J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [402]
Zsadist cleared his throat. “I said to the kid . . . I told him that I was going to get him out. He didn’t believe it at first. Not until I pushed up the sleeves of my coat and showed him my wrists. After he saw my slave bands, I didn’t have to say another word. He was with me all the way.” Z took a deep breath. “She found us while I was taking him through the castle’s lower level. He was having trouble walking, because I guess the day before had been . . . busy. I had to carry him. Anyway, she came up on us . . . and before she could call for the guards, I took care of her. That boy . . .he watched as I snapped her neck and let her fall to the ground. After she was down, I cut off her head because . . . see, neither of us really believed she was dead. Shit, man, I was in that rabbit warren of tunnels, where anyone could have caught us, and I couldn’t move. I just stared down at her. The boy, he asked me whether she was truly dead. I said I didn’t know. She wasn’t moving, but how could I be sure?
“The boy looked up at me, and I’ll never forget the sound of his voice. ‘She’ll come back. She always comes back.’ Way I figured it, he and I were living with enough shit, we didn’t need to worry about that. So I cut off her head, and he held it by the hair as I got us the fuck out of there.” Zsadist rubbed his face. “I didn’t know what to do with the kid when I got him free. That’s what those three weeks were about. I took him way down to the tip of Italy, as far away as I could get him. There was a family there, one Vishous knew from his years working for that merchant in Venice. Anyway, that household needed help, and they were good people. They took him in as a paid servant. Last thing I heard, about a decade ago, was that he’d had his second young with his shellan.”
“You saved him.”
“Getting him out didn’t save him.” Zsadist’s eyes drifted over. “That’s the point, Phury. There isn’t any saving him. There isn’t any saving me. I know that’s what you keep waiting for, living for. But . . . it’s never going to happen. Look . . . I can’t thank you, because . . . as much as I love Bella and my life and where I am now, I still go back there. I can’t help it. I still live it every day.”
“But—”
“No, let me finish. This whole drug thing with you . . . Look, you didn’t fail me. Because you can’t fail at the impossible.”
Phury felt a hot tear ease out of his eye. “I just want to make it right.”
“I know. But it’s never been right and it’s never going to be, and you don’t have to kill yourself because of that. Where I ended up is where I am.”
There was no promise of joy in Z’s face. No potential for happiness. The lack of homicidal mania was an improvement, but the absence of any sustainable satisfaction in being alive was hardly cause for celebration.
“I thought Bella had saved you.”
"She’s done a lot. But right now, with the way the pregnancy’s going . . .”
He didn’t have to finish. There were no words adequate to describe the horrible what-ifs. And Z had made up his mind he was going to lose her, Phury realized. He’d decided that the love of his life was going to die.
No wonder he didn’t want to throw around the thankyous for being rescued.
Z went on, “I kept the Mistress’s skull with me all those years not out of some sick attachment. I needed it for when I had nightmares that she was coming back for me. See, I’d wake up, and the first thing I’d do is check and make sure she was still dead.”
“I can understand that—”
“You want to know what I’ve been doing for the last month or two?”
“Yes . . .”
“I wake up and panic whether you’re still alive.” Z shook his head. “See, I can reach out through the sheets for Bella and feel her warm body. But you, I can’t do that with you . . . and I think my subconscious has figured out that both of you are probably not going to be around a year from now.”
“I’m sorry . . . shit . . .” Phury put his hands to his face. “I’m sorry.”
“I think you should go. Like,