Once my head stopped swimming, I wriggled into a seated position, wedged in the corner, my legs to the side and body twisted.
Torches crackled in sconces on the wall. Heavy chains looped from rings bolted into the corners and ceiling. The dirt floor was strewn with hay, mold and blood lying heavy in the air. It was enough to know that I wasn’t in the pit. This was a different dungeon, and I wanted to be nowhere near it.
At the far end there stood a raised platform. Four diamond shackles gaped open upon the wall above. A faint outline like a golden shadow filled the wall, its hands and legs running directly through the shackles. A golden ‘X’ was painted where the heart would be.
Next to the empty space, four bodies were mounted like hunting trophies upon the wall.
The first was still recognizable as a woman. Tufts of ragged black hair draped a sunken face with wisps of clothes covering a skeletal frame. Sparkling diamond shackles cinched her hands and feet, a matching crown upon her head. Her chest was carved open, the skin everted, the muscles and ribs pulled back and skewered by large nails like a dissected butterfly. Her heart was a ruby. The guttering candlelight flashing across the facets gave her a heartbeat, swooshing blood across the surface.
I blinked, trying to clear my mind. But the corpse next to her with a silver heart also pulsed. And the sapphire beside her. The last one, only chalky bones and rusted nails, still had an emerald heart that writhed under the light as well.
My stomach churned, and I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling, away from the haunted, empty eye sockets that stared straight at me.
I wish I hadn’t.
The ceiling teemed. Darkness churned and scrabbled, forming limbs, flashes of an arm, curves of a waist. One of the figures jerked around, the dark void of its face staring directly at me. The whites of its eyes dripped into place like wax running down a candle. There was no giggling, no shrieking, but they were producing a low rhythmic pulse. Murmurs? Groans?
My mind absorbed the low hum, the magic in my soul crawling further into itself. I could understand it, feel it. It was an incantation.
And it called to me too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SPILLED SECRETS
The chanting thrummed through the air.
There were no words, just a rhythmic swell and ebb that I understood in my bones. As I relaxed, the teeming mass above my head calmed, lapping at each other like ocean waves, sliding into the spaces, constantly moving.
The pulsing hearts on the wall sank into the same rhythm. The silver, sapphire, ruby, and emerald winking sleepily.
As one, everything paused.
Then the prince walked in.
The incantation redoubled, the hearts trilling as fast as a sparrow’s. Prince Bellinor wore long, flowing robes with diamond crystals woven into the thread. A sash around his waist captured a long, naked knife with serrated edges. The hood sagged across his face, but even beneath the shadows, his teeth gleamed too brightly.
“Good evening, Tam,” he said. “Are you ready to play my game now?”
My heart thumped, nausea welling in my throat.
He walked toward me and ran his finger along my cheek. I shuddered, the chains clinking together behind my back.
“It took quite a while for me to claim you.” He lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his keen gaze. “The spirits are blind until they are given the scent. You must know how contact magic works?”
I pressed my lips together, sequestering my emotions deep inside. Of course I knew, it’s what I did, what every bounty hunter used, but each in their own unique way. Even Siobhan used it to keep tabs on me, but she preferred to mark me with her mouth, not her hands.
“Well, loyal Clement tried to prevent the inevitable, always getting in the way. He is far too good for the likes of us. I couldn’t understand why you at first, but eventually I saw it.” He knelt before me, his hand sliding around my neck to grip the chain. “I saw you.” He tugged the links, my head snapping back, neck extended. He pressed his nose to my throat and inhaled deeply, my skin moist and clammy beneath his touch. “There’s magic in you, powerful magic. And I want it.”
His tongue carved into the groove of my throat, tracing the pump of blood up my neck.
I squirmed helplessly, my body bound by the cold iron.
“But you need to give it...” he pressed the knife to my heart, the tip biting into my flesh, while his mouth hovered above mine, “willingly.”
“Get the fuck off me.”
He tsked, rocking back onto his heels before standing. He tucked the knife back into the sash, patting it lovingly and walked to the far wall, admiring each hung woman with his hands clasped behind his back. The glow from their hearts bled light onto his face.
