Page 35 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HIM

R esi hummed as she delicately cleansed each grain of grit and daubed on antiseptic and bandages, working in a semicircle of stark white light.

I idly wondered where it was coming from until my gaze drifted dully over to the tall metal lantern covered in mesh, its electric flame casting long, wavering shadows.

I’d seen lanterns like it somewhere before.

Remembering where might help me. But I couldn’t remember much at the moment, other than that Resi had given Noam the microchip and vial of acid and dismissed him to whatever spider hole they were camped out in.

A hole I needed to find a way to get myself into as soon as I could.

In the meantime, somehow, she’d loosened my chain enough to allow me to finally collapse prone on the sand.

Its blissful softness enfolded me like an enemy I’d forgotten had tried to kill me, and I drew in a shaky breath, the pain flaring up every few seconds as she wound bandages around my broken metacarpals.

When it came to first aid, Resi knew what she was doing.

She’d carefully propped me semi-upright, easing my breathing, and draped a rough wool blanket over me against shock and the desert chill, and she regularly tipped the water bottle up to my mouth, measuring my sips.

I knew that whatever reason she was keeping me alive wasn’t a match for my own, but that didn’t matter.

All I knew was that for now, our goals were in alignment. I needed to keep them there.

She applied cool compresses to my wrecked, swollen, bruised body, and soothing aloe to the raw wounds.

With careful precision, she even donned gloves again and unwound the barbed wire that had bound my hands and rolled them out onto the sand, then bandaged the scabs over the shattered bones of my fingers.

As she gently manipulated the fragments of my broken knee, I tried to distract myself from the searing pain by counting and cataloging the stars.

But I also couldn’t ignore the agony in my ribs or the throbbing in my broken fingers, one or two of which I prayed were still working for the sake of the plan I swore I was just minutes away from coming up with to get myself the fuck out of here.

And I couldn’t ignore the melody she hummed.

An old melody. A German melody. A slave melody, at that, or at least one I’d only ever heard sung by slaves.

One she must have learned from her mother.

My own mother had hummed it, too. In fact, as she hummed, Resi’s form seemed to shatter into pieces and become my mother’s, then Maeve’s, then Louisa’s, the loveliness and peace of each of their images settling softly over my synapses like a down quilt.

But I shifted and groaned in frustration, knowing exactly what was happening and fiercely bent on not allowing it.

I’d known it would happen, of course, as my captor had dropped each opioid pill delicately on my tongue from between her vanilla nails, massaging my throat to make sure they went down, praising me the entire time as if I were the obedient pet she wanted.

And each tiny parachute drifted slowly down into my body, untangling each knot of pain—relaxing my spine, untensing my muscles, unclenching my teeth.

But the second they started soothing my body, I knew they’d also start numbing my brain.

And if I were still, like the delusional idiot I was, hoping to find a way out of this without leaving Louisa to be devoured by wolves, I’d need one as much as the other.

Of course I couldn’t force my body to function. But maybe I could force my brain. At least I hoped.

You idiot kid. You stupid fool. Stop hoping, for fuck’s sake. Don’t you know that hope is what keeps getting you put in chains and your innards splattered all over the dunes? Over and over and over again?

But I couldn’t stop because I knew there was still a way.

In fact, I was pretty sure Resi herself knew there was still a way.

Because after all that—unbuckling the muzzle, stripping the wire off my wrists, unlooping the ropes on my ankles, giving me the water and bandages and antiseptic and pain pills and everything else—she still hadn’t removed my collar.

Because she still thought I might run. And if she thought I might run, that meant there was at least one escape route that wouldn’t result in suicide. And she knew that whatever it was, it was the only one I’d be smart enough to attempt.

Goddamn her, if she was nothing else, she was smart. How the fuck had she ended up like this ?

Or maybe the real question was, why hadn’t I? A slight veer off the rails and I’d have been a sociopath, too. It was no secret, least of all to myself, that I’d been gifted more than a few of the tendencies.

Ironically, the same tendencies I was still counting on to save me.

Because as my eyes narrowed to focus on the tiny flame burning within that lamp flickering across our faces, I had an idea. Just an idea. Not a plan.

Not yet.

