Page 3 of Dance of Thorns

I think that might be me.

My eyelids open and close, dragging like rusty blades over my eyeballs as I blink up at the faces surrounding me. The smell of bleach…the mechanical beeping…the others in greens scrubs behind the people surrounding me…

I’m in a hospital.

I’m waiting for it to all come back. But there’s nothing. Just a blank.

I start to fill it in myself.

I’m Dove Marchetti.

I’ve been in an accident.

My headreallyhurts.

Suddenly, another hand wraps around mine. I swallow dry sand as I drag my eyes up to his. Older. Stern. Maybe even a little angry.

“Dove, honey,” he growls, squeezing my hand. “Do you know who I am?”

No.

“I’m your father, sweetheart…” He scowls and whips his head around. “Why the fuck doesn’t she recognize?—”

A man in green scrubs steps toward the older man. “She’s received serious trauma to the head, Mr. Marchetti. We don’t know the full extent yet.”

“She got hit in the head!” the older man barks. “That happens to people all the time! They don’t forget their own fucking?—”

“The brain is a complex thing, Mr. Marchetti,” the doctor says gently. His eyes drag to mine and he smiles kindly. “We’ll run some tests to determine how extensive the amnesia is, and how long it might last.”

The man starts yelling at the doctor. But I’m distracted by another person I don’t recognize—a woman with auburn hair, sobbing uncontrollably as she leans over me, squeezing my hand hard.

“Oh,honey!” she bawls. “It’s all going to be fine! He can’t hurt you anymore.”

Who can’t?

More faces come to hover over me. One I think might belong to the man from the fire who lifted me from the floor. But the rest are unfamiliar. My confused gaze drags from one to the next, trying to identify them, a tightening sensation snarling in my chest when I fail to place a single one.

What’s happening.

Who am I.

My eyes slide from face to face, the sinking feeling in my chest turning into a bottomless pit of despair. Then another set of eyeslocks with mine, and a cold, trickling sensation drips down my spine.

He’s younger than the rest. He’s also not standing in the semicircle around my bed. He’s behind them all, leaning against the wall by the door, his strong arms folded menacingly over his broad chest. He’s dressed all in black: t-shirt, jeans, boots, his raven hair slicked back from his deeply sculpted face. Tattoos snake down his arms and around his neck.

Jesus.

It’s like looking into the eye of a hurricane. Cold, hard, brutal gaze. A beautiful but stoic, vicious face. Blackness radiates from him like a deathly aura as he just…staresat me.

Angry.

Dangerous.

Hateful.

I tremble.

I know him. Rather, something tells me Ishouldknow him. But I…don’t.