“I won’t let you go, not until you tell me to.”
She nods.
Then I lift her gently until she’s sitting up, leaning her back against my chest.
She hisses as she moves.
“Your ribs?” I ask.
She nods.
“It feels like I’m being stabbed with a hundred knives while being sat on by a thousand-pound elephant.”
“I’m pretty sure you have several broken ribs.”
She looks down at the jacket that I zipped back over her body. She finds the zipper and slowly opens it. Then she gasps.
I look over her body and notice the bruising looks worse than when I first examined her. This is because of me. Every terrible thing that has happened to her is because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You weren’t the one who did this.”
“Do you know who did this?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know I didn’t do this to you?”
She smiles. “Because you would never hurt me.”
“I’ve hurt you dozens of times. I’ve threatened to kill you. I would definitely hurt you.”
“Not like this.”
“Tell me what you remember,” I say. I need to know what happened. I need to know every detail so we can put the pieces together and hopefully find a way out of this.
She takes a deep breath, and I can sense how much it hurts her to just breathe. Although, she tries her best to hide her pain. She tries to hide her moan, her wince, her agony.
“Don’t hide how you feel from me. Please, I need to know so I can help you.”
“Help me move so I can look at you.”
I help her adjust in my lap so that I’m still holding her, but I can see her face. She doesn’t hide her moan this time. She lets it out.
It breaks me.
She notices my reaction, but we don’t speak about it. I’m not supposed to feel anything for her. I’m not supposed to care. And I can’t admit that I do, ever.
“What do you remember, huntress?”
I stroke her face, and she shivers, which makes her cough in pain.
I withdraw my hand from her face, resisting the urge to comfort her in case it might bring her more pain. But I keep holding her hand. I still haven’t let it go from the moment she was lowered back into our dungeon.
“I remember the gun being aimed do
wn at us. I remember us both diving toward each other. I remember you being hit in the neck.” She reaches up and touches my neck, examining me for any injury.