Her father had carefully crafted the beautiful frame. It was etched much like an ancient scroll, and because her father had been an astronomer, constellations, comets and stars adorned it. Every evening Zyah touched her fingers to her lips and then to the frame before she went to bed, making her feel closer to her father and grandfather.
Anat had similar treasures she kept in her bedroom. Things that had belonged to Amara, her daughter, that were personal. A lace shawl. Her anklet bells. Photographs. Her beloved husband, Horus’s, monocle. He’d kept it on a chain because he lost them so often, he’d said. That had always made Anat laugh. That monocle was still on that chain, one of Anat’s most treasured items.
What did Player have of his past but the scars on his body? Zyah had seen him naked the night they’d spent together and knew his body intimately. She knew every scar. Now she knew how he’d gotten them, and the knowledge sickened her.
She sat in the middle of the bed, her legs drawn up, arms hugging her legs, head resting on her knees, Player restless beside her. She slept in the guest room right next door, but each night she had to come in and put him back together. When the pain was so bad it woke him, he would hallucinate.
She made a sound of denial and hastily covered her mouth, not wanting to disturb Player when she’d just gotten him back to sleep. It wasn’t a hallucination. She wished it were. She knew Maestro and the others thought it was. They even laughed sometimes, or smirked.
Player’s illusions always seemed to start with something to do with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Torpedo Ink members thought it was funny and seemed to have good memories of that time in their childhood. That didn’t in any way jive with how Player felt when the White Rabbit suddenly appeared or any of the other Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland characters began to manifest in his mind.
Zyah’s instincts told her that if Player had protected his fellow members from knowing that his illusions could become reality, then she shouldn’t say anything to them either. She didn’t understand what was going on, and until she did, she needed to stay silent and figure it all out.
One of the many problems was that the longer she was with Player, sitting with him, getting into his head and sharing his mind, even just to heal him, the stronger the connection between them became. She didn’t want or need that. She didn’t want to know about his past. She knew it humiliated him to have her know.
The good part about having Player in their home was that a member of Torpedo Ink was always there with him. Always. That meant her grandmother was protected night and day. She also knew that not only did someone stay inside the house with Player and Mama Anat, but someone was outside as well. That gave her great relief and allowed her to work at the grocery store without constant worry that someone would break into the house again and hurt her grandmother.
She didn’t worry too much about Player during the day because Steele spent a great deal of time with him, healing his brain injury. As far as she was concerned, he couldn’t heal it fast enough. Not because she was being selfish and wanted him gone—that wasn’t it—but because seeing him in such terrible pain was horrific, and watching that throw him into his childhood nightmares was even worse. She couldn’t share those things with her grandmother. She didn’t have anyone she could talk to about it. The more time she spent with Player, the more he was finding his way into her heart—and that wasn’t a good thing.
Zyah eased her legs off the bed, careful not to wake Player. This time had been particularly bad. It had only been a week since he’d been shot. She kept reminding herself that wasn’t a long time to recover, but it felt like forever when she was so afraid for him. When she cared so much. Too much. She pressed her hand to her throbbing head as she made her way into the hallway. She had a headache now from crying.
“Zyah?” Savage’s voice came out of the darkness.
She liked him. She knew she shouldn’t. Violence swirled around him. He was covered in it. Sometimes it swallowed him. But there was—that voice. That genuine caring that couldn’t be faked, not when she could read people when she was barefoot like she was. Savage cared. His eyes might be ice-cold and scary deadly, but he cared, whether he wanted anyone to know it or not. And the way he was with Anat—that couldn’t be faked. He was always so unfailingly gentle.
“I’m all right. Sometimes he breaks my heart. He’s in a lot of pain, and I can’t take it away.”