Page 107 of Locked in Wonderland

Museum.

Years.

Nico had told me that the people there were being punished. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like something I needed to be concerned about.

Now…

I’d thought the statues sinister enough when I’d walked among them. Knowing I might end up as one of them made it ten times worse.

“Hmm...” Queenie tapped a finger against her lips. “I think anything less than five years would be too generous.”

Five years!

I tried to speak, but with the ball gag in my mouth, all that escaped was a muffled moan. No one paid the slightest attention.

They couldn’t keep me here for five years.

Could they?

I already knew the answer. Nico had made it abundantly clear how difficult getting off the island would be. They’d lured me here as a plaything, and I hadn’t fulfilled that role to their satisfaction, partly because of Nico’s intervention and partly because of my stubbornness. Now, because I refused to be what they wanted, they were going to remind me who was in charge.

“I’m thinking ten years,” Henry said. “We should set an example.”

Queenie smiled at her husband. “Always the wise one. Perhaps we meet in the middle at seven and a half?”

Henry lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “That sounds fair.”

Fair? To whom?

It certainly wasn’t fair to me.

All I’d done was let myself get duped into coming here on a trumped-up rescue mission. For that, I was expected to spend the next seven and a half years unable to move while strangers gawked at me.

No wonder there were rules against touching the exhibits. They were probably afraid the bitterness and resentment would build until the first person to reach out lost a finger.

What if I rebelled? What if I refused to be turned into living art?

I already knew the answer. They’d kill me.

This wasn’t mercy. It was torture disguised as justice.

My gaze found Nico again.

Nothing.

Not a flicker of emotion.

He’d watched every second of this without saying a word.

“I want him first.”

The words were so unexpected that it took me a moment to realize who’d said them.

Kellan uncoiled himself from his seat and approached with the assured saunter of someone who knew he always got what he wanted. I’d already seen that play out back at the nightclub when he’d plucked one of the party-goers from right under his girlfriend’s nose and turned him into his pet―the same pet whose previously blank expression had now given way to fear.

His life might be miserable, but at least he was alive. And I could see him realizing what would happen if someone else replaced him.

Unable to say anything as Kellan drew close, I settled for glaring at him. It didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for. Instead, he laughed. “I like him. He’s got balls. My current dog’s become too obedient. He barely barks anymore, never mind does anything interesting. All he does is lie there when I fuck him, and who wants to fuck a corpse?”