Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(54)
Author: Nalini Singh

As it was, they passed only two other vehicles over the next twenty minutes.

“Turn where you can see that small signboard on the left.”

The car’s headlights reflecting off the discreet black-on-cream of the board, he found himself going down what appeared to be an endless private drive, winter-bare oaks lining it on either side. “Cher,” he said, hating the pain in her silence. “I can see large gates.”

“I have the access code.” She told him the code when they reached the gates, and he punched it in on the driver’s side.

Lights appeared in the distance over five minutes later, a sprawling brick house that reminded him of a Georgian mansion taking shape against a backdrop of trees that were black silhouettes in the night. The drive appeared to end in a circular sweep, with what might have been a fountain in the center, though it was difficult to tell from this distance.

“Pull over here.”

Not arguing with Ash’s request, he brought the car to a stop some distance from the house and turned off both the headlights and the engine. “What is that place?”

Ash got out. Following, he met her at the front of the car . . . where she reached for his hand and held on tight. “It’s called Banli House,” she whispered. “They don’t have a website or any other online presence. It’s one of those places that’s so exclusive, you have to know someone to get in.”

Janvier’s tendons went taut, jawbones grinding against one another.

“My brother was a younger doctor then,” she said, “but our family was wealthy, established. One of my parents’ friends must’ve recommended this place when . . . when things went wrong.” Her breath fogged the air, her inhales shallow. “The rich usually send their drug-addicted sons and daughters here to sober them up, but Banli House is a fully accredited medical and psychiatric facility capable of handling far worse embarrassments.”

Her hand was squeezing his so hard that had he been human, she would’ve left bruises. Janvier wanted to put a hundred bloody bruises on the man responsible for the echo of horror in her voice. “Arvi sent you to this place.”

“When I was fifteen. He drove me here himself, told me the doctors would help me.” A streak of wet on her cheek that broke Janvier’s heart. “I wanted so much to be normal for him.” Her eyes met his, huge and dark. “He was my big brother and, no matter what, he’d always looked after me.” Voice cracking, she blinked rapidly. “The worst thing is, he truly believed he was doing that this time, too.”

“Cher.” He turned to wrap his other arm around her, hold her against him, his indomitable Ash who’d fought off vampires and angels hundreds of years older than her and never crumbled.

“They drugged me,” she said, the words a rasp. “To make me better, that’s what they said. There was more, other kinds of ‘therapy.’ They tied me down when I resisted, and then they pumped me full of drugs again.”

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she pulled away but didn’t break the handclasp, her eyes on Banli House. Her nightmare, he thought, to be vanquished. And she’d do it with shoulders squared and head held high.

He was fucking amazed by her.

“So many people touched me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Orderlies, doctors, nurses. Enough that I began to tune in to them.” She dashed away the tears that had escaped her, stared unflinching at the facility in the distance. “Sometimes they were being nice, trying to calm me during a panic attack after I’d been strapped down, but it just made it worse—at least three of my care staff had worked with the criminally mentally ill, had horrible things inside their heads.”

Her fingers flexed, squeezed his hand again.

“I was drowning in their lives and it was driving me mad, but I had to pretend the therapy was working, that I was getting better. Even when I slept, I couldn’t let myself go too deep—I had to be awake enough to fight the nightmares. I was in there for five months.”

24

Janvier thought of how strained she’d been in Nazarach’s home, her energy contained tightly inside her skin, and couldn’t imagine how she’d survived the hell of having her mind violated over and over again. “Were the walls—”

“No,” she said, anticipating his question. “Banli House is too young to have become a living entity to my senses. It’s safe for the time being—and if I’d been able to choose my caregivers, choose the ones who had quiet, ordinary minds, I might have been okay.”

Janvier saw she didn’t believe her own words; his Ash wasn’t meant to be trapped and caged. Like a bird with its wings clipped, she would sicken and die. “How did you get out?” he asked through the rage that was a flood shoving against his senses.

“I convinced them I’d stabilized enough that they started to let me out on the grounds.” Tiny lines flared out from the corners of her eyes, her expression wondering. “To this day, I don’t know how I did it. It was as if I put on a different skin like Naasir talks about doing—beneath that skin, I was one step away from total fragmentation.”

“You were tough even then.”

A fast, unexpected smile. “Yes, I was.” The smile faded too soon, her eyes drawn toward Banli House again. “I wanted to run the first day I glimpsed freedom, but I fought it. I knew they were watching me.” Pausing, she lifted their clasped hands, rubbed her cheek against the back of his.

It was a punch right to his heart.

“So I did what they expected me to do,” she said after lowering their hands again. “I sunbathed and read books like the addicts who’d gone through detox. After a while, the staff stopped paying as close attention to me. Then late one evening after final bed check, I squeezed out a window I’d wedged open, and I ran.”

Janvier clenched his jaw, his entire body trembling with the storm inside him. “Where was your brother during the time you were in this place?” he asked, not sure he could ever be civil to the man again.

“Don’t blame him, Janvier,” she said, to his surprise. “I can’t forgive him, but I know why he did it.”

“No reason can excuse such abandonment.” He would’ve died for his sisters, would’ve slayed dragons for them. “A brother is meant to protect.”

“That’s the thing.” A pained whisper. “In his mind, that was exactly what he was doing.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “It wasn’t until I was in here that I understood why he couldn’t stand to be around me once I began to know things I shouldn’t, once I ran to him as an eleven-year-old scared of the ugly things I’d glimpsed in the mind of a teacher who turned out to be a child molester.”