facing the window, hands braced against stone, she started shaking too badly to finish the job.
She wasn’t afraid to die; she was afraid she wouldn’t bash her head in hard enough. That she’d only shatter her skull but not lose consciousness, that she’d be subject to hours of crushing pain that didn’t kill her but left her to a life of unbearable agony and half of her original capacity to think.
In the end, she was too much a coward. She gave up and curled up miserably on the floor to await whatever came next.
After a few minutes she felt a sharp jabbing sensation in her left arm. She jerked her head up, eyes darting around the room to find what had bitten her. A spider? A rat? She saw nothing. She was alone.
The prickling intensified into a sharp lance of pain. She yelped out loud and scrambled to sit up.
She couldn’t find the cause of the pain. She squeezed her arm tight, rubbed frantically up and down, but the pain wouldn’t disappear. She felt it as acutely as if someone were carving deep gashes into her flesh, but she couldn’t see blood bubbling up on her skin or lines splitting the surface.
At last she realized that this wasn’t happening to her.
This was happening to Kitay.
Did they have him? Were they hurting him? Oh, gods. The only thing worse than being tortured was knowing that Kitay was being tortured—to feel it happening, to know that it was ten times worse on his end, and to be unable to stop it.
Thin, scratchy white lines that looked like scars from a long-healed wound materialized under her skin.
Rin squinted at their shape. They weren’t random cuts to inflict pain—the pattern was too deliberate. They looked like words.
Hope flared up in her chest. Was Kitay doing this to himself? Was he trying to write to her? She closed her fists, teeth clenched against the pain, while she watched the white lines form a single word.
Where?
She crawled to the window and peered outside, counting the windows that led up to hers. Third floor. First room in the center hallway, just above the courtyard dais.
Now she just had to write back. She cast her eyes around the room for a weapon but knew she’d find nothing. The walls were too smooth, and her cell had been stripped of furniture.
She examined her fingernails. They were untrimmed, sharp and jagged. That might do the trick. They were terribly dirty—that might cause infection—but she’d worry about that later.
She took a deep breath.
She could do this. She’d scarred herself before.
She managed just three characters before she couldn’t bring herself to scratch any more. Palace 1–3.
She watched her arm with bated breath. There was no response.
That wasn’t necessarily bad. Kitay had to have seen. Maybe he just had nothing else to say.
Quickly she smeared the blood over her arms to hide the cuts, just in case any guards ventured in to check on her. And if they saw, then she would simply pretend she had gone mad.
Chapter 37
Something clanged against the window.
Rin jerked her head up. She heard a second clang. She half ran, half crawled to the windowsill and saw a grappling hook lodged against the iron bars. She peeked over the edge. Kitay was scaling up the wall on a single rope. He grinned up at her, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “Hi there.”
She stared back, too relieved to speak, hoping desperately that she wasn’t hallucinating.
Kitay hoisted himself through the window, dropped soundlessly to the floor, and fished a long needle out of his pocket. “How many locks?”
She jangled her chains at him. “Just two.”
“Right.” Kitay knelt by her ankles and set to work. A minute later the bolt sprang free. Rin kicked the shackles off her legs, relieved.
“Stop that,” he whispered.
“Sorry.” She was still drowsy from the laudanum. Moving felt like swimming and thinking took twice as long.
Kitay moved on to the bolt around her right wrist.
She sat quietly, trying her best not to move. Half a minute later she heard something outside the door. She strained her ears. She heard it again—footsteps. “Kitay—”
“I know.” His sweaty fingers slipped and fumbled as he worked the needle around the lock. “Stop moving.”
The footsteps grew louder.
Kitay yanked at the bolt, but the chains held firm.
“Fuck!” He dropped the needle. “Fuck, fuck—”
Panic squeezed at Rin’s chest. “They’re coming.”
“I know.” He glared at the iron cuff for a moment, breathing heavily. Then he yanked his shirt over his head, twisted it into a