His voice fractured as he yanked free of my grip. “Philip!”
The door crashed open.
Philip barreled in like a thunderclap, his face contorted with alarm. Together, the two men descended on me. I kicked, thrashed, and screamed, but they slammed me back into the mattress, trapping my arms beneath their combined weight.
“She’s gone mad!” Dr. Carson barked in Italian, spitting a string of curses in English. “We’re not going to hurt you! We just want to help—damn it, calm down!”
I bucked beneath them like a wild animal. Every nerve in my body screamedDon’t let them win.
Dr. Carson turned to Philip and shouted something I couldn’t hear over my breathless sobs. Philip nodded, then pinned both of my wrists in one ironclad grip, holding me like I was nothing but a feather.
Dr. Carson rummaged through his bag and pulled out a small glass vial. He knelt beside me and pried open my jaw.
“No!” I thrashed my head, but his fingers clamped my face like a vice. The bitter liquid burned as it spilled into my mouth. I gagged, choked, but he pinched my lips shut, forcing me to swallow.
“This will help you feel better,” he said. His voice was too calm, too clinical.
My muscles slackened almost immediately. The world became heavy. Slurred. Like drowning in molasses. My limbs gave up, melting into the bed.
The men hovered over me momentarily, watching to see if I’d spring again. But when I didn’t move, they backed away. I heard the door creak open, then click shut behind them. Their voices drifted outside, muffled and distant.
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was lie there, a prisoner in my own body—haunted, drugged, and undone.
A baby would ruin everything.
It would slow me down. Tether me. I had no room for that kind of weakness. I needed the daggers, and I needed them forme, not for some child or some doomed fairy-tale ending.
I rolled to my side, gritting my teeth through the ache, and spotted the broken shard of looking glass on the floor. My fingers stretched for it, sluggish as if moving through molasses. The glass was sharp. Jagged. Perfect.
I pressed it to my skin and began to slice—clumsy, shaking, but determined.
Then the air shifted.
Heavy. Suffocating. I couldn’t breathe.
And thenshewas there.
Zara.
Materializing out of the shadows like a specter made of ice and wrath, her obsidian eyes locked on mine. My heart shrieked in my chest.
Before I could move, she seized me by the throat and slammed me against the wall. Pain surged through my body as my skull ricocheted off the wood. My mouth opened in a silent cry. There was no point in screaming—Zara didn’t care.
She held me there, her frozen fingers branding my skin.
Then, she laughed.
A sound like bones splintering.
She yanked a fistful of my hair and smashed my head against the wall once, twice, again. My vision went white. The world spun. Still, I didn’t scream.
“You’regoing to keep this baby,” she snarled, her voice a death sentence. “Or I’ll show you what real torment feels like. Maybe I’ll start with your fingers.”
She snatched my hand, gripped one finger tight, her nails like claws digging into the bone. “Let’s rip them off, one by one, shall we?”
I let out a strangled cry and twisted away, wrenching my hand free from her claws.
She threw her head back and laughed again—an unnatural sound that made the walls vibrate.
