I climb onto the bed, shimmying my way towards her before I pull her into a huge hug, so fierce I hope she feels it right down to her soul.
“It’s going to take time,” I tell her, not letting go, “It’ll take time, but I know,I fucking knowyou. I know you can do this. I know you hate me right now. I know this is my fault, I know I dragged you into this but I’m going to be here, I am going to help you and give you everything you need. Whatever it is you want, you need, you ask for, I’m going to give it to you.”
“Wren,” she cries, turning her face into my shoulder.
“I know, Rory. There’s so much darkness in this world, but you already knew that, look where you came from and look at what you have achieved.”
“I hate this feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“It isn’t even about what happened,” Rory says, “I can deal with that. I can move on from that, over time, you know?” She pauses, “It’s the idea, the fear, that it’ll happen again.”
“It won’t happen again,” I growl fiercely.
“You can’t know that, and I’d rather be dead than do it again.”
My heart stutters in my chest, an overwhelming panic settling into my skin, “Don’t say that.”
“I mean it.”
Rory finally falls asleep, her head resting on my stomach as I smoothed her hair, and gently I move her from my body, positioning her head on the pillows before I climb off, leaving her curled on the bed. She appears to be sleeping soundly but I’ll be back in the next thirty minutes to check on her again.
I will stay by her side every minute of every day if that’s what it takes. My father will not take anything else from me.
I gently close the door but don’t feel the need to lock it. She shouldn’t be locked away, she needs freedom, normality, there is no need to take her from one cage and place her in another, no matter how gilded it is.
I take the stairs slowly, pressing my fingers into the centre of my forehead, trying to ease the tension I feel building there.
I’m not paying any attention when I hit the ground floor and head to the kitchen which is why the voice that greets me catches me off guard.
So off guard I’m sure my heart stops beating inside my chest.
“Hello Wren.”
The English accent has goose bumps crawling over my skin, the very same voice that spoke to me as I bled out in his arms. The very one that I was sure was going to be the continuation of my suffering and yet turned out to be the very opposite.
My eyes clash with Kingston’s, the icy blue a cold that appears too warm, a contrast and contradiction given the circumstances.
“You.”
I knew he was coming. I knew he would be back and yet seeing him here, in the flesh is something else entirely.
My memory serves me well in remembering him, even with all the shit that has fallen between us, the tattoos, the casual and yet dangerous demeanor he wears around him as if it were a cloak.
His fingers turn a crystal tumbler of amber liquid on the table, and he leans casually back in the chair, spreading his knees as he looks at me with a smirk.
“I expected a better reception for the man who saved you.”
Lex growls beside him, slamming his glass down so hard on the table the crystal cracks, allowing a steady flow of golden liquid to seep from the splices.
“Now, now, Silver,” Kingston chuckles, “your woman does not interest me.”
“Well, you did try to fucking buy her.”
“Have we not gone over this?” Kingston sighs, “It was for you, I needed an in and she was it. Valentine is just a fucking idiot. Who sells their own fucking daughter?”
A pair of heels clicking on hardwood draws my attention from the man sat at the table. Isobel saunters in, holding a flute of champagne, her jet black hair dead straight and hanging around her face. Pale skin and blood red lips are the first things I notice and then it’s the blue of her eyes, so similar to Kingston’s.