Page 36 of Come Alive
A hand tangled into my hair, using their hold to drag me across the broken mirror on my back. The shards digging painfully into my skin, but still, I didn’t acknowledge it.
This isn’t real. I’m going to wake up, and he’s going to be gone.
“Sweetheart,aren’t you going to speak to me? You’re going to hurt my feelings.” The tone was calm, level.
Just as it was so many times in the past.
Just as it had been when he shackled me to the floor and left me to starve for days. Just as it had been when he would return and hit me mirthlessly. With his hands, his belt. Just like when he was stabbing my mother in front of my eyes.
And it was that tone that finally broke through my denial. That cracked the very foundation ofmyself.My sarcasm was a coping mechanism, my confidence was stolen, my stability was a mirage.
My eyes opened.
And there he was, lit eerily by a line of fluorescent bulbs.
“There you are.” He paused, offering a toothily terrifying smile.
Myfather.
Chapter 22
Yara
Yara, it’s okay. You are stronger than you know.
It was the ghost of Kazi’s voice that sliced jaggedly through my nerves.
That caused my hand to wrap around the shard of mirror, bringing it up above me.
I didn’t bother to aim for myfather. Instead, I cut off my hair, freeing me from his hold.
“Yara.”His tone was still level, but I could see the tightening of his eyes, the flattening of his lips.
My attention went anywhere except to him. To the mirror circle behind us that I had broken through, to the harsh lights fifty feet above us, to the otherwise empty space of a large warehouse.
“Where are we? Why are you here?” I attempted to keep my anxiety under control and speak evenly, but the words seemed to ignite his anger.
A kick landed across my face, whipping it to the side. My cheek throbbed in fiery pain. “You will speak whenspoken to!You arenot some belligerent girl. You are my blood and you will act as such.” He huffed. “Eve! Take her to your room!”
Metal clanked from the distance, rapidly approaching, but I didn’t move. Didn’t dare take my eyes off of myfather.
“I will see you when I have the last players of this game,” he said before marching away.
Finally, I shifted my attention to the sound.
To Eve. To the shackles that were locked in place on her ankles, to her swollen cheek, to her black eye.
She waited until myfather’ssteps were distant before bending down to offer me a hand up. This time she held my eyes and what I had seen in them before was reflected a thousand times between us.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she helped lift me up. She was smaller, younger than I was, but she managed to support most of my weight.
Wincing at the pain as all the cuts and bruises throbbed with the move, I offered her my best reassuring smile. She had brought me here, I knew that. I remembered that. But I doubted she had a choice. She was just another one of my father’s victims. “You’re his doll?”
“An ugly replica,” she confirmed my suspicions.
“So was I,” I murmured, my eyes glistening in unshed tears. My father didn’t want either of us. We were both replacements, imitations, copies of the one he really wanted.
The one he had killed.
