Page 59 of Devoured

“Thank you.” I exhale softly. Then, to Portia, “Thank you.”

She squeezes my hand before helping me crawl back inside my cage and shackling me. I stop her just before she closes the door.

“Portia… I’m sorry. I should’ve done better. I shouldn’t have ignored you.”

She considers me with a curious glance before inclining her chin. “You aren’t alone, Vanessa. Don’t isolate yourself. That only makes it worse.” Her vine swiftly shuts the door of my cage and closes the lock. “I’ll see you soon,” she whispers before leaving.

Dawn unravels slowly over excruciating seconds and minutes and hours.

I wait for Cora to come. For someone to release me. But no one ever does.

23

VANESSA

WHO DID THIS TO YOU?” A SNARL—VICIOUS, DARK, AND unending—raises my head.

I glance up through matted, snarled locks of my hair, a curtain of purple and brown that distorts the dungeon around me as I accidentally stumble into the bars. I hardly feel it. Hardly feel anything aside from the agony in my wrists and ankles, where my shackles have begun to fuse with my bones. I open my mouth to speak, to insult the stranger, but my throat is too dry. My tongue is too heavy.

The door to my cage rattles. The stranger rips it clean off its hinges and hurls it against the opposing wall. It bends, almost breaks, from the brute force.

“Vanessa.” A low growl. Masculine. Desperate. “Vanessa, come here.”

In the back of my mind, I know this voice, this man. I know I do. But I can’t think anymore. There are only numbers, a slow rotation of agonizing seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. After that first night, I started to keep track of my time in the dark. There was nothing else to do. Nothing else that mattered.

Three days. Seven hours. Forty-two minutes. Fifteen seconds. Sixteen seconds. Seventeen seconds.

My teeth chatter. A pale, smooth hand cups my chin and lifts my face.

Eighteen seconds. Nineteen seconds.

“Vanessa.” Less desperate. More pained. “Who. Did. This. To. You.”

I shiver. My chains tremble.

He curses and grasps my chains with those beautiful, bare hands before snapping them free. Then he scoops me out of the cage and lifts me into his arms.

“She’s sick,” a prisoner says. “She hasn’t been drinking enough. She… she hasn’t been able to sleep either, and the silver has likely moved to her bloodstream.”

The stranger holds me tighter to his chest. His hands curl around my thigh, my waist, as his red eyes glow with rage. His golden hair almost looks like a halo above his handsome, furious face. “Do you know who—”

“The queen,” the older man growls. “The queen imprisoned her here.”

The boy—the prince—snarls again. “Thank you. I will send for someone to release the rest of you.”

“Your mother won’t release us, and you know that.”

My head swims when the boy turns and marches out of the dungeon. He carries me up a stairwell, down a lengthy corridor. High windows flicker with light, searing my vision with disorienting rays of sunshine.

I don’t know where I am.

“I’m going to kill her,” the prince says. “I’m going to fucking kill her for this.”

Sin, I think suddenly, remembering a different time. A different place and a different promise. But Sin never keeps his promises, and we’re all dying for it.

“Where—were—you—” I breathe hard, each word carved painfully from my desiccated throat.

He shakes his head. “Don’t speak. Conserve your energy. You need to be healed.”