Chained To Him [Editing]

Chapter Eighteen

5 years ago

Her whole body ached, muscles tender from spending day after day harvesting vegetables from the cold ground. The fall had been dry, bringing an easy harvest for wheat and corn, but leaving the soil stiff and heavy over the root vegetables that Jayde had been digging up all week. As the winter drew near, the soldiers pushed them harder in the fields to finish the harvest before the first snowfall. But the hard labor didn't bother her as it usually did. The burning in her body distracted her from her thoughts, which wandered too quickly and too often remembered what she wished she could forget. It had been two months since she'd visited Aragon, two months since Luc was returned to her. At first, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more, that at any point he might change his mind or reveal his trick to her and take Luc away. But each day she came home and Luc was still there to wrap his arms around her and melt away the worries of her day. And so after a time it was easier to pretend that life was somewhat normal again. The three of them were together, and alive.

And then yesterday she finally saw him. She'd been standing next to Luther as they waited in line for rations. It was their routine, their meditation, to stand quietly there at the end of the day, neither of them speaking, and let the day's toil and tension leave their shoulders in each other's company. The exhaustion in Luther's body seemed to make him sag, and as she looked around, most everyone in line for rations had the same weathered appearance that they now bore. True to his word, Luther had largely curbed his drinking with the help of someone who often worked alongside him in the field. It was another battle for him, constant excruciating work to pair with the already intense days of physical labor. But he had passed the most dangerous point in the process, and his spirits seemed lifted as an upward path appeared for him. Jayde was proud of him, though Luc was still unsure if Luther would be able to keep it up. It was hard for him to trust him after he'd slipped up so many times, and this was only exacerbated by Luc's own feeling of helplessness as he stayed home alone each day. Slowly, the combined rations of Jayde and Luther's toil plus the occasional supplement from the tokens Aragon had given her had brought their collective strength back, and with it some morale. Starvation was no longer on their doorstep.

As they stepped closer to the front of the line, Jayde heard his voice, the silky voice that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She stepped closer to Luther and touched his arm, but his face was already alert, eyes staring past her at the source. He gently moved her around his other side and out of sight, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she shivered. A couple weeks after she'd traded herself for Luc, she wasn't able to hold the story inside of her anymore, and she told Luther what had happened, about the tokens, about the threat of him looming over her. She still could never tell Luc what had happened, but in a small way it relieved her burden to have Luther help her carry it.

"Go ahead without me," he said quietly. "Give me your tokens and I'll be close behind."

She touched the tokens in her pocket and held them hesitantly out. "What if they won't let you exchange three?"

"Then we'll get more food tomorrow. Go."

There were only two people in front of them in line now, and just as Jayde reached to drop the tokens in Luther's hand, she looked up to the front of the line and realized that Aragon was there, talking to one of the soldiers handling rations. He looked lazily her way and his eyes lingered longer than she liked, long enough that she remembered too clearly the last time he looked at her that way.

She could feel Luther bristling, his arm stiff around her as they stepped forward again in line. She couldn't leave now that he'd seen her – it would be safer to be among other people, next to Luther. Still, as they reached the front of the line her muscles stitched with the desire to run as fast as she could away from him. She slipped one of the tokens back into her pocket, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching her accept his charity. As a soldier stacked her rations into her cloth bag, she kept her eyes down on the table, her heart beating painfully in her chest as she watched Aragon's boots step forward next to the soldier that was helping her. She looked up quickly as he leaned forward to whisper in the soldier's ear, and Jayde couldn't help but hold her breath. Surely he wouldn't try to summon her as she waited for rations, not in front of so many people, not in front of Luther. Her cheeks burned at the thought of Luther knowing what had happened and knowing what could very well happen again.