Page 50 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HIM

T he university hospital in Heidelberg didn’t treat slaves, so the first-year surgical resident the old professor had bribed to stitch my arm up all those years ago had shoved me in a storage closet to do the job.

I’d never properly seen a hospital ward, whether for slaves or free people, but when my swollen eyelids finally struggled open, I knew immediately which one this was.

No curtains. No windows. No art. No TVs.

No flowers. No clocks . Just one big room groaning under the assault of fluorescent lights and harsh antiseptic and buzzing machines, packed with flat, narrow beds filled by patients who were no doubt grateful to be here because it meant they weren’t doing whatever miserable, thankless chores they normally did.

And all solidly, expertly cuffed to their bedrails. Even the ones who, like me, could barely move their wrists.

I had an additional gift: a plastic ID bracelet bearing my slave number.

A metal bracelet was soon to follow, no doubt, though it seemed unnecessary given that the same digits were neatly, permanently printed across the same spot.

But then, slavery had never been anything but one huge, rigid, rule-obsessed bureaucracy.

And here I was, back in it, forever.

I flexed my fingers, grimacing at the rattle of the chain and the ache that shot up my arm.

They’d put me on something for the pain, but it didn’t feel like an opioid, thank fuck.

Surgery must have set some of the broken metacarpals, though my motor skills were still shit.

My shattered leg had been operated on, too, and I weakly attempted to lift it.

I wouldn’t know for sure, I supposed, until I tried to walk.

I vaguely remembered a surgeon grumbling that she’d done what she could for me.

After that, I remembered nothing. Including whether they’d used the anesthesia as an opportunity to insert another microchip in my arm.

But I had to assume they had.

How long had I been here? Days? Weeks? The room offered no clues, just beeps, whirs, and the occasional pained whimper or rattle of a chain.

I tried to sit up and look around, but a jerk back and a wave of nausea was my only reward, so I threw myself back down.

Ridiculously, one question came to mind: Who the hell was paying for this? Slaves didn’t get treated unless their owners wanted them treated, and last I’d checked, Keith could barely afford to feed himself, let alone surgeries and medication for a slave he couldn’t stand the sight of. And Max?—

Max.

The mine, every horrific, suffocating second of it, came back like ten tons of rock crashing down, and I closed my eyes against the images I couldn’t unsee, the pain I couldn’t unfeel.

Blood. Acid. Chains. Melted flesh and shattered bone.

Rock upon rock upon rock. Even thinking of it, my lungs struggled, my throat closed up.

Noam. Obadiah. Resi. And her .

Crying my name.

The name I didn’t actually have and never would. Not that I really cared. I’d gotten along just fine so far without one.

What I did care about was that she wasn’t here, and I didn’t know if she was okay.

I tried to sit up again, but it was just as futile this time. Fuck this place.

And then I thought I had my answer. A hand—a female hand—placed itself over my wrist, over the chains. A hand missing half its fingers.

“ Schwesterchen ,” I gasped as the girl I’d known most of her life by that endearment alone nuzzled against me, weeping tears like crystal prisms all down her lightly freckled cheeks, exactly like the last time I’d seen her, seven years ago.

Only this time, with no bars between us.

“ Brudderh?erz ,” she wept, brushing over the bandage and covering my cheeks with kisses as my hands snapped back against the chains again, keeping me from holding her, keeping me from the moment I’d envisioned for all that time. But I wouldn’t complain.

“I told them all you’d come for me,” she continued in Luxembourgish. “I made up the story. And finally, it came true.”

“Bass du ok? ? 1 How did you get—” I demanded in our native language, my throat scratchy and rough as I forced it to spit out the words.

“Shhh,” she said. “We found a way. And I’m more than okay.” She kissed my forehead again, stroking the bandages that must have covered my head with her delicate but undeniably work-roughened hand. One I remembered feeling exactly like this when I held them, only… smaller.

“And so is Louisa.”

I melted back into the bed in relief. And yeah, a little hope.

Idiot. My sister and Louisa were both alive and apparently safe, and so was I, which was already a far better outcome than I’d ever expected.

Good enough to pay for with a lifetime of slavery, or a lifetime without Louisa, or, in all likelihood, both.

How could I possibly be so greedy and stupid as to hope for anything else?

Maeve paused again. “I was right about her, yeah?” she whispered with a smug little wink.

