Oddette's POV
The sound came like a slap I didn't see coming—because I don't see anything coming. A hard crack, close enough to turn the air solid. I flinched; the towel bit my ribs and my hands flew to my ears. For a second I thought I'd been shot. Then the ringing faded and the world rushed back in: my knees on the rug, my palms on a chest that wasn't rising, the taste of pennies on my tongue.
"Pa?" I said again, even though I already knew. "Pa, please."
He didn't answer. Skin, hair, the familiar angle of his jaw—my hands knew all of him, the way you know your own heartbeat. I pressed harder, as if pressure could convince blood to listen. It only made more of it climb my fingers.
My throat closed. I breathed wrong. The room stuttered. Something heavy shifted in the silence, and a man's voice cut through everything.
"Give me a reason you'll be useful to me."
I went still. The voice was low and cold. Not loud. Just final. I turned my face toward it. My eyes stayed open out of habit; they don't help. I searched with my ears instead—the scrape of a boot, breathing that wasn't mine, the hush of bodies holding still. I counted heartbeats. Mine. His. Too many others.
"Useful?" I repeated. My father's shirt clung to my knuckles. "I—I don't understand."
Something warm settled over my shoulders. A jacket, heavy and expensive, smelling like smoke and winter. Every hair on my arms tried to lie down under its heat. I clutched it because my body is smarter than my pride. Some part of me thought: why would a killer cover me? The rest of me couldn't afford the question.
"If I spare you," he said, "earn it."
I didn't know where to put that sentence. One hand stayed on my father. The other fisted the jacket. I tried to answer and got a tiny, broken noise instead.
Then he spoke again, and the floor tilted. "Choose one of them to live."
Them?
I heard it then—the other breaths. The staff. Soft sobs smashed into sleeves. Fabric rasping against marble. The wet hiss of someone trying not to cry. I'd grown up inside those sounds. They smelled like starch and cinnamon and warm soap. They were family.
I turned my head toward the weight of that fear. "No," I said, and the word shook. "I can't. I won't. Their lives matter just as much as mine."
Silence stretched. It had teeth. Then the man's breath brushed my cheek, close enough to make me shiver. "Then no one does."
Hope left the room like someone opened a door and told it to run.
"Bag the father. Burn the rest. She comes with me."
Burn. The word didn't fit inside me. It tore and kept tearing. I grabbed for him because there was nothing else to hold—the feel of a trouser seam, the hard line of his calf. "Please," I said, again and again because it was all I had. "Don't—don't hurt them. Please."
They cried for me—"Young miss," "Miss Odette," "Please"—and I wanted to be the kind of brave that could change a command with a sentence. I am not. I am the kind of brave that shakes and keeps talking anyway. It didn't help.
He didn't answer. Strong arms slid under me and the floor went away. I fought on reflex. My fist hit his chest and apologized for existing at the same time. The jacket slipped; he fixed it without touching my skin. I hated him for that small decency and needed it in the same breath.
He put me on his shoulder like I weighed less than a lie. The world bounced in his steps—firm, even, unbothered. My hair stuck to his neck. My breath stuck to my teeth.
The night hit me cold. The jacket helped and didn't. I curled into it anyway. Engines rumbled somewhere ahead, hungry and patient. The air outside smelled like wet stone and city-clean wind, and under that, lilies and smoke following us out.
"I'll be useful," I heard myself say, because begging and bargaining share the same door. "I'll be useful, I swear. Just… don't…" The last word wouldn't come. If I said it—burn—it might become a thing the sky could hear.
He stopped long enough to make the pause hurt. "Earn it," he said.
That was when I understood: he was not a storm that would pass. He was winter, and I had stepped outside without shoes.
He lowered me into a car. Leather pressed my legs. I grabbed for him and found nothing because he was already letting go. The jacket slid again; this time I fixed it. A spark snapped up my arm when his knuckles brushed my collarbone. I hated my body for noticing anything but grief.
The door shut. Sound changed—softer, sealed. The engine deepened. We moved.
I pulled my knees close. The jacket smelled like him; I tried to hide inside it and only found more of him. I cried until my throat was a scrape, and then I didn't cry at all because I had gone dry.
After a while that wasn't long at all, a thought came and sat down. I would rather be dead than be with him.
I slid a hand along the seat, quiet as I could. Leather seam. Door panel. A cold metal curve. My heart jumped. I explored it with my fingers the way I learned to read: edges, angles, how the world speaks when it doesn't use words. The handle. It felt like a promise.
He said something to the driver—one word, low. The car sped up. I held still until the weight of his attention went elsewhere, then breathed and tried again to map the door. My fingers shook. They always shake when I need them to be brave.
City sounds came through the glass in soft pieces: tires hissing, a horn far away, wind doing its best.