A soft smile warms her face as she turns and leaves. All the candles flicker out. The clock stops ticking. And her acolyte breezes in, turns on the lights, and takes it all away without another word.
Chapter Thirty-Three
FIONA
Roman positions me in front of him, and we descend a steep staircase too narrow for us to walk side by side. I wonder how this place can have a basement at all, considering it’s built next to the ocean, but I learn pretty quickly that this is no ordinary lower level. After the last step, the carpet ends, revealing a metal grate for a floor and bolted steel walls. I’m descending into a submarine, a tankard, some sort of vault.
“Vivian is down here?” I ask, but I know the answer. She hasn’t been his guest. This entire time, she’s been his prisoner. If she had been his guest, she would have returned my messages and calls. Only now do I worry thatprisonerisn’t the term for what’s happened to her, that it might be something more, something darker. “Is she still alive, Roman?” It’s a brazen question, but we’vepassed tiptoeing around the reality that’s right in front of me.
He snorts and places a hand in the center of my back, guiding me deeper into the dark depths of the room. A smell hits me, and I can’t place it immediately; then I do. It’s like a stairwell in a parking garage in the city. Dried urine, dirty human, and something medicinal like someone tried to cover it all with a spritz of Lysol.
A switch clicks. Long, rectangular fluorescent lights blink on along the ceiling, one after another, to reveal cages—no, prison cells. A filthy skeleton of a woman appears at the bars of one, blinking like it’s the first time in a long time she’s seen light.
“Vivian!” I run to my friend, grabbing her hands through the bars.
“Oh God. Oh God, Fiona. Oh no. Oh God.” Her eyes are so wide and her voice is raw. But the way her skin hangs on her disturbs me the most. She looks like she’s starving to death. This is torture. This is…
Alex pops into my head, those shrewd green eyes narrowing.Do you want to wallow in the horror or figure a way out of this for both of you?
I wipe my tears. “I’ve got you,” I whisper, even though truthfully, I don’t have anyone. Not even myself. I search her face and find bruises along her jaw, her wrists. There’s a cut healing, like someone dragged the edge of a blade across her throat, just deep enough to break the skin.
Roman steps forward, sending Vivian scurrying away from the bars. “Vivian doesn’t follow directions verywell. I enjoy playing with her, but like a puppy, I can’t trust her outside her cage.”
Only then do I glance into her cell, where she huddles in the corner next to a filthy cot with a blanket that isn’t close to warm enough for down here and a toilet that allows for no privacy. Worse, she’s still wearing the same dress she wore at the wedding. He hasn’t even given her a change of clothes. And she is so thin. Gaunt. Skeletal. Her eyes, her once-vibrant eyes, how hollow they’ve become. I can’t stand it.
I whirl on Roman, fire rising in my blood, but it’s doused immediately by the cold, merciless look in his soulless eyes. Unless I want to play Roman’s painful game and end up Vivian’s roommate, I need to become his sweet, obedient fiancée. “You’re right. Vivian has never been good at following directions. But now that I’m here, I can help keep her in line. Will you let her out please?” I lay my hands softly on his chest. “I really would like her at our wedding, and I can’t have her standing with me, looking and... smelling like that.” I cascade my fingers toward the bars.
Roman seems to contemplate my request, then brushes under my eye, rubbing a stray tear between his fingers. “Not if she’s going to upset you.”
I plaster on the biggest, brightest smile. “I’m not upset. Those are happy tears, Roman. I’m happy to see her, just like I’m happy to see you.”
He skims a hand along the outside of my arm, causing my stomach to pitch. “I’m glad you said that. Truly, Fiona, it’s refreshing to be with someone who finally understands me.” He strokes the back ofmy head like I’m his new favorite pet. “I have another surprise for you, and I think you are going to really enjoy this one.” His smile is broad and beaming as he gestures proudly across the room at the neighboring cell.
It's all I can do to stifle a scream when I see Donovan strapped to a chair behind the bars, eyes closed and head hanging. An IV in his arm drains blood through a tube leading to a bag near his hip. He’s unconscious and pale. So fucking pale. The last time I met the man, he looked about fifty—tall, fit, with brown hair and graying sideburns. Only a few lines marred the area around his smiling eyes to betray his age. But now he’s barely recognizable. He looks old, like he’s aged thirty years in a day, with sunken cheeks and sallow skin. All I can think is I’m looking at a death mask.
My gaze flicks up to Roman, and it takes all my willpower to keep my own mask in place. He’s watching me intently. Watching me with a tiny smile of pleasure, as if he’d like to sop up any panic and disgust I’m feeling with a dinner roll like it’s gravy.
“Why is your father’s best friend in a cell?”
That tiny smile blooms into something fuller, wider. He backs me against the bars of Vivian’s cell and braces his forearm above my head, leaning in way too close, close enough that the stiff erection in his pants brushes the front of my dress. In all the time I dated Roman, he never appeared aroused. Now I get it. This dungeon, with its blood and stink and suffering, is his kind of porn. Seeing Vivian afraid, seeing Donovan caged and bleeding, it’s some kind of kink to him.
My skin crawls with the need to fight orflee, but then he says, “All those times you wrote about dungeons and torture in your books, I bet you’ve never seen the real thing. I bet you’ve never experienced it, smelled it.” He takes a deep breath like it’s a warm day in spring, his enthusiasm for his dungeon radiating from him. “Are you taking it all in? This is gold.”
Terror makes my stomach clench, and for a moment I think I might vomit, but I swallow it down and force my face to remain impassive. It’s his comment about writing that gives me an idea. I disassociate and become an observer of this scene, as if this truly is research for a book and not real life, not the most horrific experience I’ve ever had.
Alex’s voice pops into my head, He’s a psychopath. He gets off on pain and suffering. Don’t show him any. A toddler won’t play with a toy that doesn’t work. Be as boring and sweet as possible.Go along with everything he says. Make him believe you’re enamored with him.
I force an appreciative smile, perfectly suitable for the Mrs. Psychopath he wants me to be. “It’s all very intriguing.” I gesture around the dungeon. “Exactly the inspiration I need, actually. But why are you draining Donovan’s blood? He looks sick.”
He taps the tip of my nose with his finger. “Have you figured out yet that Donovan is a dragon?”
I slowly shake my head. “No. You said he was Stefan’s friend.”
He laughs, and the sound is awful. The laugh of a maniac. I take shallow breaths. I count to ten inside my head.
“A necessary ruse. Donovan is a dragon, just like thebeast who took you. He’s been my father’s pet for ages, but since my father is dead now, I’ve decided not to keep him.”
“Stefan is dead?” I’d wondered how Roman had risen to grandmaster so quickly.
