Marcus would be returning to burn an answer out of me. Quickly I worked to free my other hand, certain I couldn’t take any more. I had to at least fight back, at least try to stop him.
As the rope fell away, I eased to my feet. Clothing, seared straight through in parts and stuck to the pus of my wounds in others, pulled away from my skin as I moved. I gritted my teeth to keep silent, but a pained hiss still escaped.
Damn it.
I tried the door first, not that I was expecting it to fly right open for me. And it didn’t. I turned around and surveyed the room. The word ‘disgusting’ summed up the cell pretty well. I began feeling around the walls for some kind of special stone like what Ivory had used at Club Flesh or what Adrian had used outside the Maltorim’s walls. No luck there.
I leaned against the back wall, pulling in some slow breaths as I attempted to slow my heart rate and clear my mind. That didn’t work out so great either.
As I pushed away from the wall, something shifted, and I nearly lost my balance. I looked back at the wall only to see a small crack between the stones. It’d slid open.
I pushed again, but it budged only enough to show some kind of latch holding the passageway shut. I didn’t have time for this. I grabbed the chair I’d been bound to only moments before and jammed one of the legs in the opening, then thrust the chair sideways. The sliding door budged a little more. The latch had ripped out of the crumbling concrete, but the top portion still held fast.
When I rammed the chair again, the latch broke off completely and the door slid open enough for me to squeeze my way out. I had limped halfway down the hall when a hand clasped over my mouth. My eyes went wide.
“Quiet, now,” said a female voice. Though her voice was soft and warm, I remained guarded and unsure. “We don’t have time for your efforts. Ye must get out of ‘ere immediately, and I’ll see to it. But please, keep quiet.”
Everything about this woman was petite except for her large, ice-blue eyes. Black hair swept down to the middle of her back, and she smelled of rain and strawberries. She looked no older than sixteen, freckles spotted over the bridge of her nose and fronts of her cheekbones. But her voice sounded older, matured, and from another time and place entirely.
“We’ve little time. Can ye walk?”
“I…think so.” The words scraped my throat.
The young woman draped my arm over her shoulder and led me to a dark closet down the hall. She bit into her wrist and held it to my mouth.
“Drink.”
The warmth of her blood surprised me. She didn’t seem to be in any pain as I fed from her, but she must have been a Cruor, because my pain quickly ebbed. There was some kind of marking on her neck, peeking out from the collar of her dress top. A tattoo?
“We’ve been waiting for ye,” she said. She handed me clothes. “Change quickly.”
I peeled the old clothes off the rapidly healing burn wounds and hurriedly dressed. “Why are you helping me?”
“The children will explain,” she said, already pushing me back into the hall. “Now, please, ‘urry.”
The children?
Blood and mucus seeped from the thick, rope-shaped valleys on my arms, chest, and shins, sticking against the otherwise soothing clean clothes. With each step, the wounds contracted.
“What about—”
“Shhh. Listen carefully. My name is Ophelia. Things are not as they seem; I am not truly aligned with the Maltorim. I was sent ‘ere for ye, many, many years ago. Things are amiss. Ye will fix that, but not today. For now, we must get ye away.”
Ophelia? Hadn’t that been the name of the young woman Ivory had turned in exchange for the Ankou magic that would protect her from the sun?
“You know Ivory?” I asked, though I was almost certain.
Her brow furrowed. “Who?”
“Lenore—her name was Lenore when you knew her,” I said, thinking to the memories I’d stolen from my once-friend.
Ophelia nodded. “Now, please, we must move along.”
She stopped short and slid open another section of wall, revealing Charles and Adrian. My heart fell, and I started to run toward Charles, but Ophelia grasped my shoulder, holding me back until the men stepped into the hallway.
“You’re alive,” Charles said, his voice barely a whisper.
Adrian closed the cell’s back entrance. When Ophelia released me, I ran to Charles and hugged him, sinking into his arms.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he murmured against my hair. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, but I didn’t know if or when I’d be right again. I just wanted to go home.
He held me at arm’s length, his dark eyes brimming with regret. “We need to leave.”
I followed his gaze to the end of the passage, where Ophelia stood between two children, waving for us to follow.
The children were almost identical, save for their opposing genders. Both were no older than six or seven, with the same black hair—the girl’s long, and the boy’s short—and the same pale skin. Their black button eyes fixated on me. I tried not to stare as we hurried to the Liettes’ cell.