But it was no normal mirror, she realized, as Kit yelled. It was a two-way mirror.
Something crackled. "You will," came a disconnected voice.
Rin’s eyes scoured the room. In the corner of the ceiling, she saw a small speaker.
Through his tight armor, she saw his back muscles flex as he kept his hands on the mirror, his head falling onto it. The sound of his labored breathing echoed in the tight room.
A sudden, hot, heavy pain made Rin’s muscles lock up. Her entire body felt like it was being set on fire. She knew this pain. She’d experienced it before. Electro-shocks.
Her body stiffened as she fell back against the wall. Her jaw locked up, and she couldn’t make a sound, but Kit was attuned to everything, a predator. He heard the wheeze of air drawn past her parted lips, and he turned swiftly—only to find her spasming form. By the time he got to her, it had stopped.
Kit crouched on his knees on the bed before her, hands hovering in the air as if afraid to touch her.
Rin was panting as she tried to sit up. Her neck felt tender and swollen. Her lips were dry, and her fingers trembled violently as she reached up to touch the collar at her throat. "I-I-I th—think that—" She could barely speak.
"Vesperin." Kit touched her shoulder.
The voice came again, interrupting them. It was feminine, yet none that Rin had heard before. "You will be with her. If you do not…"
Rin jolted as another, smaller shock ripped through her. She gave a pained, choked cry, curling forward into Kit’s chest, unbidden. When it was over, she breathed heavily from exertion.
Kit’s arms were rigid at his side.
"The shock collar is to keep you in line, Phoenix," the woman’s voice echoed through the room. "There is also a bomb embedded within it. If you try to remove or tamper with it, it will detonate, killing her instantly. We want to see how much she means to you—whether you can override your conditioning and still protect her… or if you will do what you were built for. If you pass, you can keep her. If not, you will take care of that, I’m sure. We will be monitoring your neural responses to her presence. You have six hours to engage in sexual intercourse. After that, we will kill her." The line went dead.
Rin panicked, reaching up to claw at the collar. "N-no, no." Her movements were still jerky with the lingering effects of the shocks.
Kit grabbed her wrists in one hand, pulling them away from the collar. "No," he snapped. "You will not—die."
"They’re going to b-blow my head off, Kit. They’re going to kill me?—"
He shook her hands, and she felt her teeth click together from the force of it. It rattled something within her, making her stop her panicking and meet his eyes.
Their noses brushed.
"I will not let you die," Kit said to her.
She swallowed, feeling the collar cut into her throat. "How can you say that?" Her mind spun. "They want you to hurt me. That’s what this is about. To prove that whatever they did to youworked. They want you to try and"—she couldn’t say it—"be with me, and hurt me."
Kit was silent, still holding her wrists. His fingers tapped against the bones on the back of her hand.
He wasn’t like she thought he would be once he finally got his hands on her. All this time, since he had found her at the graveyard—or even before, when he had… tortured her—he had seemed violent, like he wanted to kill her. Yet now, she was here in his arms, he held her, watched her cry.
"Will you?" Rin prodded. "Hurt me?"
"I do not know."
"Do you want to?"
"No—I do not know. I will not let you die," he repeated. "If anyone kills you, it will beme." He got so close that she felt the puff of air of his breath against her lips. She trembled in his hold. She was realizing what her options were. Which death would be better… "And I do not want to kill you.Idon’t," he stressed, as if he were trying to assure himself more than her.
She was seeing bits and broken pieces of the man she once knew.
She felt the clock ticking, each breath like her last. She didn’t want it to be.
She reached up, and his eyes tracked her every move. Her palms hovered over Kit’s face. He was frozen, and so she touched him. She cradled his jaw, softly at first, but when he still did not move, she touched him more firmly, as if that grounding touch was the only thing that would get through to him.
Kit’s breath hit her palm as he turned his head into her touch.
