Page 36 of Darkness I Become
“Fuck you,” Asha bit out, striking his hand harder. “Fuck you and every man here who protects him. You’re all guilty.”
“Seems if we were guilty, you’d be hitting harder,” Cade replied nonchalantly. “You’ve never killed anyone, have you? You gotta mean it, or it’ll be your head on the pike instead.”
An image of the severed heads on the gate flooded her brain, followed by more of the torture she’d suffered at Angel’s hands. The deep well of rage inside of her, that part that refused to be broken, resurfaced, and she was glad. It was her reservoir of survival. It made her keep going even when she saw no reason to try.
Her blows grew stronger, faster, until she was no longer seeing anything but the blur of motion, no longer feeling anything except a swell of humiliation and fury that threatened to swallow her whole.
“You think I wanted that?” Asha said, and she realized distantly that she was screaming at him. “That I wanted that motherfucker to rape me and beat me? That I wanted to be burned, and bled, and broken?”
Cade didn’t reply, didn’t react, and she couldn’t see him anymore anyway. All that existed was the swirling torrent of shame in her gut, and the feeling of her fists hitting the pads. The impacts were satisfying, even as they made her more desperate for a reprieve from all the pain inside her.
“That I wanted my safe home to be destroyed? That I wanted to leave my best friend to be eaten by cannibals? That I wanted to lose everything—everything?”
She was getting tired, panting and sweating, but he needed to hear the truth.
“And it’s your fault!” she burst out, and she hated that she heard tears in her voice. “You were supposed to protect me. I s-said yes to your stupid bargain, offered you my body, because you were supposed to protect me from him!”
All the strength went out of her at once, and she dropped to her knees, gasping for breath. To her horror, she was shaking like a leaf. Tears blurred her vision, but she didn’t allow them to fall.
She didn’t register Cade dropping to his knees across from her, but the next thing she knew, his arms slowly wrapped around her, drawingher against him. Her instinct told her to resist, to pull away, but she was startled by how gentle he was. He held her loosely, allowing her to easily escape if she wanted to, but somehow, she didn’t.
It had been a long time since someone’s touch had felt good to her, and his was oddly comforting. She buried her face in his shoulder.
“I know,” Cade said, and to her surprise, he didn’t sound angry. He sounded crestfallen. “He’s a monster. And maybe I am, too. But let me use my skills to sharpen those fangs of yours, little viper. To help you never need anyone to come to your rescue. You have a fire burning in you that I saw the moment you spit on that asshole at Little River. Use it.”
“I don’t know how,” Asha blubbered. “I just…maybe the fire’s still there, like you said, but I can’t feel it. Like he snuffed it out, and all I feel now is this darkness inside of me. And I don’t know how to turn the light back on.”
“That’s what this world does.” He patted her back. “We all feel it. The trick is to realize that the only way to survive the darkness is to become its mistress, darling.”
She considered that as she let him hold onto her for another moment, inhaling his scent and grounding herself. When she finally pulled back, he wore a small, sad smile.
“You said that rage makes sloppy fighters,” Asha said, and he gave a low chuckle.
“Yes,uncontrolledrage,” he replied. “I’ll teach you to use that beautiful anger wisely. To give you focus, and to inflict pain on your enemies.” He swallowed and looked away. “To become a Blackguard.”
“There are no women in the Blackguard.”
“That’s true,” Cade said as he helped her to her feet. “But there’s a first for everything. It’ll take years of training before you’re on a similar level to me, Leo, and Dom; we’re soldiers. Professionals. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep yourself safe in the meantime.”
Asha fidgeted uncomfortably. “But the others won’t accept me.”
Cade shrugged. “They’ll follow my orders, even if they don’t like them. And we won’t introduce you to the others anyway until I know you’re ready to prove yourself in the field.”
“In the field?” she asked, her stomach churning. “Like…on your raids? On scavenging missions?”
“Yeah, that’s part of the job.”
Asha swallowed hard. “And if I say no?”
“You don’t want to say no,” Cade said with a knowing smile. “But nothing would change. You’d spend your days with the other women, doing their chores, and your nights here. You can choose that life, if you want…become a servant. But it seems to me that you’ve already proven that you’re nobody’s maid.”
His voice was tinged with amusement, and Asha managed a weak smile. She’d never thought about being a soldier. It wasn’t an option that ever would’ve been possible for her in the Cave. But Cade was right that she didn’t want to serve in the roles assigned to women there. She hadn’t enjoyed being a wife in the compound either, and that had been much more palatable than anything she could do in this place.
She was nervous at the prospect of learning to fight, but it also excited and comforted her. Never again would she have to rely entirely on someone else to rescue her. She could rise out of the learned helplessness that’d been drilled into her in the compound, that she’d always been desperate to escape, even if she hadn’t realized it until this moment.
“Alright,” she said to Cade. “I want in.”
He smiled at her with real warmth, and chucked her chin.
