She looks at my bloody wrists. “At least up here, you get real blankets, nicer food. I don’t have to worry about being shanked for my shoes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s going to offer you a choice. He’ll say yellow is better than red.”
Not a clue what she’s talking about but I press on. “Is yellow better?” I ask.
Simone touches the bruises on her neck. “The cell blocks are…bad. Being here, with the warden…” She pauses, a wave of weary hopelessness rolling off her. “Maybe this job is an improvement. Maybe not.”
The heavy click of the door handle makes her go rigid. She starts fumbling with the folders, her head ducked low. Trunchbull stomps back out, her face sour. “Move it, slut. He’s ready to see you.”
As I’m shoved toward the inner office, I glance back. Simone doesn’t look up, but her shoulders are shaking.
The guard knocks on yet another closed door.
“Come.”
This office is different. It’s luxuriously appointed—dark wood, leather, the smell of expensive cigars. In the center sits a man in his sixties with small, beady eyes and thinning hair. He’s wearing a charcoal suit so immaculate that Cosmo would have known the designer and the price tag within five seconds.
My heart pangs at the thought of my brother.
“Aurora Drakeward,” the man says, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. “My name is Warden Voss. Welcome.”
He stands and circles the desk, then stops just inches from me. “You don’t look much like an Elite princess. You look like the rest of the gutter rats in this place. Pathetic. Desperate. A whole lot ofnothing.”
That’s where you’re fucking wrong.
I refuse to be any of those things.
Voss lowers his voice, his breath smelling of breathmint. “In Quo, I can be your greatest ally or your most relentless enemy. Since you carry the Drakeward name, I’m giving you the luxury of choice.”
He leans back against his desk, crossing his ankles with the casual ease of a man who knows he has all the power. “Choose me as a friend, and you’ll find a home in the administrative wing.A real bed. Hot meals. The privilege of living in the light, far away from the scum.”
It sounds tempting. It sounds like a lifeline. But I can still see the thumbprints on Simone’s neck.
“The girls who work here are my little birds. My canaries. They are pretty, and they…pleaseme, to remain in my good graces. Are you willing to be one of my yellow birds, Aurora?”
The way he says “please me” makes my skin crawl. Simone’s vacant stare and bruised throat make perfect, horrifying sense now.
“The alternative,” Voss says, his eyes drifting toward the window, “is the yard. And you, my dear, aren’t built for the bullpen.” He gestures to the floodlit concrete expanse below. “Out there, the paths are short and they lead to a hell you won’t survive. On one side, you have the Guild. Currently sixty-three witches who are nearly all male. They are not the type you’re used to, Aurora. They are the bad seeds, desperate delinquents who treat their women as disposable objects—assets to be used until they break. When the Guild learns your name, you’ll be an instant bargaining chip, to trade, to humiliate, whatever they wish and it will be out of my hands.”
Well, that sounds fan-fucking-tastic.
He paces toward me, his shadow stretching over my face. “Then you have the Diggers. Two hundred and seventeen pieces of human trash, crammed into the sub-levels. They live in squalid, cramped quarters, breathing in boiler fumes and sewage. They are the scum of the earth—humans who hate your kind on principle. To them, you’ll represent every Elite who ever put a boot on their necks.”
The Trunchbull-guard steps forward, placing a bundle of thin, rough red fabric on the desk.
“So, there are your choices. Stay here with me, or face sixty-three predators and two hundred and seventeen starving animals,”Voss says softly. “A sensible girl would choose to wear that yellow cloth and keep my protection. A sensible girl wants to keep her skin intact.”
He tilts my chin up, his fingers cold as he forces me to meet his beady eyes. “Thomas Crankshawe thinks your time in the yard, getting a taste of the grit, will make you more amenable after your release.” Voss’s gaze traces the line of my throat, lingering on the pulse. “But I’d hate to see you so ruined. You’re a masterpiece, Aurora. And masterpieces belong in my private collection. If you don’t take my offer, I believe you will very quickly lament that decision.”
His hand lingers on my jaw, his thumb tracing the swell of my split lip. “So, what’s it to be? Do you remain Aurora Drakeward, wear the yellow, and become my little canary-bird? Or do you dress as carrion and let me throw you to the vultures?”
The thin red scrubs smell of industrial bleach, but they represent the only thing I have left: a choice. I didn’t escape one old pervert in a mansion just to be at the mercy of another in a cage.
Fuck it.
I snatch the scrubs off his polished oak desk.
