Another Unseelie burrow.
I force myself to look into the first cell on my right, and my stomach knots, hand whipping up to wrangle a wail.
Burnished firelight spills through the bars, igniting a slight, slumbering person tucked in the corner beneath a soiled blanket. Their hair is unevenly cropped, cheeks hollow, mouth lax as they breathe soft and slow.
Too slow.
Festering wounds tarnish their dark skin, like someone … or somethingtook bites so deep they almost tore off chunks of flesh.
My vision blurs with unshed tears, my heart a lump of lead.
This burrow … it’s no ancient, ugly scar nobody talks about anymore.
It’s a fresh, gaping wound. It’s everything Cainon warned me against.
Run!
“No,” I rasp, and scour the next cell, releasing a soft whimper that cleaves straight from my split chest.
A red-haired woman is hunched on a filthy mattress, barely an inch of her visible, pale skin unscathed by welts, bruises,bites.
I can’t imagine Rhordyn doing this to anybody.
I just …can’t.
That voice continues to scream at me as I force myself further down the twisting hallway, counting each breathing inhabitant within each small, stuffy cell.
Men.
Women.
Children.
Nobody stirs as I drift past, their dreams perhaps a better place to be than the horrors of their reality.
Moving through a shaft of moonlight, I see a male huddled in a ball by the bars of his cell. A mop of filthy iridescent curls falls across his brow, concealing all but the peak of his thorned ear.
I stumble to a halt.
Aeshlian.
A vision of Baze flashes. Of his scarred skin and pale, lackluster eyes after I ripped that ring from his hand. Of the way he dragged his gaping shirt across his chest like he was desperate to hide his scars.
I know the hurt is loud—
His past words—once a balm to my wounds—now anchor my heart somewhere deep and dark where there is no light.
Wasthishis loud hurt that still whispers to him now?
A lump forms in my throat as I glance up through the grated layers. Focus on the spindly silhouettes of a few delicate wildflowers arching over the sky-hole’s edge, like they’re peeking in.
A painful thought wraps my heart in a thorny vine …
Hattie knew about this place. She knew and somehow sent a tapestry to Castle Noir perfectly depicting this very island. A pretty picture to adorn the stark, black halls … or a clue?
A plea?
A woven scream she couldn’t voice, shipped off for someone tosee?
