The Nightmare Daze

15. Against the Current

Florence

"No hesitation."

I shake my head and Silas smiles, though I wonder if he can't see right through me. I am all hesitation, all terror.

"You're going to make it," he whispers, and I try to smile back at him but fail.

"What if I don't?"

"Don't think of it. Just focus on what you have to do."

"If I don't..."

"Florence." He takes my shoulders and squeezes gently, and that single gesture is enough to seize my heart. His is the only friendly touch I have. "You have to trust me, and you have to be brave. Do whatever you have to do, but the moment I give the signal, you better run like your life depends on it." Because it does. Silas still won't tell me what awaits me at headquarters, and I wonder if it's because he thinks I'll be too frightened. But I am frightened enough, and he knows it. No, I think it's because he doesn't want me to know what he knows. He doesn't want me to understand all that he's stood by and watched. Maybe I would despise him if I weren't a prisoner, but now I feel a strange sort of pity for him, that he would care about how I see him, and that he would be so trapped that he would stay despite his shame.

He presses a sliver of metal into my hand, a piece of rusted iron that he managed to pry away from the bed frame. It's slightly jagged on one edge—not enough to be considered sharp—but it's all I have. I tuck the metal into the back of my dress and Silas moves it out of sight and tightens the cinches of my bodice, his fingers slipping across my back as he does. It doesn't matter that I've come to understand him as an ally; the touch only reminds me of the way Levi holds the small of my back when he's about to take me to his bedroom. It's one in a long list of things that I think will be forever changed if I manage to escape. Will I ever dance with anyone again, knowing that their hand might slip to that place? It seems like a long time ago when it used to send a thrill through my chest to have a handsome man touch me like that.

"You really aren't coming with, are you."

His hands fall away from me and I turn to where his troubled expression is poorly concealed. "I told you, Florence..."

"I know. It just doesn't seem right."

What if my father had never learned whatever it was that he did? What if there was no ransom deal? I never would have met Silas then. How strange to think that this man would simply not exist to me, when now he has become the only thing offering enough hope to keep me alive. I long for a strange in-between, where Silas showed up in the rose garden that night, but he forever remained a handsome specter in my memory and nothing more.

"What's that look?" He catches me staring and smiles slightly, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

I open my mouth to answer and then think better of it, turning away. I'll probably never see him again after this; either I'll escape or die trying, and I'll never know what's happened to him. Finally, I settle on the edge of the bed and feel a strange tug of worry when he sits next to me. What if I escape and they kill him for it? Has he figured that into his calculations? "I wish you could've just remained a stranger in my garden."

"Florence..." His face is pained.

"I don't say that to shame you. We are past the point where it does any good to try to sort out the wrongness of this whole thing." I take his hand despite his hesitation and squeeze his fingers. "I hope...I hope you find some peace after today."

"Don't worry about—"

"Promise me you'll try. Won't you? Just promise that you won't resign yourself to this for the rest of your life."