The Horseman’s expression darkened. I’d struck a nerve, but that was good. Nerves were better than nothing. “I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he echoed.
“Then let me in and tell me what you know. Maybe I can help.”
He stood from his chair, the faint light I was able to see cascading around his shoulders, his chest, the rigid landscape of his muscular abdomen. For a moment he stood, motionless, but then he circled around his desk and came closer to me. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, but that didn’t matter compared to the warmth his body radiated.
Warmth I could feel despite not even touching him.
“You cannot help,” he said. “Not because I don’t want your help, but because you cannot. This is my fight. My own.”
“What are you fighting against?”
The Horseman placed his hand gently on my cheek, and I felt the warmth radiate through me like he was made of pure sunlight. “I have missed you.”
I took his hand and held it. “I missed you too…”
“But you must stay away from me. For your own good.”
“My own good? I don’t understand.”
“I will send you away from this place. You will take your leave of Harrowgate tonight.”
“Tonight? What?”
“I need you not to question me right now, Six. It isn’t safe for you here.”
My heart started hammering against my chest. “Wait… you’re sending me away? I thought you couldn’t—”
“—forget about that. You cannot stay here. I cannot guarantee your safety so long as you’re near.”
I glanced at the door to his quarters, now no longer just an ominous, foreboding door but potentially the door that would lead me to freedom. I had wanted this ever since I learned of Calder’s disappearance, ever since I found out my own people had no idea I was still alive—ever since I discovered the level to which my mind had been violated.
But the thought of going through the door, of taking the Horseman’s offer, didn’t sit right with me. It felt like a mistake. Azlu. Alexa. They were both sitting in my cell, waiting for me to return, scared for their lives. What would happen to them to them if I just left? And would I even know something had happened?
I stared at the Horseman again. “I never thought I’d say this,” I said, “But I’m not leaving.”
“You’re not?”
I let go of his hand. “No. I’m going back to my cell, and if you won’t let me help you figure out what’s going on around here, then I’m going to do it myself.”
“And you would deny yourself your own freedom, your own safety, just like that?”
“There’s more than just me at stake now. I have people in here I don’t want to let down, or abandon.”
And that includes you, you idiot.
“I can make you leave,” he warned.
I stared for the door. “Then make me,” I called across my shoulder.
The Horseman remained silent. When I reached the door, I set my hand against the knob, giving him another chance to make good on his threat. The moment never came.
“I’ll be in my cell,” I said. “And if the beast comes for me, I’m going to deprive you of the opportunity to kill it.”
CHAPTER SIX
What the hell have I done?
Sanchez marched me back to my cell, but if I’d accepted the Horseman’s offer, then maybe he would be leading me out the front door of this wretched place. I would’ve been free again, free to go back to my life with the Obsidian Order, free to go and eat a pizza or a burger by the river—free to find the asshole that messed with my brain and rip his throat out.
It was one of the toughest decisions I’d ever had to make, and I’d had to make it on the spot. A few weeks ago, I would’ve taken his offer in a heartbeat. I hated this place. I hated the food, the people, the restrictions. But what I hated most of all was that I had been sent here to kill a man under false pretenses.
I had no idea if what I had been told about him was true, or if I had been kidnapped and fed false information so that I would want to assassinate him. And for free, no less. So, not only was Calder an absolute piece of crap for manipulating me the way he had, but he was also a cheap piece of crap.
So, as much as I wanted to find Calder and introduce him to the sharp end of my claws, there were questions here I needed answers to, and people I wanted to help. I wasn’t the kind of person to keep friends. Besides Seline and a couple other members of the Obsidian Order, I didn’t really have any friends.
Azlu and Alexa were the first people that came to mind when the Horseman made his offer, and I couldn’t ignore that. Azlu had been thrown in here for the crime of being Arachnon, and as much as she liked it in here because it was safer than being out there, she was only saying that because she also didn’t have friends to help her understand that this place was bad. Nobody should want to be in here.
And Alexa… she and I had a lot in common. We had both been held against our will, we’d been violated in some way, but we were stronger for it. Were survivors. She was a louder, more overtly confident version of me, and I was a quieter, more focused version of her. We’d only known each other for a short while, but already I thought I had made a friend for life in her.
There was no universe in which I abandoned either of them now.
Then there was the Horseman. If I’d taken his offer and left Harrowgate, where would that leave him? Me? Us? It made no logical sense that there was some kind of us to begin with, but there was, and I couldn’t ignore it. He brought something out in me that I never knew I had, he ignited feelings deep within me that I thought were lost forever… and I… I had cracked his tough exterior to find the man beneath the legend.
But it wasn’t enough—I needed more.
Good luck explaining that one to Seline.
Sanchez stopped at the large door to D-Block, her hand hovering over the button to unlock and open it. She looked at me, her eyes no longer tired but sharp, and narrow. “I heard what you said at the end,” she said.
“What did I say?” I asked.
“That you were going to kill it.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t think she’d heard, but there was no point lying about it. “I… guess I did.”
Her eyes softened, becoming hopeful. “Is it true? Can you kill it?”
“I… I really don’t know.”
“But you said you would?”
“And I mean it. I’m going to try, but I don’t have a plan.”
“Well, get one. Everyone it attacks, it kills. No one has seen it and survived.”
I took a step closer to her, swallowing again. “I have.”
Her eyes widened. “You have?”
“Weeks ago. I had a brush with it one night, the next morning it killed a guy in my block. I woke up with a bruise on my arm where its claws had raked my skin in my dream. It never happened again, so I didn’t think—”
Sanchez grabbed me by the shoulders. “—you have to help us,” she pleaded. “If you were able to pull yourself out of your dream before it could kill you, then you must have power we don’t. Please. I’m so tired, I’m scared to sleep, and I have nowhere to go. I’m trapped here just as much as you are.”