Page 81 of Obsession
“No.”
Rook hits me again. My lip splits, blood running down my chin in a warm line that makes the humiliation physical. My body tries to turn away even though there’s nowhere to go. The chair holds me exactly where Canon wants me, unable to disappear into silence the way I survived him for years.
“You were always the weak one,” Canon says. “Do you know how exhausting that was? Looking at my eldest son and seeing nothing I could use.”
Tears gather before I can stop them. Pain does that, but so does fury. “You found a use eventually.”
Canon’s hand closes around my jaw, fingers digging into the bruised place Rook already struck. “Don’t get clever.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
His grip tightens until my eyes water harder, but before he can answer, Varina says, “Dad, enough.”
Canon turns his head slowly. “Leave if you can’t stomach it.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out broken and wet, catching somewhere behind the blood in my mouth. “She won’t.”
Varina flinches as if I touched her with something sharper than truth. I hate that I said it, and I hate more that she proves me right by staying exactly where she is, one hand braced against the tool bench.
Canon releases my jaw and straightens. “Eastern corridor. Support pass. Response overlap. Handoff windows. Start with the one Saint moved after your little report.”
I breathe through my mouth because my nose has started clogging with blood. The pain in my face spreads outward with every heartbeat, dull at the edges and sharp where Rook’s knuckles split skin. The straps hold me too tightly to shift, and the chair is cold through my clothes. I lower my gaze to the ringon my finger, silver smeared red where my knuckles scraped in the van, and hold on to the sight of it for as long as I can.
Saint will come.
Hope is a cruel thing in a room like this, but the alternative is Canon’s voice filling every empty place in my head. Rook takes a knife from the bench, and my breath catches before he even turns back toward me.
He drags the blade along the inside of my forearm, shallow enough to keep me useful and sharp enough to turn the skin into fire. My body jerks against the restraints, and the sound that tears out of me echoes off the walls before I can swallow it back.
I shake my head, tears spilling despite every last bit of pride I try to drag around myself. “No.”
Rook cuts again, parallel to the first. Pain explodes through me because my body knows what’s coming this time, and I try to pull away even though there’s nowhere to go. The leather holds my wrist down, turning the attempt into another injury. Blood beads along the fresh line, then runs warm toward my palm.
“Stop,” Varina says.
Canon doesn’t look at her. “Support pass.”
I breathe in, breathe out, and nearly lose the rhythm when Rook presses the flat of the blade against the cuts. The pressure turns the pain into something nauseating, a hot pulse that crawls up my arm and settles behind my teeth.
“No,” I force out.
“Saint won’t thank you for silence if it gets men killed,” Canon says. “You think you’re protecting him, but you don’t even understand the board you’re dying on. Give me the windows, and this changes.”
“It won’t end.”
His smile is small. “No. But it changes.”
The next blow lands in my ribs, driving every bit of air out of me. My body folds as much as the restraints allow. For severalterrifying seconds, nothing comes back. No breath. No sound. When air finally drags in, it comes with a sob I can’t hold back.
Canon crouches in front of me, close enough that I can see the gray in his beard and the old disappointment in his eyes. “You don’t have to be brave, Oisín. No one ever expected that from you.”
The tears won’t stop. I look past him to Varina because some stupid, wounded part of me still wants my sister to choose me once before the end. “Please. Varina, this isn’t the way. You know it isn’t.”
She takes one step forward and then stops when Rook glares at her.
Canon follows my gaze and laughs softly. “She understands survival better than you.”
I stare at her until she looks away. “No. She understands you.”
