Page 187 of Cherish

103

Bad to the

Crone

I glance back at Heather and Remy—the only other people in the cell who aren’t locked in some hell of their own mind’s making—and realize that my worst fear is correct.

The three of us are the only ones in this cell who aren’t exclusively paranormal.

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” I repeat, fear replacing every other thought in my head as I race toward the cell bars that now separate the Crone from the rest of us. “You can’t do this to them!” I yell, pounding on the bars in an effort to get to her. “You can’t send them to the Chamber tonight! They didn’t do anything! They aren’t—”

“Tonight?” she interrupts with a cruel laugh. “There you go again, Grace. Always thinking small. I’m not putting them in the Chamber just tonight. I’m extending the Unbreakable Curse to cover the entire prison. They’ll be in the Chamberforever.”

“No!” I shout again as Jaxon starts to plead with some monster in his mind. “You can’t do this to them. You can’t leave them like this. I’ll do anything—”

“There’s nothing I want fromyou,” she hisses, her strange blue eyes glowing with an unholy light as she takes a step away from the cell—and from me. “I’d wish you good luck, Grace, but I think we both know that your luck has finally run out.”

And then she turns to go.

Panic slams through me as Macy starts to scream. No, no, no, no, no! The word is a mantra in my head, a pounding in my blood. This can’t be happening to them. It just can’t.

Fear swamps me, pulling me under until I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t evenbewithout wanting to jump out of my skin. I scratch at my face, claw at my neck, pound on my chest in an effort to make the panic stop. But my heart is beating too hard, my breath is coming too fast, and my entire body feels like it’s being dipped in acid.

I can’t let this happen.

I can’t let this happen.

I can’t let this happen.

No, no, no, no, no!

But it is happening. It is, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing I can do to keep them from suffering over and over and over again. Eternally.

No. Please, please, please, no. Anything but this.

The panic grows. It clouds my brain, bottoms out my stomach, makes my heart feel like it’s going to explode once and for all.

“Grace!” Heather’s voice, loud and sharp, arrows through the haziness surrounding me. “Grace! Stop. We’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”

Her words don’t help. Neither does the firm way she grabs my shoulders like she wants to shake the anxiety out of me. But she does break through the panic and the horror just enough that I can think for a second.

And it turns out that second is all I need. I force myself to breathe, force myself to count backward from twenty. Force myself to press my hand against the metal bars just so I can feel the cold against my skin.

I concentrate on its coolness and on the metallic taste of blood in my mouth from where I bit my lip and on the soothing sound of Remy’s voice as he calls me “cher.” And I breathe.

Inhale. One, two, three, four, five. Exhale.

Inhale. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Exhale.

It doesn’t bring me back completely—fear is still a wild thing within me—but it calms me down enough that I can think. And, more, I can finally remember.

“Remy,” I tell him in a voice as sharp and rusty as a bucket of old nails. “What is it you told me once, when you wanted me to get my tattoo?” I hold my arm up to display Vikram’s tattoo, which Remy had insisted I get in prison the first time.

“I told you a lot of things,” he answers, sounding wary.

“You did,” I agree, trying to block out the sound of Eden gasping for air as I turn back to him. “But you also told me you didn’t know who your father was, but your mom would tell you a bedtime story that he gave you enough power tolevelthis prison. Do you remember that?”

“I do,” he answers, both his tone and his gaze suddenly resolute.

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