Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
But if I don’t help my father, they’ll just torture the information out of Bothaki, and I’ll be in the sanitorium knowing it’s happening, probably suffering just the same. Even if I hadn’t seen the results of it for myself, everyone knows about the sanitorium’s methods to cure their patients. Neither myself, nor Bothaki, will last then.
“You are considering something that is not a request to begin with,” my father says. “You do as I say, or you join your mother. Those are your choices if you want to call them that. And believe me when I say, I will make your stay at the sanitorium much worse, and lengthier, than hers.”
Worse? My mother can barely speak most times when I visit. When she does, she always speaks about happier times, but I can see the pain in her eyes, and hear the barely held back tears in her every word. And lengthier? She’s already been there for too many years.
Even still, I do consider that what my father says is not truly a choice. Would I be betraying Bothaki? Because somehow just thinking that makes my heart twist in a way I don’t quite understand, but know hurts. No, not betraying. I’m protecting him. The longer I can keep my father at bay by going down there, the more time I have to figure out a plan.
A plan? I ask myself. A plan for what?
The moment the question comes, so does the answer. To help Bothaki escape. To get him as far away from here as I can. To where, I have no idea. How I will hide someone of his height, I don’t know. How I will get away from my father’s soldiers is even more unclear. But a determination fills me that I haven’t felt in a long time. I will free us both and go along with my father’s demands in the meantime. I will learn what I can from Bothaki, and hope my father watching through the cameras doesn’t learn half of what I do. I will use my father’s punishment to my benefit as I would never have dared to before. But for myself, and for this alien that has come to mean so much to me, although I can’t quite figure out why, I will free us both.
“I will do it,” I agree hoarsely.
“I know you will.” He scoffs. “You will go down there on a night of my choosing, and you will find out as much as you can each night until your usefulness has expired. Then, I will decide if you have done enough to remain in this household. Or if you need … further correction.”
Plan or not, a shiver races through me at his chilling words. He drops down to his haunches and a cry builds in my throat as he brings his face so close to mine that our noses touch.
“If I find you lying to me, misleading me in any way, I will make you wish you were never born, Selina. What you have seen on the visits with your abhorrent mother will seem like a dream compared to what they, and I, will do to you. Am I understood?”
I shakily nod, but his hand quickly grips my jaw to still my head.
“Am. I. Understood?”
“Yes, father.”
“Good.”
He tosses my face away and the man behind me finally releases my arms. Only because I’m able to extend my hands at the last second do I keep from falling to the floor. My abdomen aches and my heart is in pain for what will happen to Bothaki and I both if I fail in my plan.
“Be sure to recite your tenants before you go to sleep,” my father demands.
I lift my head to look at him in my open doorway. His hateful eyes on me. Lips curved up in a smug smirk. A triumphant expression on his face as he stares down at me seemingly humbled before him.
I used to want, so badly when I was young, to say the right thing, do the right thing to earn his love. As I got older and realized this was unobtainable, I only wanted to stay out of his way and avoid his wrath. Now, as I look up at him, I want to bring everything he believes and covets crumbling down around him. I want him to burn in his own arrogance, and suffocate on his self-righteousness.
A woman is always humble and subservient.
It’s felt like those words had been etched into my very being from the moment I was born. But I shed them as I watch my father. This woman is no longer humble. This woman will not be subservient. No more and never again.
SIX
The louder my stomach rumbles, the emptier the survival kit feels as I rifle around inside for items I know are there. Or, they were there before I closed my eyes. The longer I stay down here in this prison made of bars and glass without a proper rhythm for the sun’s rise and fall other than when these humans shut the lights on and off, the harder it is for me to fall into a proper rest when my body and mind don’t also feel in need of it.