Page 11 of Angel Unchained
“And you fucking ended up here because you failed.” I was piecing together snippets of her words here and there.
“No.” She frowned, her chin lifting. “I kept a child from getting killed. So I wrecked a valuable piece of equipment.”
“Then what you did was invaluable.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “You’re the first person to have said so. Everyone else, even Mr. Simmons, my boss, acted like I was the biggest criminal in history.”
She was like me then. “To the Roulex, I’m—my people—are the worst in the universe because we won’t let them know how they can use our healing power.”
“Wait, like magic?”
I smirked. If this woman was sent her to tempt me and get information, I wasn’t going to hand it over.
She threw her hands up in the air. “Well, is it or isn’t it?”
Bingo. She had to be working for the Roulex. Willing to get pregnant with my child whatever the cost and glean any secrets she can along the way. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted a pretty face.
“Not all of our people have healing abilities.” I lied. “Some, like me, only have it to heal ourselves. But it’s not anything we can control. I could be unconscious and my body would still work to repair itself.” Truth, but nothing the Roulex hadn’t figured out by now.
“What about if you break a bone,” her eyes widened, “or lose a limb?”
The Roulex know the answers to both, they’d done it to me often enough. Was this to throw me off that she’s a spy?
“They heal or grow back.” I rolled my shoulders back, my wings ruffling.
“Your horns and wings too?” Her breath caught, like she was worried she had offended me.
Oh, she was a good little actress.
“What do you think?” I let venom lace my words.
She didn’t even bat an eyelash, but her cheeks color bright pink. “I would hope they would grow back.” She rubbed her arms. “Please don’t tell me they did that to you here. What will they do to me?”
Seeking my sympathies now? I snorted. “Something tells me you won’t be subjected to the cruelty of this prison and the Roulex unlike me and my kind.”
“Oh? Are there others of you imprisoned in here?”
Why was she asking this? She already knew there had been three of us. Me, Celia, and her brother who had tried to warn us that day on the beach that the Roulex were coming. “I’m the only one left.”
“I’m so sorry.” She hugged her knees to her chest, the compassion in her eyes nearly undid me. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
Her words drove spikes into my heart. My admission spilled out before I could stop it. "There was one who tried to take escape but… he's dead.”
“And the other?” she asked, twisting the spike in deeper.
I couldn’t hold back the anger surging through me. “You wanna know what happened to the other?”
She flinched, swallowing hard. “Y-you don’t have to tell me.”
“No, you want this right? To check off all the boxes on your list?”
“What are you talking about?” She shook her head, her brow furrowed.
“After they sawed off her horns and hacked off her wings, they used her, tortured her. Until her mind couldn’t heal from that. Until she bled to death while I was chained and forced to watch the whole fucking thing. Is that what you want to hear?”
I stood and marched over to her. She scrambled up, her gaze darting around the room as though seeking an escape. But I knew the truth. If given the chance she’d gut me once she was pregnant with my child and had all my secrets.
But now, she realized she’d been played.
In one swift movement, I grabbed her by the shoulders, hauling her up and smacking her against the stone wall.
Her eyes were full of surprise and shock, I grinned a wide, crooked grin.
“I’ll never forgive any of you for murdering her.”