Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
KIER
She’s been out for six hours.
She’s not sleeping. Not really. This is the kind of silence that follows pain sharp enough to knock you clean out. The kind of stillness that comes when your body can’t fight the pull anymore.
And I can’t do a goddamn thing about it.
The rage burns through me like acid, eating away at what’s left of my sanity.
My mate—my mate—is lying unconscious on the other side of this fucking wall, and I’m chained here like a useless piece of shit, listening to her labored breathing and going out of my mind.
I should be holding her. Should be cleaning her wounds, checking her pulse, making sure she’s warm and safe and breathing. Instead, I’m trapped in this concrete box, reduced to pressing my ear to stone just to catch the faint whisper of air from her lungs.
She needs me and I can’t reach her.
The thought is a knife twisting in my chest. Three years of torture, three years of wanting to die, and none of it comes close to this agony. This helpless fury at being so close to her but unable to offer even the smallest comfort.
I press my palm flat against the wall, imagining I can somehow transfer strength through the stone. Willing her to feel that she’s not alone, that someone is here, someone cares, someone would tear this entire place apart with his bare hands if it meant keeping her safe.
So I keep working. She deserves more than the press of a finger to comfort her after her beating.
And gods know, so do I.
The stone wall between us has stood for decades, maybe centuries. It wasn’t meant to be broken by bare hands. But I’ve been working this same spot every time they rotate me back to this cell. This is my third time here, and each rotation I’ve managed to widen the hole just a little more.
Before, carving at the stone was just something to do—an act of defiance against the nothing.
Something to focus on instead of losing my mind to silence and silver.
I knew I’d never get out. Knew even if I broke through, it would just mean trading one cage for another.
One cell for the next. Still trapped. Still alone.
But now?
My fingers are bloody, nails torn down to the quick, but I don’t stop. If anything, I work faster. Because now she’s here.
Now I want in.
I want to be in her cell. The hole isn’t a mindless rebellion anymore. I carve because I need to reach her. She’s my escape.
Lithia
Her breathing shifts—a sucked-in breath as if she’s in pain.
She’s waking.
The edges of the hole are jagged, slicing into my palms as I pry at the weakest points. I don’t care. Pain is meaningless compared to the need to reach her.
“Lithia? Are you awake?”
No response. Just another pained intake of breath.
A piece of stone breaks away, cutting my wrist deeply as it falls. I ignore it, reaching through the now-larger opening. It’s still not big enough for more than my hand, but it’s something.
I should have warned Lithia about the fear-seer and what would happen when those pale eyes looked into hers. But I didn’t think they’d bring Prudence so soon. They usually start with physical pain, wait until the prisoner is weak before hitting them with the psychological torture.
Lithia’s either very valuable or very dangerous. Or maybe she’s both.
I curse under my breath, redoubling my efforts. The silver in my system makes my wolf weak, my strength a fraction of what it should be. But desperation fuels me now, fueling whatever strength I have remaining.
Lithia.
I break through, pulling stone from the hole and clearing the dusty rubble as best I can. I hide it as I’ve always done in the waste bucket. The woman who comes to swap them out twice a day never speaks of it, and I doubt the guards are clawing through our shit to check.
With the hole clear, I wiggle down, pressing close to the wall as I work my arm into the hole. I can fit my arm through past the elbow now, if I ignore the scratch and scrape of the sharp rock.
“Lithia?”
No response. Her breathing doesn’t change.
I push my arm through the opening as far as it will go, feeling blindly for her in the darkness. My fingertips brush against fabric—her shirt—then find her shoulder.
At the contact, she jolts awake with a sharp intake of breath, pulling away from the wall.
“It’s just me,” I say quickly. “It’s Kier. You’re safe.”
There’s a pause, then I hear her shift closer to the wall. “Kier?”
“How are you feeling?”
She moves, and I hear a pained hiss. “Perfect. Like I could run five miles without breaking a sweat.”
I smile. There she is.
“Bob’s got steel-toed boots,” I tell her. “Compensating for other inadequacies, I’m sure.”
She snorts then groans. “How long was I out?”
“Six hours. Maybe seven.” I flex my fingers, trying to ease the ache from hours of stone-breaking. “You had me worried.”
“Don’t be. I’m hard to break.”
