Swelling on my brain?
Hallucinations?
What the hell is happening to me?
I snatched up the pills, popping them from the packet with tingling fingers thanks to being tightly bound. “How do you know I have a headache?” I decided against telling her about the ringing in my ears, the odd taste in my mouth, the weakness in my left side, and the constant nausea. I also suspected my left arm was broken, made worse with her rope tying me tight. I knew the dull ache of a bone injury and recognized the symptoms.
How I’d broken my arm was yet another mystery.
One I needed to figure out before any other shit could happen to me.
Ignoring my pain, I glared at the woman.
I wouldn’t let on that I hurt.
No way.
The least pathetic I looked, the better. If she still feared me, even with my hands in ropes, then I might stand a chance of getting free. Of scaring her enough that she didn’t hurt me further.
“I watched you fall.” She ducked her head, biting her lip before admitting with a wince. “I made you fall.”
“Fall?” I scowled and tossed back the pills with the entire bottle of water, blindly trusting and not caring if they were poison. I was suddenly thirsty. Epically thirsty. Once the bottle was empty, I threw it back toward her, then grabbed the plate of random food. It wasn’t roast beef, but it would patch up some of the gnawing hunger inside me. “Where’s the chef? You give him a night off?”
She blinked. “There was a chef?”
I rolled my eyes but stopped with a hiss, cursing the rock and roll of the room and the spearing pain in my head. “How else do you think Storymaker entertains in style?”
“Storymaker?”
Honestly? Who the fuck was this woman? She wasn’t a member of my family. Therefore, she had to be a guest. I’d never met her, but she couldn’t be here if she hadn’t been given exclusive membership.
Ignoring her, I chewed on a strawberry.
My stomach roiled.
My body rejected it.
I barely made it in time to twist to the side before I wretched.
All the water came up.
The room turned upside down.
My nervous system chose that exact moment to turn me into a furnace, blur my eyes, and turn up the screeching in my ears until I couldn’t breathe.
I convulsed.
I screamed.
It went dark.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’D NEVER WISHED FOR someone to survive and die in equal measure.
I wanted him to survive because the thought of him dying after the past he’d endured was unthinkable. No wonder he was the way he was. No wonder he’d attacked me. Didn’t trust me. And had such a complicated relationship with sex.
Each time he woke, blinked at me as if he’d never met me, let alone had his tongue between my legs, I wept inside. I struggled not to break and cry in front of him. I did my best to answer his repetitive questions about where his family was, where the guests were, who I was, and ensured I managed to get as many anti-inflammatories, liquids, and food into him as possible.
But then...there were moments where I wished he would die.
Not because I wanted to be free of him but because I couldn’t stand the agony he was in. The torture of his mind. The screams of his nightmares. The catatonic slave who bowed over his knees and implored me to hurt him but no one else. Who trembled and begged me to release the others, and in return, he promised to do whatever I wanted.
It shattered me. Sickened me.
His own mind was killing him.
For eight long, unendurable days, I walked that tightrope of wanting my treatment to succeed and the god-awful admission of holding my breath in hope when he wouldn’t wake.
Of sitting by his bruised and scarred body while he slept, of stroking his hair, of whispering sweet nothings in his ear, praying that his mind would let him rest.
He deserved to rest. To feel peace.
But each time I believed his pulse had slowed and he was fading in my arms, he’d twitch awake, disorientated and unbalanced, and I’d have a few precious moments when I could guide him from his blankets, brace him with my body to the bathroom, and let him relieve himself.
I’d hurry and watch the clock, my jumpy anxiety justified because the sleepy, stumbling man using me as a crutch could, at any moment, snap back into his delusions and try to kill me.
On the third day, I made the decision to undo the rope from around his wrists. Rightly or wrongly, I’d had no choice. I’d been watching him. Monitoring his pain levels and growing intimately aware of his flinches and wariness.
His left wrist and arm had blown up with swelling, despite the drugs I fed him. The rope had grown too tight, cutting off the circulation to his fingers. I’d cut him free while he’d slept.
With no protection from his potential aggression, I’d pilfered a knife from the kitchen and kept it tucked down my waistband ready, just in case he woke and launched himself at me.
However, when he did wake, he remembered nothing.
Not our previous conversations. Not his past. Not his present.
He blinked at me with pure innocence, a softly spoken boy with his untainted life spread out by his feet.
“Who are you?” he’d asked in a voice that held no animosity, blackness, or derision. It was clear and trusting, kind and soft.
It made my entire body clench with longing because I knew, without any doubt or uncertainty, that in this short fragment of time, I spoke to the boy who’d lived before the man who’d suffered.
I’d dropped the books I’d gathered off the shelves in the library—medical texts and extensive surgical volumes that belonged in a hospital instead of a civilian’s collection—and collapsed on the floor.
He’d tried to catch me. Long-buried instincts hurling him out of his blankets to catch a stranger he believed he’d never met. However, he hissed and buckled. Pain jerked him back. Nursing his arm, he rocked over the mottled bruising before clutching his head with another groan.
It’d been my turn to catch him.
I’d crawled into him, not fearing my life. Not from this version of Kas. Not this sweet, sweet boy.
“Tell me what hurts.”
He blinked huge dark eyes at me, wetness glistening on his bottom lashes. “Everything.”
I took his swollen arm in my hands and pressed gently, working my way up and down, feeling bumps that shouldn’t be there. “There? Does that hurt?”
He moaned and bit his bottom lip. “Yes.”
“I think it’s broken.”
“I think so too,” he whispered. “It doesn’t like it when I move.”
“Okay.” I patted his hand and gave him a gentle smile. “I’ll fix it.”
“You will?” He looked at me as if I held his world. As if I was some mythical guardian who would protect him for always.
“Yes. I’ll be right back.”
For days, I’d suspected his arm was broken but had no way of splinting it. Now? Now I had another version of Kas that I wasn’t afraid of, and time was of the essence to help him before he switched again.
Pushing to my feet, I dashed out of the library, ran to the garden, and grabbed a small bamboo stake that I’d seen in the pea vine part of the veggie patch. Bolting back into the house, I skidded to a halt and dropped into the blankets.