“You know,” she mused, “it just breaks my heart to think you spent three years at hard labor in the fields, then five more solving equations in some stuffy lab. And then Keith puts you to work—washing dishes? Digging fence holes? Well, we all know he’s an idiot.

Anyway, the point is, no one’s ever really treated you like the stunning luxury possession you deserve to be. The one you are .”

What, was I supposed to say something in response to this nonsense? “No, ma’am.”

“Pets usually get names, you know.”

Yeah. Pet names. Blondie. Goldie. Honey. Baby.

Names that replaced any names I already had. Names that were worse than having no name at all. Names that so many poor saps still considered some kind of sick honor to get.

Long ago, I’d made up my mind to never be one of them.

Which was why I needed to get her off this subject and onto another one, so I took a deep breath and shoved down not only my pride but the very notion of pride. I wouldn’t need it for a while.

I kept my eyes carefully fixed off to the horizon because she’d scolded me already once for trying to look her in the eyes without permission.

“May I ask a question, ma’am?”

Resi’s face lit up like a jubilant moonbeam. “Of course, baby. If you ask that politely, I’d never refuse you anything.”

All right then. Where are we? Was that really my chip? Where are you and Noam hiding when you leave me here? Where’s Obadiah?

Let’s not get cute. “What were you humming, ma’am?”

The jubilation melted off her face. “Nothing. A slave song.”

“Jenseits der Hügel, unter’m Sternenschein/Fliegt er durch die Nacht, so mutig und allein,” I forged ahead before I could stop myself. “That’s the only couplet I remember, ma’am.”

“Something about flying and the night. It’s all I?—”

“Beyond the hills, beneath the stars/He flies through the night, so brave and alone,” I translated. That was the gist of it, anyway.

Her chin flicked up to the limitless, diamond-studded, purple-black blanket above us. “Do you remember anything else?” Her voice and manner were growing younger and more vulnerable by the second.

Which was exactly what I wanted.

As long as I remembered we were both acting.

“Only that my mother sang it, ma’am,” I rasped as another spasm of pain gripped me, one I couldn’t let on if I didn’t want another pill jammed down my throat. “And that it made the days feel shorter.”

“It made everything feel shorter,” she whispered darkly. “Which was the next best thing to not feeling it at all. But who cares?” She added, “I decided some time back that I’ll never again feel anything I don’t want to feel.”

She pressed her thumb into the center of my bottom lip so I could taste it and her cinnamon breath on my face. “And if you keep being so sweet, neither will you.”

Resi stepped closer, her presence an enveloping warmth in the chill of the desert night. She reached out, her fingers trailing through my hair.

“I taught myself the constellations, you know,” she said. “But nobody ever told me the stories.”

Her hand left my hair and dropped limply by her side, while the long fingernails of the other traced the sharp metal edge of my collar, over the lock.

“Would you like me to?” I asked gently, meeting her eyes once more, expecting to be scolded.

Instead, her fingers dug into my arm as she helped me up off the ground like a newborn foal, my broken knee crumbling almost immediately. And, yes. There went my chain, released from the post with a silky metallic sound, and I tried to desperately shove down my elation.

“Stay close, Starling,” she ordered.

Starling?

She was naming me, I realized. Just as she’d threatened.

After twenty years of resisting, I’d reached the one situation where I couldn’t.

So I nodded and limped on as Starling, Resi’s leashed pet, dragging one useless leg behind me.

The desert air hung heavy, a blanket of stillness only broken by our breaths. Every so often, a slight breeze tugged at Resi’s hair, carrying the raw scents of sand and sagebrush, wending between silvered rocks and the occasional patch of sparse mesquite.

My muscles ached with every labored non-step, but I masked the pain before it showed all over my face.

There would be no escaping here. My mangled body had no strength, speed, endurance, or reflexes to speak of, and Noam was still lurking nearby, waiting to pound me into a smoking crater if I got out of line.

But I had to keep moving because the farther we went, the better sense I’d get for the lay of the land, and that could only help me.

It would especially help if I could figure out where Noam was, and even better, where he had stashed that chip and the vial of sulfuric acid.

Because whatever else I did, I had to destroy that first.

There was nothing scientific about what I was about to do. Besides, Resi knew as much as I did about science, so facts were useless here. To get her under my spell, I’d have to do the unthinkable.

I’d have to get them wrong.