Damnable Grace
Page 30

When I reached the male, he held out his arms for me to take. But I shook my head. I would do this alone. I followed the sound of water to a small bathroom. The steam from the shower clung to my skin and acted as a beacon to my weary bones.
“Towel is there. I’ll be just down the hall if you need me,” the male said behind me.
I did not turn around to reply. “Thank you.”
The door shut behind me, and I dropped to sit on the closed toilet seat. I breathed in the steam, giving myself a moment to gather some strength. I looked at the shower—I craved it more than Meister’s potion right now.
It took me too many minutes to rid myself of the soiled clothing I had been wearing and even longer to step into the shower. But the second the water hit the top of my head, an onslaught of tiredness and hurt came barreling down upon me. I struggled to keep up with the fog that was clouding my mind. Confusion wrapped around me. How had I come to be here, and where was he? Where had I been, and what had happened to me? Why was I so thin? Where was Meister? The thought of Meister made my legs give way. I tumbled down to the shower’s floor, hitting it with a thud. Fear had taken hold and I could scarcely move. Tears flooded my face and mixed with the water raining from above.
Shivers broke along my skin as flashes of Meister tying me down to a chair, hurting me, came slamming into my head. I placed my hands on the sides of the shower and tried to get up, but I could not move. My traitorous muscles had collapsed and left me too weak to move from this spot.
I tipped my head to the spray, trying to wash away the feel of Meister on my skin, to cleanse his memory from my mind. And just as I began to cry harder in frustration, the door to the bathroom opened and the male who had cared for me entered. He darted toward me and bent down, wrapping me in his strong hold. He smelled strongly of smoke. It had not been that strong in the bedroom.
“I fell,” I managed to say when I eventually found my voice. “I . . . I could not get back up.”
“It’s okay, Red,” he reassured me and took me from the shower.
“No!” I protested, managing to add some strength to my voice. “Please.” I stretched out my hand to the shower, yearning to be clean. To feel anything but what I did at present; I felt plagued with dirt, inside and out.
In his arms, my body trembled with cold. “You want me to clean you?” he asked.
I turned my head into his chest to shield me from embarrassment. “Please . . .”
The man took a deep breath, then turned and walked back to the still-running shower. I thought he would stand behind me and guide me as I tried to bathe. I did not expect him to step inside with me, still wearing his pants. He kept me cradled in his arms. He braced my feet on the floor and held me with one arm. With his free hand, he took some shampoo and rubbed it into my scalp. I closed my eyes as he washed away the grime and the dirt. I sighed as his hand ran over my skin, taking away the sweat and stench that I found so abhorrent. Then he guided me as I simply stood under the hot spray. He stayed behind me, a pillar of strength. He never spoke as the last of the suds from the shampoo were rinsed from my body. Not once did he utter a single word, until the water began to cool and he asked softly, “Are you finished?”
He switched off the shower and wrapped me in a towel. He sat me back on the closed toilet seat while he dried my hair with a second towel. I sighed as his hands massaged my scalp. And I opened my eyes. I opened my eyes and found myself face to face with this man. He was not looking at me, so focused was he on his task. A wave of something unknown crashed through me when I realized that, in all my life, no man had ever cared for me this way, let alone a complete stranger.
An angel. The endearment fluttered through my mind.
His dark hair was wet. His pants were sodden, creating a flood at his feet. Mesmerized by this strange, kind soul, this man, I found myself with my hand on his wrist. He froze the second my fingers touched him, but he gently met my gaze. “What . . .” I gulped. “What is your name?”
The man’s dark eyes narrowed just a fraction. He withdrew his hands from my hair. “AK.”
“AK,” I said softly, feeling the strangeness of his name on my lips. Not knowing what else to do, I brought his wrist to my mouth and pressed a single grateful kiss to his pulse. I felt it speed up beneath my lips and heard his sudden intake of breath. “We have met before, have we not?”
He glanced away. “Once.”
“The tree,” I said. He nodded in confirmation. A sudden rush of emotion swept into my heart. “You helped save my Rebekah.” I winced as I fought back tears. Then I remembered his eyes, his hair and his smell so close to mine. “You spared my life when you could have destroyed me.”
Sighing, he reluctantly looked at me. “You hadn’t done shit wrong.”
His words were not a balm, rather a heavy metal spike piercing my conscience. “That is debatable,” I replied.
He studied me, his dark eyes assessing. I swallowed hard under his close attention. I opened my mouth to speak. But the words did not come. I could not verbalize my shame, my utter guilt at being the sister who ensured that Rebekah, from a young age, became the devil-girl all in the commune believed her to be.
In truth, I was the devil’s girl. I allowed men to hurt a child; even worse, I encouraged Rebekah to believe she was evil herself.
What she must have thought of me . . .
“She’s here.”
The blood that ran smoothly through my body became a rushing torrent. I stared at AK. He met my eyes and nodded gently. “R-Rebekah?” I managed to stutter, certain I had misheard.
“Lilah.” AK stepped back. “Your sister. She’s here. She lives here.”
AK held out his hand for me to take. He wanted me to get to my feet. But it was impossible. A million emotions ran through my mind as his words sank in. She was here? Here in this place?
“The devil’s men,” I said, my voice cracking.
AK’s eyebrows pulled down. “We’re the Hades Hangmen. And your sister belongs to one of us now.”
“The man with the long blond hair.”
“Ky.”
Ky. I ran the name through my mind, savoring the familiarity of the syllable in my memory. Rebekah loved him. She had told me so before she was punished.
Image after image of Rebekah filled my mind. Her beautiful smile, her long blond hair, and the devastation on her face as they publicly tried her in New Zion. Her face, as she looked to me with such pained resignation in her eyes. Resolve that this was always how her life would end. And that she was the devil-woman they had made her out to be.