I didn’t move. My eyelids remained shut. Maybe if I feigned death, I could escape what came next.
“I guess you’d rather stay in here, then,” Grim’s foul voice writhed into my ears.
I inhaled a breath and rolled over. “Fuck off.”
Grim’s menacing chuckle was swallowed by the silence, no echoes to follow. I wasn’t sure if I preferred the echo or not. “Don’t tempt me.”
My eyelids snapped open as my brain fired high doses of adrenaline through my bloodstream. I groaned, the magic deprivation’s claws not relenting on my mind in the slightest. “Fine. Get these fucking cuffs off me.” My throat felt sliced to hell, causing my voice to sound stripped.
“So many demands from someone who holds no power.”
An acute throb began a rhythm in my temples. “Just fucking wait.”
Another laugh came from Grim, taunting me. “I can’t wait to see what you have in store. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
I swallowed—or tried to—realizing I was turning into the killing machine that they so wanted me to become. I didn’t even care anymore. It was about survival and finding a way to get the king’s head while protecting a princess I’d only spoken to twice in my life.
“Let’s just go,” I grumbled, already trying to compartmentalize the punishment I’d just endured. It grew harder and harder to do lately. My will to fight him had dissolved. Broken.
I forced my body to sit up through the agony searing my sore organs and muscles. I felt so fucking heavy and limp.
“Good boy.”
My head drooped forward. Iwasa good boy, wasn’t I? Bile rose up my throat at the thought. Doing as commanded at the drop of the hat. Fuck, I hated who I’d become. Who they’d made me.
The locks on my wrist and ankle cuffs jostled and clicked as they snapped open, relieving me from the magic suppression. Tears sprang to my eyes at the sensation of my power sputtering in my veins. I needed to replenish desperately before I did something reckless.
My Elemental magic immediately sought out and pulled from Grim’s aura and the energy of every prisoner on the block. I couldn’t stop it, like being beyond the point of starvation. I’d reached the point where my survival instincts took control.
Meanwhile, my Kinetic magic sought the electromagnetic waves being emitted from the lights in the corridor, the sounds—anything being output by electromagnetic energy—tugging on it to fuel my currents and strength.
Grim pressed a Kinetic blade to my side as he escorted me from the prisons and to the elevator.
As the doors snapped shut, he turned his head to face me. “Lesson learned?”
I didn’t deign him a response as I stared at the minute gap in the doors.
“Stay away from her. I don’t give a fuck if your king is beating her to death. You stay the fuck away from her. Otherwise, you’ll have to watch her punishment next.”
His warning weaved a poisonous thread deep within my chest, creating a helpless wrath that promised to explode to the surface. I fucking dared anyone to hurt her. I didn’t know why, nor did I care anymore, but I’d raze the fucking world if she was hurt. She and I were one and the same. Mirrors of one another. She was for me to protect. I’d always known that. Little did Grim know, I already had Slate on it to keep her safe.
I could feel his beady eyes boring into my side profile. “Understood?”
I met his sadistic gaze with my blank one. “Of course, Grim,” I responded, my voice cold and despondent. “Whatever you want.”
Me
Meet me in the parking garage in 20.
Slate
Bet.
Istood on the edge of a metaphorical precipice. I was going to snap. I had to get the fuck away from the palace before I lost control.
Pacing back and forth in my room, I clenched and unclenched my fists at my sides, trying to outrun the suffocation threateningto undo me. But that wasn’t working, so I dropped to my knees on the white carpet, pressing my forehead to the fabric, all while trying to scrub Grim’s seedy voice from my mind. My fingers twined in the carpet, and I did my best to snatch it loose. Anything to make my mind stop.
I gasped for breath, but my lungs didn’t seem to be able to keep up with the demand. The pressure was going to collapse my chest bone, I just knew it.
