A distant sigh of relief was followed by the echoes of sniffling.
My irons sang as I rolled to my side, still afraid I may retch on the dungeon floor.
“You’ve been out for nearly a day,” Cova rasped.
Part by part, I checked in with my body, waking up the bones and nerves. I didn’t reserve my groans and gasps as my depleted body struggled to obey simple commands.
It didn’t feel real. What I did feel was heavy. Like my veins were filled with the same iron holding me hostage and empty from the shattered bond all at once.
“Fuck…” I strained as my calf muscle locked and sent a fresh jolt of pain up the length of my leg.
“Auntie…please say you’re all right.” Lydia’s distinct, tender tone tiptoed between the sound of dripping water and distant jingling keys.
I pressed my toes down, forcing the muscle to submit and the pain eased enough to focus my attention back to opening my eyes.
I’d relinquished myself to the Hive to protect her, and she’d ended up locked in a vampire prison anyway. Not only that, but she’d witnessed the same horrors and I wasn’t going to waste time sugarcoating it. “Not yet. But I will be.”
If we live through this,I didn’t add. Things were bleak enough.
After a lifetime’s worth of effort, I sat upright. I exhaled, letting my head hang between my knees as I propped myself against the dungeon wall.
We were three little birds, all in a caged row. Each placed in our own separate cells.
The human keep had only one, slim opening in the walls that barely qualified to be called a window. But the Hive dungeon was submerged in the Irriset mountainside. It was windowless, lightless. The kind of place that completely suffocates any trace of hope.
As if there was any hope to harbor.
The image of Rhazien's headless body tumbling on top of Orla’s lifeless corpse would stay ingrained in my memory until I cease to exist, in whatever form I am when I finally pass to the other side.
I lifted my hands to my head, trying to physically rub away the sound his crown made as it clanged on the dais, but the chains shackled around my wrists and ankles only made the memory louder, more clear.
Cova still wore her torn dress from the ceremony and her signature sneer. Good. She would need all her wit and armor if we were going to even attempt to escape.
My gaze dropped to her collarbone. Our family heirloom—the necklace containing the shard of Lorana’s stone—was gone.
Eryx must have taken it.
My sister’s form had soft edges that shifted and multiplied, triggering more nausea. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know how bad the situation was. “What happened? After…Eryx bit me.”
Lydia began to cry softly and my heart broke for her. She’d lived a comfortable, sheltered life, which is exactly what I’d hoped for her. A life filled with ease, safety, security. Not this.
Cova let out a long exhale while she tried to decide where to begin, but wasn’t given the chance. Metal meeting metal rang through the poorly lit space.
The shrill tapping grew closer, and closer, until a form emerged from the dark. His gaunt, pale face made him look like a specter here to claim my soul as his own.
“I’ll admit…I’m jealous I’m not the only one to know your taste,” Vaspar hissed as he leaned his face against the bars of my cell. Onyx eyes surveyed my exposed skin. “I dreamt of you. Daily.”
The walls dripped with the moisture of the underground and were heavy with the remnants of despair from previous tenants. Vaspar, who had spent the last month of his life having his tongue removed as punishment for defying Rhazien’s orders. For tasting me. Healing and being hurt. Living in a cycle of punishment again and again in this place.
The ghoul exhaled. “But now that my master has had you—and he knows what I know—you’ll be his.”
His.
The icy hand of fear gripped my throat like an invisible chain. He meant Eryx.
But what he didn’t know was that I would rather give myself willingly to death than be used by anyone else ever again. Least of all, Eryx.
Despite the embers that threatened to ignite beneath my drained muscles, I stood. Vaspar watched me with predatory eyes as I approached him.
