Page 86 of Moonlit Temptation

No. For the first time all night I felt my heart kick-start in my chest, revving with panic as I stumbled toward the furniture.

My hand ran over the top of the sleek wood, as if it would find what my eyes couldn’t see, only to confirm the key I had been given this morning wasn’t there.

The very key I needed if I wanted to find a way to get out of this godforsaken society.

Trying to suppress my panic, I tried to recall if I put it someplace else.

After all, it wasn’t like me to just leave something so vital out in the open. I had a safe for all my secrets for a reason. But the pressing weight of the Leader’s threat had distracted me enough that I forgot to lock it away.

Now it was gone. And I knew exactly who took it.

“Fuck!” My fingers pushed through the familiar path of my hair, pulling at the strands with a painful grip. “This can’t be happening.”

I really hoped I was wrong and that the very person who I just made despise me didn’t steal the key to my freedom right from under me.

I spun around to check another place in hopes I maybe misremembered, when something on the ground caught my eye.

A necklace.

Fuck, my chest started to deflate with relief until I noticed the chain was metal, not a cord. And the charms were dainty, not a skeleton key.

The necklace on my floor wasn’t mine, but Mady’s.

My knees felt shaky, and I reached out to grab my dresser for stability.

She took the key.

Mady took the fucking key.

Bad. This shit was bad.

Worse than bad.

This was a fucking nightmare.

Of course Mady took the key. She just couldn’t keep her hands to herself. She probably took it in hopes it would rile me up. That it would somehow inflict some kind of hurt to me, like I did to her.

God, she had no fucking idea.

Now Mady was entangled in something I couldn’t get her out of. The very people I just destroyed her to keep her safe from.

The necklace wasn’t a trinket, but a key to Icarus’s most guarded secrets.

It was an honor to receive the necklace. It meant that you had done enough in your tenure in the society to be considered to join the Ascended. I had been doing everything I could in the last eight years to get myself noticed, to earn a chance to join the most elite group.

It had been my plan since I found out that Icarus was responsible for Delvak Tech’s success. I wanted to get the key, and infiltrate the highest level.

It was there I’d figure out how to leave unscathed or tear the whole society down in the process.

And it finally happened. Before the Leader left my kitchen this morning he gave me the key, with the instructions to guard it for the next two years.

My last test.

And I didn’t even have it for twelve hours before it was stolen from me.

Goddamn it, Madelayne. I gritted my teeth. Everything was falling apart.

You don’t know what you just did, baby.

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