My heel caught on the long hem of my borrowed dressing gown—
The world tilted and I went down.
Hard.
The carpet didn’t offer much cushioning; the breath knocked right out of me.
Trying to get my bearings as animal noises cooed and sang around us, Lucien slowly stood. Graceful and elegant, he looked like an assassin honed from years of pain to kill anyone he deemed dangerous.
Whisper shot to his paws, gluing himself to his master’s side.
Both of them moved to tower over me.
I waited for him to offer me his hand. To help me up. To enquire if I was okay.
I braced myself for the sensation of touching him. Of the electrical rush I knew would happen the second our skin connected but—
He shifted his arms behind his back, the action deliberate and cold. “You should stop spending time on tricks and focus on how to stay alive in here. It would be a far better use of your time than wasting it on me.”
Without another word, he stalked to the door and left—abandoning me in the wilds of Borneo and taking his domesticated pet panther with him.
Chapter Forty-Three
––––––––
MY BEDROOM FELT LIKE A CRYPT.
Dark and empty, silent as the grave I’d survived in for twenty years.
Silence never used to bother me, but tonight, it scratched at my skin and dragged my thoughts into places I refused to go.
Her.
What the fuck was shedoingto me?
How did she make me suffer in completely new ways, even while curing me of old ones?
That damned room.
That damned moment.
That damned girl.
Dropping onto my bed, I rested my elbows on my knees and pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw stars. Whisper headbutted me before sprawling behind me on the blankets.
I’d known that room existed.
I’d heard it being installed after a particularly rough year when I was thirteen. Marcus had dragged a psychologist in to see me—diagnosing me with my first official mental breakdownafter being trapped without seeing a single soul, apart from the nurses who came to harvest my blood.
For four years—ever since my parents tried to blow up Brimstone Industries in a joint suicide attempt—I’d been treated as the most precious key imaginable. Without me, therewasno company. No endless wealth. No infinite power. No kingdom.
I’d been a terrified nine-year-old as I’d been stuffed in here after my parents never came home. The wall was built, the doors were locked, and the security cameras were installed.
For four awful years, my only form of communication had been with the men operating those cameras, warning me not to destroy them as I attacked each and every one until they were all gone.
By the time I’d reached my teens, my mental health took a nosedive.
I hadn’t been touched or hugged or cared for in almost fifteen hundred days.
