Deviant

Chapter 29

Rowen

“How is she?” Andy asks once I’ve stepped out of Lucy’s bedroom, leaving Harper and Abbie to remain inside with her.

“She’s as well as she can be, given the circumstances. She’s still in shock.”

“Aren’t we all? Who would have thought that Lucy would kill Lucas?” Andy shakes his head in disbelief.

“I don’t think that was her intention. From what I could understand, they somehow forced her to do it.”

Though Lucy hasn’t told us exactly what happened earlier today, the rope mark burns around her neck are a good indicator that she could have died today just as easily as Lucas did.

“How does someone force anyone to do anything they don’t want to?” Ruby asks like I’m talking out of my ass.

“Our hosts can be pretty persuasive. But I’m sure you’ll find that out for yourself when your games begin.”

Ruby’s nostrils flare, but her hate doesn’t even make a dent in my heart.

Not when it was already trampled on by Elias earlier.

As I look around the hallway, my bruised heart dips into my stomach, seeing everyone here, except for him.

“We should let Lucy rest. When she feels up to it, then we can ask her what happened. Abbie, Harper, and I will keep a close watch over her in the meantime.”

“Okay, but if you need anything, just give us a shout,” Andy says sorrowfully before following everyone else downstairs.

I wave him goodbye and then return back inside.

At least while I’m here looking after Lucy, I can pretend that Elias doesn’t hate me.

But the scene in front of me is just as disheartening, if not more.

Lucy lies motionless on the bed, staring at blank space, her hysterical tears long dried up.

“Lucy, do you want us to get you something to eat? Or to drink, maybe?” I ask softly.

She doesn’t answer me, doesn’t so much as even acknowledge my presence, preferring to stare at the wall.

“I can only imagine the horrors she must be reliving,” Harper whispers as Lucy continues to stare into the void, completely checked out of all reality.

“At least she’s no longer screaming. That’s progress, right?” Abbie says as she gently rubs Lucy’s back.

I throw Abbie a gentle smile instead of answering her.

I’m all for celebrating the small wins in life, but something tells me that the Lucy we once knew is long gone. Nothing to celebrate there.

We all sit around Lucy and wait for her to give us any signs of life. But even if that’s too much for her right now, at least she’ll know she has us. That she doesn’t have to go through this alone.

After a few hours, Lucy thankfully succumbs to sleep, her mind too exhausted to stay awake.

“Did you see him?” Abbie asks me.

“Who? Lucas?”

She nods.

“No. After Lucy exited the room, the door locked behind her. Elias tried to get in, but Henry showed up and told us that he would retrieve the body and deal with it according to the Hosts’ demands.”

“Whatever that means.” Harper scoffs. “It’s not like any of the dozen have ever had a proper burial.”

When I see Abbie flinch, I discreetly kick Harper’s shins and widen my eyes at her to be more careful with her words.

“Sorry,” Harper mouths, rubbing at her shins.

“What… what was… it like?” Abbie asks me, hugging her legs to her chest.

“The games?”

“Yeah,” Harper chimes in, just as curious.

“It was… intense.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give us? That it was intense?” Harper arches her brow.

“Do you really want to know? They say ignorance is bliss for a reason.”

“I want to know,” Abbie says with conviction, though the fear behind her eyes would suggest otherwise.

“Me too,” Harper chimes in, looking at least more confident in learning about the games than Abbie does.

“Fine,” I reply, defeated, tilting my head for them to join me in the sitting area by the fireplace so we don’t wake up Lucy.

Once we are all seated, I tell them everything that happened. Well, almost everything. I leave out the part about what Elias and I talked about, especially my confession of how Nora died in the end. But other than that, I tell them everything that happened downstairs in the basement—how Elias and I were forced to play a twisted version of truth or dare.

But by the time I’m finished, both girls seem to regret their decision.

I chew on my bottom lip, their fear so thick and palpable that I decide to do something Elias won’t approve of. Since he’s already angry at me, then I don’t see how helping our friends will get him any madder.

