Chapter 5
Merrilee
The guards came for me as the last light bled from the sky.
Two of them—a big purple guy with scars running down his face and something reptilian I didn't have a name for. They didn't speak, just grabbed my arms and hauled me up three flights of stairs that smelled like rust and old blood. My legs shook with every step, exhaustion and terror making my muscles weak.
They took me to the throne room first.
The massive doors swung open, and they dragged me before Persico's grotesque throne. He sat there like some bloated king, surrounded by his court of monsters. The harsh lights made everything worse—the gleam of too many eyes watching me, the glint of weapons, the shine of scales and chitin.
Persico leaned forward, studying me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. He reached out with one thick finger and tilted my chin up, turning my head left and right, examining the bruises Declan had left. The swelling around my eye. The split in my lip.
"It's healing," he said, and to my surprise appeared genuinely pleased. "Good. I want you pretty for the pit."
He waved a dismissive hand, and the guards yanked me backward.
But they didn't take me back to the cell.
They took me higher instead. Up more stairs, through corridors that grew narrower and more oppressive with each turn.
That should've been a relief.
It wasn't.
The room they shoved me into was barely bigger than a closet.
A cot with a thin mattress that had seen better decades. Blankets that might have been gray once, now stained with things I didn't want to identify. A bucket in the corner that reeked of piss and worse. A sink bolted to the wall, the metal corroded, the water dripping from the faucet the color of old pennies.
The door slammed shut behind me.
The sound of the lock—metal sliding into metal with brutal finality—punched the air from my lungs.
I wanted to scream. Wanted to throw myself at the door and claw at it until my fingers bled, until someone heard me, until they let me out or killed me or did anything except leave me in this box to suffocate.
But I didn't scream.
I pressed my fist against my mouth and bit down on my knuckles until I tasted blood, using the pain to anchor myself, to keep the panic from exploding out of me in a sound that might bring the guards back. Because if they came back, they might decide I was more trouble than I was worth. Might decide Persico's plans didn't matter as much as their entertainment.
My legs gave out. I sank onto the cot.
The blankets stank—sweat and fear and something sour that made bile rise in my throat. I pulled them around me anyway because the room was cold and I was shaking so hard myteeth chattered. I needed something to hold onto. Something to keep me from flying apart.
This was real. This was happening. I was going to die here.
No. No, I wasn't going to think like that. I was going to survive. I was going to kill Declan and get out and see Ana and Sebastian again and—
The thought of my siblings cracked something open inside my chest.
What if I never saw them again? What if the last thing they knew about me was that I'd betrayed everyone who'd ever helped me? What if I died in this shithole and they spent the rest of their lives thinking I was a traitor and a coward who'd sold them out to save herself?
What if they thought I hadn't loved them enough to fight harder?
The sob tore out of me before I could stop it—raw and ugly and broken. I pressed my face into the filthy blanket and wept, my whole body shaking with the force of it, grief and terror and shame pouring out in waves I couldn't control.
Food came just after full dark.
A tray shoved through a slot in the door—greasy meat that glistened in the dim light like something diseased, bread so hard I could have used it as a weapon, and a cup of something that smelled like my grandfather's horse barn on a hot summer day.