Of that I have no doubt.
Dawn approaches—or what passes for dawn in this windowless hellhole. I can tell by the subtle shift in the facility’s sounds, the changing of guards, the distant clang of metal trays being prepared for morning meals, the soft shuffling of the cleaning crews beginning their rounds.
Three years of captivity have attuned me to the rhythms of this place, such as they are. They’re the only way to mark time when darkness is constant. We won’t have long before we’re interrupted once more.
“I should have warned you about Prudence. I’m sorry.”
“Even if you had time—and you didn’t—would it have changed anything?” Lithia asks. “Maybe I’d have broken faster if I’d known what was coming.”
“Maybe,” I admit. “But I still should have told you.”
She reaches out, her fingers finding mine through the hole. Her touch is electric, shimmering up my arm.
Mate.
“Tell me everything I need to know.”
I thread our fingers together, wincing slightly as her fingertips brush over the raw wounds.
“Kier,” she says sharply, her voice cutting through the darkness. “You’re bleeding.”
I can feel her fingers exploring gently, tracing the torn skin on my knuckles, the deeper gashes on my wrist. My hands are still wet and sticky with fresh blood from my work on the wall.
“How badly are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing,” I try to dismiss, but she’s not having it.
“Bullshit. I can smell the blood, Kier. Your hands are torn apart.” Her grip tightens on my fingers, careful of the wounds. “Tell me.” The worry in her voice—for me, when she’s the one who was just tortured—makes my chest tight.
“Just some scrapes from working on the wall,” I admit. “I’m making the hole bigger.”
“You’ve been clawing at stone with your bare hands?”
I don’t answer.
She sighs heavily. “Fine. Tell me about Prudence.”
“She’s a fear-seer. Like all seers, it’s a rare gift. Unlike others who might see the future or the past, she can see what terrifies someone and project it as visions that feel completely real.”
Lithia’s fingers flinched in mine. “Yeah. It definitely felt real to me.”
I trace my thumb along her knuckles. “She’s not evil. She’s as much a prisoner as we are. They use her daughter as leverage.”
Lithia’s grip tightens. “They have her child?”
“Yes. They keep her deep in the mine somewhere. She’s alive but sick. They tell Prudence that cooperation will earn her daughter better medical care. She does what she has to, to keep her daughter alive.”
“Bastards.” The venom in her voice could strip paint. “How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been in her mind.”
“What?”
“Not intentionally.” I shift position, uncomfortable with the admission. “One day they brought Prudence to my cell, and when she touched me to show me my fears, something… broke open. In both of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“The barriers between our minds. I wasn’t seeing my own nightmares—I was seeing hers. Her memories. Her pain.” The memory still makes me sick. “I saw her daughter, Meg. Saw the moment they told Prudence that Meg was sick and needed treatment. Saw how they used that love to turn her into a weapon.”
“Are you a seer as well?”
“Not that I know of.” I turn her hand over, tracing the lines of her palm. “But the mind does strange things when it’s pushed past its breaking point.”
“Has it happened again?”
“A few times. Brief flashes when she’s working on someone nearby. I feel her guilt, her self-hatred. That’s how I know she means it when she apologizes. The pain in her mind when she hurts people—it’s almost worse than what she shows them.”
Lithia processes this. “Could I do it too?”
“Maybe. If you’re desperate enough.” I press my palm to hers, relishing the heat. “I don’t recommend trying. It nearly shattered what was left of my sanity.”
“How did you do it?”
I’m silent as I try to find the words to explain.
“I guess the best description would be that I didn’t fight the connection.
It was my fifth session in three days and I just…
gave up. When it started, I could see it all playing out before me, every sickened second.
But instead of participating in the scene, it was like I was floating above it.
As it continued, I noticed a weird pull from one side of the vision.
When I followed it back to its source, that’s when I found myself in Prudence’s mind. ”
I swallow, remembering her thoughts. “To do what she does isn’t just about unlocking our fears–it requires her to experience her own. There’s a cost to everything.”
Lithia’s grip tightens on my hand. “Do you think I could break through?”
“If you don’t, you’ll be forced to endure whatever hell she shows you, just like everyone else.”
I hear Lithia inhale sharply. “Does it get easier?”
“Never. Each time is worse than the last.”
“How much worse?”