A knockingon the room doorwakes me up. Distant and soft, I hear a chirpy, almost annoying voice coming from the other side. “Mr. Finn? It’s Cormac! The god awaits! Please wake up now!”
“Shit,” I whisper, gently easing my arm out from under Jasina.
“What’s going on,” she mumbles, clearly still mostly asleep. It’s alluring, this voice. And I would like nothing more than to climb between her legs and wake her up properly.
But stupid Cormac is still knocking. “Mr. Finn!” he sing-songs. “Time to go!”
“I’m coming,” I say. Getting up.
But Jasina places a hand on my shoulder, her words filled with confusion, voice still groggy. “Wait. What’s going on?”
“I have to go. Cormac’s here.”
Her eyelids flutter for a moment, then open to reveal those amazing royal-blue eyes. “I want to come.”
“No,” I shake my head. “It’s… a procedure, Jasina. Medical, ya know.”
“You don’t want me there.”
I hesitate. “It’s… yeah. I don’t.”
She laughs, then leans up a little. “Kiss me goodbye, then.”
“You’ll be OK?”
“I’ll manage.”
“I’ll miss you,” I say. Kissing her.
“I’ll miss you back,” she says, then turns over, returning to her dreams.
“See you tonight.”
But all I get in response is a low rumbling hum.
27 - CLARA
“Needles and thread.Needles and thread!”
That’s all I hear, on repeat. Like the fool’s chant has been branded into my brain.
But something has changed.
I am no longer strapped to a wall inside a cage of needles.
I’m somewhere else.
Some kind of amphitheater. Longer than it is wide, deeper than it is tall. With rows and rows of men lining the sides all the way up to the ceiling. In the center pit is a massive cage, but not any kind of cage I’ve ever seen. It’s a twisted, tangled mess of bars, tunnels, and levels stacked on top of each other—reaching high into the dome of the amphitheater, stretching up and out, bending in ways that don’t make sense.
It’s a maze.
Scanning the writhing crowd of men, I find them packed into rows of makeshift seating platforms stacked around the edge of the pit.
It’s disorienting. Confusing. Because they’re notmen.
They’re…monsters.
Faces all twisted and wrong. Skin scarred so badly, it looks to be melting under the flashing colored lights. Their eyesglow. Some bright, like hot embers. Others dim and flickering, like failing bulbs. Their bodies are bent and ruined. Too big, too small, too asymmetrical. Flesh meets metal in ways that shouldn’t fit. Joints bend the wrong direction. Some twitch uncontrollably. Others move with an unnatural jerkiness—like puppets on invisible strings.
