A jagged piece scrapes across my sensitive skin, and I fall still as panic seizes my chest.
A whip cracking rings in my ears.
The wood leaves splinters in my fingertips.
His hand smearing my blood as his body presses in from behind me.
“Thayla.”
I flinch as Yemi’s cold hands grip my tightly coiled ones. A hiss slips through my teeth when I unclench them, and rocks and gritty dirt fall from my palms.
“I’m fine,” I murmur, then look at our staring cellmate. “What’s going on?”
“What are your crimes?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“What landed you in here?”
My sneer is immediate and my fingers flex back into fists. Yemi has far more patience than I do, though, and cuts me off before I can cuss him out.
“We didn’t commit any crimes. We were drugged and dragged in here.”
“So you’re claiming innocence?” He laughs as though it’s the joke of the century.
Heat surges through my cheeks, but he ignores me. His stupid-ass condescending smile fades at whatever is on Yemi’s face.
“You’re serious?”
“Very,” she whispers. “We were in the Athenaeum getting books, then the next thing we know, we’re here.”
“The Athenaeum? In the Godsdawn.”
“For the love of the fucking Valories, where else?” I snap and my chains rattle as I throw my hands up.
I attempt haphazardly to snatch them off. All that does is crack my middle fingernail right down to the cuticle bed. That surge of pain has a vicious grunt vibrating in the back of my throat.
“Lower or mid-level of Hellveilious. Where all those who come to the Judgment Rings are from.”
The blood rushing from my finger turns to ice.
Hellveilious…Judgment Rings.
No.
Creed.
The thought of him has my soul going ballistic in my chest. Its reaction is so painful, it steals the air from my lungs and water fills my eyes.
I both try to calm it down and snatch it around.
I think of Creed, all my Valtrue, and try to pull them to me. Only it feels different, as though it’s trying to go, but it can’t. It’s stuck.
“V, can you hear me?”
Nothing but silence returns.
“V, please! Seismet.”
