Bride of Shadows (Cronus Society) by Rhea Watson

Author:Rhea Watson [Watson, Rhea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The bathroom never cleared out.

I kept waiting and waiting, ignoring the knocks on the stall door, needing just a few quiet minutes to process, you know, everything.

Everything everything.

From being assigned to Sub-level Z that fateful day to the abduction—because kidnapping usually implied a ransom request, and as it stood, my captors didn’t seem like they planned on ever selling me back to Dad or Cronus—to Arawn’s kiss in the tub and Draco’s half-smile at the park and Balor doing that thing with his tongue…

My nails. My senses.

My confidence.

My place in the world outside of Fort Beacham.

My… mom. My history. My truth.

Seriously, my brain wasn’t designed to tackle all this shit at once—and definitely not in a cramped bathroom stall at some random nightclub.

Eventually, circuits way too overloaded for critical thinking, I just stood up, flushed the toilet I hadn’t used, and left. A woman shouldered by me and slammed the metal door, and I drifted to the sinks, on autopilot as I waited for one to open up and thrusting my hands under the faucet sensor as soon as it did. Lukewarm water with solid pressure pummeled my skin, my new nails, and I went through the motions of a deep clean, getting every finger, every inch, like I was due in a sterile containment cell any minute now.

An expressionless Selene stared back at me in the mirror, and I narrowed my translucent blues, expecting so much more. Fear. Anger. Grief. I ought to be planning an escape—something.

But fight or flight had died a week ago, my body too weak for either, and now that it was strong enough to actually do something, I just stood there and numbly washed my hands.

I’d grown paler in the last week, a feat old friends used to joke was impossible. Paler, but also somehow fuller? I tipped my head side to side, assessing the healthy glow in my cheeks, some of the sharper angles dulled. All the consistent meals Balor made me eat. All the rich, heavy, hearty foods that would have turned my stomach on the meds… Maybe. Maybe my body had always needed this, but the drugs made it impossible to choke much down.

My black lashes flickered when I refocused on my eyes.

What did Arawn, Draco, and Balor see when they peered into them?

Because I saw so much in theirs, layers and strata I’d never gleaned from anyone before, centuries of life and experience, depth and emotion untouched by time.

“Selene?”

A soft whisper jolted me out of the scrutiny spiral, and I flinched when the woman beside me locked onto my gaze in the mirror, our reflections meeting as she too spent way too long washing her hands.

“My name is Audrey,” she murmured. Red hair cropped in a pixie cut. Black septum ring that looked a bit off, like it wasn’t a real piercing. Slightly shorter than me, with a straight build and an olive complexion. Hazels that should have been warm but… weren’t. Not when she lifted a knowing eyebrow

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