Page 18 of Darkness I Become
“Starving,” Asha admitted as she got to her feet. She followed Lana out of her cell. Dax watched her carefully, and she didn’t like the way he leered at her.
“You can go, Dax,” Lana said to him in an overly cheerful way. “I’ve got this under control. Breakfast will be ready soon, so you should go relax before it’s time.”
Dax grunted. “Fine. Don’t let her out of your sight. Angel’s orders.”
“I’m well aware,” Lana replied brightly. “Don’t trouble yourself about it. There’s a good boy.”
Asha could’ve sworn she actually saw the hulking man flush. Then again, she herself wasn’t immune to the charms of the tall, voluptuous beauty next to her. Dax merely grunted again in goodbye, then took off in the direction of the mess hall.
Lana let out a breath. “I thought he might not leave. That makes our lives easier.”
“What do we do now?”
She raised her eyebrows. “We serve breakfast, of course.”
Lana led Asha into the ruined restaurant, where the women had set up in the old kitchens. Naturally, none of the old stoves worked, so they’d been replaced by fire barrels. Women chatted back and forth as they grilled eggs and some kind of meat over the flames. A teenage girl stirred a large pot of what looked like some approximation of porridge; another was mixing dried fruit into a salad. Lana walked Asha through the various cooking tasks and introduced her to the women and girls. They seemed friendly enough, though they looked at her with wariness.
Guess I can’t blame them.
All the while, Asha’s stomach protested loudly at its emptiness. But, Lana told her sternly, the women weren’t allowed to eat until the men had, and it was the women’s job to serve them their meals first.
“You work, you get fed,” Lana said definitively. “You don’t, and you go hungry. Simple as that.”
That’s how they keep the women in line,Asha thought bitterly.Serve us, or starve.
As a result, she found herself serving eggs and wild turkey to the very men who were keeping her here. They laughed and jeered at her, and she had to bite her tongue to keep going. She hated every second, but she just about managed to get through it without spitting at them.
“It gets easier, sugar,” Lana said afterwards, when they ate their breakfast in the kitchen. “And when Cade gets back, you’ll only have to do this for him. Claimed women only have to serve their own men.”
That is,Asha thought with some dread,if he gets back at all.
Chapter 6
The rest of the day passed in a blur of chores. Lana walked Asha through the women’s daily work, from prepping food to sorting supplies to cleaning laundry on old-fashioned washboards and hanging it to dry. She also helped tend to a small vegetable garden that they kept in a fenced-off yard near the clubhouse. In the early spring, they’d only just begun planting, which meant hours kneeling and digging in the dirt.
It was all backbreaking labour. Asha had never worked so hard in her life, and she had a newfound respect for the women and girls who lived there. Meanwhile, the men did things like guard duty, strategy meetings, and patrol. It struck her as a rather charmed existence, even if it did theoretically carry more risk than washing a pile of laundry.
“You’ve done really good for your first day,” Lana said, giving her a sweet smile. “And I’ve got good news! I talked Angel into letting you stay in the dormitory with the rest of us until Cade comes back. I have a bunk ready for you, so you’ll have a real bed tonight.”
It didn’t seem like much, but when Asha thought again of the straw pallet on the floor, it wasthe best news she’d gotten in some time. As afternoon slipped into early evening and it was nearly time to prepare dinner, she found herself exhausted and irritable. She was grateful when Leo appeared to rescue her, looking vaguely apologetic.
“Sorry I didn’t check on you sooner,” he said, running a hand through his short blonde hair. “There were more patients than I expected today, and then I ran out of alcohol, so…anyway, how’re you holding up?”
“It’s fine,” Asha replied with a shrug. “Hard work, but if they do it every day, so can I. What do you mean about patients? Do people go see you regularly?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve converted one of the rooms on the west side of the clubhouse into a clinic. I’ll show you.”
Relieved to take a break from domestic duties, Asha followed him to the west wing of the clubhouse. She’d never been in that area before, but she noticed it was considerably less shabby than the east wing, where the women were housed. More structures were intact, there were fewer cracks in the concrete walls and floors, and overall, it looked as though it had perhaps been minimally maintained. However, the west wing was far smaller, with just a few doors to choose from. All of them except for one were closed, and at the end of the corridor, there was a set of double doors that were painted in vibrant navy blue, which stood out against the bland grey and beige of everything else.
Curiously, in front of the colourful doors, Dax stood with his arms folded, staring ahead into space. It looked like he was guarding something.
“Angel’s Wing,” Leo said, catching her looking. “He has a few doormen, but he seems to have a special fondness for Dax for some reason. Best to keep your distance.”
Asha nodded, though she wondered about what Angel did all day. Did he simply lounge around in his quarters, being waited on? He hadn’t appeared for meals in the mess hall, and when she’d asked, Lana had told her that she brought his meals to him personally. Supposedly, it was an honour, an acknowledgement of her as his favourite, because it meant he trusted her not to poison him.
Lana needs to take one for the team,Asha thought bitterly as Leo led her through the single open door.
Leo’s clinic was far more impressive than she’d have expected, given their limited resources and the fact that he had no formal training. It wasn’t a large room, but he’d packed in a long metal table for exams that he’d somehow managed to polish to a sheen, as well as a single cot in the far corner with a privacy curtain connected to the ceiling by small hooks. On the table lay an array of metal surgical tools and syringes, along with clean bandages, and a large bottle of alcohol. Most impressively, there was a new-looking cabinet on the wall behind thetable with a glass window, through which Asha could see various pill bottles and other medicines.
