Chapter 31
I Love You
ELLIOT
“Mr. Cross.”
I’m getting sick of this room. I think the oddly sour scent is starting to cling to me.
“Mr. Cross?”
Iris probably won’t like it if I smell like old shoes all the time.
“Mr. Cross, are you listening to my words at all?”
No. I’m not.
I’m too busy replaying the hers. Over and over, they ring in my ears like a never-ending song, burying the world around me in static until she is all I can hear.
It’s all I heard as my hands were bound behind my back.
It’s all I heard as they led me back to my holding room.
And it’s all I hear now, even as the inquisitor sits before me, tapping his pen along the old wooden desk.
I love you.
I’ve only heard them once before. From Jeff, on my thirteenth birthday. And if I’m honest, I never expected to hear them again.
But I don’t remember it feeling like this. I don’t remember it feeling like anything at all.
But each time I replay the image of her soft lips muttering against mine, just quiet enough for me to catch, I feel lightheaded, and my vision starts to blur.
I didn’t say the words back.
I probably should have, but I don’t want to lie to her anymore. When I say them, I want them to be true. Right now, I’m about as close as I can get, but one day, I will, and when I do, there will be no doubt in her mind that what I say is true.
“Mr. Cross.”
The inquisitor’s voice is dull in my ears as I continue to listen to the melody playing at the back of my mind. He’s been talking for some time. I figured he would stop eventually, but he’s got a motor, it seems.
“You know, we have a bet here,” he says. “About how long it would take you to snap. I’m up six hundred drac because of you. Most folks bet you’d crack in a few more years, but I knew you wouldn’t make it. You’ve developed a taste for it, haven’t you?”
He fidgets with his tie as he speaks. The knot is too tight around his throat, bloating his smug face, and he pries at it, desperate to loosen it.
I’m familiar with the feeling.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Death,” the inquisitor states plainly. “You like it, don’t you?”
I shrug.
“I’ve grown indifferent to it,” I say.
“And are you indifferent to lifelong imprisonment?”
He asks the question as if it should scare me, but I’ve been in a cage my whole life.
“Oh, I thought that’s what this was,” I say, fingering the fucking collar around my neck.
The inquisitor rolls his eyes, and the rickety old chair creaks as he leans back, folding his arms.
“Mr. Cross, you may want to take this more seriously. You were witnessed docking Deacon Anderson Friday night at Beta at approximately 1:45 AM by at least fifty people.”
“He challenged me,” I remind him. “As his beta, I was well within my rights.”
“To dock him, yes. To maim him so mercilessly that he would succumb to those injuries forty-eight hours later, no.”
I sit up in my chair.
“Maim him? I barely touched him. He was still talking when I left.”
“Was talking and is talking, are two very different things.”
“I didn’t kill Deacon,” I say, fists clenching beneath the table.
“Just tell me what happened,” he says. “And we’ll see about commuting your sentence.”
He produces a series of photos, tapping at the image as he lays them face up in front of me.
“Was it an accident?” he asks. “Did you take your dampener off? With a curse like yours, I’m sure it’s easy to go overboard.”
I shake my head as I stare at the images of Deacon lying stiff in an infirmary bed, pale and covered in familiar black markings. The same ones I’d seen on Grey.
It occurs to me that I could confess here and now. If they’re going to pin Deacon on me without so much as a second thought, what’s one more body on the way out? I could absolve Iris in the process, and our new friend would have nothing to hang over her head anymore.
But there’s one thing keeping me from opening my mouth.
Who would feed her if I died?
“What are these markings?” I ask. “And what about the truth serum?”
“What truth serum?”
I shake my head.
“You mean to tell me that you’re all so dead set on proving me a monster that you didn’t run a potions panel on him? Maybe if you stop harassing me, I can just go do your job for you? How does that sound?”
The inquisitor quiets, and I can almost see the wheels in his brain turning as he thinks about reaching across the table to strike me. They must be rusty, though; it takes him a while to make up his mind.
I wish he would. I could use an excuse to rip his head off.
For a second, I think he might, but his plotting is interrupted as the metal door clangs, and someone knocks from the other side.
“Busy!” the inquisitor barks back.
In answer, our guest knocks again, and he groans as his chair scrapes across the concrete floor, and he rises from his seat.
“These idiots,” he mutters, opening the door just enough to shout at them through. “What don’t you underst—”
“Don’t speak.”
A low, accented voice says from the other side, and I grin as I watch Dred push past the frantic inquisitor. He is clawing at his throat, mouth moving, but no sound comes out as he tries and fails to counter Dred’s weave.
“Sit.”
Dred commands him, and the inquisitor obeys, dropping into the empty chair with a thud, still mouthing angry words and pointing at him with an unmatched fury.
“Yeah, mate.” Dred pats his shoulder. “We get it, settle down.”
The inquisitor quiets, and I rise to my feet just as Dame ducks under the low door with Kitty close on his heels.
“Can we speed this up?” he says, panting.
“Some of those guys back there are tougher than they look,” Kitty finishes, though she doesn’t look like she’s broken much of a sweat.
“The fuck are you guys doing?” I ask. “Do you have any idea the shit they’re going to put us through for this?”
“I cannot express how much I don’t give a fuck,” Dame says, holding out his phone.
It displays an ongoing call with Iris, currently on mute and ticking past minute nine. There’s a slight rustling coming from the other end, and everyone stills as we all focus in on the sound.
Faintly, almost imperceptible, if not for the blessing of supernatural hearing, Iris’s voice seeps through the speaker.
Her voice is clenched, controlled, and she’s speaking to someone.
A man whose words I can’t make out. But I don’t need to know what’s being said.
I recognize the strain in her throat and the slow cadence of her carefully selected words.
She’s afraid, and there’s only one person Iris is afraid of at the moment—our new friend.
Rage rips through me, sparking the wolf to rise to the surface, but the dampener keeps him at bay, and my head begins to pound from the effort of swallowing back my power.
“Where?” I growl.
“I don’t know,” Dame says. “I can’t catch her scent. I figured you could, since she’s tied to you.”
I shake my head.
“He’s masking it. That’s how he’s been sneaking around all this time. Whatever he’s using is better than mint and unicorn horn. I can’t trace a single thread. Dred, you can’t hear her?”
“Wherever she is, it’s too far. And I’m at my limit holding all these idiots.” He gestures at the inquisitor sitting content in his chair. “But I could kill ‘em and free up some space.”
Dred shrugs as the rest of us shake our heads at his suggestion.
“What about Elsie?” Kitty asks. “She can find her.”
“We don’t have time to hunt down Elsie!” I bark, starting to pace. “Fuck!”
“We don’t have to hunt her down,” Dame says, setting his phone on the table.
He lifts his shirt, revealing a large tattoo over his chest that was not there a few days ago, and Kitty and I frown as he rips a tear in his palm with his teeth and places his hand over the dark markings.
“Is that blood magic?” Kitty murmurs.
But nobody has time to consider the implications of that as Elsie materializes in the room, directly in front of Dame.
“Hi,” Dame says softly, thumbing her cheek.
“Hi,” Elsie answers, frowning. “What’re you—”
She turns, taking in the state of the room and the desperation on all our faces before her back straightens and she declares, “Tell me what you need me to do.”