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Another bolt struck me, right in the temple, and then everything went black.
Chapter 33
Quilla
I woke, bound to a stone wall, my arms stretched out on either side of me with my wrists caught in manacles and my ankles shackled together with chains. A cloth gag was tied around my face, biting into the corners of my mouth.
Panic was the first reaction. I struggled, trying to pull my hands free to no success and move my legs, but the chains were far too heavy to allow me more than a few inches of movement at a time.
Damn.
Good and truly stuck, I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the wall behind me, concentrating on breathing in through my nose—because the cloth tasted vile—and calming myself down. Exhaling out around the gag, I cleared my brain and let reasoning thoughts back in.
Think. I just needed to think.
Indigo had told me, all you have to be is smarter than them. You can overcome anyone by outthinking them. So I could do this. I could think of a way out of here. Because size, strength, and speed definitely weren’t going to help right now. Nothing physical would, which meant I’d need to talk my way out, get inside my opponent’s head, and coax them into setting me free. Except I kind of needed my mouth available for that. I began to work my jaw, wincing at the soreness there, which reminded me of how many times my captor had hit me in the face before knocking me unconscious. Bastard. He’d done a superb job of gagging me too. The cloth was wrapped so tight around my head I couldn’t even push it out with my tongue.
My very dry, offended tongue, I might add. Seriously, the bitter flavor of the gag was straight-up disgusting.
Okay, removing that was going to be a no-go. But there had to be something else.
Reopening my eyes, I focused on the room. Dark, chilly, damp. Low ceilings, stone walls. The only source of light came from the two torches that hung from either side of the closed door on the other end of the room. No windows.
Definitely a dungeon. But a messy one. It was full of shit. The shelves and tables around me were littered with clay beakers, coils of leather, gears of all shapes and sizes, metal and wooden doohickeys that made no sense to me, along with piles of scrolls with what looked like crazy scribblings on them from where I squinted.
If I were on Earth, I’d say it looked like a mad scientist’s laboratory, like someplace where Dr. Frankenstein had created his monster. Then my gaze moved to the center of the room, and I became utterly convinced that’s exactly what this was.
Because seriously, what the fuck was that thing?
It was exactly the kind of machine Frankenstein’s monster would be born on.
Constructed entirely of wood and metal, the creepy contraption sitting in the middle of the room had to be a torture device straight from my nightmares. With a complicated mess of pul
leys, gears, and levers surrounding it, the main area was really quite simple, involving three slabs: two wooden planks crisscrossed for a place to shackle arms and legs, forcing all four limbs to spread apart equally, and a shorter plank nailed to the middle to hold a head and torso. Then there were more metal manacles to clamp the person’s hips, chest, and forehead into place.
I gagged, and panic rolled over me again. Thrashing anew, I flailed so hard against my restraints that I realized I had a wound in my side that I hadn’t been aware of before. Sucking in a pained gasp, I bowed against the agony, and tears seeped down my cheeks. But Christ, when had I gotten that one? More than one rib had to be broken.
They must’ve kicked me while I was unconscious.
He must’ve kicked me.
Everett of House Teller, I remembered.
Indigo’s uncle.
That was who’d captured me. But who held me now? He’d told his lackey they would be rewarded for keeping me alive, which had to mean they’d passed me on to someone else. Right?
But who? The King of High Cliff?
I was just beginning to think maybe I wasn’t going to be able to escape this place when the door opened, and Indigo’s uncle stepped inside.
“Ah,” he replied pleasantly when we made eye contact. “You’re finally awake. Excellent.”
He shut the door behind him and strode into the room, coming over to inspect me. He appeared much more cheerful now than he had the last time we’d spoken. When I’d told him I had killed his son.
But then, why wouldn’t he be? He had me completely under his control to torture as he wished. It had to be any avenging father’s dream come true.
“Well, look at that,” he murmured in awe and lifted his hand to my face. I tried to move my head to the side, away from his touch, but he just kept coming until he’d gently wiped a tear off my cheek. Then he frowned as if confused as he inspected the drop of wetness on the tip of his finger. “Graykeys can cry. How remarkable.”
