“Kil-Killian?” Shock and happiness twirled like a tornado in my tone, my eyes squinting, trying to see through the dense darkness for a shape against the wall. “Oh, my gods... you’re okay.”
“Okay is a relative term.”
Rolling my lips, my head bowed, “I’m sorry what happened to Sloane.”
Killian didn’t respond, but in his silence, I could feel all the emotions he didn’t want to speak. The hurt, guilt, anger, and grief. Killian didn’t just lose an elite soldier. He lost a friend.
From the moment I met him, and maybe even before when I sat high on top of HDF, staring over at his palace, as if I knew he was standing on his balcony peering in the dark back at me, I could feel a connection to Killian I couldn’t explain. It was different from Scorpion and Warwick, but was there just the same.
He cleared his throat, finally speaking, and I could hear a slur in his speech, as if he was struggling. “What did you do to get in here?”
My mind flashed to when Killian and Sloane were getting attacked by the guards, Rosie being held back, her face already showing signs of being hit. But now I could put a name to the soldiers I saw holding her. It was the same ones who came for her today.
“I have a feeling, doing the same thing as you.”
He went quiet again.
“And they call us the monsters,” he uttered quietly amid the scraping sounds as he adjusted against the wall. “Is she—are they all right?”
“I hope so.” We both knew how it was here. We probably only delayed their pain, not actually stopping it. And maybe trying to stop it only made it worse. Once I stepped out of here, I had no doubt I would be their new target.
“If one of those fucking cowards touches you or them...” Warwick snarled.
“What are you going to do? You’ll end up down here too.” I knew my logic was off, since I had the same response. But I couldn’t stomach anything more happening to Warwick. What they did to him down here last time was enough. And now there was no line Boyd or any of them couldn’t cross. Istvan gave them the all-clear.
“Is Scorpion here with you? I’m still unsure how it works.”
“Uh... No.” I peered up at the beast standing over me now. “Did I not also tell you I have a connection to Warwick?”
“Warwick?” Killian sighed with annoyance, “Of course, you do.” His chains jingled. “I see you have a type, Ms. Kovacs. I’m gathering I am too housebroken and refined for your taste.” It wasn’t an insult to me, but directed at Warwick.
“Bet you fuck that way too, prick.” Warwick snarled. “You couldn’t handle her. This one is feral, especially when she fucks. And in your bed.”
“Warwick.” Even though Killian couldn’t hear him, a blush still warmed my cheeks.
“Let me guess, he’s calling me some uptight asshole?” Killian let out a dry, empty laugh. “Very predictable, Farkas. A tiresome response. Plus, you have no idea what I’m like or what I’ve been through. I don’t think it is me she would become weary of over time.”
A low growl scraped over me.
“He’s trying to get a rise out of you.” For a moment, I was in his cell far above the hole, watching him pace back and forth.
“You chained up with one of your boyfriends didn’t already get a rise out of me?” he grumbled out loud, running his hand through his tangled hair. His mood had nothing to do with Killian but everything to do with what went down in the factory.
“I’m okay,” I muttered to him.
He snorted, scouring his face, then stared off into the distance, cries and bangs howling through the penitentiary. “No one’s coming for us.”
“Then we find another way,” I repeated the statement he had said to me once. “We don’t play by the normal rules, Farkas. You and I make our own.”
His head snapped back to me, his eyes darkening, drilling into me with intensity. It was another example of how Warwick could strip me bare, peeling me down to only the basics. The part of me that would crawl through carnage and challenge death head-on.
The screech of door hinges severed our link, shooting my gaze to the solid cell door of the hole. My body automatically curled against the wall, knowing nothing good came when it opened.
As light pooled in, my eyes darted over to Killian, a gasp filling my throat while nausea sloshed in my stomach. Chained to the wall, his shoulders slumped, he looked haggard and depleted of strength. But it was his face that took the brunt of his punishment. It was pulverized, swollen with bruises and wounds. I could see why he was struggling to speak clearly. With the iron collar around his neck and being starved and depleted, he wasn’t able to heal himself in any way close to what he normally could.
