voice shaking. “You should’ve let me go back to Quebec.”
He reached out, slow, unthreatening, and eased the phone from my grip. “I’m sorry, firefly. I?—”
“Don’t!” I reared back. “Don’t call me that.”
His fingers twitched on the phone. “Okay—Nyx.” He exhaled heavily. “Look, we need information. Why would he go after Perla? I thought she’s his housekeeper?”
“Because she’s the one person I care about in that fucking lair.” The words tore out of me. I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes. “I should’ve guessed he’d go after her. But I didn’t think he knew.”
I shook my head slowly side to side. “I shouldn’t have made friends with her. I knew better. But we were careful. And now she’s—” My voice splintered.
“Nyx.” Twilight appeared between me and Cain. She gripped my shoulders. “Listen to me.”
I jerked against her hold, one heartbeat away from a scream. “Let. Me. Go. This is your fault—all of you.”
She hung on, mouth grim. “You’re upset. I get it. But you need to calm down. Not for us—for Perla.”
A red-hot buzzing filled my head. “What do you care?”
“Oh, I care.” Her laugh was humorless. “Cain said he told you the story—that Nazaire almost bought me at a blood-slave auction. At the Black Dahlia.”
That brought me up short. I focused on her concerned face. “Yeah. He told me.”
“So I saw what the QCS is like firsthand. Trust me, I know we have to get your friend out of there.” She paused. “Are you listening?”
She waited until I nodded.
“I get that you’re angry, but this isn’t on Cain and it sure as hell isn’t on you. It’s on Nazaire.”
The angry buzz returned, even louder. I twisted against her grip. This time, she released me.
“It is so on Cain,” I bit out. “I wasn’t part of any auctions, my father was.” I rounded on Cain. “You had to tell him I’d taken sanctuary with you. If you didn’t need me to get to him, then why bring me into it? But you had to use me. The weakest link,” I added bitterly.
Cain didn’t even try to deny it. “You’re right.”
The admission hit like a slap. I flinched.
“Except,” he went on, “I never thought you were weak. From the start, I thought there was more to you than anyone saw, and once I got to know you, I was sure of it.” His gaze locked on mine, steady, almost pleading. “You’re fucking incredible, Nyx. If anyone’s strong, it’s you. You’d never have survived the QCS otherwise.”
I stared at him, chest tight. His praise slid under my skin, painful as a silver blade.
Not because I didn’t believe him. I did. But it was too little, too late.
It couldn’t undo those texts to my father. It couldn’t undo Perla, sitting broken in a cell.
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” I said over the grit filling my throat, deliberately echoing Brien’s statement from that first night.