“A, Frechdachs ? 2 ,” I said with a throaty laugh. “Nondikass,” I hissed as the door of the ward flew open and a middle-aged nurse with severe silver hair marched toward us, having zeroed in on the visitor instantly.

“Can I see some ID, please?”

Shit. I’d come here to save Maeve, and now I was putting her in danger all over again for my stupid fucking?—

“Yes.” To my surprise, Maeve’s voice was calm and confident, even speaking English.

And suddenly, I realized that something about her was…

different. And no, it wasn’t the lack of a metal chain on her wrist—I’d figured, like the other girls, she’d shed that long ago.

And no, it wasn’t her severed fingers, even with my shiver of revulsion at the realization of who and what must have done that.

Maybe, instead, it was her golden pixie bob haircut, geometric-patterned athletic-style dress, or the mini backpack she jauntily carried, both of which looked new and chosen with care.

Or the way she didn’t tremble, didn’t use a title, and didn’t immediately cast her eyes down—not for more than a split second, anyway.

But the biggest surprise of all came next. She reached into the backpack she was carrying and took out—yes—an ID card.

Before she handed it over, I glimpsed the whole thing: Her photo. Her birthdate. Her name , printed right on the laminate in indelible ink.

In other words, this was no con—and Maeve couldn’t con to save her life, anyway. She wasn’t like me. She was as honest and sincere as a pink unicorn with a rainbow mane, and that was what I loved about her.

Which left me with one word. One question, encompassing a thousand others.

How?

“I’m sorry, Miss,” said the nurse, matching up the photo on the card with the girl in front of her, “van Someren.”

What?

“But in this ward, the only visitors allowed are the slaves’ owners. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

Maeve drew herself up with a dignity she’d always had but had never—in all the time I’d known her anyway—been allowed to use.

“Oh,” she said in slow, careful, perfect English. “I’ll go.”

And then my sister, Miss Maeve van Someren, gave one last tear-streaked look at me and swept out of the room, the heels of her chunky sandals tapping on the linoleum.

When she’d left, the nurse, silently and with little enthusiasm, began to check my vitals.

“How long have I been here?” I ventured to ask. “Ma’am,” I added with a sigh when she didn’t answer right away and instead kept passive-aggressively tightening the blood pressure monitor.

“Given your head injuries, Dr. Perez put you in an induced coma for a week to reduce the chance of brain swelling,” she responded, clearly annoyed by the fact that a mouth was suddenly attached to the body she was manhandling. “Now that you’re awake, she said we can free up your bed.”

I sank down again, closing my eyes briefly. I hated how servile and defeated my voice sounded when I spoke again. But if I wanted to know, I had to get her to answer. “So I’m going back to my master, then, ma’am?”

My master, whose house I’d been assured I’d never again be allowed into. Only the mines remained, but if that were the case, shouldn’t Keith have just let me die where they’d found me, cut out the middleman, and saved himself thousands of dollars in hospital bills?

“Guess again.”

Oh.

HER

Two weeks ago, I’d crawled out of the rubble of a collapsed copper mine, and still, this was the hardest place I’d ever been in.

Iron gates ushered us into a vast, labyrinthine government facility seemingly more suited to holding animals than the humans it contained, detained behind layer after layer of chain link and steel bars like some kind of sadistic wedding cake.

After five minutes here, I already knew I’d never A) Feel clean again and B) Find my way out, at least alone. And still, a short, humorless, uniformed government slave handler named Deare led us deeper, each gate obediently clanging closed behind us with a sound that echoed off the vaulted ceiling.

Breathe.

I did, only to be rewarded with the scent of acrid disinfectant filling my lungs, which itself masked a more pungent odor.

The bare, colorless cinderblock walls muffled distant shouting, the scuffling and clinking of shackled limbs.

It all made me feel tiny and vulnerable, though I knew the inmates here, for the most part, weren’t dangerous. Just very, very unlucky.

We walked on. Through seemingly infinite passages and corridors, our footsteps echoing on the linoleum, beneath the flickering yellow fluorescent lights I’d come to associate, now, indelibly, with slavery.

Occasionally, I caught a glimpse, in the distance, of a shackled figure in a gray scrub uniform being led by a handler, and my stomach churned hard enough for me to worry that I wouldn’t be able to keep my lunch down.

I tightly clutched my handbag—searched thoroughly by the guard at the gate—my bare fingernails digging hard into the leather.