Archangel's Shadows
Page 64

“They drugged me,” she said, the words a rasp. “To make me better, that’s what they said. There was more, other kinds of ‘therapy.’ They tied me down when I resisted, and then they pumped me full of drugs again.”
Taking a deep, shaky breath, she pulled away but didn’t break the handclasp, her eyes on Banli House. Her nightmare, he thought, to be vanquished. And she’d do it with shoulders squared and head held high.
He was fucking amazed by her.
“So many people touched me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Orderlies, doctors, nurses. Enough that I began to tune in to them.” She dashed away the tears that had escaped her, stared unflinching at the facility in the distance. “Sometimes they were being nice, trying to calm me during a panic attack after I’d been strapped down, but it just made it worse—at least three of my care staff had worked with the criminally mentally ill, had horrible things inside their heads.”
Her fingers flexed, squeezed his hand again.
“I was drowning in their lives and it was driving me mad, but I had to pretend the therapy was working, that I was getting better. Even when I slept, I couldn’t let myself go too deep—I had to be awake enough to fight the nightmares. I was in there for five months.”
24
Janvier thought of how strained she’d been in Nazarach’s home, her energy contained tightly inside her skin, and couldn’t imagine how she’d survived the hell of having her mind violated over and over again. “Were the walls—”
“No,” she said, anticipating his question. “Banli House is too young to have become a living entity to my senses. It’s safe for the time being—and if I’d been able to choose my caregivers, choose the ones who had quiet, ordinary minds, I might have been okay.”
Janvier saw she didn’t believe her own words; his Ash wasn’t meant to be trapped and caged. Like a bird with its wings clipped, she would sicken and die. “How did you get out?” he asked through the rage that was a flood shoving against his senses.
“I convinced them I’d stabilized enough that they started to let me out on the grounds.” Tiny lines flared out from the corners of her eyes, her expression wondering. “To this day, I don’t know how I did it. It was as if I put on a different skin like Naasir talks about doing—beneath that skin, I was one step away from total fragmentation.”
“You were tough even then.”
A fast, unexpected smile. “Yes, I was.” The smile faded too soon, her eyes drawn toward Banli House again. “I wanted to run the first day I glimpsed freedom, but I fought it. I knew they were watching me.” Pausing, she lifted their clasped hands, rubbed her cheek against the back of his.
It was a punch right to his heart.
“So I did what they expected me to do,” she said after lowering their hands again. “I sunbathed and read books like the addicts who’d gone through detox. After a while, the staff stopped paying as close attention to me. Then late one evening after final bed check, I squeezed out a window I’d wedged open, and I ran.”
Janvier clenched his jaw, his entire body trembling with the storm inside him. “Where was your brother during the time you were in this place?” he asked, not sure he could ever be civil to the man again.
“Don’t blame him, Janvier,” she said, to his surprise. “I can’t forgive him, but I know why he did it.”
“No reason can excuse such abandonment.” He would’ve died for his sisters, would’ve slayed dragons for them. “A brother is meant to protect.”
“That’s the thing.” A pained whisper. “In his mind, that was exactly what he was doing.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “It wasn’t until I was in here that I understood why he couldn’t stand to be around me once I began to know things I shouldn’t, once I ran to him as an eleven-year-old scared of the ugly things I’d glimpsed in the mind of a teacher who turned out to be a child molester.”
The hurt in her voice as she spoke of her brother’s rejection was old, long accepted. “In that last, Arvi didn’t let me down. He had the teacher investigated, and the man ended up behind bars.” A squeeze of Janvier’s hand. “He’s not a bad person, my brother. He’s just . . . I think I’d better show you why Arvi is as he is . . . Why I am as I am.” Her eyes went to the facility in the distance. “We have to go inside.”
•   •   •
Banli House grew bigger in front of Ashwini as they approached it, a bloated beast with glowing eyes.
No, she thought, forcing her jaw muscles to relax, aware she was seeing the facility through the gaze of the scared, confused girl she’d once been. Banli House was no beast; rather, it was a hiding place created by the wealthy to dump their problems where the world couldn’t see them.
Janvier brought the car to a smooth stop in the circular drive, near the steps that led to the entrance. There were planters on either side of it, a small manicured evergreen in each, and the fan-shaped lead glass above the door glowed from the light beyond. “It looks so warm and inviting, doesn’t it?” she said through the choke hold of fear and old panic.
It was never easy, walking through those doors. But if she didn’t do it every single time, the fear would win, it would own her.
Janvier braced his arm along the back of her seat. “This place wounds you. We don’t need to be here.”