Page 46 of Darkness I Become
Breathing heavily, Cade barked in a harsh whisper, “What the fuck are you doing? I turn my back on you for five minutes—”
“They’re selling women.” Asha’s voice was low and hollow. She lay back on the hard ground and stared blankly at the sky.
“I ordered you to stand down, and you disobeyed—”
“They’re selling women, Cade,” she repeated, in the same tone, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Aren’t they?”
For the first time, he softened a little. “Yes. But unless you want to get yourself killed, and me right after you, you have to stop. This isn’t the way.”
“What is the way?” she asked blankly, staring past his shoulder at the sky, listless. “If this can happen to any of us, and no one says a thing, what’s the point, Captain?”
People were starting to stare at them, in a heap on the ground. Cade ignored her question, took her gun, and helped her to her feet. He took a moment to reassure the bystanders that all was well, trying to pass it off as a ‘training exercise,’ which Asha doubted anyone would believe, but she didn’t really care. She didn’t care about anything right now; everything felt as though it was being filtered through a haze of brutal despair, unlike she’d ever felt before.
She didn’t know how something could make her feel so numb and so terrified at the same time.
Cade led her through the streets towards two houses near the gate. One was a small, white-washed cottage, while the other was a larger building with its door open. Inside, a bunch of bunk beds were visible, and one of the Blackguard—Raph—was fiddling with one of them.
“Where the men stay,” Cade explained, then nodded at the cottage. “This is the Captain’s quarters. There’s one at every settlement.”
He brought Asha inside the one-room house, which was sparsely furnished with a large double bed, a dresser, a closet, and a washstand with a cracked mirror above it. The walls and floor were bare stone. It was clearly a fairly new structure, since it didn’t suffer from the decay that was obvious in Old World buildings.
“Sit,” Cade ordered, gesturing at the bed, which had been made up by someone.
Probably one of the many slaves that live here, Asha thought, her disgust and shame threatening to engulf her.
Nonetheless, she obeyed, perching on the edge of the mattress, her arms hanging uselessly beside her. She felt emptied out, as though someone had scooped out every bit of hope she’d begun to build.
“Look at me,” Cade said firmly, his arms folded, and she forced herself to look up. “Youcannotdo this again. There will be more slave markets at the other settlements, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. We’re here to do a job. That’s the end of it.”
Right now, he wasn’t the soft, understanding man he’d been when he comforted her after her nightmares, or when he’d held her in his arms and told her he wanted to train her to defend herself. Now, he was every inch the military commander—her superior—and he was giving her another order.
“Promise me that you willnotendanger yourself or the rest of us again like that,” he demanded. “Or I’ll have to confine you to the captain’s quarters at every settlement, and post a guard to make sure you stay put.”
A spider crack of outrage made its way over the smooth, featureless glass of Asha’s numbness.
“You’dimprisonme,” she said slowly, “to stop me from interfering with the process of human trafficking.”
Cade raised an eyebrow. “I would. For your own safety, as well as mine. You have to know that if you had attacked them, and anyone had retaliated, I’d have gone down with you.”
If that was supposed to make her feel supported, it didn’t. Instead, despair creeped back in. This was her life now. She was part of facilitating this horrible system of pain and misery and torture.
“You can’t do anything about this, Asha,” Cade said, his jaw tightening. “It’s how it is. Do we like it? No, but we have to live with it to survive out here.”
She took a shaky inhale, staring at the floor again. She couldn’t look at him.
“Before I came along, Angel used to do these trips himself,” he continued. “It’s why everyone is scared of him. Every time he showed up, there was mass chaos—looting, pillaging, rape. It’s why I volunteered to take over with a team of soldiers I selected and trained myself. I know my men won’t cause trouble, bully the residents, or hurt anyone without a direct order. It’s one way that I tried to make things better for the people here. Sometimes change happens slowly.”
“It’s not enough,” Asha replied, still avoiding his gaze.
He gave a weary sigh. “That may be true. But it doesn’t change anything. If I tried to unilaterally free everyone here, I’d succeed in nothing but ensuring my own death, plus yours and everyone I’m responsible for. Angel wouldn’t think twice.”
Asha knew that was certainly true. Yet it still wasn’t enough. He stared at her for a long time, evidently hoping for her to say more, but she wouldn’t.
“Can I trust you to stay here for the rest of the day, until I finish my work?” Cade finally asked.
She nodded mutely. She didn’t think she could muster the energy to leave anyway, in her current state. She felt hollow, like she’d felt after Angel raped her.
With a searching look, Cade left the cottage, and Asha crawled under the covers on the bed, cocooning herself.
