Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
sinner
I thought I’d known fear before.
I thought I’d felt the worst of it when my father laid his hands on Margaret.
But this was a new low. Even for me.
I’d walked off that ship in a daze. What the fuck was I doing? I let her walk right into the enemy’s hands. Let Director play around with her like she was nothing more than a shiny fucking toy.
My Athena. Mine.
And where the fuck was she now? Where had Director taken her?
I didn’t have a plan. Just a pit in my chest and a dull ache that told me Athena wasn’t here.
My claimed. Wasn’t. Here.
This could not be happening. I couldn’t lose her. Not when we were so fucking close, not after we’d been through so much.
Director wouldn’t kill her, would she? She valued Athena. Needed her.
I paced through the darkness. I was too restless to just lie in bed and wait for her. But I had no idea where she was.
So all I could do was move.
The night air helped. It reminded me that a world existed outside this place. We weren’t trapped in that damn dungeon anymore. There was a chance we could get out of here. Wasn’t there?
My chest tightened at the thought. In the weeks we’d been here, we hadn’t gotten any closer to escaping. We hadn’t tried to trick the shields, and we hadn’t tried to sneak out through the woods.
Fuck. Why hadn’t we?
Probably because we were so focused on surviving that escaping hadn’t exactly been on the agenda.
I passed the bathhouse and stormed toward the sea, where the giant ship had left an indent in the sand.
The beach was empty. Every fucking place was empty. There was no sign of her—no sassy smile, no sleek hair whipping in the wind.
My feet ached, but I kept moving. I circled the field we’d trained in dozens of times. I walked for hours. So long that the night sky was beginning to lighten. A bad fucking sign.
Athena had been with Director all. Fucking. Night.
I circled that field one more time. When our bunkhouse came back into view, I froze.
I couldn’t fucking go back there without her.
Kneeling, I grasped the tall, stiff grass beneath me. I wanted to feel her. I wanted these damn shields gone so I could sense her.
I clutched the dirt. Let it slip up my fingernails, let the sting distract me from my numbing mind.
Athena. Fuck. Where are you?
That was the last thought I had before there was a sharp pinch in my neck and darkness took over.
I knew the second I opened my eyes that Athena wasn’t here. The shields were gone—the force suppressing my phantoms had lifted.
Which meant the connection I had to her crashed back to me in full force.
But so did the emptiness that told me she was nowhere near.
My body was drenched in sweat, heat radiating from me. I blinked my eyes open and rubbed that spot on my neck.
That was it then. They’d drugged us and dropped our bodies into these damn war games before we had a chance to fight back.
The concrete cityscape around us was unfamiliar and disorienting. I peeled my body off the smoldering concrete and turned in a slow circle, checking my surroundings.
I was alone.
That was a fucking relief.
I didn’t have the energy to fight. All I fucking cared about was her.
The war games meant nothing to me. I had no interest in the dog and pony show the Ministry had thrown me into.
I needed her. Before I lost my fucking mind.
I was still dressed in my suit from the Bellum Partium, but an unfamiliar weight made my right pocket sag.
I slipped my hand inside and found the warmed steel of a knife.
And a crumpled piece of paper.
I pulled it out, unfolded it, and squinted, my eyes not quite adjusted to the bright light of the sun.
Not that it fucking mattered. I couldn’t read the gibberish scrawled across that paper, anyway.
I shoved it back into my pocket, flipped the knife in my hand, and started down the vacant street.
With nothing but Athena on my fucking mind.