Page 10 of Immortal Rose

“Make it a habit of assaulting innocent young women, do you?” I jeered back.

I twisted, savagely kicking at his knees and ankles and soft parts. A fight then. I’d claw my way out. He swore, releasing one of my arms, only to perform some sort of trickery that had me spinning around. He brought my back flush to his hard chest. I jabbed an elbow back, wincing as I struck the cold buckle on his belt.

He brought his face in line with mine, his breath fanning across my ear. Another shiver spread from my scalp to my freezing toes. “I’d hoped to do this in a more civilized manner . . .”

He banded an arm across my chest. I threw my skull back, the way Arabella had taught me, but naturally he had to be a bloody giant. My head bounced off the collar of his uniform, and my simmering blood heated to a boil as he laughed again.

There was something in his free hand—a small black bottle. He flicked the cap off with his thumb. Pine. Lavender.

My body tensed as a stroke of effervescent magic brushed my senses, settling deep in my lungs before I could stifle my breath. Seductive warmth curled through my blood then, stroking my mind with slow, teasing fingers.

One by one, my bones hollowed, turning as light as a bird’s. A dark curtain pulled down over my mind, smothering my frantic thoughts. My terror.

“You . . . bastard . . .” My lips moved, but I wasn’t sure I’d managed to force the words out. My sense of him blurred like watercolors. His grip on my chest eased.

“Now, Miss Lockwood,” his voice rumbled near my ear again, “you’ll have to do far better than that if you mean to maim.”

My fist curled around the lapel of his damp uniform coat, twisting with one final, silent promise as I sank into dark unconsciousness and the moon’s soft face dipped toward the horizon.

I will.

Chapter Two

I knew I was in trouble when the last of the women in my cell was released, and the guard’s sulfurous stench of malice became spiced with the cinnamon of lust.

Mrs. Fellows shivered as the door slammed shut and was locked behind her. Even in my envy, I was relieved for her. The woman had spent the better part of the last . . . two, was it? Two days weeping and shivering, distraught at the thought of what had become of her nine children since she’d been arrested. All for the crime of attempting to sell her dead husband’s fairy comb at the Midnight Market, so she and her family wouldn’t starve.

“It’ll be my brother, I expect, lately arrived in town,” Mrs. Fellows murmured more to herself than to me.

I nodded, no feeling left in my body as I leaned back against the cold stone wall. Her brother was the last in a succession of husbands, sons, fathers, uncles, and cousins who had dutifully arrived at the prison gates to pay their wayward relation’s way out of Fairgate ahead of their coming trial.

I met her dark gaze one last time, the rusty scent of her guilt indistinguishable from the actual rust clinging to the bars between us. Her hands twisted in her ruined cloak, her throat working to find the words. In the end, she said nothing.

It was just as well. There was nothing she could have said. Certainly nothing that would have made me feel better. I’d told her and the others the truth that first morning: no one was coming for me.

With one last nod, Mrs. Fellows scurried after the other guard as he strode away, not willing to be left another moment in this hell.

The other guard, Branson, lingered. Of course he did. The pressure of his gaze was like a tongue tracing the curve of my cheek. I fought a shudder of revulsion, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of any response.

“Looking awfully lonely in there, Red,” Branson said, giving the bars a tap with his truncheon. “How’s about I come and keep ye company tonight? Gets awfully cold down here after sunset, don’t it? I’ll keep ye warm . . .”

I wasn’t a coward, but I also wasn’t a fool. I congratulated myself for my restraint as I somehow managed to bite back the words Not as warm as your blood when I slit your throat. I wouldn’t give him an excuse to beat me again—not that he needed justification. The guards had been empowered to brutalize prisoners under the guise of “subduing wicked spirits.”

“Think yer above me, do ye?” he jeered.

Ignoring him seemed to annoy him more than cutting retorts, so I merely looked down at my filthy nails, studying them.

He slammed his truncheon against the bars again, and this time, my body jumped instinctively at the harsh clang. He laughed, and all I could do was swallow my bile and let him.

“Tonight then,” he promised, with a last leering look. “I’ll show ye how a little bitch deserves to be handled.”

My jaw clenched to the point of pain, every muscle in my body going rigid with the effort to remain still as he finally strode away, whistling “The Black Needle” to himself.

Damn him, I wouldn’t let him ruin that song for me, and I wouldn’t let him touch me, either. Couldn’t.

My breath steamed around me with my harsh exhale. His body was rotting away quicker than his soul, just not quickly enough to matter to me. Not when I knew now what happened to women at Fairgate after dark.

There had been twelve of us packed into this cell, which was barely the size of a carriage. Most of the other women had been customers at the market, but a few were simply prostitutes who’d been walking the wrong streets as the King’s Guard had stormed through the Brickbats. And while fate had taken it upon itself to weave our lives together, it moved quickly to unravel the protection our numbers had provided. Branson took the utmost pleasure in returning to lead each of the others out, well aware that he was stripping away layer after layer of defenses.