about why she interrupted my time in the bathroom.
But I’m not listening.
There’s an edgy, twitchy feeling in my hands, and before I can stop myself, I close the space between us, grabbing that black bandana around her throat and backing her up against the wall in my bedroom.
Her nails come to my forearms, clawing at me.
I don’t feel it.
I don’t feel anything.
See anything.
But them.
I don’t mind the darkness.
For Noctem, it’s a requirement, they told me. Dark spaces. Three nights of no food or water.
I almost laughed when they said it, thinking of my time in that fucking cage. But Lucifer was watching me carefully, and I thought about when he came to see me down there.
I didn’t laugh.
He was smiling.
Now, though, he’s not around. None of them are. It’s just me, my knees curled up to my chest, arms around my shins. It’s a cave of some sort, and we were blindfolded and led in here. The rest of them split up. No one asked me to go with them. They pretended I wasn’t here at all, save for Ezra, whose dark hazel eyes connected with mine in the glow from his flashlight.
One second.
Just a split second, and I thought maybe he’d want me with him. I thought about the bobby pin. The box of matches. His whispered words.
But I didn’t do as he asked, and the look he gave me wasn’t one of kinship.
It was fucking hatred.
Sometimes, I think he knows what I did to Kameron.
Doesn’t matter. It’s better for me this way.
I’m not sure why I bother keeping up appearances. I’ve got a house. Money from the family I fucking slaughtered. I could cut ties with them all.
I saw on the news they reported I shot the Forgues.
I huff a small laugh in the damp, wet underground of this cave, thinking about it. I did shoot them. Three of them, anyway.
But I did so much fucking worse than that.
The house burned down afterward. After I got out. I started that blaze with the matches from Ezra, but it was Lazar Malikov that finished it. He was waiting when I ran out of the house.
Right into his arms.
He didn’t hug me.
Didn’t hold me.
His eyes—so blue they seemed unnatural—were on the fire. The house engulfed in flames in the night, on a street that I’d never seen.
Ever.
When they ripped me away from Sid, I’d been blindfolded when they put me in that car.
And it wasn’t until I was clinging to Lazar, my fists clenched around his dress shirt, my head buried in his chest, that I realized it had been nearly ten. Fucking. Years. Since I’d been outside.
I cried harder.
He’d shoved me away, held me at arm’s length, his eyes trailing up and down my naked body, covered in blood, his lip curling in disgust.
I knew I smelled bad.
Looked bad.
I knew my head was so, so fucked. But under the full moon in that night sky, on the private street, I didn’t care.
I was free.
Free.
He had dropped his hands from me as if I were diseased. He stepped back, jerked his head to a black Lincoln pulled up on the curb. “Go.”
That one word.
I went.
Then I was inducted.
In the darkness of the cave, I close my eyes, forcing myself not to think about that. The initiation. It wasn’t proper. Just…pain.
My mouth goes dry, and my bones ache.
My face burns, thinking of their humiliation.
Their taunts.
How it hurt.
I clamp my hands over my ears, rocking back and forth, humming softly, a way to drown out the memories. A habit I took up in that…cage. I sleep that way, in my own big, empty house. Sitting up, against the wall. Rocking.
For a while, here in the cave, it works to calm me.
My mind goes blank. I lean my head back against the rocky wall, drop my hands to my knees and keep my eyes closed, hoping to sleep the next three nights away.
I grew used to that in the Forgues house.
But just as I feel like I’m nodding off, drifting away into that bliss of nothingness, I sense someone beside me.
At first, I think it’s in my mind.
That happened all the time in the cage. I made friends with dozens of people. Lovers. Parents who cared. Sid even came to see me.
I had it all inside my head.
So, I don’t even open my eyes at first. But then I hear a clinking sound, smell something like smoke.
My eyes fly open and my breath leaves me in a rush as I flinch, startled by