“I know it’s a lot to take in, but I need you to listen to what I say next very carefully. When it’s your turn to go to the basement, I want you to pick the black door. Always the black door. If, by chance, someone picks that door before you, then pick the red one. Never the white. Do you understand? Never the white,” I insist, grabbing each of their hands and giving it a tight squeeze, my voice sounding a little unhinged even to my own ears.

“Okay, okay. Never the white,” Harper repeats, pulling her hand away from my grip. “We get it.”

“That piece of information would have been useful to me hours ago,” we hear Lucy say from the bed, her voice still rough from all the crying she did earlier. “Or maybe it wouldn’t. I’m not sure anymore.”

We all rush to circle around her, Abbie and Harper preferring to sit on the bed while I pull up a chair to sit in front of Lucy.

“How are you feeling? Are you hungry? Can we get you anything?”

Lucy just shakes her head, her gaze still empty of life.

“All he had to do was tell the truth. But he… didn’t,” she says, still sounding like she’s not all there.

“Hey, you don’t have to tell us anything. Maybe it’s best that you don’t even think about it,” Harper suggests, holding onto Lucy’s hand.

Lucy pulls her hand away from Harper and hides it under her pillow.

“I’d like to be alone now,” she says, closing her eyes.

“Are you sure?” I question skeptically. “We don’t mind staying with you through the night.”

She doesn’t answer, preferring to close her eyelids to tune us out.

I wave to the girls to follow me into the hallway.

“She can’t be alone,” Harper says adamantly the minute we step outside.

“Agreed.” I nod. “But maybe instead of all three of us watching over her, we take shifts. I think if only one of us stays with her, she’ll be less inclined to kick us out.”

“I don’t mind taking the first shift,” Abbie offers.

“Good. I can relieve you in a couple of hours. Say midnight?” I ask, to which Abbie nods.

“That leaves me with the morning shift. I’ll ask Five or Seven to make Lucy some breakfast. Something sweet to tempt her into eating, even if only a little bit.” Harper smiles sadly.

Once we have our schedules all settled and part ways, I’m at a loss of what to do next. My first instinct is to find where Elias is and go and talk to him, but I quickly chuck that idea away since I don’t think I could bear him looking at me the same way he did in that godforsaken room. There was a time when I used to thrive under his hate, seek it out, and bathe in it. Not anymore. Now, his hate feels like a boulder on my chest, weighing me down and suffocating me. It no longer feels like a precious gift. It feels like damnation.

My body, mind, and soul suddenly feel like they’ve taken a beating. Every inch of me hurts, none more so than my broken heart. I decide to return to our room, knowing there is a high probability that he’s already moved out of it. But when I get there, the smell of sage and mint still hangs in the air. And when I see his backpack in the corner of the room, hope finds its way inside my heart and mends it a little, whispering to it that maybe not all is lost.

After a shower, I lie on the bed to take a quick nap, feeling too exhausted to keep my eyelids open. I’m not sure how long I sleep for, but when I feel a gentle hand nudge my arm to wake me up, I verify it must have been a few hours since no sunlight streams inside the room anymore.

“Elias,” I whisper gruffly, still a bit groggy.

I blink a couple of times before my eyes land on his, Elias, sitting in a chair beside our bed.

“I need to know,” he says after a pregnant pause.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I reply, more alert, knowing exactly what he’s referring to.

“I… need… to… know,” he says through gritted teeth this time, unable to keep his temper at bay.

I sit up and lean against the bed frame, hugging a pillow to my chest.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

His penetrating gaze tells me that I won’t leave this room until he gets what he came for.

“You’ll never look at me the same way if I tell you.”

“I don’t already,” he admits, causing me to cringe at the coldness in his voice.

He’s gone to me now.

I was so afraid of losing him to The Scourge that I didn’t even consider there was more than one way for that to happen.

“Very well.” I take a fortifying breath. “Where would you like me to start?”

“At the beginning. Leave nothing out. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“I’ve never lied to you. To everyone else, yes. But never to you.”

The scoff he lets out says he doesn’t believe me. I try to ignore how that makes me feel and start my tale from the beginning, just like he demanded.

