Page 195 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
The dark suit. The spill of him against the concrete. Blood appearing so quickly it feels wrong, too bright, running from his temple, down into the cracks of the parking lot. He does not catch himself. Does not get up. Does not even make the sound I am desperate to hear just to know he is still inside that body.
Something rips out of me then. A scream, his name, maybe both. I do not know. I only know I am lunging toward him with everything I have, legs scrambling, hands reaching, the whole rest of the world gone except for the need to get to him before the dark takes him farther than I can follow.
I never make it.
An arm slams around my waist from behind with enough force to wrench me backward off balance. The breath leaves me in one shocked burst. My body twists instantly, nails clawing, heels scraping uselessly over pavement as I fight to get free, but the hold only tightens. Whoever has me knows how to hold someone who does not want to be held. He drags me back against a chest that feels too solid, too familiar in all the wrong ways.
Then he speaks.
“Easy now Octavia. You used to know how to stay still for me.”
The voice hits before the words do, thick with the kind of ugliness I know in my bones.
By the time the words register, I am already shaking. They are filthy, gutting, dragged up from the deepest part of my past, the kind of thing men used to say when motel walls were thin and my body was not mine enough to protect. Hearing that voice against my ear now, years later, in this parking lot with Silas bleeding on the ground, splits something old and half-buried straight back open.
“No,” I choke out, twisting harder, wild now, all reason gone. “No, get off me, get off me-”
My voice breaks apart against a rough hand.
Something is forced over my mouth. Cloth. A hand. I do not know. I only know the smell is instant, a chemical sting that burns through my nose and throat, turning panic into something even more violent. Jerking my head away, I thrash with everything in me, but the man only hauls me tighter, holding me there while the world starts slipping at the edges.
The parking lot smears.
Light stretches. Shadows bend.
My limbs stop obeying the way they should. Strength drains in horrible, impossible waves, each one taking more of me than the last. I am still fighting, still trying to tear free, still trying to scream around the pressure over my face, but the body doing it no longer feels fully attached to me.
Through the blur, I find Silas again.
He is still on the ground.
Blood at his temple. One arm bent wrong beneath him. The shape of him so still it horrifies me in a way nothing else ever has. The masked man is somewhere near him. Kadin too. Their edges smear in and out of the weak light, but Silas remains the only thing my eyes can hold. I try to reach for him even then, uselessly, hand shaking in the air toward the one person I cannot get to.
Another sound leaves me, torn and swallowed immediately.
The last thing I see is him bleeding into the pavement while the dark closes over everything.
Then even that is gone.
CHAPTER 41
Octavia
Consciousness returns in broken pieces.
First comes the taste in my mouth, chemical and bitter, like something dead was dragged across my tongue while I slept. Then the ache. My head feels packed with wet cotton. Every thought tries to rise through mud. Beneath the heaviness, there is the raw pull in my wrists, a sharp sting where the skin has rubbed itself angry against whatever is binding me.
Then the smell hits.
Motel.
Not memory. Not nightmare. Real.
Mildew trapped in old carpet. Cigarette smoke buried in the curtains. Cheap cleaner failing to hide rot in the bathroom grout. The stale, sour heat of a room that has held too many bodies and too little mercy. The second it floods my nose, terror tears through the haze faster than the chloroform can keep me numb.
My eyes snap open.
The ceiling is stained. The wallpaper is peeling at one corner near the door. A lamp with a yellowed shade throws sick light across the room. Every detail arrives like a blade because every part of it is familiar in the worst possible way. Not this exactroom. Something worse. The species of it. The shape of it. The kind of place where girls are reduced to nothing as men become gods of very small hells.
