“But how do you know until you try?”

The look he pins me with is as dark and desperate as I feel. “How do you know I haven’t already tried? Every night, I’ve tried to take one of their places myself, to keep one of them out. It doesn’t work, Grace. For whatever reason, it only works for you.”

By the sixth day, we’re all shells of our former selves. Flint stopped eating and drinking yesterday, too. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t move, and when Hex time came around, Remy had to make an excuse to the guards because there was no way we were getting Flint off his bed. He’s spent nearly every hour of the last twenty-four sitting on his bed, arms wrapped around his knees as he rocks and rocks and rocks.

I try to talk to him, to comfort him or make him laugh, but every time I come near him, he looks like I’ve hit him. I don’t know what he’s going through in the Chamber, but whatever it is is killing him. And I can’t stand it.

Hudson is almost as terrible now, the black circles under his eyes so bad that he looks like he’s been hit…repeatedly. He doesn’t run from me, but he doesn’t talk to me much, either. Whenever I get too close, he stiffens up, and whenever I try to dig into what went on in the Chamber the night before, he tells me not to worry about it. That he’s got it. That he deserves what’s coming his way but that it will take more than this to bring down his vampire ass.

I wish I could be so sure.

I know this won’t kill them—Flint and Hudson are way too physically strong to be felled by a week of barely eating. But mentally and emotionally are a whole different ball game, and I don’t know how much more they can take.

Even Calder, who’s been through this before, looks ready to break. She’s spent most of the day in the shadows, and every time Remy and I make a noise, she cowers and begs us not to hurt her. Her normally sparkling brown eyes are dull and lifeless, and she hasn’t even bothered to brush her hair. For a girl who is normally an obsessive self-groomer, the change is startling. And disturbing.

As night descends and the lights on the wall get closer and closer to go time, tension ratchets up inside our cell.

Flint has finally moved and is now lying on his stomach, head buried under his pillow and entire body stiff.

Calder is still in the shadows, but she’s talking nonstop, her voice high and tight as the words come faster and faster.

And Hudson… Hudson spends most of the evening in the shower, and I don’t know if that’s because he wants to scream without us hearing him or if he’s just trying to make himself feel clean.

By the time the last light flickers off, I can barely breathe, barely think. All I can do is close my eyes and pray as we spin round and round and round.

125

At the End of

My String

As soon as we stop, I know we’re fucked. The lights turn red and once again, Hudson, Flint, and Calder collapse.

I think I scream—I can’t be sure because the horror inside me is all-consuming now, panic lighting me up in all the wrong ways. My stomach is twisting, my heart feels like it’s going to explode, and all I can think is not again. Not again, not again, not again.

“It’s the last time,” Remy says, but he sounds as exhausted and defeated as I feel. “They can get through it.”

“They shouldn’t have to,” I snap back at him, and for the first time I realize I’m on my knees, even though I have no recollection of how I got here.

I try to push myself up, but my legs are shaking so badly, they can barely hold me. I can’t do this. I can’t watch them go through this again. I can’t.

A scream echoes through the chamber, and I’m sure that it’s mine, except it’s not. It’s Calder, who’s screaming and begging whatever is happening in her head to, “Stop. Please, God. Just stop.”

Flint is crying, tears running down his face, as he sobs like his heart is breaking.

And Hudson—Hudson is shaking so badly that his teeth are chattering, and he keeps banging his head against the wall he collapsed next to.

“We need to get them into their beds before they hurt themselves,” I say, and Remy nods.

“They’ll be okay,” he tells me for what feels like the millionth time.

But as he carries them to their beds and I pull the covers over them, he doesn’t seem so sure. All three of them look like they’re full-on being tortured and standing here powerless while it happens may be the worst experience of my life.

When Hudson starts to cry, too, I can’t take it anymore. I whirl on Remy and beg, “Help him. Please, you have to help him.”

Remy shakes his head, but for the first time since we’ve gotten here, he looks helpless…and as crushed as I am. “I can’t, Grace. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Fuck how it works! He can’t take any more!”

But Remy is adamant. “He’s going to have to. They all are, because they have to find their own ways out.”

“But what if they can’t?” I point to Hudson, who is curled into an even tighter ball than the others…and is still shaking so badly that he’s making the metal frame of his bed bang against the wall. “What if he can’t get beyond whatever’s in his mind?”

Remy doesn’t answer, simply goes to his own bed and pulls a sketchbook out of the drawer under his bed.

“Remy?” I prompt, and when he still doesn’t say anything, I push again. “What do you think we should—”

“I don’t know!” he explodes. “I have no fucking idea what happens now. I’ve never even heard of anyone getting the Chamber six days in a row. It just doesn’t happen.”

“Doesn’t that make you wonder why it’s happening now?” I ask.

“They must have done something pretty awful and the prison is demanding atonement,” he answers. “How else does it assure people have made up for what they’ve done?”

“This isn’t atonement!” I shout at him. “This is revenge, pure and simple.”

“No.” His voice is adamant. “The prison doesn’t feel. It can’t want vengeance.”

“Maybe not. But the people who built it can. And so can the people who fill it with prisoners.” I turn back to look at Hudson and Flint. “Do you know who they are?”

“A vamp and a dragon,” he says with a shrug.

“Not just any vamp or any dragon,” I remind him. “That’s the crown vampire prince over there, and that is the crown dragon prince. Their parents sit on the Circle.”

Remy knows who they are, of course—we talked about it before—but I can see a dawning look as who they are enters his expression. “What are they doing here?”

“They tried to change things, tried to fight an unjust system where power skews toward the most brutal and the most ambitious. They took on the vampire king, and the establishment absolutely fucked them.”

“Yeah, it did.” His drawl is out in full force.

“Now you see why I don’t think us getting the Chamber every night is an accident?”

“I don’t know.” He tosses his sketchbook on the bed, giving up any pretense of being unaffected. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I know this prison inside and out. And I had no idea it was even possible to control the Chamber spin.” He looks over to where Calder is curled around her blanket, whimpering. “It’s not okay to do this to people.”

“None of this is okay,” I tell him. “It’s barbaric and a total abuse of power. It has to stop. Not just the repeated nights in a row but the whole practice altogether. No one should have to go through this simply to leave a prison, especially if they don’t even belong in it to begin with.”

Remy nods his agreement. “But I still can’t help them. I would if I could, Grace, but there’s literally nothing I can do. If there was, I’d be doing it already.”

It’s not the answer I want to hear, but looking at him now—seeing the outrage on his face—makes me believe him in a way I didn’t before. There really is nothing he can do to save them.

“I don’t think they—” I break off as Hudson screams.

Whatever grip I have on my emotions shatters. And that’s it. That’s just it. I can’t do this for one second longer. I can’t sit here and watch him suffer.

Rage rips through me, and with it comes an idea. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot I’ve got. So I reach deep inside myself and start looking for one string in particular—the shining blue one that I’ve tried so hard to ignore—that’s blazing as brightly as ever. I grab it and close my eyes before squeezing as hard as I can.

126

I Love You to Death

(Whether I Want

To or Not)

When I open my eyes, I’m back at Katmere—in Hudson’s room. I can see the big red-and-black bed that I’ve had so many fantasies about, can feel the warmth of the spring sunshine filtering through his windows. And I can hear Lewis Capaldi’s “Grace” coming through the speakers.

But those are the only things that feel familiar. Everything else is wrong.