She came in, an elderly woman in her seventies, her gray hair cinched in a tight ponytail and her eyes a light blue. She saw me sprawled across the bed, unable to move because of what the Buyers had done, my gazehooked on the boxes in the corner. She followed my focus, her eyes sad but resigned.
Halden had left the boxes because he knew I couldn’t heal enough to reach them. The Buyers were offered knives that day. For the first time they had weapons, and they used them to pin me down—steel driven through my palms and feet, deep enough to keep me still but not enough to kill me. Every twitch threatened to rip the wounds wider.
Dr. Davidson took the daggers out, stitched, and bandaged the wounds. “You’ll heal,” was all she said before she packed up her kit and left me. I’d curled into myself, barely hearing her, my gaze set on the boxes still. I’d planned to sleep. I hadn’t inso long.
But then hands were there again—black gloves—and I was taken to that treadmill, the very same I’d been taken to before Room 82. They set me on the belt, but I couldn’t stand with my injuries. I dropped to my knees with a shudder, the bang of the hit rattling the treadmill. The room was a kaleidoscope of overhead lights, soldiers, and doctors; everything was half silent in my bad ear, half smeared through my bad eye.
It felt like ages before the belt moved and I caught myself on my injured palms. I fell swiftly to my forearms from the pain, sliding off the belt into a heap of naked, beaten, bloodied, malnourished limbs.
Gloved hands picked me up and put me back on.
It continued like that, the belt speed set at its lowest, until I was on my stomach, elbowing across it. The belt tore along my breasts. Then came the burn against my ribs, my pelvis, my thighs. Still, I dragged myself forward, because I knew if I let myself fall off the treadmill again, I’d simply be put back on.
I crawled, and I bled, but I did not beg. Hours I was like that. I’m sure it washours. At certain points, my body gave out, no matter if I wanted to keep going or not. The belt shredded against my cheek and brow whenever I fell. My hair got caught at one point, a chunk yanking from my skull as I was thrust off the treadmill to the floor.
I didn’t care. I barely felt it. Icouldfeel the air conditioning from high above pouring down against my scalp, though, the spot I lost hair sticky and wet.
Halden’s voice cut through the silence and the damning heave of my breath that told me I was, unfortunately, still alive. “Take her back.”
“No.” The word broke from me as I laid on the ground beside the treadmill, my forehead kissing the cool cement. Gloves took hold of my biceps, and I begged myself to thrash, for my body to do what I needed it to do, but it wouldn’t. I felt like I was…was…
A corpse.
The realization hurt more than anything else. It really did. I had fought it so hard, had chosen to find little bits of brightness in the things surrounding me—even the darkest things. Yes, even Halden. He was evil, but he’d put those boxes in my room, hadn’t he? That’s how fucked my head was. Viktor, too. What an evil manbuthe gave me my own room after awhile, let me leave the estate. What a disgusting, vile thing I must’ve become to see the good in manipulation, in grooming and sadism, in constant, relentless suffering. I was a corpse, and I was rotten, weak,a disgrace.
“Arden?” A voice cracked from somewhere nearby. Chains rattled, and I looked toward the noise as black gloves dragged me back to Room 82.
There he was. Thorne.
“Arden,” he said, more certain, as if he, too, couldn’t quite remember if the name was right or a word from some fever dream in a past life.
They were dragging him the opposite direction, just as naked, just as bloody. Our paths crossed for only half a second, maybe less, but he’d said my name twice.Twice. Once for me. Once for him. Neither of us could fight toward the other. Halden had broken our bodies thoroughly. But I felt my heart reach for Thorne in the same way it did when we were eighteen and in that clearing just passed the city.
I had only a flash to meet his gaze, but when I did, IsawThorne Creed tell me with certainty that we could only remain on the threshold of death for so long. Eventually, we needed to make a choice, and that choice wasn’t going to be the end of Creed.
It’s incredible, honestly, the amount of fight we have inside ourselves. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone to discover it in the way we had, but itisthere. It’s our heartbeat, I think. Unsteady often but there to keep the time. It’s death’s clock and life’s witness, and it demands to be heard even in the darkest hours of both.I heard it then, beckoning me toward Thorne, toward them all. Somewhere in Room 82, I’d lost myself, and when soldiers dumped me back on that mattress across from those boxes,myselflooked a lot like that fucking lighter.
So I crawled one last time, bled across that floor knowing Halden likely watched on his cameras, uncaring if the Buyers came in at any minute because—I got it.
I ran my thumb over theV.S.on the lighter. My eyes didn’t even carry over to the gun. I just laid there on the concrete and flicked the lighter to life, watching the flame curl awake in the white light of my blood-covered box. In that flame, all I could hear was my heartbeat and Thorne’s voice,You’re sobright. Like my little burning flame.
I didn’t want to be little, and in that moment, I really didn’t give a shit if I was playing exactly into Halden’s hands.
When the Buyers filed in the last time, they circled like sharks, but all I could see were their ties. The patterned, sleek fabric dangled from their necks when they hovered over me, the silk swiping over my skin with each invasion, like wicks on a bomb.
Their rasps filled Room 82, but my focus was on the quiettink, tink, tinkof my trembling, aching, bleeding thumb against the lighter.
Then the first tie caught.
It was small at first. So small the Buyer didn’t notice until the flame had crawled all the way up to his neck.
Then—finally—screams filled Room 82 that weren't mine. I flicked the lighter against the mattress. Smoke billowed, the flames ate hungrily, and the door remained bolted.
Halden was an evil,evilman, but I’d never been so happy to be locked in a cage.
I inhaled deeply, let my lungs feel the finality in the air and let my body feel how nothing was touching me except my own light. My skin burned in places, especially my hands and thighs. I peered up through the gray, not at all surprised when Halden was there with Dr. Davidson. I faintly heard soldiers dragging thebodies of the Buyers out of the room. Even fainter I remember the soft prick of a sedative against my arm. I was lifted or dragged—one of the two—to our old cell, the one I’d shared with Thorne, Kane, and Rafe. They placed me on my old cot, Dr. Davidson applying salve and dressing to my burn wounds. It took her some time to pry the lighter from my hand, its metal burned into my palm, the shape of its square imprinted into my flesh.
Days passed before I was able to sit up and take full stock of where I was. The guys weren’t there. It was just me, the other three bunks empty.
