My body disagrees. Every muscle is screaming at me to stay down, to keep my face hidden in Bells's lap where the dark is warm and safe and I don't have to be anything except a collection of broken parts held together by the stubborn refusal to stop breathing.
But Bells is not dying in a fuckingcage.
So I move.
Getting upright takes everything I have. The chains bite into my wrists as I lever myself off her lap, the bullet wound in my back pulling and making my vision strobe.
I make it to sitting.
Barely.
The world tilts. Steadies. Tilts again.
I brace my shoulder against the bars and lock my jaw until the dizziness passes, sweat tracking down my temples and mixing with blood. My arms are wrenched behind me, useless, the rigging chains cinched so tight my fingers are going numb.
Bells is watching me.
I feel her eyes on the ruined side of my face. I’m exposed without my mask. Nothing between her gaze and the full catastrophe. The melted cheek, the exposed teeth, the damaged side of my nose, the lidless eye that can't close.
I hate it.
She shifts closer.
"Don't—"
She ignores me and nuzzles into my hair, her nose tracing the line of my scalp the way she did before. Then she drifts lower.
Past my temple.
Past my ear.
To the scarred side.
Her nose brushes the ridge of scar tissue where my cheekbone used to have flesh over it. Her breath is warm against the tight, grafted skin, and my stomach twists so hard I almost double over.
I can’t fucking move.
Maybe because the feral thing driving my body has decided that Bells touching my scars is lower priority than getting her the fuck out of this cage. Maybe because somewhere underneath the self-loathing and the revulsion, there's a part of me that's been starving for touch for so long, it's too fucking tired to fight anymore.
She presses her lips to the scar.
My whole body shudders.
"Turn around," I rasp.
She pulls back. "What?"
"Your zip ties. Turn around."
She shifts on the stone, presenting her bound wrists, the plastic biting into her reddened skin.
I lean forward.
My teeth find the zip tie.
This is…
Fuck.