Heat flooded my body, my breath caught, and an unbearable ache coiled low and hot between my legs.
“You’ve made me fucking starving but...I refuse to eat until I’m free.”
His voice echoed over and over in my mind.
I shuddered on the spot as my migraine brought nausea out to play.
I hated him for a split second.
Hated howeasilyhe manipulated me.
Any second now, I would throw up.
It was too much.
Toomuch.
But then my gaze fell to his throat.
Memories of him teaching me the most vulnerable spots on a person. Of him angling the blade tip over his neck and tracing it down his chest—
I cringed away. “I-I want to help you. God, I want it more than anything, but...” I flicked a look at the guard beforestepping into him and whispering, “How I’ve not passed out yet is a miracle. You can’t ask me for two.”
“Fine.” Lucien nodded, his eyes wild and borderline insane. “I’ll do it myself. Like I’ve always done.”
A wave of vertigo struck—
I staggered as the world turned to a pinprick.
“Oh no, you don’t get to pass out. Not yet.” His hate sounded so real, so vicious. He hated me. He’d asked for my help and...I’d let him down. Just like everyone else.
A rush of sickness made me violently ill.
“You don’t get to blackout and miss this.” Keeping his back to the guards, he tore the knife out of my hand and went to plunge it into his chest.
I choked—
He groaned as his hand stopped mid-strike. The soft beep and flash of red from the metal disc above his heart smashed into him, preventing him from self-harming.
Pain erupted in his eyes. His shoulders rolled in defeat. And his perpetually raging fire guttered with despair.
For the first time since I’d met him, the rage that kept him breathing, kept him fighting, didn’t roar but...snuffed out.
He staggered, barely holding onto consciousness.
One of the guards noticed I wasn’t holding the knife anymore. “Grab the girl. We’re leaving. Mr. Ward is running behind and I’m sick of standing in the rain.”
Three men headed toward me.
And Lucien didn’t move.
The fact that he didn’t move.
That hecouldn’tmove.
That he fought his buckling knees and clung to that knife with everything he had left.
I saw every implosion of his heart. Every destruction of his soul. He looked devastated and desperate—shaking, burning, denied air and sun and life—and...I couldn’t do it.
