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It’s pure agony.
My vision goes completely black.
I’ve never felt so much pain.
I deserve this.
The stabbing pains grow more intense, and it’s as if knives are piercing my flesh. Then, there is nothing but the memory of the sister I once knew.
I tell myself that Rose is sleeping. Even now she is beautiful, the bruises unable to steal that from her completely. Part of me is relieved. My perfect sister will never have to face another day in this hell we were forced into.
She will never again have to miss the family she was stolen from. Her fate has been kinder, because she didn’t have to face the true horrors that Madame had planned for her future.
Her sentence is over at just eleven years of age.
And now, mine is, too.
Chapter Forty
Igasp, and water heaves and spews from my shaking body. I steal desperate breaths, eager to take in as much oxygen as I can.
My body works to expel the icy water, and every part of me throbs and writhes with the effort.
Once I’m finished, gentle hands cradle my head.
“Zaina? Can you hear me?”
I force my eyes open, but the movement is slow. Painful, even.
“Zaina?”
A blurred figure stares down at me. It takes several more moments to register that it’s Einar who is holding me. I must say his name aloud, because a hushed prayer of thanks escapes his lips as he pulls me closer.
Even with the relative warmth emitting from the king and Khijhana's fur on the other side of me, I am racked with violent shivers. Einar manages to keep a hold on me, though, gripping me almost too tightly as he clambers to his feet.
"I need to get you to the caves," he says, and I'm not sure if he's explaining where we are going or asking for my permission, but I can't seem to make my eyes stay open or stop shivering long enough to nod.
I slip in and out of consciousness, cognizant of nothing but the jolting motions of my own tremors and the king's rocky trek through the snow. Khijhana lets out a noise between a whine and a meow, and it sounds far away.
I fade again, the world going black around me.
When I come to, the smell of damp earth fills my lungs and I’m lying on a stone floor.
My heart races, and I can practically hear the clinking of my chains and the screams of the prisoners in the other cells. Breathing is difficult, and I gasp and scramble until my fingers find something soft. Something that shouldn’t be in the dungeons of Villa Paradís...
Khijhana?
I force my eyes open to see the chalyx pressed against me on a rock-hard floor. She doesn’t seem to mind that my fingers are tangled in her silver fur.
Taking a steadying breath, I focus on the world around me, confident that I am not in Madame’s dungeons. My muddled thoughts puzzle through the last thing I remember, and I come up short again.
I should be dead.
But instead, I am staring at the ceiling of a cave. I force my weary gaze to the right. Khijhana is nestled against me, blocking a significant portion of my view, but I can see the far edges of the cave walls and notice that they are bathed in a greenish glow.
Rather than flicker like firelight would, this light seems to shimmer and swirl on the walls, though that could just be the way my eyes still jump around from the jarring motion of my shivers.
The room smells like damp rock, like the stones near the beach by the château, only not as salty.
