Chapter 29
When I finally awoke, my head was throbbing.
I sat up and pressed my hands against my closed eyes.
Once I lowered them, I saw iron bars all around the prison cell.
I’d been caged again, and this time, I didn’t have any lockpicking tools hidden up my sleeve.
Nor did I have my weapons or the tiny vial of pixie blood I’d intended to give to Ambrose.
The tiny cell suddenly seemed even smaller. The walls were closing in and I was back in that trunk where the space around me was shrinking, shrinking, gone. There wasn’t enough air to breathe. I choked and wrapped my arms around myself.
“I’m sorry, Jillian.”
My head spun around. Lochlan was sitting on a bench right outside the cell bars.
“You—” I couldn’t think of an oath bad enough to describe him. “I trusted you. I kissed you!”
“I had to, Jillian. You don’t understand.”
“I understand plenty.” Tears filled my eyes. Why had I ever thought he cared about me?
“No, you don’t. I kept you alive.”
“I’d rather be dead than in a cage,” I spat. “You lied to me! You were so insistent that I tell you the truth, but you didn’t tell me anything.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“You were part of the Nightsworn this whole time? All the time I knew you?”
“Yes. But I never lied. You just never asked.” His hair still hung into his eyes, but this time, I didn’t find it attractive. He had been hiding his true identity from me all along. “I really do care about you.”
“No, you don’t. You made me think you cared about me, then you turned me in for the money. You and Elvin really aren’t different after all.”
He winced. “Jillian,” he began in a placating tone. “I wasn’t planning to take the money. I just needed to tell them that. Just listen.”
“No. I’m done listening to you. Get out.”
“Jillian…”
“Get out!”
He left. Heat built up behind my eyes but I didn’t let the tears fall. I didn’t want to give Lochlan the satisfaction of knowing that I had cried over him.
For three full days, I paced my cell like a wild animal, fighting off the flashbacks to when I was in that trunk as a child.
I was going to go insane here, I was sure of it.
I’d been placed in solitary confinement, so I wasn’t able to see anyone besides the occasional guard who silently delivered my meals.
Anytime my legs grew numb from pacing, I would slump to the floor, my thoughts racing.
Before my arrest, Lochlan had managed to convince me that he genuinely cared about me.
All the evidence had pointed that way. He had protected me during that fight in the street.
He had run into a burning building to save me.
He’d tended to me when I was injured and hadn’t revealed my secret to Roderick or Peter.
Big deal. So he didn’t tell two people, and yet the secret still managed to leak out to everyone else in the entire country.
I cringed as I thought about the time I’d gotten all dressed up and tried to look pretty for him. He had probably been laughing to himself that he’d reduced a dangerous bounty hunter to a pathetic, lovesick puppy.
I wanted so badly to hate him. I wanted so much to despise Lochlan and everything he’d done to hoodwink me, but even when I tried to wish ill on him, my heart kept refusing.
Part of me hoped that Lochlan would come back to apologize, to grovel for my forgiveness and give me a thoroughly satisfactory explanation for his behavior, even though the rest of me hated that he’d lied to me for so long.
Did I even know who Lochlan was, really?
Roderick’s son, an undercover Nightsworn, my confidant…
he wore too many hats for me to know what was real and what was fake.
My feelings were all so muddled up and confusing that I wished I could carve them out and cast them aside, never to be examined again.
Being on my own might have gotten lonely at times, but at least it was manageable.
The time I’d spent with Lochlan when I thought he loved me had felt like warm rays of sunshine after a lifetime of cloudy gray.
But now, the lows were lower than before.
I simply felt hollowed out and empty in his absence.
The rejection and betrayal were a thousand times worse than my former loneliness had ever been.
On the fourth day, there came an unfamiliar rattling noise and Lochlan appeared with a ring of keys.
I glared at him, wishing my gaze would set him on fire.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Lochlan said. “I really do care.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I have someone I want you to meet,” Lochlan pressed. He fumbled with the keys, then paused. “If I let you out, will you try to fight?”
“No.”
“You won’t run? You’ll stay put?”
“Yes.”
He sighed and put his hand up above the cell door. “You’re lying again.”
“Why ask me questions if you already know the answers?”
“Jillian, I’m trying to help you. Please let me help.”
