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Not in pain.
His gun dipped.
I grabbed the knife from my boot with shaking fingers and lunged.
The blade sliced across his forearm instead of anywhere useful. He roared and backhanded me hard enough to send me into the door. Stars burst behind my eyes. My teeth clicked together. Blood filled my mouth.
The bond screamed. Lux’s rage hit so hard the walls shuddered.
The guard grabbed my throat, then the next second he slumped to the floor with a broken neck. Kalon stood behind him, face distorted with large creases and black veins. He lifted the guard, mouth opening, and I watched as Kalon, the kind, buff barista, ate his soul.
He dropped the guard, face returning to normal, and looked up at me. He shrugged. “What? It’s always a good time for a quick snack.”
I stood over the fallen guard, breathing hard, blood on my tongue, knife in one hand, tail lashing behind me, eyes burning bright enough to paint the concrete walls in rose-colored light.
Mandi shoved roses out of her hair. “Well, that was hot and horrifying, Kalon.”
I reached for the door and took a breath. The iron bolts slid back. The door groaned open. I stepped inside.
The room was carved into the old foundation beneath the tower, all black stone, iron rings, ward chains, and wet shadows pooled in the corners as if the dark had gotten tired and sat down. The air tasted of blood and burnt magic. Old power scraped over my skin. Southern sigils glowed around the floor in ugly red bands, layered over deeper carvings that felt like Lux even before I saw him.
He was in the center of it.
On his knees.
Wrists chained behind his back. Shoulders bowed from the weight of the chains. Black sigils burned along his throat where the collar bit into his skin. Blood streaked his temple, his mouth, the hard line of his jaw. His white hair hung forward, hiding part of his face.
Then his head lifted.
Red eyes found mine.
Everything in me went still.
Lux stared at me like I was impossible.
Like he was hallucinating.
His voice came out wrecked. “Liv.”
“Hi,” I said, because, apparently, that was all I could think of for my big rescue speech. “So. Funny story.”
Chapter 30
Lux
For one second, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.
I had already seen Liv’s death a hundred different ways in my head. Shot on a sidewalk. Dragged into a black car as a message. Left somewhere cold because I had just one soft place in a city full of knives.
Instead, she stood in my holding cell with flower petals plastered to her hair, a knife in one hand, dark red lipstick smeared across her mouth, and a bruise spreading over one cheek. Alive, furious, and hopefully still mine, because I had done everything possible to make her question whether she wanted to be.
The silver cuffs bit into my skin when my hands flexed behind my back.
Scarn had done his research. Silver threaded the collar around my throat and the cuffs at my wrists, burning my skin while choking every nightmare trying to escape. An idiot would have used iron. Scarn understood what held the Nightmare Hound. I guess I’d give him points for that. Maybe a five-second head start or a quick death . . .
Nah. I wanted to watch him suffer.
I’d been saving my strength for him, for escape, for whatever ugly shape the end took.
