Vincent’s hand clamps over my mouth when I start to shout.
“Orders,” he mutters against my ear. “That’s all you need to know.”
Orders.
My stomach drops hard enough to rattle my bones.
Lucian ordered this.
The realization hits like a fist I can’t see coming.
I thrash harder, but Vincent sweeps my legs out from under me. I hit the floor on my knees, pain detonating up my thighs. I don’t stop. Ican’tstop. My nails scrape the floorboards as I try to wrench free.
Behind me, Johnny hisses, “Stop making this worse.”
Worse. As if I’m the problem. As if I asked for any of this.
They haul me upright. My heart slams against my ribs, drowning out breath and thought. Are they here to kill me? I didn’t think...Lucian said I was safe here, and I was stupid enough to believe him.
“Tell me what he thinks I did,” I choke out. “Tell me why?—”
They drag me into the hallway before I can finish. The manor is dark except for dim sconces that cast patches of soft gold along the walls. Everyone’s asleep. That fact lands sickly in my stomach.
Lucian didn’t want witnesses. This is humiliation in silence. Punishment behind a locked door.
“Mara!” I cry out.
“Elias, please don’t. Mara wasn’t built to see these things.” Johnny drags me along.
But I am meant to bear them?
They shove me toward the back stairs—the ones no guest ever uses. My mind sprints through possibilities: something I said? Something I didn’t say? Something Xavier?—
Xavier.
My throat closes. Ice floods my veins. Maybe Lucian found something. Misread something. Assumed something. But Lucian wouldn’t?—
Except he would.
Hehas.
Vincent’s palm presses between my shoulder blades, shoving me down the last steps. I catch the railing before my skull meets the wall.
“You’re making a mistake,” I snap, breath shaking. “Lucian’s making a mistake.”
They put me in a black van before Johnny speeds off into the city. Is Lucian letting me go home? The thought makes my heart squeeze until I think it might burst. We ride along for twenty minutes until we pull up in front of Lucian’s office.
Down another hallway. Through a coded door I didn’t know existed.
A mechanical groan as a heavy steel gate slides open. Cold air slams into me. Damp, metallic, stale.
The underground cells.
I didn’t know they were here—but of course they were. Everything in Lucian’s world has a shadow beneath it. A place where the real work happens. They drag me inside.
Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting long skeletal shadows across concrete floors and thick walls built to swallow screams.
I freeze.
