Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) by Harry Manners

passion . The upper floor, in the middle of which her chair had been bolted down, consisted of a single slant-roofed room, the corners piled high with yet more trinkets and tributes. Two cases of liquor lay nearby, next to a metal table that looked disturbingly medical in origin, covered over with a length of tarp.
    She looked at it all afresh and a sliver of fear arose from somewhere inside her. She had been here almost an hour, and not one sound had registered even on the edge of audibility. She had seen nothing of Newquay’s Moon on her less-than-elegant return. Two days ago, she had been at the Alliance homestead, along with Malverston’s goons, exiled for refusing his bed. She had hated going for her departure had been coupled with her home being turned upside down. Melanie, her sister, and her mother, who already had so little and worked so hard to scrape by, had been left with nothing.
    Because of her.
    But being at the homestead had meant being with James. James, who had appeared months ago from the wilds and cast the first twinkling rays of hope into her life. His green eyes, his easy smile, the stupid pigeons that hung around him all the time—she had noticed all of it, the moment he and Alex Cain had arrived to see the mayor for the first time. The look in their eyes had been one she had seldom seen except in her own, whenever she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
    They had no intention of bowing to the cretin. They had a plan.
    The first time she and James kissed had been in the peach groves under the cover of darkness. She had known then that she could never be without him. If she couldn’t escape Malverston’s clutches, she would rather die than lay in his bed, night after night, with his flabby bulk pumping impotently atop her.
    When Malverston had flung her away to the homestead, despite the knowledge that she was leaving her family behind, a secret relief had nestled in her chest. Because she had been going to him, and briefly, she had dared to hope that it might be the end to her suffering. But when she had arrived, the fantasy popped. Malverston’s goons, wheedling their grubby fingers into the Alliance’s classrooms to learn the ways of the Old World, had taken her as their plaything. While her mind’s eye had played film reels of James cutting them all down, one by one, he had left.
    He left her alone with those monsters. She fought them for an entire day while James’s friends watched, their hands tied by dirty politics. Then while she slept, a bag had been thrust over her head. The next time she had seen light, she had been back in the Moon.
    “Why bother sending me all that way just so that you could bring me all the way back?” she said.
    Malverston turned from the table and splayed his arms as though to say, What are you gonna do?
    “I remember what you said. You said I was all used up. What’s the matter, mayor? You realise just how much you need me? That I’m the only one who’s willing to stand your filth, because she had something to lose?”
    He gave her a long look-over, running his tongue along his teeth under his lip. “You are used up,” he muttered. “Tainted. I can see it in you. You always had spice; that was what made it worth putting up with your shit. But now…” He cocked his head to the side, and he pointed the knife at her, waggling it back and forth. “You’ve got that look in your eye.” He waddled closer, placing each foot menacingly before the other. “It’s that kid. That Chadwick.”
    Beth clamped her teeth together, desperate not to let anything show on her face. But she knew he’d seen her momentary shock by the glint that sparked in his eye.
    “I knew it,” he hissed. “That little bastard wheedled his way into my home, ate my food and drank my ale, and he thinks he can take my property from me. Oh, I know their type well, my dear. They talk of peace and rebuilding, traipsing around the country like it was theirs for the taking, treating the