I can take no more.
As quickly as I fell into the memories, I am spat back out.
I come to, shaking, sobbing on the hard dirt ground.
Blinding white light clears from my vision and I blink against the sun.
Bald tree branches sway gently above me, stark against the bright blue sky.
I’m outside the cave, I realize.
I gasp for breath, my stomach aching as if the wind has been knocked from me, but the movement only causes me to cough and the coughing causes me to vomit.
Someone pulls my hair off my neck. Their fist is cool where it rests against the base of my skull. “There, there, get it out. You’re all right. You’re safe,” says a soft voice.
I look up through watery eyes to find Lydia. She, too, is pale and shaky, but she’s on her feet, which means she is faring far better than me.
“I’m alive?” I rasp.
Lydia’s pale face consumes my field of vision as she stands over me, examining for any signs of harm.
“What did you see?” she whispers.
I push the visions of Emmett down; I don’t want to remember. “You first,” I answer grimly. She doesn’t reply.
Lydia pulls me to my feet and wraps me in a tight hug. “You were in there for nearly an hour.”
“And you?”
“They tell me I was gone only twenty minutes before I wound up here.”
My empty stomach drops. “So, I won?”
Lydia nods gravely.
That’s the thing about sisters; you can’t hide anything from them. She knows I didn’t want this. “You won.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bram and his courtiers gather around me moments later. Emmett stands near the back of the crowd, his face grim with worry.
Rhion extends a hand to steady me, but I refuse it and stumble, my legs as shaky as a newborn fawn’s.
“It’s done,” I whisper in his ear, and he gives me a single nod.
I pat the interior pocket of my cloak and find the comforting weight of Ferrinus there. Despite it all, we achieved what we set out to do today. It should feel like victory, but I am hollow.
“How’d it go?” Bram asks cheerfully, his tone eagerly intent.
Back in Bath, while the others delighted in torturing humans at the revel, it seemed that Bram was mostly above it. I see now that he enjoys the carnage just as much as the rest of them; his tastes just lean more personal. What good is pain when it’s inflicted on a stranger? Up close, when it’s me or Lydia or Emmett or his mother, it must be so much sweeter for him.
Perhaps that’s why he let his court run so wild back home in England. My distress wasn’t an unfortunate aftereffect, it was the point entirely.
I do my best not to recoil from him as my eyes meet his. There is glee glinting in his silver irises.
“It was horrible,” I answer honestly. The sour taste of vomit lingers in the back of my mouth.
Bram slings a heavy arm around my shoulder and grins down at me. There’s that single dimple, the one that used to make my heart stutter in my chest. “Good.”
