Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (33 page)

The once rich rose colored carpet had faded to a mucus pink. The bare mattresses of the two twin beds were stained and looked as if mold had taken hold.
 

A dankness saturated the room, a smell of rotting moisture that I knew would never really fade.

Scabbard exited. The door shut behind him.

An opportunity had finally presented itself and I wasn’t going to squander it.

I rattled my arms and carefully studied the rod. It was bolted to the walls.
 

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I pulled as hard as I could.

Bones groaned. Metal scraped against skin until blood trickled down my wrist.

But I couldn’t slide my hands through the cuffs. They were too tight.

“Don’t do that.”

I jerked.

He emerged from the bathroom like a phantom.

He’d always been thin and lanky, but now it hurt to see the cheekbones jutting from his face, the outline of every bone in his large hands.
 

A hard gauntness claimed him, the same wasted look I sometimes saw at hospitals when disease slowly ate humans away from the inside.
 

“Ian,” I said softly. “Are you all right?”

Eyes once dark and rich with kindness and friendship were now empty.

“You shouldn’t do that.”

What had they done to him?
 

I glanced at the pipe in his hands and wondered if that was how he’d gotten away.

“It’s all right. Scabbard’s gone.”

He stared. I had to snap him out of it.

“Come on. Help me out of these cuffs and we can get out of here. If you find something to unscrew the bolts on that rod, I can slide out.”

I rattled the cuffs and slid closer to one end of the rod.

“I told you to stop doing that, Dad.”

I slowly turned to look at him. “What?”

“You need to be punished for what you did.”

No recognition reflected in his eyes.

Fear curdled in my stomach. “Ian, it’s me —“

The first strike came swift and unexpected.

The pipe pummeled my shoulder with enough force to slam me against the wall.

Pain shattered through me. I screamed.

“No, Ian! What are you —“

Again, he struck.

The back of my thigh.

Excruciating agony crushed my hip, my bone.

My leg collapsed. I hung off the rod, the excess weight worsening the pain cleaving my shoulder blade.

“Ian…”

My mind trembled and flailed, poised to flee this filthy, weakened body, no longer able to understand what tied me here.

I gritted my teeth.

Stay
.

Ian loomed over me, an unrecognizable shadow.

“I want it to stop,” he said flatly.

“I know.” God, what had happened to him? “I know.”
 

He wasn’t an Aquidae. No Origin scar marked his neck.

But he wasn’t Ian any more, either.

“It’s me,” I said shakily. “Kendra.”

He shook his head, lifted his arm. The edge of the pipe glinted.

“I know what you did.”

“Aubrey’s waiting for you back at Haverleau. Neo and Redgrrrl, remember?”

His arm froze.

“Please, Ian. Please, please.” Tears and blood dripped against my lip. “It’s me.”

“You killed Mira, Dad.”
 

“I’m not him,” I whispered. I had no strength left. “Look at me.”

“Why did you have to kill Mira?” His voice cracked, almost a sob. “She was only five. And Mom. If I had been there, you would’ve killed me, too.”

“Your dad’s not here anymore.” He was battling a monster only he could see. “He can’t hurt you —“

“You’re always inside me. You never leave me alone. I want you to leave me alone!”

His voice rose on an agonizing scream.

He was hallucinating, untethered in a place I could no longer reach.

Bastien had made sure of that.

“You know me,” I whispered.

But the words were weak, a lie staining my lips.

Because I wasn’t sure who I was.

Ian wearily shook his head.

“I just want it to stop,” he said dully. “I need to stop you.”

The pipe whistled through the air.

That was when I caught myself in another lie.

I had enough strength to keep screaming.

***

The dark returned.

Or maybe it had never left.

Maybe none of this was real.

The dark whispered.

“Was it Scabbard?”
 

It was Cam. No, Julian.

I could no longer tell the difference.

There was only pain as if every part of me had been snapped, broken, stomped, run over and then put back together.

But the bones didn’t fit right, the muscles bruised so badly they no longer recognized what they were supposed to be.

It felt as if I’d been put back together wrong.

My breaths were ragged and loud, thunderous in my ear, melding with the water.

In. Out.

Drip
.

“Kendra.” Again, a voice. “Was it Scabbard?”

Ribs shifted in. Out.
 

Drip
.

Pulse continued beating.

Drip
.

I was still here.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “It was Scabbard.”

I floated, clinging to the never-ending rhythm, knowing that if I let go I would be lost forever.

In.

Drip
.

Out.

Drip
.

The dark whispered again.

Leah emerged, her sharp face greedily latching on to my wounds, Virtue emanating from her hands in a soft glow.

And that was when I knew it wasn’t over.

It was just beginning.

TWENTY

Time was marked by what did or did not exist.

Food and water. Hunger and thirst.

Ian. No Ian.

Leah. No Leah.

There was pain.

Then the erasure of that pain.

And the cycle began again.

Kendra
.

Her voice began echoing again, louder than it ever had before. I saw her sometimes, standing along the edge of fading sunlight.

No. She was a memory.

Not real.

Kendra, fight.

My mind had begun to play tricks.

Survive.

Water’s steady beat pulsed.

If pain didn’t last, if no evidence remained of its existence, was it real?

***

Another cycle. Bastien reappeared in the light.

He nodded at Scabbard and Sawyer. “Take them.”

Locks snapped and metal clanged to the floor. I couldn’t see Julian, but caught a glimpse of Cam as Scabbard pulled him through a slice of sunlight.
 

He stumbled, his head down, too weak to resist.

“Where are you taking them?” It came out in a hoarse whisper.

Please don’t take them to Ian.

“They will not be harmed.” Amusement colored his voice as if he knew what I was thinking. “I’m simply moving them to another room. I’d like to converse with you privately.”

The unseen door shut with a click of finality.

