She leans over, heaving the emptiness inside of her due to the lack of contents in her body. Moira hasn’t eaten for days and wonders how she’s managed to remain alive for this long. How, with cold waters dripping from her skin and the chilly air causing her to frost, she is warmed even in the slightest by the sight of those probing evil eyes of his.
“I am human, after all,” she answers, her hands still where they’ve been all this time, as if she’s still bound.
“You are no such thing,” he tells her, squatting before her.
She refuses to look him in his eyes.
“Are you angry with me then, girasol?”
When she remains silent, he chuckles, as if this is all the greatest entertainment to him. Her discomfort, her desire for death…it amuses him.
And that causes her nails to dig into her palms until she feels the warmth of her blood pooling inside her fists.
“I don’t believe I deserve your anger.” He still squats, lowering his eyes even more in an attempt to meet hers.
“And do I deserve this?” Her fists are shaking but she presses them against the wooden chair as she clenches her teeth around the question.
“You tried to leave me.” The words are offered simply, all he believes she needs.
“You informed me that I could,” she refutes.
“I changed my mind.”
“Aye, the torment I suffer has made that apparent.”
They are at an impasse, with her still not looking him in his eye and him, staring at her in wonder.
“If I bring you back to my home, will you try to leave me again?”
“I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone.” She looks at him as she utters the last words and bears witness to the brilliance of his smile.
“You are most beguiling, girasol.”
“What does that mean?” Her question is full of impatience at his show of pleasure.
When he stands, she’s sure he won’t answer.
But he turns at the last moment, the tail end of his smile still gracing his face. “It means…sunflower.”
And as she’s come to find familiar with Sol, he walks out of the shed, leaving her unchained and curiously infuriated.
You’re playing a dangerous game, Sol chastises himself as he walks up toward the house, the moon a bright splendor in the sky.
He hadn’t had the heart to bind her again, too afraid to touch her, too afraid to push the boundaries of his own wicked desires.
Ones that had nothing to do with blood and violence and more to do with greed and lust.
Last night, he slept in her scent. Rather, he lay in it, with sleep not coming.
How could it?
Sol is aware he’s dancing between the lines of violence and infatuation, and both create a knot in his chest when Moira comes to mind.
He cannot have her, cannot keep her. She did him the great pleasure of reminding him so without even knowing herself the full truth of it.
Nothing everlasting could come of such a union.
And yet, he lay in her scent and dreamed of a world where it could. Where he could go into the shed and rescue her from his own doing.
She is both his tribulation and his triumph.
But he would only ever be her ruin.
12
There are no men to lead Moira back to the house. No shackles to keep her in the shed.
But where would she go?
Her mind spirals as she shivers once more before standing on unsteady legs.
She is too weakened to walk from this place, her bones chilled and her stomach empty.
In this moment of complete frailty, Moira thinks back on her worst days. On the feeling of broken skin and the day she’d stopped crying.
It only caused her mother to whip her harder. To choke her with her bare hands until the world blurred and ended around her. To have her kneel for hours on the jagged stone of the gravel outside.
Still, her body refuses to die. To offer reprieve.
She sways as she walks, and once she steps outside, she collapses. Her dress has gone stiff with the cold water that froze in the even colder air.
“¿Necesitas ayuda?”
She should’ve known.
There is always someone nearby.
“I cannot walk,” she murmurs, her face pointed toward the ground.
If only her mother could see her now. How triumphantly she’d smile at her most passionate child, finally broken.
The man lifts her by her arms and when she looks up at him, she notices it’s the same one who’d brought her food.
“I help you,” he says, placing an arm under hers and gesturing toward the house that seems farther and farther away with each moment that passes.
She wants to push him away, wants to keep her frozen body away from the heat of a man’s.
In all her life, Moira hadn’t been so surrounded by the opposite sex.
But she finds she has to lean on him. She requires his aid to make it to the house. Each breath comes out in visible puffs as they struggle slowly. Each step strengthens her confidence in her ability to make it, and once she does, she sighs with relief.
Only for it to be interrupted by the sight of the driver.
Moira recognizes everyone here as her enemy. And Sol is the leader of these men; the man who’d sentenced her to a torturous bath. Who’d laughed at the sight of her frozen, hungry, and tired body.
“Come with me,” Julio demands, his eyes unblinking.
“I cannot walk,” she insists, but he yanks her forward, dragging her into the home.
She looks back at the man who’d helped her, her eyes locking with his before he turns away and heads outside once more.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks, but her question goes unanswered.
He stops just in front of a door, knocking before waiting. For what, she couldn’t say. He adjusts his stance and glances at her, an unspoken annoyance in his eyes.
The door opens and the first thing Moira sees is a shower. Her eyes catch on the white walls, covered in cracks like not much care has been taken to decorate this space. There’s one near the ceiling and it webs out toward the shower itself.
And then she looks at the person in front of them.
She looks as fair as Moira is, her hair brown and her eyes wide with surprise.
“What have ye done to the poor lass?” She reaches for Moira and pulls her inside the bathroom before shutting the door in the driver’s face. “Barbarians, the lot of ‘em,” she mutters as she squeezes Moira’s icy hands before tugging at her dress.
Moira, in her confusion, pulls away from the woman. “What—”
“I’m only here to help.” Her eyes are sad as she takes Moira’s face in her hands. “Though I can understand why ye seem so skittish.”
“How can you help me?” Hearing another Scottish brogue has Moira feeling more at home than she thought she could in this wretched place.
“I aim to bathe ye.”
“Haven’t they told you? I’ve already had a washing.” Her mind thinks back to the shed and the blasts that assaulted her. To her hunger pangs and her lack of screams.
And now, she is meant to believe this woman is here to offer her comfort?
“My name is Ella. I don’t ken what’s goin’ on here, but I keep this house.”
She steps away to start the shower and Moira leans against the farthest wall, watching her as best she can.