Several figures stepped in, taking back my attention. I shifted even tighter to the wall when I recognized one of them. Boyd.
“Chain him up here,” Boyd ordered two soldiers, dragging a man to the wall across from Killian. Shackling him up, a guard stepped out of the way, granting me a view of the prisoner.
I swallowed back a small gasp.
Tracker.
Exhaling sharply through my nose, shock tapped my head into the wall, not expecting to see him. But then I recalled how much Tracker enjoyed being alpha, which didn’t go over well in here.
I didn’t remember seeing him at all today, but I also hadn’t looked for him, which made guilt nip at me for how easily I forgot him.
Tracker snarled at the guards, yanking against the thick manacles.
Boyd smirked like he was nothing more than a puppy pretending to be a vicious dog.
“As you can see, we’ve changed things.” Boyd mainly addressed me, his smirk growing, his arms open to the men on either side of me. “We realized it gets so lonely all by yourselves down here. So why not share, watch, and join in each other’s experiences.”
Pressure pushed down on my ribs, limiting my air as understanding crashed down on me. This was even more sick and twisted. They would force us to watch the others get tortured.
“You enjoy having company, majesty?” Boyd strolled to Killian, sneering out his title. “Not so desolate down here?” His tone mocking, he crouched down close to Killian. “How does it feel to be a nobody now? The one bowing to me?” Boyd grabbed his head, wrenching it hard, thumping it into the wall.
“Stop!” Straining the shackles, dread webbed over my chest. “Leave him alone.” My words were pointless, but I couldn’t stop myself. The need to protect Killian, knowing he couldn’t take much more, rose within me. The powerful fae leader I knew was slowly corroding away. This place was meant to do that, to gut you like a pumpkin, leaving you a cut-out, sinister shell of yourself. A walking ghost no better than the skeletons the necromancers could animate.
Boyd tilted his head to me, turning back to Killian. “Look at that. The fallen princess wants to protect you,” he cooed with derision before laughing. “You’d probably let her, huh? Hide away to save your own skin.” Boyd stood up, spitting down on Killian. “Look at you now, Lord Killian.”
Killian’s nose flared, his jaw straining, but he gave Boyd nothing back.
Boyd huffed, swinging his head back and forth. “Just so you know, a real leader is taking your throne. She will ensure fae supremacy, our right to rule, and you will die here. Alone and forgotten, only a blip in the history books, a paragraph easily skipped.”
“You say it, but you work for a human.” Killian’s violet eyes flicked up at his old employee.
“He thinks I work for him,” Boyd snarled. “His ignorance is even worse than yours. In the end, humans will fall. They will be the ones who have to go into hiding.”
Sonya was planning a coup against her own lover. I was starting to believe it was her scheme all along. What if becoming Prime Minister Leon’s lover had always been a plan? To get herself into power while learning everything she could about her foe. Literally sleeping with the enemy. If it were true, then damn, Istvan had nothing on her. She was far more intelligent, devious, and conniving than anyone realized. She was in the long game. One that took patience and precise timing.
I hated her, but I had to give her points for being by far the better player in this game. The snake waiting in the grass while the others fought to the death, not noticing the real predator ready to make the final kill.
“You’re willing to betray your own kind to only help yourself,” Killian slurred, his puffy eyes in slits. “You are a disgrace to the fae.”
“You really want to say that when you’re the one chained to the wall like a dog?” Boyd grabbed his head again, smashing it back, before kicking Killian in the side over and over.
“No! Stop!” The cuffs cut into my wrists as I tugged forward. The agony of watching Killian get hurt felt ten times worse than if Boyd was hitting me. This version of the hole would break me faster, tear me in two. Anger, fear, and sorrow churned in my gut, stacking log on top of log, building a fire inside.