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That is not a good answer—especially since there is only one wraith unaccounted for. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who did this. “We need to get back to Aidan and Aurelia and get the fuck out of here.”
We don’t even make it to the first step before I feel the ripping sensation in my chest. Shock has me stumbling as I reach for my ribs, my hands coming away with the warm wetness of fresh blood.
Aurelia, I think as the already-dark world goes black.
Chapter Fifteen
AURELIA
Gasping awake, the cold instantly seeps into my bones. My clothes are rough against my skin, stiff with dried blood. The bite of the shackles encircle both my wrists and ankles, my arms stretched above my head, already half-numb from the position. I try, but I can’t move my hands or feet more than a few inches. The stainless-steel table I’m chained to looks like a morgue slab. The clank of the metal on metal causes a shudder to shake its way up my spine.
Well, I've been here before.
The panic attack barreling its way through me is nothing new, and it takes roughly an age to get under control. Well, and a teeny, tiny nap as I pass out from hyperventilation. But, hey, I’m being held hostage. I get one freebie meltdown, right?
Consciousness takes its sweet, merry time coming back. I know this because now the room has people in it. I can’t see or hear them, but I know they’re here. I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say some form of torture is about to start.
At this juncture, I scratch the life goal of never being tortured again at the top of my wish list.
The barren room is decidedly gray with windowless cinderblock and buzzing florescent lights hanging from the ceiling. Moisture crawls up the walls, the scent of mold and death invading my nostrils.
A cell, my brain supplies, slow on the uptake. Yippee. I’ve always wanted to die in prison.
A soldier appears in my line of sight, and it requires a fuck-ton of self-possession to tamp down my fear. Especially since he has a very large Morganite blade in his hand.
Is that big of a blade really necessary?
Apparently so, because he’s using it to cut away my clothes, leaving me in the draft—the pervert. He’s quick and efficient, removing my shirt and jeans before I can get over the shock of what he’s doing. When he gets to the point of the festivities where he tries to cut the middle of my bra—that’s where I snap out of it.
Putting an Aegis on a metal table with steal bonds is a very bad plan. I’ve never been happier to completely fry someone in my life.
I shove the electricity from my chest, coating my flesh, allowing it to travel down and out of me through the table all the way to the hand the idiot rests on the edge. It’s as if I’m touching him with a live wire, disrupting the rhythm of his heart, burning him from the inside out.
A dark smile curls my lips when I see the wetness running down his leg before he collapses. The memory of the bastard pissing himself will probably never get old—even if the smell of charred flesh fills my nose.
But letting that bit of myself go free wakes up the aches and pains in my body. I’ve squandered too much energy, and now I have the added fun of trying to get out of my shackles.
It takes a while to work myself up to it, but I manage to dislocate my right thumb, just barely holding onto my gorge as it rises in my throat. The smell of flambeed soldier and his loose bowels does nothing to me, but dislocating one measly joint, and I’m ready to toss my cookies.
I squeeze my right hand out of the cuff before snapping my thumb back into place.
Don’t puke. Don’t puke.
Now I’ve reached a dilemma. I still have three limbs trapped, and the thought of dislocating another thumb—nope. I’ll wait a minute.
“It took longer than I anticipated for you to dispatch him,” a voice calls, and my already-topsy-turvy stomach nearly loses it.
I’d know that voice anywhere.
Iva.
The woman I’ve feared for more years than I care to count saunters into my line of sight. Outfitted in a pristine white dress that clings to her slender frame, she surveys the fallen guard as if she can actually see him. Once, I’d thought white had been a symbol of purity, but the way she wears it, the color will always remind me of death. It makes sense that everything—even her hair—carries the trademark shade.
Everything but her eyes.
A century ago, she wore dark, green-tinted spectacles to hide the hollow sockets where her eyes used to be. Now, brown prosthetic ones fill the space, their odd ability to follow my movements unnerving.
“Sorry to disappoint. I didn’t know we were having a party,” I say referring to her gown. “I would have dressed up.”
