Page 41 of The Pawn

I look up at him, into those eyes where I can lose myself. Where I know I’ll never be lost.

“He told me you weren’t coming,” I hear myself say, my voice small. How little faith I had.

Cassian’s eyes darken and narrow. “And you believed him?”

“He said Michael paid you and you wouldn’t come for me.”

“Did you believe him?” he presses, and tears blur my vision of him.

“You don’t know what I did,” I whisper, looking away, feeling shame. Feeling shame for my weakness. He doesn’t now that his vow is wasted on me. I can’t be his. It’s too late for that.

He cups my face, turns it up to his.

“Whatever you did, you did to survive,” he says, his jaw tight, and I don’t know if I’m grateful or sorry he doesn’t push me to say it. To tell him what happened in that room. What happened after Malek cut off my finger.

“You don’t understand.” My throat is so tight, the words come out strange.

“You told me on the first day I met you when you gave me this,” he says, pointing to the scar on his side. “You told me that you wouldn’t be a good little victim. Do you know that I believed you from the start?”

I search his eyes, so different from Malek’s, from Michael’s, from my father’s. Their eyes were dead. Their eyes only came alive when they were cruel. But Cassian isn’t cruel. He’s never been cruel. Not even in the beginning. Not to me.

“I don’t like it when I wake up and you’re gone,” I admit. “I was scared. Iamscared. I’m scared all the time, and I hate myself for it. For being so weak.”

Cassian sits on the edge of the bed, and I lay my head on his shoulder. He caresses my hair, quiet, waiting.

“It’s like,” I start, but it’s a false start and I need to lick my lips and swallow and try again because this? What I’m going to tell him? It is me baring my soul to him. “It’s like I went back in time when he took me there. To that house. That room downstairs. And he still had all those things. Everything, even the smell of the place...” My voice breaks and a tear slips from my eye.

Cassian’s caresses stop, hand heavier. He pulls me closer to himself.

I wipe my face, look up at him. “At that house, I became exactly what I said I’d never be. His good little victim.”

“You are not his. You were never his. You will never be his,” Cassian says angrily. He shakes his head. “No.” He touches the healing bruise at my temple, and I can almost see him trying to calm himself, to shield me from his anger. “Fear is natural when you are at the mercy of a soulless monster,” he says, voice tight. “It doesn’t make you weak. Fear can become your strength if you choose to make it so.”

“I wasn’t strong. I was just scared.” I look away when I begin to cry again because I can’t seem to stop crying.

He cups my face, makes me look up at him. “You are strong. You are so strong. But until you realize that for yourself, I will be strong enough for the both of us. Let me carry you, Little Moth. I will keep you safe and I will bring your enemies to their knees before you.”

“In pieces,” I hear myself say, remembering his promise earlier.

He nods, reaffirming. “In pieces.”

13

CASSIAN

Ifind Jet easily enough because this place, it’s where we used to come. It’s been years, but here he is, his lime green Porsche parked outside the small house that looks like all the other houses. Lime green as if a beacon calling me to find him.

I pull up to the curb behind it, the Ferrari blending into the dark, and climb out, bypassing the front door for the one around back. I’m not sure if it’ll be there, but when I lift the rock beside the door, I find the key beneath it. Nothing’s changed. She needs to be more careful.

A light is on in the living room, but they’re upstairs. I hear them.

I climb the stairs, sliding my hand along all the familiar grooves of the handrail. The sounds I heard moments ago are louder up here because the door at the end of the hall is cracked open.

Of course it is.

He’s expecting me.

I push the door open. Mina gasps, whips her headaround in panic which is quickly replaced by surprise and followed by a smile.