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“Down here!” His voice is strained, the words carrying through the passage. “Fuck! Hurry!”

Remy and I race toward him, and when we reach the opening, he mutters, “Holy shit.”

My heart both sinks and kicks violently against my rib cage when I see the girl curled on the hard stone floor. She is impossibly thin, her dark hair hanging in greasy strands around her face, her bare feet filthy from the dirt and grime covering the floor. For one terrible second, she is so still that I cannot tell if she is breathing.

“It’s Stella,” Whitaker says. He grabs the metal bars and shakes them hard enough to make the entire frame rattle. A padlock swings from the center, clanging against the bars.

“Stella. It’s me. Wick.” His voice breaks slightly as he leans closer. “Stella, please wake the fuck up.”

She moans, the sound barely more than a breath, and relief hits me so sharply that I almost lose my balance. Before I can say anything, another sound comes from the opposite side of the room, louder and more distinct.

I swing my flashlight toward it, and my blood surges when the beam lands on Augustine lying flat on a narrow cot. She is alive, but completely unconscious, her body limp beneath the harsh light. I move closer, watching for the rise and fall of her chest, and when I see it, I finally let myself breathe. Given what we know about Amber, I assume she has been drugged to keep her unconscious, but I cannot know how much or for how long.

“Dad.”

Remy’s voice pulls my attention away from the cell. He is crouched beside his backpack, already digging through it with a grim determination written across his face. When he looks up at me, the pain in his expression is impossible to miss.

“We’ve got this,” he says. “You keep going. See if you can catch up with her. She can’t be far.”

He’s right. There is no reason for all of us to stay here when Amber is still somewhere ahead of us, and every second we waste gives her another opportunity to disappear. I turn toward the tunnel, forcing myself to move, but after only a few steps I stop. I cannot leave them without saying something, not after everything that has happened tonight.

I turn around, walk back to them, and pull both boys into a tight embrace. For a moment, neither of them says anything. Whitaker’s arms close around me, and Remy grips my jacket, and the weight of the moment settles over me with a force I cannot quite name.

When I finally release them, Whitaker squeezes my bicep. “Go get her. Don’t let her hurt anyone else.”

I nod once and force myself away from them.

The relief I feel when I am finally beyond the cells is brief. I move back through the small torture room and into the tunnel, retracing our path until I reach the point where we stopped. I take a left and continue along the passage we were following before we discovered the hidden door. The tunnel gradually narrows as I move, the ceiling dropping lower until I have to duck beneath sections of uneven stone, and then the path begins to slope upward.

The walls change again as I climb. The smooth, worked stone gives way to a surface mixed with moisture glistening beneath my flashlight as droplets slide down the rock. The faint scent of incense that has followed us through the tunnels finally disappears, replaced by the unmistakable smell of earth and wet leaves. I keep climbing until the passage ends at an iron grate, and when I push against it, cold night air floods over me.

I step out deep in the forest, surrounded by darkness.

Arianette ran this way.

I proceed with absolute certainty, moving between the trees. I can almost see her doing exactly what she described, crashing into the forest at full speed, branches whipping across her arms and cheeks, her body already battered and exhausted, but driven forward by the knowledge that stopping means being caught. I follow the memory as much as the terrain, searching for the river by listening rather than looking.

Then I hear the water.

I move toward the sound, pushing through the brush until the trees begin to thin. Somewhere ahead, beyond the tangled branches, the river cuts through the darkness, and I know this has to be the place. The spot where Arianette reached the edge of the ravine and realized she had nowhere left to run. The place where she chose the possibility of death rather than the Beast behind her.

I look toward the ravine, and something inside me twists painfully. She survived this.

A twig snaps behind me.

I crouch on instinct, every muscle tightening as heavy footsteps crush through the brush. A low voice carries between the trees, distorted by the darkness and distance.

“Shit.”

My hand goes immediately to my weapon. I draw it and turn toward the sound, my heart hammering as I search the blackness for movement. The night seems to split open when I cock the gun and aim into the trees.

Then I hear the sharp snap of a cord and something slices through the air.

A projectile grazes my ear before burying itself in the tree behind me with a heavy punch.

“Son of a—” I mutter, reaching up to the side of my head and feeling the sharp sting immediately followed by the wet warmth of blood trickling down my neck.

I turn toward the tree, grab the arrow, and yank it free before facing the darkness again. “You can come out now, DK,” I call, lowering the weapon slightly.