Page 48 of The Vixen

Anger melts away as her face twists with grief. I look just to her right. Swallow hard.

I should have let Sawyer do this part.

“Sawyer believes?—”

“You evil bitch,” Liberty whispers, her bravery returning with a gasp. “You evilfuckingbitch!”

She runs at me like an actual bull set on a red cape, and it’s too easy to deflect. I twist at the last second and send her to the snow with a shove between her shoulder blades.

Louis is there to collect her before she’s able to get up. I listen for crying. Or screaming. Or wailing. Anything of the sort but am amazed when she simply jerks away from Louis’s touch and turns a glare on me.

Hatred.

Pure, fiery hatred blazes in her eyes just before Louis jerks her up and throws her over his shoulder. She doesn’t make a sound as he carries her back to the Bower, but I’m not naive enough to believe she’s subdued.

She’s already planning.

CHAPTER 14

SAWYER

The moon glints against the glass of my bedroom—full and bright with clouds decorating the sky surrounding it. It’s the third full moon I’ve seen since I arrived at the Shadow Sanctum, and if everything goes according to plan, it’ll be the last.

I stare at the snowy ground below while nudging the bar repeatedly with my shoulder. It groans with a bruise that’ll no doubt be purple by morning.

Yelling starts.

At first, it doesn’t break my concentration. I count seconds while my drooped eyes watch a Keeper stroll a line in the grass.

There’s no pattern to their movements that I can find.

A Keeper shows up; hangs out for a bit; moves on. Within twenty minutes, another appears, but the interval changes randomly. Sometimes, it takes two minutes for the replacementto show up, sometimes it’s ten, and on one occasion—nineteen minutes seventeen seconds.

There’s no pattern. Nothing to dissect.

Every time my count begins, I pray for normalcy. For some sort of shape to emerge.

But there is none. It’s chaos by design, byherdesign, and though I may be delirious after hours spent staring out this window, I’m beginning to think she’s doing it to drive me mad.

It’s working.

The muted sound of shattering glass or ceramic pulls my gaze from the window. I stare at the wall while the volume rises—Aurelius’s voice, I think.

Closing my tired eyes, I listen closely but only pick up meaningless fragments, clipped words punctuated at the end of his sentences: wealth, useless, idiot.

He must be in Luna’s room.

Opening my eyes, I peer out the window and return to my count, adding on twenty-one seconds.

Something crashes against the wall. A fist, maybe a body, maybe?—

Focus.

I shake my head and shove my shoulder harder against the bar. The ping it makes hardly compares to the commotion coming from down the hall.

Seven minutes nineteen seconds.

Twenty.