“What’s left of me,” she whispered.
I scrambled across the room on all fours, searching out my best friend with blind hand movements. Even dragons needed a hint of light to see in the dark.
Milly hissed when I encountered something fleshy, and I withdrew.
“Careful.”
I inched closer, wishing fervently for some light. “What have they done to you, Mil? Are you okay?”
She laughed. It was wet and, scariest of all, weak. She didn’t sound good. I inched a finger forward slowly until I found her. I heard some movement, and then her hand found mine.
I gasped at the fragility of her grip. Milly was the tallest and strongest of all of us. The closest to being a non-clippy. But even her dragon wasn’t truly awake. It just manifested itself in her personality, making her feistier. A bit stronger. And protective of Ella and me.
And now it seemed she had paid for that. Her fingers were rail thin, her wrist all bone.
“Oh, orb. Milly,” I breathed as she described the beatings and damages to her body that had been inflicted on her. “Why? Why did they do this to you?”
“They wanted to know who you were and why people were searching for me so much.” She managed a laugh, which told me the Milly I knew wasn’t dead yet, hadn’t given up hope yet. Always a fighter. “Told them that nobody was looking for me, but they didn’t seem to believe it. Said I was wrong. Nothing I said could convince them otherwise. So they took out their frustrations on me.”
“You were wrong,” I said into the silence thatfollowed. “We have been looking for you.”
“We?”
“Yeah.” I took a breath. “This could take a bit. Are you sitting down?”
Silence.
“Ha. Ha-ha. Ha, ha, haa.” Milly laughed. It still sounded ugly, but the humor sounded genuine. “You have changed, Na. Making jokes in a situation like this? I’ve missed a lot. Haven’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“Start from the beginning. And go slowly.”
I did. I told her everything. About my escape from the market and of Caz showing up. Of the discovery that we were mates. That we had claimed one another. All of it.
Well. Almost all of it.
“Good for you,” Milly whispered, giving my hand a squeeze. “I’m happy for you. So happy for you.”
My eyes teared up at the weakness in her grip. My strong, protective Milly. Reduced to this. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair! She didn’t deserve this treatment, simply because of the way she’d been born. Nobody did. Blood still flowed in her veins. Dragon blood.
“So now what? Will he find you? Then what? The elite here is a brutal one.”
Just perfect. “Any ideas who it is?” Not that it would help.
“No. But they aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.” Something clanked against the stone floor. “They put this on with their own hands.”
My fingers fumbled in the darkness until I felt the ring of metal around Milly’s neck.
A slave collar.
Why bother with that, if they were going to keep her locked up and under a constant interrogation? Something was missing from the puzzle. But what?
“We’re screwed. Aren’t we?” Milly whispered. “They’re going to put a collar on you too. We’re never getting out.”
I could hear the hope fade as she spoke, the vitality she’d managed to hold on to slipping away into the ether as it all came crashing down. Milly had held out hope for so long, knowing I wasn’t there, that her captors were still looking for me as long as she was getting beaten.
But now they had me, and Milly had nothing left to hang on to. It was so unlike her, it made me angry. Howdarethey do this to someone like her!
