Page 11 of Hellfire to Come
“Must be exhausting,” Frederic whispered, his voice threaded with mock sympathy, “pretending defiance will save anyone.” He crouched beside me, long blonde hair falling over his shoulder and hiding half of his face. “We both know how this ends, don’t we?”
I didn’t answer. I focused on keeping my breathing shaky, my eyes dull, like I was barely there. Let him think I was broken. Maybe he will go away.
He sighed theatrically. “I have an offer.” His voice lowered conspiratorially. “You help us…genuinely help us…and you’ll see your little band of misfits again. Safe. Unharmed.”
Slowly, deliberately, I lifted my gaze to meet his. “And in return?” My voice was fragile, vulnerable, just as he wanted. My friend would be proud if she saw my acting skills.
The idiot crouched next to me bought my act.
Frederic smiled sharply, the beauty of his features distorted by cruelty. “You let us harness what’s inside you. Accept your true potential and do our bidding. Imagine the power you’d hold. You’d be revered, feared, unstoppable.” He leaned incloser, his words baiting me like poison-coated apple. “Brooklyn would live, Dominic too. All you have to do is surrender yourself fully to us. Become something greater.”
A beat of silence passed. I let my eyes shimmer with just enough unshed tears. Let him think he’d won something. I could feel him gloating and the excitement bubbling, buzzing under his skin.
Then I smiled. Small. Hollow.
“I’m already something greater,” I whispered.
His expression flickered.
I leaned forward, slow, every part of me humming like a drawn bowstring. “And if you so much as touch one hair on Brooklyn’s head again,” I said, voice sharpening like frost across steel, “you won’t live long enough to beg for death.”
Frederic’s eyes widened, but only for a second. Then he laughed. Light, mocking. But he stepped back. Just one step. But I saw it.
He was afraid.
From me.
The absurdity of it almost made me scream-laugh in his face.
“Such spirit,” he said, standing straight again. “You’ll learn soon enough the only room for you in our world is on your knees. You’ll learn your place. We all do.”
He turned to leave, but paused at the door.
“Oh,” he added without looking at me, “when you start glowing again, try not to scream too loud. We have new guests in the lower levels who are dying to meet you. Don’t want to disturb their rest.”
And then he was gone.
The door shut softly behind him, plunging the room back into its oppressive quiet.
He thought he knew me. Thought he could control me. But he didn’t see the truth.
I would figure out what terrified him about me, then I would use it. I had every intention of escaping before Brooklyn risked her life to save mine.
They thought they almost broke me, but I was just getting started.
Chapter Six
BROOKLYN
Something was wrong.
Not the low, constant hum of anxiety I’d learned to live with since Alice was taken.
No. This was different.
Sharper.
Colder.
