Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Not Piper. She was waning, yes. But not withering. Even though she was showing a physical toll, her eyes were bright with life. Stubbornness. She sat at the table with me every night, head held high, nibbling at what food she could tolerate while staring defiantly at the plate of meat that must’ve been appealing to her animal nature, desperate to survive.
Her principles were stronger than her baser nature. Not many people existed like that. Certainly not in my world.
She was a flower, none of the bloom fading despite the lack of care and attention she received.
It impressed me plenty. But it didn’t weaken my resolve. The stronger she showed me she was, the more desperate I became to be the one who broke her. Then she’d be mine somehow. Even after I handed her off to Stone, part of her would always be mine.
When she’d been gone for fifty minutes, I started looking for her. I wasn’t a tracker by any means, but I knew I could find her wherever she was in these vast woods.
It didn’t take me long.
She was sprawled facedown in the dirt, unconscious. Blood trickled from a wound in her head.
Such images were not shocking to me. Blood. An unconscious person. Yet my heart rate increased, my breathing became shallower, and the tips of my fingers prickled with something.
Though new voices inside of me that made me uncomfortable urged me to run to her, I purposefully slowed down my gait. Approached her unhurriedly. As if I didn’t care. I didn’t.
I didn’t care about Piper beyond the pieces I broke her into.
The few seconds it took to get to her side, kneel, to put my fingers to her pulse felt like an eon.
It was there. Sluggish, almost concerningly so, but she had a pulse. Her skin was still warm, and I failed to stop myself from breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with the bitter yet not unpleasant twang of her sweat.
Even in her prone state, I wanted to lick the perspiration off the side of her head, to taste it. I wanted to run my fingers through the stream of blood from her forehead, coat myself in it.
There wasn’t time for me to indulge in my increasingly strange yearnings. There was never a time for that. I had a task. To break her. But not kill her. I was doing my job, I told myself as I picked her up.
She was light. Too fucking light considering her stature a week ago. She let out a tiny sound and nestled her head into my chest, proving she was wholly without survival instinct. She should’ve been battling out of my arms, even in her semi-conscious state. Yet she was as helpless and fragile as a fucking baby.
I kept my eyes on her as her eyelids fluttered then groggily tried to focus on me. The image of her mud-stained, blood-smeared, gaunt face was more beautiful to me than I could describe.
But her awareness and consciousness only lasted for a handful of seconds. I watched as the force of her exhaustion, malnutrition, dragged her back down again.
“Piper, don’t you dare pass out on me again."
Even as I commanded her to stay, she left.
And she took part of my sanity with her. Part of my soul lapsing into the darkness with her.
Piper
Something warm brushed against my forehead. Not the same warmth of the chest I’d been pressed against. Nothing was warm like that.
This was softer, wetter.
A washcloth, I deduced without opening my eyes.
My head throbbed painfully, so I assumed that opening my eyes to the reality of the situation would only make it worse. I decided to keep them closed a little while longer. Damn, they were heavy, impossibly heavy. Even if I wanted to, I didn’t know if I had the strength to open them.
There was a crushing, unyielding weight over my whole body. My limbs were heavy, and my stomach was excruciatingly empty.
Though I felt sluggish and out of it, my hunger was visceral.
The warmth at my head disappeared, replaced by a sharp sting.
My eyes popped open as I let out a hiss of pain, unable to move myself because I was too weak.
I was met with an icy, intense gaze.
Knox.
Inches from my face, watching me with a practiced concentration, cold expression in place.
“Hold still,” he ordered as I tried to wiggle. “I need to clean this.”
More pain at my head, eliciting another hiss between my teeth.
I glanced down at the coffee table. There was a bowl of water with a washcloth in it, the washcloth was stained crimson. My blood. I’d hit my head on my way down, obviously, which might have been the reason for losing consciousness. Or the mild starvation. Or the trauma of the past week.
I held still, considering the sequence of events, gritting my teeth as Knox cleaned my wound.