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This is it.

The first few cells are empty. Iron bars rusted at the joints. My stomach turns, but I keep moving, checking each cell as I pass. My bare feet are numb against the freezing stone floor as I move to another room of cells.

A figure shifts in the eighth cell. A man, large and bearded, his face hidden in shadow. Not Arlo. I move on to the next corridor. Cells line both sides, with metal bars set deep into the stone, shadows stretching between them, and it isn’t until I take another step forward that I realize not all of these cells are empty.

Two men stand in the first cell.

They are not restrained the way I expect. No chains bind their wrists or ankles, yet something about them is wrong in a way that sharpens my instincts, and my body goes still before my mind can catch up.

They are bare-chested, dressed only in dark shorts that hang low on their hips. Even in the dim light, I can see fading bruises marring their skin. Their muscles are carved, sharp and defined, but it is not their size or strength that unsettles me.

It is their eyes.

Green, but not natural, not human. The color is too bright, catching the lantern light in a way that reminds me of something coiled and waiting beneath the surface, something that does not belong behind human skin.

One of them moves slightly, just a fraction, and I see the tension beneath his movements, the way his shoulders pull tight. It’s as if something larger is trying to exist where it cannot. There is a faint ripple along his spine that does not match the rest of his form. His skin shudders, scales glinting briefly under the dim light, before he growls, unable to shift.

My eyes land on the collars wrapped tight around their throats. The thick bands of dark metal are etched with faint markings that seem to pulse beneath my gaze, and even without understanding what they are, I know they are the only reason these men are standing still instead of tearing this place apart.

“Dragons.”

I spin so fast my breath catches in my throat.

A woman stands in one of the cells further down the corridor, and when she speaks, my skin prickles.

“The king’s men brought them in.” Her gaze flicks toward the two men before returning to me. “Tortured them for hours.” There is an odd sense of satisfaction in her voice, something that makes my stomach twist. “They can’t hurt you. The collars around their necks stop them from shifting.”

I don’t realize I’ve taken a step back until my heel catches against the stone.

My attention snaps fully to the woman behind bars.

Then she gasps. “Alessia?” My name leaves her mouth like both a curse and a plea.

Madam Dahlia?

Recognition dawns in stages. Confusion first, because the girl standing outside her cell doesn’t match the girl she last saw on Purgatory. Then shock, because she’s noticed she and I are on very different sides of the same cage. Then a new expression crosses her features.

Desperation.

“Alessia?” Her voice cracks on my name. She races forward, slamming into the bars of her cell just as I stop in front of it. She grips them, her knuckles whitening once again. “Alessia, please. You have to help me. You have to get me out of here. I shouldn’t be in this place. I’m not a criminal.”

“What are you doing here?” I’m going over the possibilities in my head of all the ways she used to break the law. The bees. Selling contracts under the table.

“Wait . . . Why are you here, and you’re dressed . . .” Her gaze sweeps over my nightie, which is made of silk and far finer than anything she owns. She shakes her head. “You work here now?” she asks desperately. I don’t bother correcting her. “Then you can get me out. They took me from my home, dragged me onto a ship, and threw me in a cage. Please, you have to tell them they’ve made a mistake, please Alessia. I don’t belong here.”

The word please sits in the air between us, and the sound of it from this woman’s mouth is so profoundly wrong that my brain struggles to process it. She is begging me?

The scars on my back pulse, but not with pain; those wounds closed years ago. It’s the memories. The crack of the whip. The way my skin split. The counting. Each lash delivered by the same hands now white-knuckling the iron bars between us. I screamed, and Sable begged her to stop.

Fifty lashes.

Fifty scars.

Because I burned her with boiling water for trying to sell Sable to a brothel. I can just make out the faint scars that mar her flesh. The skin stretched over her cheeks looks too tight, its sheen visible from beneath her hair, and the burns disappear into the neckline of her dress.

Watching her grip the bars, I wait for the satisfaction to arrive. The vindication of seeing my former tormentor reduced to the same helplessness she inflicted on us. I wait for it, even try to summon it from the part of me that hates this woman.

Yet what comes instead is something worse. Pity. The hollowed-out, reluctant, gut-twisting kind that sits heavy in your stomach because you didn’t choose it. Because the woman gripping those bars isn’t the same lady I once feared. She is a scared woman in a cage, and I have been a scared woman in a cage. The understanding of what that feels like doesn’t care who’s enduring it.