I nearly writhed free. One of the guards lost his grip on my arm. I slammed my shoulder into the stone wall, using the momentum to pivot, to lunge back toward her chambers, but the others pulled me tighter.
That’s when it hit.
The tether jerked inside me, sinew stretched to the breaking point. My chest compressed with unbearable pressure. I’d felt the bond between us pull before, but never like this. My vision blurred. I feared I might pass out or vomit. “Let me go,” Igrowled, but my voice came out cracked and useless. “Let me go, please?—”
The pressure grew worse. A hot line of agony lanced from my chest down my spine.
Quinn was panicking. I could feel her anger, fear, and helplessness.
Snap.
A bowstring rending. I had never experienced this level of pain. It was as if my very soul had been torn in half. A scream clawed from my throat. My knees slammed on the floor. I curled forward. I’d been stabbed before. Burned. Broken bones. But this? This was worse, as if every nerve in my body had been lit on fire and plunged into ice at the same time.
I clutched my chest with shaking hands, trying to grasp something that wasn’t there. I reached for her with everything in me, and found…nothing.
The tether was…
Gone.
Terror seized around my lungs.
Had Edric killed her?
The guards hauled me up by my arms, forcing me down the stairs. I whispered a prayer to the Saints I hadn’t believed in since I was ten. I didn’t even know who I was praying to. Maybe to her.Please, Quinn. Be alive.Be hurt, be angry, be afraid—but be alive. Even if I wouldn’t be soon, I needed her to live.
Unconsciousness bit at my heels. I stumbled, legs leaden, but the guards held me upright. I reached for the tether again; a fool pressing on a phantom limb. But there was only barren silence where there had once been connection and warmth.
The guards stopped at a dead end. One of them pressed hishand to the wall. With a grinding screech, the bricks parted to the side in neat stacks, revealing a stairwell.
Sealing the dungeon with Tremor magic? Clever. Only a few people would be able to open it.
The stairs opened into a wider space lined with barred cells. I ducked to avoid scraping my head on the ceiling. Rats skittered to corners the torchlight couldn’t reach. Every breath burned my throat as the scents of mildew and blood invaded my lungs. It was dark, dank, and altogether miserable. A place designed to break people, with the added convenience of holding them.
The guards brought me to a halt. They yanked my head backward. I sucked a breath through my teeth, grimacing as my scalp protested.
A knife hissed.
Hair sliced.
Not much—a lock.
Alarm jolted through me.
“What are you—” I twisted, but their grip on my arms tightened.
The guards wrapped the strands in a handkerchief. A chill somersaulted down my spine.Why would they need hair?
A guard wrenched open a rusted cell door and threw me in. Pain flared in my skull as it connected with the stone floor. Blood coated my tongue and teeth in iron.
“You awful brutes!” someone shouted. “You don’t deserve your mothers, you scum-sucking limp-membered cretins!”
That voice.
“Thistle…?” I croaked, head swimming.
Two sets of hands reached for me. One bracing under my back, another pulling my arm over a broad shoulder.
“How are you here?” I asked.
