"No. They can’t know."
"Then what the fuck do we do?" Sheknewthat voice. Peppermint and red eyes.
Her fingers twitched.
Sifting through her thoughts was like trying to sift through each grain of sand on an endless beach. They fell through her fingertips, scattering in the wind and disappearing at her feet.
"If we take her to a hospital—they’ll know. They’ll find her again. She will be killed!" The voice softened with anguish. A name came to mind. It took her a moment to grasp it, but when she did, she shuddered with a sob. Lucien.
"We don’t know it was them?—"
A dark laugh. "We fucking know. Don’t lie to yourself. It was them. Sabine and Talor."
The words broke through her jumbled-up thoughts.
Electricity. Brown eyes. Freckles.
No—
Her body locked up again as more seizures gripped her. White dots sparked in her vision.
And she fell entirely into the darkness.
A gilded vasefilled with Nightfell roses was arranged on the tabletop.
Vesperin eyed them with a sigh, one finger pressed on top of the book in her lap.
She was being gifted to the finest man with the deepest pockets. And without a say. Hadn’t she given enough?
She had bled herself dry for the cause.
She couldn’t take it anymore.
With a low sound of rage, she stood, throwing the book down. The hem of her gown brushed the floor. The fabric stifled her, clinging to her skin.
Her eyes swept over the room. The wooden walls, the bookshelves, the table, the small couch. The rug was plain, if a little dirty. She guessed even rebels didn’t have money nowadays—no wonder she was being sold to the highest bidder.
At the mere thought, anger filled her.
She couldn’t do this.
She slammed her palms against the door with a cry. "Let me out! I know you hear me! I can’t believe this!" she yelled. "After everything I’ve done. And you plan to trade me like I’m—like I’m nothing." It was too much to wrap her head around, even with the month she’d been trapped in this room.
Her hand dropped to the doorknob. The brass was cold. She didn’t try it, knowing it was locked—it always was.
The first few days of her imprisonment, she’d run her nails over the wooden grains of the door, searching for a weak spot, which had left her hands ruined and bloody, filled with splinters.
When Aliscent had come to bring her food, she’d merely looked at the blood dripping from Vesperin’s fingertips and tsked.He won’t like it if you hurt yourself.
Vesperin had tried to throw a pot at her head, and Aliscent had deflected with her Stella, sending it shattering to the ground with swirls of air.
Aliscent was her godmother, or so Vesperin had thought—until she’d betrayed Vesperin by offering her up to one of the benefactors of the resistance. In exchange for a handsome donation, confidential information, and a supply of medicine, food, and arms.
The resistance.
Vesperin had been born into the cause by well-meaning parents, until they’d been killed in a bombing, leaving Vesperin an orphan, raised by her mother’s best friend, Aliscent Reveria.
Iron Veil, the capital province on the planet of Brassalon, was due for a change in authority. Famine, overworked slaves—all because the leaders wanted more, more, more. Never satisfied. Always pushing. They’d grown too greedy, forcing workers to keep long hours at the steam mills that powered the trains through the city and beyond. The resistance had been slowly moving, growing more violent as the regime began to turn to worse means of ensuring their rules would be followed.
