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“I trust you. Swing with purpose and fight with your entire soul, mate,” I ordered her. She swallowed hard and touched my cheek. We still had a long way to go. I had a lot to learn about her and humans in general, but I still trusted my mate to succeed.
“Thank you, Kol. I will,” she promised. “I’m going to change. You guys can fight it out but when I get back. We are going in, turning back now could be our downfall.”
“No,” Ivar yelled, his voice so loud it echoed against the walls around us.
She was right regardless of his anger. This was the only direction forward.
We needed to find answers. Something that would explain how our own queen could betray us.
For the first time in my long existence, I felt as if I were lost. No leader ordering me to follow orders and fall in line. She said I was destined for Harlow before she forced us to slumber. Now that I’m free of my stone, there was no turning back.
My mate called the shots now.
She was my queen.
I’d lay my life down for hers.
But, in this case, she needed me to lay down my ego, and I was doing it willingly.
ChapterFourteen
Harlow
Monday Evening
Third Floor Common Room
The hallway stretched out in front of us, dark and riddled in shadows. My nerves were so shot, the meds did nothing to keep the shadows at bay. They seeped from the walls and poured out at our feet, filling the space and raising my anxiety to new heights.
“Fucking hallucinations,” I bit out. “This is the worst fucking time.” It didn’t help I felt awful for leaving despite how adamantly against it Monty was. But we had no choice. He was probably still destroying the floor.
“I’ve got you, Harlow,” Roman promised beside me as his hand slid into mine. He had a large katana in his hand that Drake had handed over, and I had Hel’s dagger. I had no reservations about using it and knew we wouldn’t get out of this one without coating them each in the blood of demons.
And hopefully Vane’s blood as well.
“This is strange. Why does it go so far before anything pops up?” Roman said, but my attention was already caught on the paintings hanging in the hall. When I stopped, he was forced to as well.
“Look. They’re exactly a room’s length apart,” I said. Moving to the middle one that would be the same placement as my room, I shifted the painting to the side and felt bile rise in my throat as I looked through the small peephole it revealed. “The clock, Roman. This is the exact place the clock hangs on the wall in there. It’s a hidden peephole.”
“What?” he asked, going to the painting where Drake’s room would be and ripped it down. He pressed his face to the wall and cursed.
“He’s been watching us,” I whispered as I looked in. He had a perfect view of my entire room. We were in a psych ward; I had no illusions I had much privacy. But inside our rooms should have been an exception. We already had windows on our doors, why this? Did he watch us fuck? Seen us as we melted down or cried? How often did he sit here and stare at us in our most vulnerable moments?
“He’s sick,” Roman said. “Come on, we have to keep going.”
Stepping away, I let the painting fall back in place. When we finished, I’d be covering up every fucking one of these. Was there a reason he had placed Roman and Hiro, me, and Drake all on this wall?
Finally the hallway ended on a door. My knuckles ached at the grip I had on the base of the dagger as Roman shoved the door open and stepped inside.
“This is like an apartment,” I said as I glanced around at the strange studio. It had a bed, a kitchenette, normal furniture, everything an apartment would have.
Windows showcased the grounds below, though it faced away from the courtyard which was likely why he got away with hiding here for so long.
“Kol said Nurse Drew was freaking out as he went in. I wonder if she’s been in here with him,” Roman mused before we both grimaced at the thought.
“You think they’re together?” I asked. “No, she looked horrified when I mentioned what he did to us all.”
“Or jealous,” he countered. “I’ve always thought it odd how much she drank the fucking Kool-Aid around here.”
