Page 45 of Dark Night of the Soul

“There,” she said. “That should hold.”

But I was pretty sure the bone was fractured, and I needed stitches.

Sebastian pushed off the wall. Circled me like a predator. “Much better. Can’t have her falling apart before the main event.”

Sebastian led me out. Two guards flanked me, hands on my upper arms. Back in the hallway, Vormund motioned for the guards to follow him. My feet were cold on the tile floor.

“We’ll take her to the room, now,” Vormund said. Like I wasn’t listening.

“And how long will it take?” Sebastian asked.

“A few hours. It’s not a simple procedure.”

A few hours.

Not to fix me. Not to heal me.

To finish breaking whatever resistance I had left.

“I need her ready to deploy, doctor.” There was a tightness to his voice I didn’t like. Like he was impatient to do it the second I was out of recovery.

“She’ll be ready,” he replied, cool, calm. “Perhaps not as quickly as you like.”

“Fine,” he said after a long beat. “The longer he’s in chains, the angrier he’ll be. Should make for a good fight.”

The sick part was he sounded delighted.

And my stomach clenched tight.

“You sure it will work?” Sebastian asked.

“She’ll respond to any threat,” Vormund said. “But she’s calibrated for one target specifically.”

Sebastian’s mouth curved. “Him.”

“Yes. The closer he is, the sharper the response. It’s elegant. Turning his proximity into the thing that destroys him.”

The words landed like a physical blow. They weren’t going to alter me. They were going to make me kill him.

They took me to an operating room. Bright. Sterile. And I was supposed to willingly get up on the table. Every instinct in me revolted.

The only other time this had happened I’d already been unconscious. I’d woken up strapped in, IV in my arm, my blood being drawn without my consent. There had been no choice then, either.

A scrub nurse stood off to one side. Young, pretty, eyes too blue behind her mask. The assistant hovered near the instrument tray. The anesthesiologist waited by the head of the table, hands folded like this was routine.

Like this was nothing.

The scrub nurse moved toward me. “Jewelry needs to come off.”

My hand flew to my throat, to the necklace—the one he gave me. The one I hadn’t taken off since then. “No.”

She didn’t argue. She nodded once to one of the guards. He pried my fingers away while she reached around my neck. The clasp gave with a tiny click.

Gone.

The absence of it felt like losing a part of myself.

“Get on the table,” someone said.