Queen of Nothing

The entire next week got away from me, and most of the next. I spent most days waiting for the alarm to go off on my phone so I could find a reason to be down there with the siren that was taking up all the space in my painful head. Ronan took Cecilia to her special “room” at least once a day for a few hours at a time. She was getting visibly skinnier now because she barely ate her food, even though Álvarez was cooking her every possible meal if he wasn’t sneaking her all the best take-out spots from Cove City.

Ronan rarely stuck around after her sessions in the soundproof chamber were over, always itching to avoid the always present conflict between the two of them.

I walked past the kennels and found him opening the door and pulling her out, but she was so different from the first time I pulled her out of the box. It was as if this had been hardening her instead of breaking her like he planned, and my admiration for her grew because she was a soldier just like me.

He nodded my way as he acknowledged my arrival, I shot my hand out to catch the keys as he tossed them at me and shouted back, “I gotta go pick up some things for tonight.”

I nodded back as I walked closer to the one thing that had been running through my mind all week no matter how hard I tried pushing any thoughts of her away. I stuck my hand out at her and tipped my chin in the other direction to signal her to take my hand and follow me.