Page 51 of This Cruel Fate

Atlas waved a hand, and they flew to the side. Reaching out his left hand, he gripped at nothing. All around them came a rattling noise, and then water burst through the pipes, from the ceiling, the walls. It was a torrential downpour.

“You’re going to regret punching me. And tomorrow you’re going to tell Peter you changed your mind.”

The water swirled into a vortex, rising above the boxes, above her. All she could do was stare. She was both within and without herself, some part of her brain screaming at her to move, to run, to do anything to get away.

Then the water dove into her mouth.

Her nose.

Her ears.

Everything was waterlogged. She choked and gagged until even her lungs were full of water. It was all-consuming. Overwhelming. Xolia lost her grip on whether she was standing or falling, dead or alive.

Were the lights still on? Everything was so dark. And cold. And wet. I hate you. I hate you…

Chapter Twenty-One

Her eyes burned. Her throat burned. Every part of her burned. Even her skin, which was covered in damp clothes. Her hair was matted and stuck to the sides of her face and neck. The groan and scream of construction vehicles grated against her ears.

Much of last night was a blur. Unfortunately, she remembered every detail of her fight with Atlas. Not that it’d been much of a fight. He had decimated her in between her slow blinks and half-coherent musings. It was worse than humiliating. She cracked open an eye to find the lights were still on in the warehouse, even though sunlight streamed in through small windows at the top of the eastern wall.

Fighting through the stiffness and pain in her limbs, she sat up, looking around for any sign of Atlas. There was nothing. Bracing herself against one of the fallen boxes, Xolia stood up, hating the way the obruo still kept her from fully healing. She hated everything.

This will never happen again, she vowed to herself. Nothing will ever catch me by surprise again. No one will cross me.

She was done living in complacency. Done living off the words of others. Walking as silently as possible, she found her way to the door that Atlas had led them through. Her hand paused on the handle. I feel like I was supposed to remember something. She struggled to think back through the night, but it was gone. Whatever she was trying to reach was lost in the gaps of her memory.

The door opened easily, and the sun hit her face. The air might’ve been mild, but in her damp clothes, she was a shivering mess. Construction workers milled about, focusing on the parts of the building covered by the scaffolding. Not wanting to be seen, she ducked her head and made quick work of leaving the property.

People walked along the street, some giving her a passing glance, but in a city as large as Ris, she would hardly be the most interesting or out-of-place character walking in the streets. With that as her only comfort, she made her way home.

Shower. Sleep. Warmth.

Xolia repeated those words over and over in her head like a mantra. They were all that kept her moving forward. It had been over two hours since she started the trek home, and she was woefully close to curling up on a dirty street corner when she rounded the final block to her apartment building.

Not even on the day she’d moved in had she been so happy to see the nondescript five-story building. She clutched her house key which had blessedly managed to stay in her pocket. The elevator was still broken. Just these stairs.

Grunting, she pushed herself onward. Thirty more steps. Twenty. Fifteen. She made it to her door, in all its chipped-paint glory. The key slid smoothly into the lock. Too smoothly. Normally, it had to hit the tumblers just right for the handle to turn.

Using the last dregs of her strength, she pushed open the door, ready to face whomever had broken in. Nothing was touched. There was a head of black hair poking up over the back of the couch, however. Soft snoring filled the apartment.

“Adonis?” she asked.

His head whipped around, revealing a slightly disheveled Adonis. At the sight of her, his eyes lit up and he leapt off the couch and ran to her. “Xo, what happened?” His hands skated over her body, and he frowned when he encountered her wet clothes.

His caring demeanor snapped what little composure she had been still clinging to. She allowed herself a shuddering breath before collapsing against him. A heaving sigh escaped her, the solidness of his body was so far removed from how afraid she’d been. Atlas had demolished her pride in the span of minutes.

“I came here as soon as I could. I called at least fifty times,” he said in low tones, his hands still not leaving her body. They caressed her filthy hair, trailed along her jaw, her shoulders. His touch was just as consuming as the fear.

“My phone broke,” she croaked out. There was no way it had survived that much water damage, though truthfully, she hadn’t even thought to check it. Leaning on him for support, she let him lead her into the bedroom and then the bathroom, where he turned on the shower. Once the temperature warmed up, they stripped their clothes and Adonis got into the shower with her.

“What happened?” he asked. She shook her head, still struggling to hold herself together. He didn’t push for answers, and instead, he carefully massaged shampoo and conditioner into her hair. She sighed as the tension coiled underneath her skin slowly unraveled.

Once her hair was clean of product, she turned to him. With him standing a head taller than her, it was hard to make herself intimidating to him, and Sel, she was so tired, but she pulled herself up into a haughty pose all the same. “Adonis,” she said. “It’s either me or Helen. You’re my… partner completely or not at all.” Even under the comforting thrum of hot water, goosebumps prickled at her skin as she waited to hear what he would say.

He didn’t answer right away. It was the worst type of torture, her so vulnerable next to him in his domineering silence.

“Did you know that when FAR released variants from the barracks, they never removed the Variant Service Act from law?”

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