A black hole of grief opens up inside of me, threatening to swallow me whole. But I can’t let it. I have to get out of here . . . wherever “here” is.
I struggle to my feet, my limbs numb from cold and wetness. The shape of the space around me appears as my vision acclimates to the dark. It’s a tight space, with curved brick walls that form a tunnel. The ground has an inch of standing water, which is what I was lying in, and is the reason I’m soaked.
There’s a wall behind me, so there’s only one way to go. I try to move, but my leg snaps back and I go down hard, splashing into the freezing water. Pain blooms at my ankle. I grab at it and hit metal, realizing there’s a manacle locked around it. A chain trails from it to the wall behind me.
No.
My body starts buzzing with fear and panic. I take a deep breath to try to calm myself, only to gag again on the stench of what I’m starting to realize is sewage.
I must be in a sewer somewhere.
Underground. Alone. Trapped.
Shivering, I back up against the wall, using it to lean on. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to stay warm.
Someone will come for me.
But who?
Becks may be dead. My parents and Locklyn and Talon are in the creature world. If Cassian didn’t make it through the portal, they may be trapped there, not having any idea what happened to me or why I didn’t follow them.
Who is going to come for me?
I can’t just wait for someone to save me. I have to save myself. Which means keeping my wits about me. Otherwise, I’m dead.
Twenty-Nine
BECKS
When I blink, white fills the entirety of my vision, and so my first thought is that I’m blind. Slowly, blurry shapes start to appear, contrast in a sea of white, until slowly the space around me takes shape.
A stark sterile room. Blinding halogen lights. The beeping of a machine. A too-small bed that my feet hang over.
I recognize where I am.
The Order has a small surgical and medical center in one of the subfloor levels of their headquarters. I’ve been here before—the first time I ended up in the human world with a stab wound that almost killed me. I haven’t been back since.
Everything hurts, even my eyelids, which feel like they’re weighed down by concrete.
With an extreme amount of effort, I sit up, groaning from the pain.
What happened? Why am I here?
My mind is completely blank.
My vision swims, a blurry mess that’s making me nauseous.
I shake my head and it feels like my brain is knocking against my skull like the die inside a Magic Eight Ball. Pressing the heel of my palms to my eye sockets, I will the room to stop moving.
Giving up the fight, I close my eyes and sink back against the twin-sized hospital bed with another groan. The door across the room opens and I crack my lids.
Kade strides in, mostly unscathed except for a few cuts high on his cheekbone and forehead. It almost looks like he was clawed.
A run-in with a tiger shifter?
There was a clan that had been giving the Order some issues recently.
Glancing down at myself, I realize that my torso is heavily bandaged. Was I part of that run-in as well?