And since he doesn’t want me to leave anything out, I make sure to tell him everything. Even the part where Nora told him about her intentions of entering The Scourge. I know it’s cruel of me, but if I didn’t include it, he might have sensed I was leaving something out. I tell him how I followed Nora into the church and then the cemetery, how I spied on her as she talked to the old priest. I tell him about how Nora told me she found a way to get selected for the Harvest Dozen and how terrified I was to lose her. I tell him how I planned to steal the drugs from the sheriff’s station and use them to incapacitate Nora long enough so she couldn’t complete the Harvest Moon ritual. I tell him how my father found us the next morning in the kitchen as I cradled Nora’s lifeless body to mine. I even go as far as telling him how, after killing Nora, life stopped having any meaning to it, how I would visit Grove Bridge every night with the sole intent of killing myself. But that every time I tried to fling myself off it, I would hear her voice stopping me. I even tell him that the only time I felt better was when he treated me like shit. Because that’s what I believed I deserved. And I still do, hence why I wanted him to kill me. But before I learned of his intention, being selected for The Scourge was the only way I had found to kill myself. I even tell him what my father told me just as we left Blackwater Falls.

By the time I’m done, I feel like I’ve relived every last traumatic memory all over again.

As I close my eyes and envision Nora’s lifeless body in my lap, I allow myself to feel just a glimpse of the pain and misery from that night, fully aware that if I open the door to such anguish, it will devour me whole.

“Is there anything else you want to know?” I ask just as coldly, wiping the tears that stream down my cheeks.

Elias just leans back into his seat, his mind working double time before he offers me a clipped no.

Since I doubt he’ll say anything else to me tonight, I slide out of bed, put on my shoes, and pick up my backpack.

“I’ll be staying at Lucy’s tonight. You have the room all to yourself. But tomorrow, maybe it would be best if you asked Five for your own room. I doubt you’ll want to share a bed with the person who stole your sister away from you.”

But as I grab the doorknob, I hear him call out my name. The word comes out faint—so very faint, it almost seems he didn’t want me to hear it.

I don’t turn around, preferring to keep my hand on the doorknob while I wait for him to say something. But when more than a few seconds pass, and he still doesn’t utter a word, I turn the knob and leave.

Once in the hallway, I slide to the floor and let all the misery I had kept inside me spill out.

I’ve lost him.

But then again, did I really have him? Was he ever mine to lose?

The answer to that question is so obvious to me now.

Elias was never mine.

Never.

Not in hate and certainly not in love.

But I’ll mourn the loss either way.

Just as I’ll mourn Nora for the rest of my life.

I wake up the next morning in Lucy’s room, when Harper knocks on the door. But as I open the door for her, I realize that Lucy isn’t in her bed.

“She’s gone,” I say, panicking as I let Harper inside.

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Harper says, scouring the room and finding the same empty bed that I did.

“I don’t know. I must have fallen asleep, and she snuck out on me.”

“This is not good. This is so not good,” Harper joins me in my panic.

“I’m right here,” Lucy says, coming out of the bathroom, looking like she just took a shower.

“Oh, hey,” Harper coos. “You’re up. That’s good. Isn’t that good, Rowen?”

I nod, my gaze never wavering from Lucy as she opens the closet and picks out some clothes for her to wear.

“Are you going somewhere, hun?” Harper asks, keeping that sweet tempo of hers while throwing weird glances my way.

“I thought I’d come with you downstairs and have breakfast with everyone.”

“Are you sure you’re up for that?” I ask skeptically.

She nods before dropping her chosen attire on the bed.

“You don’t have to babysit me anymore. I can make my way downstairs on my own.”

“Not fucking happening,” Harper mouths to me, while I nod in agreement.

“It’s no trouble. How about we wait for you outside and give you some privacy to change?” I suggest, keeping my tempo just as upbeat and friendly as Harper’s.

“Okay,” she concedes, never once looking us in the eye.

We leave the room, Harper grabbing me by the arm so we’re far enough that Lucy can’t overhear but not too far that she can give us the slip again.

