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My chest heaves. I can’t breathe right.

Patrick keeps his weapon steady on me.

“You see?” he says to the chamber, like he’s teaching a lesson. “This is control. Not theatrics. Not tantrums.”

Liam’s voice falters. “Patrick, guns aren’t allowed—”

Patrick turns his head, never lowering the weapon. “And yet here I am.”

Then he looks back at me. “Send him to the Crypt.” He grins. “Until after the execution.”

That word goes through me like a hook, and nausea coils low in my gut.

He steps closer, voice dropping, meant only for me. “I’ll make good use of her before she’s gone.”

I try to lunge again. The guards jerk me back. My heart has torn down the center, and the pain gives me no comfort.

“Escort them out,” he orders.

His goons draw their own guns and point them at my brothers.

Liam looks sick. “Patrick, you don’t have to do this.”

“I do,” Patrick says. “This is how you keep order.”

My brothers are led out of the chamber with no choice.

Then I’m hauled to the Crypt. It’s used to make men talk, where they await their trials. It’s never used for members of the Order.

Apparently, we’re all learning new customs tonight.

The guards shove me through a heavy barred door and lock me inside. It’s a makeshift jail cell. A narrow cot is bolted to the wall. There’s a drain in the floor that I don’t want to get close to.

A dungeon under a hotel built for pleasure.

Elias really thought of everything.

I stand still, staring at the bars as if they’re some vulgar trick of the light. When the guard walks away, leaving me all alone, whatever restraint I had dies.

My fists crash against the bars. Again and again and again. Pain bursts through my hands, throbbing bright and useless. It accomplishes nothing.

“Let me out!” My voice echoes down the corridor. “Let me the fuck out!”

My throat burns with each heavy breath. I hit the bars again. Pain shoots all the way up my arm. Skin splits at my knuckles. I’m reduced to an animal throwing itself at a cage.

And then I stop. I see her face when they took her. When she looked back. When she decided to hurt me by leaving.

This is the pain she chose for me.

Not blood. Not a wound that can heal.

This.

The ache of being alive when I don’t deserve it. The weight of her sacrifice pressing on my shoulders. If I destroy myself in here, I make her choice meaningless.

I step closer to the bars and press my forehead against the cold iron. I close my eyes and just breathe.

I don’t believe in the rescue of prayer. But I do believe in her. In the way she stood up in a room full of monsters and chose pain as a weapon.