Did Luvic know he was getting married to Last next week?
She sighed. “I know. Selfishly, you’re worried about a dress. But what does it matter? No one will be looking at you. They’ll be looking at my disgusting, showy Bard husband-to-be. And me. Of course.”
I shook my head. I had no words. None.
“You don’t think he’s good enough for me.”
“No . . .”
She shrugged. The flesh beneath her thin shoulders was concave, and her dress hung loosely on her frame. She pushed up her sleeves, rolling the fabric and displaying her veined forearms. “Neither do I. Will you be there? Yes or no.”
Jagger had told me to do whatever the Clarks asked, as long as it didn’t harm Hell Gate or me. All the same, I would’ve said yes no matter what. Not for Last, but for Luvic.
During the games, he’d shown me an illusion where we were at a wedding. I was in a dress, with a crown of flowers. He was in a morning suit. In the illusion, he’d smiled at me with so much joy and given me a kiss. I know it was meant to be my wedding to Finn. He wanted to be there.
His wedding to Last would be nothing like my wedding to Finn, but I’d be there. I’d be there for him.
“Yes. I’ll be there.”
Last smiled.
Then she opened the door, and we entered the ruined estate.
To me, the Clark mansion had always felt like the closing lid of a coffin. Every time I walked in, I felt as if I were paralyzed, without air, and buried alive. Before, the eerie quiet, the musty parchment scent, and the feeling of being watched by a malevolent, unseen presence had been enough to bring out goose bumps and make me look over my shoulder every few seconds. But now, it was a thousand times worse.
The fire I’d lit had destroyed everything. The interior of the house was like a skeleton forest, with charred bones sticking up out of the ground. There was an ash layer a foot deep. It clung to my pants and sifted like heavy snow as I trudged through the wreckage. The air was almost unbreathable. I pulled my T-shirt over my nose and inhaled through the fabric, hoping to block out the noxious fumes. It smelled like a garbage dump had been smoldering for weeks, letting off burned rubber, charred battery acid, and melted plastic. My eyes burned as we made our way down the stone stairs into the catacombs.
Unlike the house, the catacombs had survived with only a few broken bones. Some of the passageways had caved in. Many of the rooms were inaccessible. But other areas were unharmed.
“Why haven’t you fixed your home?” I asked Last, my throat painful and raw from breathing the fumes. “The outside is illusion, but you’ve left the inside a wreck.”
Last shrugged. “The Clark said he won’t repair our home until the Smith is dead and Primus is wearing the crown.”
I frowned, but Last didn’t seem concerned. She held a ball of green light, casting a sickly glow on the hard-packed dirt floors and the stone shelves lined with the remains of her Clark ancestors. There was still a hint of bitter smoke and ruin, but mostly, the dry air was musty, earth-soaked, and underground-cool. Cobwebs fluttered in our wake as we strode past, and a few skeletons shifted on their shelves until Last snapped, “Be still!”
My throat hurt; my eyes burned. That didn’t matter so much. What mattered was that with every step deeper into the catacombs, my heart beat faster and my pulse begged me to turn around.
The passage narrowed, the dirt sloped downward, and my chest grew tighter. Even with Jagger’s blood and his hate swirling through me, I was still terrified. I knew there wasn’t much stopping Last from burying me twenty feet below the dirt or locking me on one of the shelves to rot with the skeletons.
I had to remind myself I wasn’t helpless. I could fight back.
Last knocked on a wooden door, and then, without waiting for a response, she swung it open.
“I’ve brought her,” she said, and then she added as if it were an afterthought, “Heir Clark.”
I stepped into the room behind Last.
Primus sat behind a large stone desk, a stack of old parchment in front of him. The room was small—barely big enough to hold his desk and a wall of ancient scrolls, bits of pottery covered in cuneiform, leather-bound books, and a stone tablet etched in a language I’d never seen.
He was a large man. That fact was easy to forget when he was sitting in a dark room, hunched behind a desk, riffling through history. It didn’t help that, outside of the games, he wore drab, unobtrusive clothes that were best suited to a professor or a librarian. He was pale—the color of a bloodless larva that had spent its life underground and was waiting to hatch so it could devour the world. His black hair was shaved close to his skull, but unlike his father, he didn’t scrape himself free of all body hair. Instead, he was covered in a thick mat of wiry bristle. He was large-boned, formed for cruelty, and in one look, you knew he’d use his power to harm. Not because he could or because he wanted to, but because that was who he was.
When Primus looked up from his parchment, his eyes gleamed in the green light. He ignored Last and instead studied me, stroking his finger along his pen.
I stood still, my chin high, not letting on that my heart was pounding wildly in my throat, begging me to escape this underground nightmare.
Primus’s scrutiny pinned me to the wall like a butterfly to a corkboard. My fingers twitched, and Primus smiled.
He set his pen on the desk, the click forceful. “Sister. Leave us.”
