Page 53 of Fractured Fates

10 yearsago

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

My lungs rasp. Warm air burns my throat.

My knees are jammed under my chin. My arms folded into my chest.

There’s no room. There’s no light.

I close my eyes shut tight.

Pain pierces through my lungs and into my chest, through my gut and into my limbs.

Can’t. Breathe.

I gasp. I gasp again. Faster and faster. It feels like someone’s gripping my throat. Gripping my throat and squeezing.

I can hear her screaming. I can hear the men laughing. I can hear the thumps as they hit her. As they throw her across the room like a rag doll.

I want to help. I want to go to her. But I’m only tiny. Nothing compared to the three large men who stormed into our home.

And she told me to hide. She told me to stay quiet.

I screw my eyes up tighter. My hands form steely fists. I count in my head. One. Two. Three.

I try to breathe. I try to block out the sound.

I don’t know how long I’m in there. I don’t know how much time passes.

I only know that when the cupboard doors finally open, it’s my aunt that opens them. Her face is swollen, a clump of hair is missing from the crown of her head, and there’s blood in the corner of her mouth.

“Come on, Rhi,” she says anxiously, reaching out her hand to me. “Time to go.”

18

Rhi

Present

I’m notquiet this time. I scream with all my might. With all my lungs. I hammer my fists on the locker door and kick at it with my feet. I scream so damn loud the entire school must hear.

I don’t care. The sound keeps the other noise from my mind. Those noises from long ago. My aunt. My aunt taking punches for me over and over again. I don’t want to think of it. I don’t want to be reminded. So I keep screaming, if only to keep the air sucking into my lungs.

I’m shaking, my bones rattling with the violent movements, and I’m caked in sweat. A terror swims in my belly and threatens to overtake me entirely.

I won’t let it. I won’t let some stuck-up dickhead do this to me. I won’t let him force me back there.

Fury begins to simmer in my belly and I focus on that emotion and none of the others as I continue to scream. Soon that fury is pulsing through my veins and with all my goddamn might, I send a bolt of powerful magic crashing from my fingertips and thudding hard against the locker door. It rips the metal from its hinges and the thing flies across the changing room, crashing into the wall opposite, plaster splintering everywhere.

I stop screaming. I close my eyes and take a steadying inhale. Then I squeeze out of the locker, trying not to think of her hand, trying not to think of her face, trying not to think of it at all.

I don’t look at the other girls gathered in the room, but I know they’re all staring at me open-mouthed.

“Rhi!” I hear Winnie gasp and I lift my gaze to find her pinned between two cheerleaders. There’s sympathy and concern brimming in her eyes and I can’t stand to look. Instead, I grab my clothes, pick up my heels and run. I run the hell out of here.

I don’t stop running until I’m back at my dorm, until I have Pip gathered up in my arms.