A room of death.
Why the fuck were we in this one? Then again, were there any rooms in this place that weren’t touched with death?
“You’re not allergic to any pain meds, are you?” Gem asked Jareth, her voice stiff and strict. She might’ve protected him from my wrath and helped snap me out of whatever hate-fuelled bloodlust I’d been in, but she wasn’t his friend.
Jareth ran a hand over his jaw, pushing against a new bruise and swelling. “No. I have a tolerance for all drugs. Whatever you have, I’ll take.”
My eyes narrowed. What did he mean by that? We’d never been given drugs at Fables, apart from the odd painkiller when a guest got particularly nasty. We’d never been force fed chemicals to keep us inline.
Leaning forward, I shook away what I could of my headache and focused on him. “You use drugs?”
Gemma subtly left the room, taking my oxygen with her and leaving me with a thousand questions for Jareth.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t comfortable asking them in front of her, it was my constant need to keep my past away from my present. Gemma represented hope and happiness that I still had no idea how to claim. Jareth reminded me of all the shit we’d endured and done, ensuring we weren’t suitable for silly things like relationships or love because we had no concept of the word.
We only knew how to love each other because we were all each other had.
But you have Gem now.
You need to talk to her.
Clear the air about why you ran tonight.
Balling my hands, I ignored the faint twinge in my arm and waited for Jareth to answer me.
He mimicked me, clasping his hands between his legs and sitting forward. “I’ve dabbled with a few.”
“What few?”
His teeth flashed. “Everything.”
“By choice or force?”
His body tightened just a little, but I noticed. I noticed because even though he was more stranger than brother, I still knew him. I’d once protected his body and soothed his mind. I’d done everything I could to take away his nightmares even while I’d drowned beneath mine.
“I didn’t come here to talk about me, Kassen.”
I jolted at my name on his lips. It dragged up a million memories all over again. My ears rang with Quell’s voice murmuring my name as we’d cut ourselves in the dorm. My heart burned with echoes as Nyx made me promise to keep Wes alive.
My name had been used by guests who’d turned me into nothing more than their fuck toy but it’d also been breathed with love by my family. I’d forgotten that part. I’d allowed hate to ruin everything.
“Why did you come?” I glanced at the door where Gem had disappeared. How long did we have to talk openly? Would Jareth speak truthfully with her around or not?
Licking his lips, he ignored my question and asked one of his own. “Why the fuck are you still living here, Kas?”
I sucked in a breath, dropping my stare to my lacerated knuckles from punching him. How the hell was I supposed to answer that question? I’d only just got my full memory back without choosing amnesia over reality. I’d literally just admitted I was in love with Gemma, even after running from love for the past decade.
I felt as if I was on a seesaw. Flipping from one side to the other. The side of me that’d once loved blindingly and completely, only to end up molested and trapped because of it. And the side that’d done whatever it could to forget. To put himself first and no one else.
I didn’t know how to live with myself anymore. How to choose which side of me to become and which side to eradicate once and for all.
Jareth saw straight through my hesitation, impatience filling his harsh voice. “The truth, Kas. Tell me.”
I looked up, narrowing my eyes. “And what of your truth? Will you tell me that?”
He shrugged, sprawling backward nonchalantly into the chair. His air of uncaring didn’t fly with me. His muscles were still coiled, his energy still poised, his body still hurting from my fists. There was no relaxing in this place—especially as a returned slave. “I don’t want to talk about me. I want to talk about you.”
“And I want to know what happened to everyone when you left that night.”
He tilted his head, dawn mixing with a lamp Gemma had switched on by the bar cart, splinters of amber dancing over his hair from the last remaining bottles of liquor. “I told you. I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? You left together. You should’ve stuck together—”
“We were stupid to think we could escape so easily.”
“Easily?” I snapped, sitting on the edge of the couch. “You think it was fucking easy slaughtering everyone and then burying their bodies? You think it was easy waiting for others to come? Easy when someone did arrive and almost fucking killed me?”
Jareth stopped pretending he wasn’t on edge and sat upright again, wincing a little at moving so quick. “We told you to come with us.”
I studied him, doing my best to see past all the shit he wouldn’t confess. “And if I had, where would I have ended up, huh? Where did you end up? Where the hell is our family, Jareth?”
He pursed his lips, swallowing down answers he wasn’t ready to spill.
Taut silence stretched between us again. If I hadn’t known this man for years—if I hadn’t hugged him in the dark and shared promises on a daily basis, I would’ve launched myself at him again.
The smug coldness in his bi-colored stare. The arctic chill that never seemed to leave. There was nothing left inside him. Nothing soft. Nothing human. We’d survived similar ordeals, yet while I struggled with sanity because I still had a heart inside me, Jareth had nothing.
He was a void. A shell of who he’d once been.
Leaning back, ice slipped down my spine. “If you don’t care, why the hell did you come back here?”
“Because I made a promise.”
“Most of our promises are broken.”
“Yeah well, not this one.”
I ran a hand through my hair, swallowing hard as pressure built in my skull. I hoped Gemma had enough painkillers to go around because I’d long ago used up Fable’s supplies.
She’d been generous since I’d fallen off the cliff, gifting me pills when my headache grew too bad, but now I needed an entire handful. My headache needed to piss off so I could figure this shit out.
Jareth’s arrival wasn’t a coincidence, was it? His appearance was suspicious.
I didn’t like it.
“Look, let’s start somewhere easier,” Jareth muttered. “I’ll tell you what I can, okay? And then you...do the same.”
I nodded stiffly. “Fine.”
“Okay then.” He sat taller, eyeing me carefully. “Who’s the girl?”
Everything inside me grew claws. I struggled not to snarl, drowning beneath overprotectiveness. “Someone whose life means more to me than any other. So I suggest, if you want to keep breathing, that you treat her well.”
He nodded as if my declaration that Gemma came before anyone else made total sense. “I figured as much. The way you watch her...” He shrugged. “You gave us your pain to keep us safe, but her? You’d give her your life.”
I clenched my hands, relishing in the stings from my cuts. Was that true? Had I truly allowed myself to put her first in everything? I’d felt it when I’d kissed her earlier tonight. I’d suffocated beneath it as I’d run from hurting her. But I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to stay committed.