“I’ve had enough of your help. Your help landed me in this jail cell. What do you want?”
“Just to talk. That’s it.”
I continued to glare.
“Elvin reported to the Nightsworn—”
“So he’s undercover too?” I interrupted.
Lochlan took a deep breath and looked both ways for guards, but no one else was in sight. Nevertheless, he still lowered his voice. “Yes. He reported that the Employer put a bounty out for you as Gil. I knew that if the other hunters got to you first, they might hurt you or even kill you.”
“When did you find out about this supposed bounty?”
“The night before the Syndicate was raided. I had the Nightsworn take Ambrose before he could tell anyone else, and I had Elvin make sure you weren’t inside the Syndicate before they came. I didn’t want you to go back to the Syndicate or the cottage, so I took you to the cabin to keep you safe.”
I let out a snort so ferocious that I was surprised snot didn’t fly out of my nostrils. “You left while I was sleeping to inform them you were preparing to turn me in, then made me think you just went to get me breakfast.”
Lochlan winced again. “I did. But it was for a good reason.”
I rolled my eyes so hard that it actually hurt.
“I had to give the Nightsworn time to put up the notices.”
“Heaven forbid you actually tell me the truth and we work out a plan together.”
“If I promise I can explain everything, will you come with me?”
“No.”
“How about if I say you can punch me after we talk, then will you agree?”
I almost smiled. “You do know how to tempt a girl, don’t you? But I’m still not convinced.”
Lochlan took a deep breath. “I have connections that can get you out of prison for good and entirely erase you from the system. You’d be given a fresh start.”
That one got my attention. “And all I have to do is listen?”
He nodded.
“Fine. Get me out.”
Lochlan slowly inserted the key into the lock and rotated it. “Don’t fight me, okay?” He carefully opened the cell door. “No fighting,” he reminded me once more, holding his hands out in a defensive position.
I walked out, eyes darting to the end of the passage, where armed guards were undoubtedly posted around the corner.
“Don’t run, either,” Lochlan cautioned. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.” He reached for my arm, but I jerked away.
“Don’t touch me.”
He pulled back. “Walk with me.”
“You walk in front,” I ordered. “I won’t let you backstab me again.”
“I won’t,” he said, but placidly began walking toward the end of the hall, and I followed him past the guards and out into the hallway beyond the jail.
“Don’t run,” he repeated, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was still there. “You wouldn’t make it out, and I don’t know if I can pull enough strings to get you out again.”
“And where are you taking me?”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“Along with the rest of the Nightsworn? Or will it be just you?”
There was a long pause. “There’s another member of the Nightsworn as well. Our leader.”
I let out a snort. “I knew it.”
“We aren’t bad people,” Lochlan assured me. “I know you’ve had bad experiences with us in the past, but we’re just trying to keep everyone safe from criminals.”
“I am a criminal.”
Lochlan rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh yeah.” We turned down a corridor and I threw a longing eye at the side door where two guards were posted, barring the tantalizing freedom I could see through the window.
Lochlan stepped to the side, blocking the exterior courtyard from view.
“We can help you. But we need your cooperation first. Just answer our questions, and we can work out a deal.”
“Fine.” I would say whatever I had to if it meant I’d be freed.
Lochlan turned one final corner and reached for the handle of a heavy wooden door. “Here we are.”
The room beyond was not at all what I expected.
I’d imagined shadows and torches with some dramatic, cloaked figure emerging from the darkness, dripping with weapons.
Instead, the chamber was warmly lit, with a long table set near the hearth and two chairs already drawn out.
A teapot steamed gently beside a plate of bread and soft cheese.
And standing by the fire was—
I stopped short.
It was a woman, and I knew her face, though I’d only seen it once before, at the wedding when she was talking to Lochlan.
But she looked familiar even past my recollection of her at the wedding.
That was the most confusing bit of all. I always remembered faces.
Had I seen her when I was much younger and her face had changed with age?
I couldn’t imagine that was the case but couldn’t think of what else it could be.
I stared, unabashed, trying to bully my brain into placing her.
She wasn’t young but not particularly old either.
Her dark hair had silver threaded through it and was pinned neatly at the nape of her neck.
Her posture was straight, and her clothes reminded me of what a noblewoman would wear, not some hardened warrior who was part of the Nightsworn.