“You healed up nicely.” She smirks. “But I suppose that scar on your face has been a lovely reminder of me.”
“Why are you here?” I stumble to my feet as adrenaline floods my veins.
“Do you think I didn’t know you would come back here?” She rolls her eyes. “This pathetic little farm is all you have. I thought it would be fitting for you to watch it go up in flames.”
Her eyes dart to the white bottle lying on the ground, and it takes me a second to understand that it’s lighter fluid.
“You’re fucking psychotic!” I stare past her, trying to figure out my options as my pulse begins to race. But the only way out is to go through her. She’s got me trapped, and judging by the smell around me, this whole barn will go up in seconds if she ignites it.
“What else could you possibly want from me?” I ask. “I left Thorsen alone. You got what you wanted.”
“What I want is to watch you die,” she hisses. “You ruined everything, and now you’re going to pay for it.”
My eyes bounce around the barn in search of a weapon. Something I can knock her out with. But there’s nothing remotely close to me. It feels like another hopeless situation until it doesn’t. Until I realize that I am so done with Lavinia terrorizing me. A decade’s worth of repressed hostility boils to the surface, settling into my curled fists. Only one of us is getting out of here alive today, and this time, it’s going to be me.
“I’ll give you a choice.” Lavinia pulls a lighter from her pocket and slowly drags her nail over the ridges of the ignition switch. She wants to draw out her torture and make me squirm. But I’m not the same helpless girl who was strapped to the bed in Norway.
“If you do that, you’ll never get out of here alive,” I promise her. “I’ll make sure of it, even if it’s the last thing I do.”
Her head falls back in laughter, and she breaks into a fit of hysterics over the idea that I could ever fight back. For as long as I’ve known her, I’ve let her have the upper hand. I’ve tortured myself over my father’s death, and I fought in vain to prove myself worthy of their love. But there is no love left in my heart for any of them, and Lavinia has pushed me for the last time.
Using the moment of her distraction, I launch myself at her and tackle her to the ground. Her head bounces off the earth with a sickening thud, and the impact stuns her long enough for me to pry the lighter from her fingers and toss it aside.
For a split second, I have the advantage, and I don’t waste it. I’ve never been in a fight to the death before, but that’s exactly what it feels like when I punch her in the face as brutally as I can manage. Her head whips to the side, and I draw my arm back again, landing another blow. Red blooms across her skin as blood trickles from her lip, and it feels so goddamn good. But my victory is short-lived.
Lavinia screams like a demon spawn from hell as she wraps her icy fingers around my throat, choking off my air supply. On instinct, my hands come up to hers, trying to pull them away, but the strength she’s drawn from her rage feels superhuman.
When I fail to pry her fingers away, I fling my fist at her face again. But my body is already suffering from the lack of oxygen. I’m weak and sluggish, and panic is taking the place of rational thought when I try to crawl away from her. Her arms are locked around me like steel bars, caging me in. I kick and thrash and use everything in my power to fight back, but every passing second only seems to seal my fate.
I can’t breathe. She’s choking the life from me. Without air, I don’t have the strength to fend her off, but I still have my hands, and I know what matters to her most. Digging my nails into her forehead, I scrape them down her face, leaving trails of blood behind as she screams like she’s being murdered. Her hands fall away from my throat, and I gulp in air as she touches her face in horror.
There isn’t time to catch my breath. I’ve just damaged what’s most precious to her, and she’s not going to stop now until I’m dead. I scramble off her, crawling toward the lighter, but no sooner do I have my fingers wrapped around it than she comes for me again.
She shoves my face into the dirt and yanks me back by my hair, trying to pry the lighter from my grasp. I elbow her in the gut, and she grunts, doubling over on top of me. Throwing the lighter as far as I can from her reach, I turn to face her, and within seconds, we’re wrestling in the dirt again. Between the punches and slaps and head thrashing, my energy is waning. Whatever hope I may have had for walking out of here today is slowly dissipating. My entire body feels like jelly, and I can hardly control my limbs anymore.
When Lavinia rolls me onto my back again and wraps her hands around my throat once more, there’s only one thing I can think to do. As I struggle to hold on to my consciousness, I bring my hands to her face and dig my thumbs into her eyes with every ounce of strength I have left. She shrieks, and I nearly choke as she falls back, dragging her trembling hands to her bloody eyes.
“You fucking bitch!” she screams. “You’re going to die for this!”
I try to crawl away, but it’s too late. When she pins me on my back again, she presses her knees into my elbows and drags something from her pocket. A familiar blue bottle. She twists the lid off the oleander extract and tosses it aside as she tries to focus with her swollen eyes. I turn my head to the side, but my strength has abandoned me. I’m fading fast, and the only comfort I have as she wrenches my head back is that at least I’ve probably scarred her for life.
She tells me she’s won when she brings the bottle to my lips and forces it between my teeth. As the liquid pours over my tongue and gurgles in my throat, I’m left to wonder if she will still set me ablaze when she leaves. It’s the last fleeting conscious thought I have.
32
Thorsen
The beat of my heart echoes through the silence of the bedroom I shared with Ella, but now it just feels like a coffin. Cold, suffocating, and achingly empty.
It’s been two days since I’ve last seen her. When I came home to an empty house, it nearly fucking destroyed me. Within the hour, I had gathered every resource at my disposal. I had the royal guards scouring the streets of Oslo while I personally checked the airports and train stations even though it didn’t make sense. Ella doesn’t have any money. And now she doesn’t even have a phone since she left hers behind.
I flew to London that night anyway. But there were no passenger tickets with her name on them, and she never showed up at the sanctuary or the manor. Her friends haven’t heard from her either. Neither the guards nor my security has found anything useful. The last glimpse I have is her climbing into a rowboat to leave me behind.
They tell me she could be on the ferry, but even that doesn’t seem reasonable. She would need money for that too. I don’t know where she could be, and the longer I sit here wondering, the more destructive I become.
The halls are already littered with the evidence of my frustrations. Holes in the walls. Shattered picture frames. Lisbeth disappeared soon after I interrogated her and brought her to tears, and she hasn’t returned since.
Everyone is looking at me like I’ve gone insane, and I suppose I have. But what do they expect? She left me. And all that remains is her letter of lies.