Sunlight couldn’t warm the cold of his eyes. “I take it your reunion with Mr. MacAllister didn’t go as you imagined.”

Don’t let him in
. “All this just to protect your turning blades. You must be desperate.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Ian was close so you had Scabbard take him out.”

Bastien smiled. “Kendra, I have no doubt you’ll find the blades on your own soon. This was never about that.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

He didn’t want to kill me. Not yet, at least.

He’d beaten and tortured me, but that wasn’t it either.
 

“This was always about truth. About stripping everything away so you can see yourself as you are. You cannot destroy me, Kendra. The possibility of me exists in every mortal. Killing me would be like trying to remove your own shadow.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Are you sure?” He stepped forward, arms clasped behind his back. “Cam seeks the acceptance he is unable to give. Julian wants unconditional love, while he attaches conditions on every affection he gives. Mortals search for what they are unable to give, what they lack within themselves. You’re very predictable creatures.”

“And you think you know what I want.”

“I’ve watched you your entire life. Of course I do.”
 

“Then you know I want you to die. Slowly.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure you do but that’s not what drives you. That’s not what had you digging up your mother’s grave. That’s not what made you abandon your bicycle on the side of the road.”

My pulse skipped.

“Oh, yes. I’ve already shown you what you want, Kendra.” He tilted his head and his voice changed, pitching higher, sweeter. A voice of care and concern - a mother’s voice. “You might get hurt riding that bicycle. Won’t you come play with my daughter on the sand?”

Memories resurfaced of a dusty Texan spring, of a mother and daughter dancing across golden sand and lavender waters. A mother with pale green eyes who’d shamed me with her love and kindness into giving up my silly, rusted bicycle.
 

When I’d gone home, I’d lied and told my mother the bike was stolen.

Revulsion crawled up my throat. “You.”

The eyes were always the same.

“You want love.” Bastien slowly circled me, his eyes trailing over my body. “The love your mother deprived you, the love your uncle and aunt had. You want intimacy and yet you hold everyone at a distance. You want the love you are unable to give, what you withhold from your Warrior Prince.”

I was too exhausted to fight off his words. They seeped into my skin, worming its way through my veins like a poison.

“Love threatens you because it goes against what the
sondaleur
is fated to be. Powerful.” He stopped in front of me. “You worked hard to become someone your mother could no longer disapprove of and no one could hurt. You’re powerful enough to control others — ”

“Powerful enough to destroy you.”

“You see?” He gave a smile of understanding. “You are not capable of love, Kendra. You are too much what your mother molded you to be.”

The words crawled into my head, dug into the recesses of my exhausted mind, took root somewhere deep within.

No. There was something I needed to remember.

You are so much more than that.

Remember what is always inside you.

Tristan believed I was more than a weapon.

Tristan believed in me.

“I’m not you.”
 

“Why? Because of your Warrior Prince?” Bastien cast me a pitying look. “Do you honestly believe that is love? You are an ondine. He is a selkie. You chose him because you cannot be with him. The very impossibility of your relationship makes him safe.”

The words hammered at something I didn’t want to see.

“You are so much like Naida. It’s startling.”

“You don’t know what —”

“The last time you saw your father, he was leaving for patrol. You remember that house, don’t you? The little bungalow with the green trim and a cheery sparrow mounted on the mailbox?”

I’d loved that mailbox. I’d imagined the sparrow brought us the mail every day.

“Naida was restless. It was right after your stay here in the GrandView and she felt me in her dreams. Ansel was the only one who could calm her, make her laugh.”
 

He tainted every part of my life, every memory that made me who I was, and took it for himself.

“He kissed her right next to that mailbox. She said, ‘I love you.’ He left and never returned.” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, an elegant, refined monster.
 

“Poor Naida just couldn’t get over it. After that, she never mentioned love ever again because she knew what would happen if she did.”

Kendra, live. Survive.

I gripped the chains above me, wishing I could say he was wrong.
 

“Your father died because she’d said those words and invited in death and pain and hurt. She’d invited me in and I took him. So she refused to say it and you learned to do the same—‘

“Shut up.”

“So you didn’t say it to your mother. Or to Marcella or Gabriel. You never said it to Rhian. But they’re still dead.” He stepped forward and shrugged. “Poor Kendra. To love or not love? Doesn’t seem to matter because they’re all gone —“

“You will be, too.”

He leaned in and lowered his voice. “What were you really digging up in that San Aurelio grave, Kendra? What did you hope was buried with your mother?”

I remembered the feel of cool air against my sweat-slicked skin, the pain in my palms as I thrust the shovel into the ground, again and again.

“You needed something.” His voice curled around my mind, soft, intimate. “I watched that ridiculous woman from Oregon and her bumbling friends remove Naida from the morgue.”

Don’t let him in.

“I knew you’d eventually return. The questions were always written on your face, in your eyes. I didn’t want you to find it empty so I placed your father’s
kouperet
in there and told you how to find me.”

He made it sound as if I should be thanking him. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Tell me how it felt when Ian hit you.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“He hurt you, Kendra, and we all know what happens to people who hurt you. What did you do to Gilroy when you found out Scabbard had taken Ian?”

“Nothing compared to what I’ll do to you —“

“What will happen to Mr. MacAllister now that he has broken your body and bled you?”

“That’s not Ian.”

Whoever was in room 319 looked like Ian, but it wasn’t him.

It wasn’t my friend.

A smug smile slowly spread across Bastien’s face. “I know what you will do,
sondaleur
.”
 

Something inside snapped. “You don’t know shit.”

He walked over to the ventilation grate and raised his hand. Sunlight illuminated his skin and he stretched his fingers, reveling in its warmth.

Bastard.

“I believe it’s time for a brief respite in this war,” he said casually.