Chapter Nine

I MADE IT TO MY QUARTERS before the pain crippled me.

Her.

Why did she make the vitalsync core react?

Why did my heart spike, setting off the chain reaction that always happened if I couldn’t control my pulse?

My fingers clawed at the inserted device in my chest. Embedded in my skin, its cables wriggled through my body and were surgically attached to my heart, ensuring every secret I’d ever had, every misery, every hatred, every fucking heartbeat was captured and assessed by those holding my chains.

I staggered as whoever monitored my vitals pressed a button.

Ripping my shirt open, I snarled as the lights on the vitalsync core flashed from green to red.

I didn’t even have time to make it to the couch before the familiar haze flooded me, potent sedatives seeping directly into my bloodstream and stealing my consciousness—not because I’d been affected by a woman for the first time in my miserable life but because the pulse spike probably looked suspiciously like when I tried to kill myself.

Dropping to my knees, I clutched the silver circle stamped into my flesh, clawing at it as my lungs struggled for air and my thoughts bled away. My eyes drifted closed as the fog came for me—the sickening, syrupy smog full of demons and nightmares.

As my shoulder smacked against the ground and I slowly passed out, fragments of the day when they’d inserted this nasty device haunted me.

It’d been a few days after my ninth birthday.

A gift I definitely didn’t want.

The sharp sting of antiseptic, followed by the bitterness of anaesthesia.

They’d buckled me down even before the drugs kicked in. The man who I’d trusted stood over me with a kind, fatherly smile, his warm, firm hands on my shoulders.

They’d cut me open—

I’d come to after surgery, finding myself in this place.

A single nurse had been allowed to tend to my wound, and a technician monitored my newly installed vitalsync core—making sure it read all my bio-data correctly. Not one of them smiled at me, touched me, talked to me.

I was just a job.

And when I was healed enough, they left.

I’d been alone ever since.

Twenty long years, I’d endured unfathomable loneliness and near-constant agony.

If they weren’t harvesting my blood through the cuffs, they were administering poison directly into my heart.

I supposed it was my fault that they kept me living in total agony.

At the beginning of my incarceration, they’d left me to my own devices.

I’d grown stronger as I grew older and I learned my prison well enough to plot my escape. I came close a couple of times. I also almost died a few times.

But when I’d woken after scaling the wall for the fifth time and noticed my hands bandaged from shredding them on broken glass, a cloud of misery soaked into my heart and never left.

Every hour, the vitalsync core fed me another droplet of poison, scrambling my nervous system and adding fuel to my hate. A constant drip of agony that kept me weak and irritable, barely able to go for a walk without my heart pounding and head swimming.

They’d won.

And somehow, two decades had passed and I no longer knew what healthy felt like. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt strong and not burning alive with torment.

Until her.

Until the moment she’d touched me and something happened.

She’d interrupted whatever method they used to keep me subservient and miserable.

And maybe, just maybe, she could be the one I’d been waiting for...

Chapter Ten

I WOKE TO DARKNESS AS ABSOLUTE as the darkness of death.

Shivering so hard my teeth chattered, my soul slowly seeped back into my body, very, very reluctantly.

Where...where am I?

Lying on icy marble and staring into pitch black, I struggled to recall—

Wellness weekend.

Panther.

Him.

Sucking in a breath, I cried out at the bruises ringing my throat. I swallowed on reflex, whimpering at the throbbing agony left over from his fingers.

So he hadn’t finished the job.

And his oversized cat hadn’t eaten me for dinner.

Why?

Why had he stopped when he’d proven he was more than happy to take the lives of all of us for trespassing into his hell?

Forcing myself upright, I braced myself to see the corpses of the women who’d died.

But...nothing.

The cavernous, dark ballroom held no one but me.

Where had he put their bodies?

Why hadn’t he taken mine?

I collapsed back onto the floor, my strength weak and jittery.

I didn’t know how much time passed before I attempted to move again but at least the second time, I wasn’t as hopeless. Gritting my teeth against the pain in my throat, I managed to get onto my knees and from there, it was an exhausting fight to get to my feet.

My shivering didn’t help, making everything that much harder.

I didn’t know why I fought so hard to get moving again or why I even left the ballroom. I’d already attempted escape and found out the impossibility of such a thing. I didn’t know what had happened to my rucksack and I was terribly, horribly alone.

But instinct drove me onward, hope kept me trying.

Stumbling through the palace, leaning against the decorative walls for support and clinging to heartless statues and ancient furniture, I tried to retrace my steps from earlier.

I wanted out of this place.

Even if it killed me.

By the time I stumbled through the foyer and out the double oak-and-dragon doors, I had nothing left and collapsed to my knees right there in the crescent moonlight.

My thick black hair obscured my vision, falling in sheets around my face.

Breathing hard, I tipped up my chin, brushed back my hair, and...

Oh, wow.

The gardens had been set ablaze.

Hundreds of lanterns swung from branches and covered walkways, each flickering like they contained a small sun. Bronze braziers lined the pathways, sending orange flames dancing over the gravel. Pagodas and patios crackled with fire, destructive heat spewing from the tops of black torches.

For the first time since getting off the bus this morning, I finally understood why this place was called Cinderkeep. Not an inch of it was untouched by fire. From the bridges to the courtyards, to the trees and flowers, every inch turned into an ember. Wisteria and oaks were braided with strings of tiny flames. Even the lawn held lamps that looked as if comets had fallen to earth and continued smouldering.

No wonder the main palace had no lights on.

Who would want glaring electricity when magic such as this existed?

I knelt there, unable to look away.

My stress slowly melted, thanks to the meditative beauty of fire.

All I focused on was the flames, feeling as if heaven had somehow merged with hell.

A silhouette moved in my peripheral, wrenching my attention into the maze of flowers. The blackest shadow slinked through the foliage, the yellow and orange of a thousand fires glinting off its pelt.

Staggering to my feet, I braced myself as the panther left the garden and slinked silently up the steps to the front portico of the palace.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

My hair stood on end as the giant beast came close enough to sniff me, its whiskers tickling my forearm. I bit my lip as it prowled around me, its shoulders as tall as my hips, its tail coiling around me like a velveteen vine.

It huffed as it came to a stop in front of me. Its matching fiery eyes met mine and I swear it meant me no harm.

Not that I would touch it.

I wasn’t suicidal enough to stroke a panther and think it would appreciate it.