And that was when I saw the smear of dark red on the stone wall.
My heart froze like a fucking brick in my chest as I reached out to touch it, still sticky, prevented from drying completely because of the dampness in the tunnels.
“Is that blood?” Remy asked.
Poe reached out to touch it. “Yes.”
I slammed my fist into the stone without thinking.
Again. And again.
Poe and Remy knew better than to try and stop me. My rage needed a place to go.
My hand was beaten to a bloody pulp by the time I was done but I didn’t feel it. My body was as desolate as a faraway desert, Maeve’s name blowing like a tumbleweed across the landscape of my heart.
“I’m going to kill them.”
I stalked forward, my knuckles dripping blood onto the stone floor.
We came to a narrow staircase and then there was nowhere to go but down, deeper under the castle.
I stopped when I saw the coiled rope at the bottom of the staircase. It had been tied to rusted iron gates on either side.
“Maeve did this,” I said when Poe looked around me to see why I’d stopped.
Maeve would fight until she couldn’t fight anymore. It was why she belonged with us.
Why she belonged to us.
“That’s our girl,” he said.
“I hope Todd broke his fucking face,” Remy said through his mask as he and Poe followed me over the rope.
We’d only taken a few steps past the stairs when I heard voices.
“Wait,” Poe said.
But I’d already stopped moving.
Poe pointed toward the tunnel branching to the left. The voices were coming from that direction.
“What if they split up?” Remy asked.
He was right: if they’d split up and we only followed one of the tunnels, we’d lose someone, and I wasn’t about to lose Todd. The other two men were his flunkies. I didn’t care what happened to them.
But Todd was mine.
“I’ll take this one.” I headed in the direction of the voices.
I was already swallowed by the darkness when I heard the sound of Poe and Remy continuing down the main tunnel.
And this time, I walked carefully, sweeping the ground for obstacles that might have been set by our girl.
Our beautiful, fierce girl.
Maeve.
16
