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For this is his offering to his Empire. This is his sacred ritual to bind him in blood.
What the fuck is this?
My heart races as I scan over the note. A second, third time. Fourth, and then a fifth.
This couldn’t be what Zade needs me for. This couldn’t be the ritual he’s been talking about because that could only mean that he’s been keeping me alive, protecting me from these cruel, vicious attacks, just so that he can be the one to carve my beating heart right out of my chest.
Sixty suns. Sixty moons. How long has it been since he murdered his own father?
In the dungeon, Nikolai said that Zade cannot rise to power without completing his ritual. I’m his golden ticket to secure everything he’s ever wanted, and all I have to give is my life.
They’ve been lying to me this whole time, drawing me in and forming these connections, making me want to trust them. And I fell right into their trap, yet again.
Fool me once and that’s on them, but fool me twice . . . well shit. I won’t allow it to happen. I won’t sit back and allow myself to become sliced and diced for someone else’s twisted games. My life is not a bargaining tool. It’s not there to be used at someone else’s will.
I have two choices. One, I can disappear. All I need to do is make it past the night of the sixtieth moon and ensure Zade cannot complete his ritual. My life will be saved, and Zade will forfeit his claim to leadership. Then I can bitch out, run as far as I can until they eventually catch up to me. Or two, I can be the daughter my father raised me to be and take what’s rightfully mine.
I am the rightful heir, and the power of Empire is right there, waiting for me to take it.
My father lost his life for this, and now that I finally have some answers, I can make this right. And when I do, Zade DeVil better watch his fucking back.
With my decision made, I glance around Zade’s penthouse, making sure the coast is clear, and without a second thought, I slip the note and calling card into the back pocket of my jeans and walk straight out the front door.
Using the fire escape, I take myself down a few levels before cutting across to the main elevators and taking it all the way down. Reaching the lobby, I keep my eyes wide, searching around me for whoever might have left me this note.
Stepping out into the street, I move past the valet parking when the attendant turns to me, a welcoming smile on his face. “Ahh, Miss Quinn,” Joe says, another person I’ve become familiar with over the past few weeks. “Going somewhere? Can I fetch you a car?”
I look around, staring out at the busy streets as I shake my head. “I, umm—”
A sharp pinch stings the side of my neck and I whip around to Joe, watching as that welcoming smile morphs into a sinister grin. “Sleep tight,” he says as a car pulls up to the curb. He opens the back door, and just as my body becomes too heavy to hold myself up, he pushes me inside, closing the door behind me as I succumb to the darkness.
Theloudclangofbanging metal echoes through my pounding head, and I open my heavy eyes. The ground is cold beneath my body, and I try to sit up, peering through the fog and realizing I’m in some kind of prison cell.
My heart races and I shift to my knees, trying to crawl across the darkened cell, but my body is too heavy to hold up. I cry out as I fall, desperately trying to pull myself back up.
My hand closes around the metal bar, and I drag my body across the rough stone, my jeans catching and ripping on the stray rocks. Gripping the bars with both hands, I pull myself to my knees and try to catch my bearings.
Where the hell am I?
“HELLO?” I call out, the sound pounding against my skull as I try fruitlessly to shake the bars. “Please, someone, help me.”
I try again and again, defeat gripping my chest and squeezing tight. Tears stain my dirty face, and as I cry out once more, my desperation knowing no bounds, I hear a haggard voice coming from across the room. “Give up, girl,” the man says, his voice thick and dry as though he rarely uses it. “No one’s coming for ya.”
My gaze cuts around the cells as I grip the bars tighter, hauling myself to my feet and staring into the shadows of the neighboring cells. I see a faint outline of a man hidden in darkness, and nervousness starts to pound in my chest. “Wh . . . where am I?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he responds in that gruff tone. “Once you’re in here, there’s no getting out.”
Falling back to my knees, I drop my face into my hands, tears streaming down my face as hopelessness claims me. I had a plan. I had a life I needed to save. And now I’m nothing but a sitting duck, just waiting for someone to come and end it all. Whether it be the person who’s been organizing these vicious attacks or someone much closer, someone I thought I wanted so desperately to trust.
“What’s your name, kid?” the man says in a bid to distract me from my tears, his tone disinterested and bored.
Wiping my cheeks with the back of my hands, I mutter my name over the lump in my throat. “Oakley Quinn.”
“No,” comes a whoosh of breath, accompanied by the sounds of heavy chains dragging along the stone. I look up at the cell directly across from me and watch as a pair of dirty hands lock around the metal bars before a face appears through the darkness. “No, it can’t be,” the man says, a hint of desperation in his raspy tone. “Tell me it’s not.”
My brows furrow as I peer into the darkness, trying to make out the man’s face. I pull myself back to my feet when I finally see him. I suck in a sharp gasp, my breath getting caught in my throat as I see the ghost of the man who’s haunted my dreams for nearly twelve years.
“Dad?”
