Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(57)

“No more of the dealing, Ahlan. Or the drugs. From here on out, you have to be clean.”

“I promise.”

She hoped he could keep that vow. Only time would tell, but at least the commitment was on his part at the moment.

“I miss Mahmen and Dad,” he said. “Every night.”

“Me, too.”

As they both fell silent, she thought of things she wanted to forget. Like Rollie. And Chalen’s dungeon. The skeletons in that ceremonial arena and the Dhavos. And then, prior to all that, memories like packing up their parents’ personal possessions. Shutting down the house she’d grown up in. Walking away, though she hadn’t sold it yet.

Abruptly, she had no interest in ever going back to Caldwell.

“You came when I needed you,” Ahlan said. “You saved me.”

As he spoke, something inside her broke free—in a good way. And it was then that she realized she had always felt as though she had failed their mahmen and father. Somehow, in her mind, she had ascribed to herself and herself alone the ability to stop their murders. Save their lives. Restore their family to how it had been and should be.

It was craziness. But emotions were rarely logical.

But she had been able to save Ahlan—with help from Duran and Nexi. And as her brother was all she had left of her bloodline, there was peace to be had in that, peace that ushered in a whole lot of forgiveness for those things she had felt responsible for, even if she could not control them.

Ahmare stared into eyes that were the same color as her own. And thought more of the divides in people’s lives, the starts and finishes of stages, the eras that you weren’t aware of being in . . . until they were over.

“Do you want to leave Caldwell?” she asked.

“Yes,” her brother said, “I do.”





36




IT REALLY SHOULDN’T BE that tough.

As Duran faced off at the shower, he stared at the faucet handle like it held the key to the mysteries of the universe: H vs. C. His choice of one or the other seemed monumental. A predictor of things to come. A prognostication as to whether what was going to come next in his life would be good . . . or bad.

Reaching into the tiled alcove, he started the water and moved the handle to the “C” position—and was disappointed in himself as he pulled the curtain back into place. But there was no reason to think he’d tolerate warmth any better now than he’d handled it back at Nexi’s cabin. Had that been two nights ago? Or . . . only one?

Time had little meaning to him. Everything had been so momentous that measuring things in terms of twenty-four hour clips seemed like using a beach to count grains of sand.

Getting out of his filthy, dirty, sweat-and bloodstained clothes, he looked down at his body. There were bruises on his skin. Scrapes that were leaking. Cuts that were healing already.

Thanks to Ahmare’s vein.

There were a lot of other things that were thanks to her. He touched his neck, which was, for the first time in twenty years, free of a shock collar. She had even been the one to cut the thing off him, sawing through that which had been locked on his throat by Chalen.

Who most certainly was no longer on the planet.

Ahmare had freed him in so many ways. Yet he was worried there were things even she couldn’t let him out of.

He drew the shower curtain back again. As he pictured Ahmare’s face when she had broken out of that crawl space in the cell and thrown herself at him, he focused on the faucet’s “H.”

Start as you mean to go on, he told himself as he leaned in and moved the handle up . . . up . . . up.

The change in temperature came slowly, the hot water routed up from some kind of heater somewhere. But soon, the spray was kicking out warmth.

He braced himself as he stepped under.

The rush as it hit his head made him shudder, but not because it was unpleasant. It was because his body was unused to anything other than discomfort, like his nerves had been re-programmed and if shit didn’t hurt, it didn’t feel right.

He told himself he was going to get used to the new way. The normal way. The . . . better way.

When he wasn’t sure he believed that, he went for the soap and cleaned himself, suds sluicing down his chest, his sex, his thighs. He was tired. His back hurt. One knee felt like it wanted to bend backward.

Shouldn’t this be a time for rejoicing? he thought.

“Mind if I join you?”

He whipped the curtain back. Ahmare was naked, her clothes pooled where he’d left his own, her hair freed from her ponytail. She, too, had bruises, on the side of her face. Her arm. Her hip. And then there was that shoulder wound.

“Please, God, yes, please,” he breathed.

She smiled a little and then turned to the mirror. After wiping the glass off with her hand, she picked the adhesive off the bandage around her shoulder. As she peeled the gauze free, he winced. The ragged, two-sided wound was healing, but it was angry red, with jagged edges and a very deep core.

He thought of the mark in the linoleum on that floor, when he had been searching with her for the pearl.

“My father . . .” He couldn’t finish as rage rekindled.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

With the urge to kill surging in him, he tried to put the aggression aside. “Are you sure you want to get that wet?”