House of Kings(61)

And my heart explodes into a million pieces. “Ian?” I gasp.

I place my hands on the wall that connects the two cells, leaning in close as if I can will myself to melt right through the steel.

“Liv!” he says loudly. “What…what are you doing here?”

Tears instantly spill down my face, rolling down my cheeks in fat beads. Just the sound of his voice instantly brings every feeling and every emotion rushing back. “I’m going to be put on trial. The Court, they think I did something awful.”

I hear movement on the other side, and I can just imagine it: Ian placing his hands on the steel, mirroring my position. His forehead touching the wall. “This has something to do with the Bitten attacks, doesn’t it?”

I nod, even though he can’t see it. He’s so engrained in this world. He understands so much. That it only takes him moments to figure everything out. “Yes,” I whisper.

He lets out a breath, slow. Low. And he doesn’t have any words of comfort for me.

“Ian, why are you here?” I ask, so afraid of the answer.

“I think you know why,” he says quietly. He taps his forehead against the wall. Not gently. “Lovers quarrels are never quiet, and that’s what the King saw this as.”

Tears rush down my face all the faster. I take a hard sniff, trying to reign in my emotions and utterly failing. “They told me you left me. Just walked away. That you’d taken Elle and Lula and left for forever.”

“How long has it been?” Ian asks, his voice low and intimate. “It’s easy to lose track of the days in here.”

“A month,” I respond as I let my hands slide down the smooth surface.

“A month,” he says. I hear the grief, the sadness. The anguish he’s been through in that month. “That’s how long I’ve been here.”

I squeeze my eyes closed, forcing more tears out. I wipe at them, taking a deep, calming breath. “I’m going to get you out of here, Ian. It’s my fault you’re in here. I promise. I’ll get you out.”

And that heightened sense, the one that is always aware of exactly where the sun is, the one that warns of pain to come, goes crazy in me. The glow in the mirrors intensifies and I can’t seem to help it as I look.

My eyes sear in pain. Like a hot poker jabbed into my eyeball, continuing on through as it sinks into my brain. A scream rips through my throat as I drop to the floor. And I’m not the only one. Five others bellow and scream in pain. Hands smack the walls, feet kick at the doors. We are a pack of caged wolves who rage and fight to free ourselves from a death trap.

This is death. Even with eyes closed tightly, even with my hands clamped as securely as I can over them, the sun still sears my eyes. And maybe part of the intensity is mental, knowing I am trapped here inside. Maybe it’s just my instincts telling me to flee and knowing I cannot, but now, the pain is so intense, I wish for death.

“Ian,” I breathe with a sob through the pain. “I need you to tell me something.”

He hisses through his own pain and I hear him smack the stone floor with his hand. “What?”

“Who drained me?” And for a moment, everything stills, hanging on the answer to my simple question.

One beat. Two.

“Me,” he finally answers.

There’s the truth. Nothing in me doubts it.

“It was me.”

The sun crests over the trees, engulfing me in blinding sunlight, and I have never known pain such as this.