Oh God.
I knew this room. I had studied photographs of rooms exactly like this in my forensic psychology courses. Had written papers about the horrors that had been committed in spaces just like this one.
An observation theater.
The operating table I was strapped to sat in the center of the circular space, positioned beneath a massive surgical light that wasn't currently on.
Around me, arranged on steel trays and mounted on the walls, were the instruments of a bygone psychiatric era.
Electroconvulsive therapy machines with their dials, wires, and rubber bite guards.
Leather straps darkened with age and use.
Metal probes of varying lengths and thicknesses, some still bearing the faint discoloration of old stains.
And there—mounted in a glass case like a trophy—was anorbitoclast. The ice pick-like instrument they had used for transorbital lobotomies. They had inserted that instrument through the eye socket, tapped it with a hammer, and severed the connections in the prefrontal cortex.
A procedure that took ten minutes and utterly destroyed a person's soul.
This was where they broke minds.
This was where they carved out the parts of people that society found unacceptable.
The irony wasn't lost on me. I was about to be claimed by a madman in a room designed to manufacture compliance.
A sound made me turn my head the other direction.
Glass.
The observation window stretched along one entire wall, and behind it. . .
Oh no.
The Broken Court.
Dozens of them. Maybe thirty. Pressed against the glass like children at an aquarium, staring at me with wild, hungry eyes. Men and women in various stages of undress, some wearing the tattered remains of asylum uniforms, others in street clothes stained with violence.
I saw dried blood on faces, on hands, on bare chests.
I saw scars, tattoos, and piercings.
I saw madness given human form, assembled to witness. . .what?
One of them noticed my eyes were open.
"She's awake!" The cry went up, spreading through the crowd like fire through dry brush. "The Queen is awake!"
And then they began to chant. "The Queen! The Queen! The Queen!"
Dear God.
The sound was deafening even through the glass. Fists pounded against the window. Bodies pressed forward. The chant became a roar, a tidal force of devotion that made the surgical instruments rattle on their trays.
My heat surged in response, as if my body recognized the tribute even as my mind recoiled from it. Slick pooled beneath me on the cold metal table. My nipples hardened against the chilled air. The emptiness in my core pulsed with renewed demand.
Then I saw him.
Rook stood near a door on the far side of the room, his back to me, and for a moment I could only stare at the massive tattoo that covered his entire back.
