Her head was pounding and her throat felt raw from where Sloan’s fingers had clamped around it. She drew a ragged breath and tasted the damp of abandoned places exposed to elements, the tang of metal and earth and stone.
A shiver went through her, and she realized she was sitting on a floor, slumped against a wall, both surfaces concrete, and cold was soaking into her back and legs. Metal pressed against her wrists, and when she tried to pull away, she heard the clink of steel on steel. Her hands were cuffed to something to her right. She turned until she was facing it and raised her hands, questing with her fingers, until she found a flat metal bar, like a piece of scaffolding. Kate pulled as hard as she could, but it didn’t give.
She curled her fingers around the metal and hoisted herself to her feet, slowly, in case the ceiling was low. Three feet up, her cuffs caught on a crossbar, forcing her to stop, so she sank back to her knees, and followed the vertical line of the pole to the concrete floor, where it was screwed down with some kind of metal plate. She wasn’t going anywhere with that. She twisted her head, straining to hear something—anything—over the sound of her pulse in her good ear. At first, there was nothing, but then, muffled by concrete and metal and whatever else stood between her and the outside world, she heard a voice.
Sweet, and smooth, and on the verge of laughter.
Sloan.
Kate gritted her teeth, torn between shouting his name until he showed up and staying silent until she had a way to kill him. As she listened, more sounds reached her, muffled by the walls between—a scrape of metal, a stifled groan of pain—and her stomach turned.
August.
August trembling in the hall, his black eyes wide with fear and hunger.
Get the Sunai.
Kate dragged in air, forced herself to focus. She had to get out of here. Her lighter was gone, lost during the fight, which meant no weapon, and no way to see what she doing. She didn’t have anything to pick the handcuff locks, and— Another muffled scream beyond the walls.
She cringed, fought back the shudder of fear. Somewhere a different Kate could be terrified, but she didn’t have time, so she forced it down and felt her way back to the place where the pole was screwed into the floor. She felt four screws, all half rusted into place. The frame was solid enough, but if she could get the base free she might be able to torque it and slide the cuffs beneath the frame. She’d worry about getting them off later. Being handcuffed wasn’t as bad as being handcuffed to something. Kate took a deep breath, and exhaled, her breath catching as another sob carried on the air.
She tried to turn a screw free, but it didn’t budge. She pried until her fingers ached, twisted until her nails cracked.
Nothing.
She closed her eyes, and tried to think, her fingers drifting to the pendant against her sternum. Her eyes flashed open. She pressed herself against the bar until she could reach the medal’s chain and dig it out from under the sweater’s collar. It wasn’t a very elegant gesture, but soon she got the pendant up over her head and wedged the medal’s edge into the screw’s groove, praying it was the right size. It fit. She twisted, as hard as she could. Twice her fingers slipped, skinning her knuckles raw.
But then, at last, the first screw began to turn.
And several curse-filled moments later, it came free.
One down, she thought. Three to go.
Sloan’s voice rose and fell beyond the door.
She jammed the silver disc in the next screw.
A horrible thud, like metal against flesh, bar against bone.
She twisted, slipped, twisted again.
A stifled sob.
“Hold on, August,” she pleaded as the second screw began to turn. “Hold on.”
A drop of blood hit the concrete, viscous and black.
“There’s only one way this ends,” said Sloan, running a nail along the bar’s jagged edge.
August tried to drag in air. The Malchai had struck him across the face, and blood was running from his nose and over the tape across his mouth. He was choking—on blood, on terror—and every time his vision slipped, he thought of Ilsa.
Ilsa standing in front of the window, fingers cracking the glass.
“So many stars.”
Ilsa’s reflection in the mirror, chin resting on his shoulder.
“I watched them all go out.”
Ilsa lying on the floor of the traitor’s cell, singing him to sleep.
“Right before I cut her throat.”
His lungs ached. His vision swam.
Hold on, he begged his body.
And then an electric buzz filled the air, and whatever was holding August up disappeared. The chains went slack, and he crumpled, hitting the ground hard, his wrists still raw and wrapped in chains.