“Is that a serious question?” I ask, and then do a melodramatic gasp. “Oh my God, is this your first time seeing a blanket?”
He squirms at the blanket with his shoulders, but it doesn’t budge. “Take it off.”
“Nope.” I slide a square of chocolate into my mouth, and sugar explodes over my tongue, so strong after hours of no food that all words flee my brain.
His jaw clenches so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t chip a tooth. “Eden, if you don’t take this off me right now, I swear to God?—”
“You swear to God what? You’ll kill me?” I rest my head back against the column, trying to let his words wash over me. “I’d like to see you try from up there.”
He glares at me with the intensity of someone who’s imagining my death, and honestly? It’s kind of impressive how threatening he can look while wearing a blanket cape. The fury radiating off him is palpable enough that I should be more scared than I am, but I’m too tired and cold to care.
I notice his hands. The tips of his fingers have become a dusky purple. What if he loses circulation? Once the others get here, I’m sure they’ll know how to reverse whatever happened tohim, but normal Nico will have lasting injuries from hanging like this, while I just sat here.
I can’t release him. I can’t talk about anything I don’t want the Game Master to overhear. I can do nothing other than be useless and watch him.
The occasional rattle of chains breaks the silence. I try hard not to sleep since this isn’t a place I want to let my guard down, but the cold has other ideas. My eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each, and no matter how many times I snap myself awake, they keep sliding closed.
I go in and out of dreams that feel more real than my normal ones. There’s plastic over my face, but instead of Stanley Daniels peering down at me to see if I’ve stopped breathing, it’s Nico. His green eyes watch me through the clear film with that same predatory look from earlier. I try to scream. The plastic seals to my mouth.
The crackling of the speaker pulls me out of the dream.
“Your second trial will commence shortly.”
I push myself up, leaning on the column as spots flood into my vision. My muscles have stiffened from sleeping on the hard floor. It’s impossible to tell if it’s been six hours or twenty-four.
Nico’s already looking at me from across the room. His skin has taken on a grayish pallor that makes him look like a fresh corpse, and his hands are hanging at unnatural angles from wrists that are raw and bleeding where the cuffs cut in.
I try to be gentle when I work the rope free from the cleat. Every second he’s up there is another second of agony. His boots go flush on the floor. I reach forward to steady him, but he jerks away so hard he stumbles.
I hold my hands up. He stays on his knees, head bowed. He doesn’t make a sound, but I still catch the sharp intake of breath through his nose as his only sign of pain. Good Lord, he’s stubborn.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask.
His head lifts, and his eyes look less angry, exhaustion in its place. “Oh yeah. Like a baby.”
I wasn’t expecting a joke, so it takes a couple of seconds to register as such in my head. The man in front of me doesn’t feel like the version of Nico that was enjoying carving me up with a scalpel. Could the hours hanging from the pole have made him go back to his normal self?
“I can never tell if you’re joking or being serious,” I say.
His Cupid’s bow twitches. “Oh my God, is this your first time hearing sarcasm?”
I let out a laugh that sounds more like a hiccup. “Maybe it would be easier to tell it was sarcasm if you didn’t deliver every joke like you’re informing someone their dog died.”
“My delivery is what makes me funny,” he says.
“No,” I say. “It makes you confusing.”
“You think I’m confusing?” he asks.
I nod. “Very.”
He looks as if there are words trapped behind his teeth that he’s fighting not to say. But maybe I’m slipping into old habits and reading too much into it because of how desperate I am for it to be true.
The speakers hiss to life again, and I jump.
“You’ll find the key to Subject One’s restraints behind the loose brick in the northeast corner,” the Game Master says.
How am I supposed to know where the northeast corner is? What kind of stupid directions are those?