“I saw a horror movie like this once. She’s acting like some pod person. Did you see her eyes? Nothing there. Nothing!”

“Shh, keep your voice down,” I urge, throwing glimpses at Lucy’s bedroom door. “But I agree with you. She is acting strange.”

“Strange doesn’t even cover it. Whatever that is… it’s not Lucy.”

“Give her a break. Her boyfriend just died.”

“Yeah, and she was the one who killed him,” Harper reminds me.

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“What part of her screaming that she killed Lucas yesterday confuses you?”

“Fair point.” I scrunch up my nose. “Still, did you see the rope marks around her neck?”

“I did.” Harper cringes, running her fingers up and down her throat as if she can physically feel the rope around it.

“They must have done something to force her to do it. They must have.”

“I want to be there for Lucy. I do. But I can’t stop thinking about my own game in a couple of days with Andy,” Harper admits nervously. “What if one of us dies? I don’t think I could bear it if something happened to Andy. I know I couldn’t.”

I pull her into a hug and hold her tight.

“Today is the only certainty we have. Don’t waste whatever time you have with Andy worrying about such things. It will only serve to steal the happiness you two have found in each other. The Scourge has taken too much from us as it is. Don’t let it take that too.”

Harper holds onto me and sighs.

“You’re a good friend. I wish we had spent more time together back in the day.”

“Me too, Harper. Me too.”

We only pull away from our hug when we hear Lucy’s door open.

“I’m ready,” Lucy announces, her expression void of all emotion.

“Okay. Let’s go get us some grub!” Harper squeals a bit too excitedly while discreetly wiping the tears off her face.

We walk down the staircase and into the dining hall, everyone already seated at the table. I square my shoulders as I walk over to sit on the empty chair between Abbie and Elias.

“Good morning,” I greet, only to gain a good morning back from Abbie, Elias too preoccupied with staring at his empty plate to even look at me.

“Lucy, we didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Abbie says, giving her a confused smile.

Lucy doesn’t respond as she sits, looking like her body is here, but her mind is not. Five and Seven begin to fill our plates, doing their dutiful taste test as we all continue to throw glances over at Lucy, morbid curiosity getting the better of us.

We must not be discreet enough because Lucy lifts her head and stares back at us.

“Just ask,” she finally says, waving Five away when she offers to taste her food.

Of course, the only one who is callous enough to ask the question we’re all thinking is Mackenzie.

“What happened in that room?” she asks, placing her clasped hands under her chin, giving Lucy her undivided attention.

“Lucas died,” Lucy replies, her tone sounding just as lifeless as her boyfriend.

“We know that, but how?” Mackenzie insists.

I have half a mind to scold Mackenzie for being so callous, but I don’t since I’m just as curious as she is to learn what happened in that room.

“They wanted us to play a game,” she starts. “The first one to lie would die.”

“Holy shit,” Andy blurts, getting a good elbow to the gut from Harper with his outburst. “Sorry.”

The table goes silent as we wait for Lucy to continue.

“When we walked in the room, we noticed three things. That the room was so white it almost hurt to look at it, that there were two chairs at the center of the room, and lastly that there were two ropes hanging from the ceiling just above the chairs. Before we could make heads or tails out of the situation, we were told to stand on top of the chairs, and once that was done, they demanded we wrap the ropes tightly around our necks. When Lucas saw me hesitating, he said that everything would be okay, as long as we followed their orders. So, I did. But the minute I wrapped that rope around my neck, I heard some kind of lever turn on, and suddenly, I felt something pull the rope up in such a way, that I was basically on the tips of my toes the entire time,” she says unfeelingly, almost as if she didn’t live the horrid ordeal and was merely an outside spectator to all of it instead. “That’s when the watches started to beep,” she continues. “Since I was too preoccupied with keeping my balance, Lucas was the only one who read the text. He said that we had to ask each other five questions, and if anyone lied, they would be the ones to die.”

My heart races at the similarities between Lucas’s and Lucy’s game, to the one that Elias and I played. He must be thinking the same thing by the way he’s white-knuckling the knife in his hand.

