Page 12 of Twisted Kings

The sound of squeaking woke me from a deep, drugged sleep. When I peeled my eyes open, something scuttled across thefloor. Because it was dark, I had no idea what else shared this cell with me, but it couldn’t have been human.

A horrible scream burst free as I sat rocking on the floor, hugging myself like it might help to keep the monsters away.

It didn’t.

The monsters always came.

I felt a tickle on my ankle. A light brush of fur. I kicked out hard, and the creature squeaked with outrage. The rational side of my brain told me there was nothing in these cells that could hurt me. Not really. But my child’s brain didn’t operate on logic.

Just as the dark terrified me, rodents also triggered a visceral, completely irrational fear.

My eyes slammed shut, and I rocked silently, wishing I’d worn pants instead of a dress today. Pants would have protected my legs from the creatures. And also the cold.

The sound of my labored breathing filled the small room until I heard a faint cough.

“Stay calm,” a low male voice advised. “The rats are your friends.” A low chuckle filtered through the bars, and then silence.

The knowledge I wasn’t alone down here broke through my panic. Who was the man and why had Dad locked him up?

This was the first time I’d heard another soul. Usually, it was me and my imagination for company until Dad relented and sent Torrance to fetch me.

“Who are you?” I asked. For ages, the man didn’t reply, and I began to wonder if maybe my imagination had conjured him. Then I heard a wet, rattly cough.

“Nobody, princess.”

Hmm. I was no princess. Even if I liked to pretend sometimes when Mrs. Gia read stupid stories to Verity at bedtime.

A princess always ended up with a handsome prince, who rescued her from the tower and took her away to some magical place where they lived happily ever after. It was dumb. I might still be a kid, but even I knew that wasn’t how the real world worked.

There were no handsome princes in my world.

Only monsters.

“I’m not a princess,” I muttered, but the man didn’t reply.

What happened to that man? When Torrance threw me in a cell a few weeks later, I’d yelled and cried, but nobody spoke. Somehow, the silence had been even more terrifying. In my head, I’d pictured a rotting corpse, slowing being eaten away by the few rats that lingered down here.

By rights, there shouldn’t have been any creatures alive in this fetid place. There was nothing for them to eat other than each other. The fact there were rats meant there was a food source, and I didn’t like to think about that too hard.

There were no rats today. Or tonight. It was hard to say what it was with no windows. For all I knew, I’d been here for days. My mouth felt like carpet. Old, rank carpet covered in dust.

Gross.

I cracked open a seal on a bottle and sipped some water. It helped. My head still pounded, probably from whatever sedative Torrance had given me, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

All that remained was to wait for him or my father to come and fetch me. If what Torrance had said was true, that Dad planned to marry me off to Konstantin Marku, head of the Romanian mafia, he wouldn’t want me down here too long.

Marku would expect a bride in good physical health, with no visible injuries, and definitely not half-dead from malnutrition.

I tried not to think about Verity. Mrs. Gia had told me she was fine, but I wasn’t convinced that was the truth. Dad wouldhave no use for Mrs. Gia soon. Once he sent us to Marku, he’d probably kill her.

Did she know this? I hoped not. Not knowing was infinitely better than being aware of the noose around your neck.

Had the guys worked out I was gone? They probably assumed I’d left of my own volition. It would have been impossible to know who was where after the stampede of students from the hall. Add in the sex tape and I doubted any of them gave a fuck about what happened to me.

It was better if they forgot about me. They weren’t my princes. The only person who could save me and Verity was me.

Since I had nothing better to do while stuck down here in the dark, I sat and thought about how I was going to rescue myself and my sister.

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