Page 23 of Flesh & Divinity

They knew I was listening, they were testing me and I fell for it.

They don’t take me back to the bedroom.

They take me to the kitchen, where the fire is still low and the table has been cleared. The three of them move around each other with the practiced ease of men who have shared a space for years. Brother adds wood to the fire. Boyfriend fills a cup and sets it in front of me without a word. Daddy stands at the far wall with his arms folded and watches me with the particular quality of attention that has never once felt safe and I have stopped wanting it to.

I wrap both hands around the cup.

“You set me up,” I say.

“Yes.” Daddy doesn’t move from the wall.

“You knew I’d run.”

“Yes.”

“You left the key out on purpose.” I hold his gaze. “You wanted me to try and escape, only to realize there is no way off this island without you three.”

The silence that follows is its own answer.

“You hoped to scare me enough to stay close,” I say quietly. “But I wasn’t supposed to run for the water.”

“No,” he says. “You weren’t.”

I laugh. It comes out short and dark. “Backfired.”

“Somewhat.”

Boyfriend makes a sound from the far end of the table that might be an agreement. Brother is looking into the fire.

I set the cup down, stare at the table and feel the weight of the month pressing down on me all at once. The bluff I almost went over.

The way Brother’s heartbeat felt against my face. Not steady at all.

I look up.

“Tell me something true,” I say. “Not about today. Not about the island.” My eyes stay on Daddy’s. “Something real.”

The fire pops. Nobody moves.

Then Daddy pushes off the wall and crosses to the table. He doesn’t sit. He stops behind the chair across from me and wraps both hands around the back of it. He looks down at me through the glass of his mask with an expression I have never seen on him before, not hatred, not hunger, not the cold surgical contempt I have learned to navigate.

“We know who you are,” he says. “We know about what you did.” His voice is low. “We know about the lie.”

“Lie?” I ask.

The word sits between us like a blade laid flat on a table.

“Don’t play dumb,” he says.

I hold his gaze for a long time.

Then boyfriend is behind me and his hands find my shoulders, unhurried, and I feel him lower his head until the cool glass of his mask grazes the side of my neck. “Tell us,” he says against my skin, and the words land somewhere between a threat and something else. “You’re still ours, Cinder Soot. Lie or not.”

His mouth finds the curve of my throat. My eyes fall shut and the questions dissolve, which I suspect is entirely the point. I am too tired and too undone from the bluff to pretend I want him to stop.

Brother appears at my side. His hand finds my jaw and tilts it toward him, and even through the glass mask I feel the intensity of his gaze like a physical pressure. “You scared us tonight,” he says.

“Good,” I breathe.