“I thought it was going to be easy.” She scoffs like she should have known better. “All we had to do was ask questions the other could answer truthfully. How hard could it be?” She begins to draw circles on the tablecloth with her finger. “But this white room must have triggered something in Lucas. I know it did. It made him recall that first white room in the east wing that we went to, on our first night here. The one with all those awful ugly words. But there was one word there in particular that Lucas couldn’t shake off… couldn’t allow himself to forget. So he asked me. And out of fear for my own life, I answered him.”

Everyone around the table hangs on her every word as she continues to run her finger on the tablecloth in circles.

“He didn’t like my answer. I knew he wouldn’t. That’s why I had kept it from him all this time.”

“What did he ask you?” The words come out of my mouth before I can stop myself.

“He asked if I had ever been unfaithful to him,” she responds with that same robotic tone. “I told him that I had. He asked me if I had cheated on him more than once, and again, I said yes. He then asked me how many times and I replied that I didn’t keep count. That one hurt him more than I was prepared for. He asked me for names, and I told him all the ones I could remember. That’s when he started to cry. Hearing that I had fucked his two best friends at the same time, in his bed while I waited for him to get off from work, broke something inside him.”

“Jesus.” I hear Elias mutter under his breath.

“His last question was barely a whisper. He asked me if I ever loved him, to which I said I did, and always will, with all my heart. That’s when he stared at the rope. It didn’t tug or kill me like he assumed. Because it wasn’t a lie. I did love him. I do love him.” She closes her eyes as if the last part hurts her the most. “But even after I proved that I loved him by not dying, he still didn’t believe me.” She bows her head. “If I learned anything from this game, it’s that you can die without actually dying. The look on his face… I’ll never forget it.” She shakes her head. “Then it was my turn to play the game and ask the questions. I should have known it was a trap. I should have asked him any other question than the one I did. But I did it anyway. I asked if he was the thief in our group. It was stupid. So stupid. Because I already knew the truth. His parents had already confided in me that they suspected Lucas had been stealing from the cash register in their restaurant to buy me an engagement ring. They had asked me to confront him, hoping he would stop if I was the one to ask him to, but I didn’t. I wanted that engagement ring. I wanted to marry him more than anything. I even promised myself that once we were married, I’d never be unfaithful again. But the damage I did to his heart was just too much, so once the question was out there, I couldn’t take it back.” A stray tear streams down her cheek, as if remembering Lucas’s last seconds on this earth is the only thing strong enough to snap her from her semi-catatonic state.

“He looked straight at me and said no. He purposely lied just so The Scourge could end his suffering. That’s when the chair tipped back, and the rope strung him up. He didn’t even fight it. No matter how hard I screamed or begged, he just let them kill him. He preferred death to living with the misery I caused him, so in the end, was it The Scourge that killed him or me?”

None of us answer her.

If we did, we’d be forced to lie, too.

It’s been two days since Lucy’s confession, and everyone is still reeling.

When she told Harper, Abbie, and me that she didn’t need us looking after her anymore, we didn’t put up much of a fight. Truth be told, after learning how Lucas died, it was hard to be sympathetic to her pain.

But alas, Lucy and Lucas cease to take the number one spot in our list of concerns when the day arrives for Harper and Andy to have their first game. Young Abbie, too.

“Remember what I said,” I warn Abbie again. “If you can prevent it, don’t pick the white room.”

“Shouldn’t I warn Chris too?” Abbie asks, forcing me to turn my head over my shoulder to see Chris having the time of his life playing with a Newton’s Cradle on a desk. My brows pinch together, wishing Abbie had a different partner. Someone who could protect her instead of needing protection.

“No. Keep that secret for yourself, but when the time comes, don’t let Chris make any important decisions without you. Got it?”

“Got it.” She smiles before hugging me.

I wrap my arms around her and pray that nothing bad happens to her. Abbie is far too young to have to endure such games. Though she’s Mackenzie’s age, she doesn’t have that killer instinct that Mackenzie does. She’s far too shy for that.

But as I embrace Abbie, a suspicious sight catches my eye—Big Mike and Lucy hurdled up in a corner, whispering to one another.

