Page 74 of The Steel Rogue
“But…but what you said—everything—you said I was everything.” The ground was swaying beneath her, parting, anxious to swallow her whole.
His look went into pure callousness. “I told you what you needed to hear in order to get you safely to Culland Hall. You would have left me otherwise, and I couldn’t have that.”
A wicked blow to her gut, taking the air out of her more than his fist ever could.
She gasped a breath. Another. Another. Her feet shuffling backwards, searching for stability, searching for ground that would not swallow her hole.
Her hand went to the front of her neck, holding it for lack of any other way to force breath down into her chest. One last gulp for air and it made it deep into her lungs, swirling with a fury she’d never known.
Her heel caught a root and she tripped, falling flat on her backside, knocking out the little air she had in her lungs.
Roe didn’t say a word. Didn’t move one pinky to help her.
Air. Air. Another gasp deep into her chest.
Her face jerked upward to him, her eyes looking to slice him into a thousand shreds. “You took me in and made me trust you—you twisted everything I thought I knew and now you’re leaving me.” The words hissed out of her mouth, the low hum of an angry hive. “How could you do this?”
“Tor—”
Her hand flew up. “I let you in, let you break me and now you think to discard me—a slop bucket over the side of the ship.” Leaves and moss clenched into her fists, her heels digging into the dirt, looking for traction, looking for a way up, a way out.
They slipped, again and again.
“Tor—”
“Just go. Leave me.” She didn’t bother to look up. Not to him. Not anymore.
“Torrie—”
“Leave!” Her shriek shocked the air through the woods around them, echoing off the trees, and it took everything from her. Her feet stilled, all feeling in her legs, in her arms gone, leaving her in the wasteland of a body that refused to move, refused to fight.
All she could do was sit there. So numb tears couldn’t even form.
With the last of the breath in her lungs, she pushed out whispered words. “Leave—go.”
Roe stepped forward, walking past her without a word.
Gone.
~~~
Torrie sat in the middle of the square plat of flowers by the water basin that anchored the core of the rose garden.
All colors, all varieties of roses surrounded her in full bloom, sending their heady scent into the air, the walls of evergreens along the outer borders holding the air still and suffocating all around her.
She never liked roses. Never liked the smell of them. But this was the only spot she could find hidden away from the main house, hidden away from people.
Maybe her dislike of roses could make her feel something—anything to cut through the numbness that had overtaken her body. If anything could get her hackles up, it was the scent of roses.
They didn’t.
She leaned forward on the marble bench she’d found by the water’s edge, her fingers running along the outside of her calves through the skirt of the dress she’d borrowed from the duchess. Massaging her skin, her nails itched at the tightness beneath the top of her leather boots.
“Here you are.”
Torrie jerked upright, her hands clamping together on top of her lap as she looked over her shoulder.
Sienna stood between the two junipers standing skinny and tall at the entrance to the garden of roses. The duchess stepped in, her slippers crunching onto the granite gravel that lined the beds of roses in perfect symmetry.