“God, I hope that’s not what I think it is,” I hear Harper say behind me. “Lucas’s body isn’t even cold yet, for fuck’s sake. That is beyond gross.”

“What?” Abbie asks, confused, her back turned to the unlikely pair.

“Nothing, cutie,” Harper says, wrapping her arms around Abbie and giving her a big hug. “Just wanted to hug you before Henry shows up and gives us all our marching orders.”

“Are you scared?” Abbie asks her, her voice starting to tremble.

“Who, me? Nah. We’ve got this in the bag now that Rowen shared with us how to win this thing.” She winks at Abbie, whose body instantly relaxes at how unbothered Harper is about the games.

“Thank you,” I mouth to Harper, gaining a wink of my own.

Unfortunately, Henry shows up at this precise time, indicating that the games are about to start.

We all follow him into the boardroom, some of us more nervous than others. I throw a few discreet glances over at Elias, frowning when I see his head bowed with his hands stuffed into his pockets. After I came clean and told him what happened to Nora, he hasn’t looked at me once. He even moved out of our bedroom as I had suggested. That hurt. Maybe deep down, I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it, but in the end, he was all too happy to put as much distance between us as he could. It feels like he just cut me out of his life completely.

I meant nothing to him, while he meant….

I don’t let myself linger too much on that thought.

My feelings for Elias, whatever they are, no longer matter.

I just hope that his reborn hatred of me keeps him true to his word.

He promised me a death by his hand, and if he has any heart at all, he will honor his vow to me.

Once we reach the boardroom, we wait for Henry to give us his instructions.

“Before our second game commences, I would like to ask you all to sit down with your respective partners.”

I school my features to look just as impassive as Elias as I sit down next to him.

“The fuck is going on?” I hear David across the table when he sees Ruby sitting alone while Big Mike sits beside Lucy.

We are all at a loss as to what’s happening, and when neither Lucy nor Big Mike are forthcoming with their explanations, we turn to Henry for answers.

“Lady Wright, having lost her partner in the first game, was given a choice. She could either choose to sit out the following game, knowing that someone else would have to participate on her behalf, or she could choose a new partner and participate in this one.”

“And you let her choose you?” David blurts out incredulously at Big Mike.

“Hey, I was going in either way today. They didn’t offer me a get-out-of-jail card. They offered it to her. If she didn’t want to use it, then that’s her decision.”

“I’m fine with her decision, by the way. Not that anyone asked,” Ruby says smugly while waving her hand at the rest of us.

Of course she’s happy with the change of events. They only favor her because this means she doesn’t have to participate in the games yet.

“Lucy… why?” Harper asks what we’re all thinking.

“Because…” she says softly, sounding more like the Lucy we knew. “I love him. There is no life without Lucas in it. So why wait? Why suffer when I could be reunited with him now?”

I try to hold back my tears, feeling like someone just sucker-punched me in the gut. Her words resonate with me in such a way that I can almost feel her pain as if it were my own. I felt the same way when Nora died. I just wanted to end it all. To disappear from the face of the earth.

After I heard what had happened to Lucas, a part of me blamed her for his death and even criticized her actions that made him do such a thing. But maybe Lucy and I have more in common than I realized.

I must be shaking because the next thing I know, I feel Elias’s hand on mine, holding it tight, just enough to calm me.

He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t even talk to me.

And yet, he still found it in his heart to comfort me just as I was on the verge of losing it.

It’s an act of mercy, but it’s one I’ll be forever grateful for.

However, I am pulled into the here and now when the familiar chime of our watches begins to echo throughout the room.

“Damn it,” Andy says with a worried frown while wrapping his arm around Harper.

Abbie’s eyes start to water as she stares at her watch, while Chris stares out the window like he’d rather be outside than inside this room.

“I knew it,” Big Mike grumbles, pissed.

Lucy closes her eyes and takes one deep breath. But when she opens them again, there is a new sparkle in her gaze. Her entire body seems to melt back into the chair as an immense sense of peace washes over her.

And that’s when I know my friends are safe.

None of them will die today.

Only Lucy.