“He’s my son, Finn.” She looks devastated. “I’ve given Cyrus everything he wants. Why would he do this?”

Because he can. Because you have given him everything he wants. The answers are right there on the tip of my tongue, but now’s not the time to say them. I’ve never been an I-told-you-so kind of person…and I’ve definitely never been a fan of kicking people when they’re down.

Besides, she already knows. It’s written all over her face. As is the determination to pay him back for this somehow, someway.

Of course, that could just be me projecting. God knows, I’ve never wanted to kick someone’s ass more in my entire life. Not a team of surrogates for him this time but his actual ass.

She waves a hand at Uncle Finn, telling him without words to lower the wall. And while I’m not so sure that she’s chill enough to hold herself back, he obviously sees something in her face that he believes.

The wall comes down, and we all hold our breath as we expect Nuri to at least walk over to Cyrus and say something to him. Instead, she ignores him in favor of approaching her son.

Flint looks more somber than I’ve ever seen him, but he doesn’t look afraid. And he doesn’t look defiant. In fact, if it makes any sense at all—which it doesn’t—a part of me would say he looks almost…relieved.

She reaches for his hands, but they’re already cuffed. So she puts a hand on his shoulder instead and waits for him to look at her. “You need to atone,” she tells him.

“I don’t know— I can’t—”

“Listen to me,” she says, her voice low and urgent as she leans forward. “You didn’t kill Grace, so the price you have to pay isn’t to forfeit your life. The prison only holds the guilty until it deems you’ve paid your debt. If you want to get out, you need to atone for what you’ve done.”

It’s the most anyone has ever talked to us about what goes on in the prison, and my mind is whirling as I try to figure out what it means. I understand the concept of paying your debt, but how does a prison—which is still a building, no matter how enchanted it is—decide that you have atoned enough? Or worse, that you haven’t?

I can’t wrap my head around it as they walk us into the forest—and straight into a portal that Cyrus obviously had opened for just this occasion. Then again, I realize I don’t have to imagine it. I’ll be seeing it firsthand soon enough.

106

There’s Never a Pair

of Ruby Slippers Around

When You Need Them

This portal isn’t like the ones at the Ludares tournament. There’s no stretching, no pain, no quick dive in or even faster roll out. There’s nothing but a free fall through darkness that goes on and on and on.

I strain my ears, trying to orient myself. Trying to find Hudson or Flint in the middle of this never-ending blackness, but I can’t. I’m completely isolated, completely alone, and it’s as terrifying as it is disorienting.

A scream wells up inside me, and I reach out a hand, certain that if I can just find Hudson or Flint—if I can just touch one of them—it will make all this bearable. But I can’t reach them, can’t touch them. It’s like they’ve vanished, and I really am all alone in this.

I don’t know how long the portal takes—probably only a couple of minutes. But it’s the longest couple of minutes of my life, and all I want is for it to end.

Until it does.

The portal vomits me out in the middle of an obscenely bright room, the lights like giant needles being shoved into my eyes after the absolute darkness of the last few minutes. I’m disoriented, can barely see, and am more scared than I want to admit when I land on my knees with a hard thud that sends pain ricocheting through me.

My first instinct is to stay where I am until I can get my bearings, but it’s not like they don’t know where I am. Plus, being unable to see and on my knees makes me feel way too vulnerable—I’d rather be on my feet when I meet whatever comes next.

It turns out that whatever comes next is a woman in a severe black business suit and black sunglasses, her black hair tamed into a ruthlessly precise bun. She’s standing a few feet from me, and though I can’t see her eyes, the tilt of her head says she is very much watching me, like I’m an animal in a cage.

Though I guess that’s precisely what I am. Precisely what Cyrus has turned all three of us into.

My instincts tell me to duck my head, not to look at her even as she studies me. But that feels too much like defeat to me—too much like giving up at a time when I’m going to have to fight harder than I ever have in my life. So I stare right back at her, the blankest look on my face that I can manage. After all, she’s going to do what she’s going to do. My refusing to cower isn’t going to change that.

I wish she’d take off the glasses, but something tells me they might be there for my protection, not hers. I can feel the magic in her, but I have no idea what she is—definitely not a vamp or any of the other paranormals I’m used to running into at Katmere Academy. But as I’m learning, there are a ton of other creatures in this world that I don’t know about yet, and she is definitely one of them.

“Welcome to the Aethereum, Miss Foster,” she hisses, her S’s extremely exaggerated as she walks around me in a circle that has the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up.

I turn with her, everything inside me screaming not to give this woman my back. The cold smile on her face tells me she’s amused by my reluctance, but all her body language shouts that she’s not going to put up with it for long.

Even before she says, “Turn around, please.” Again with the long S sound.

It takes every ounce of strength I have to do as she orders, but I manage it. Then nearly sob in relief as she loosens the punishing cuffs. At least until I feel two sharp pricks in my wrist.

I start to jerk my hand away, but she stops me.

“You belong to the prison now, Miss Foster. You do what I say and nothing else.”

“What did you do to me?” I ask, the sting in my wrist getting worse instead of better.

“Ensured that your powers belong to us now. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“What does that mean?” I demand even as I reach inside me to find my gargoyle. Not because I want to shift but because I need the reassurance. Need to know that she’s still there. Except she isn’t…I can’t even find the platinum string, let alone reach for it.

I quickly check for my other strings, and I’m a little dizzy as I find my mating bond string, still shimmery and beautiful. But my gargoyle string is…gone.

Panic races through me, and I want to scream at her, want to beg her to tell me what she’s done. But I already know that she won’t tell me—this is prison, after all, and she doesn’t have to tell me anything.

And that’s before I feel something cold encircle the same wrist she pricked, before I feel a snug metal bracelet snap into place.

“You may turn back around now,” she says. “And follow me.” Without the S’s, her syllables are sharp, bitten off.

I do as she says, rubbing at my wrist as we walk out of the brightness into a shadowy hallway. I keep trying to get a look at what she did to me, but the bracelet is covering it up.

As for the bracelet itself, there are strange etchings on it that look a lot like runes—similar to the one my uncle gave me this morning, in fact.

In the center of the bracelet—directly over the pricks to my skin that are finally starting to calm down—is a glowing red dot. I assume the red light has something to do with my gargoyle going missing, and everything inside me wants to claw at this bracelet. To tear it off. To rip it to pieces, anything to get my powers back.

It’s ridiculous, I know, to be this upset about my gargoyle being bound—especially considering I didn’t even know she existed before a few months ago. And it’s not like I didn’t know they were going to bind my powers in prison. They have to if they want to have any hope at all of controlling the prison population.

But knowing it and feeling it are two very different things, and now that my gargoyle is gone, I feel so empty. Like a giant part of me is missing and I’ll never find her again.

Intellectually, I know that’s not true. I know that once Hudson, Flint, and I make it out of here, my gargoyle will come back…and so will all the other strings. I just have to hold on to that, just have to remember that this isn’t forever.

That everything is going to be okay.

Of course, that might be easier to remember if we hadn’t just stopped in front of a Plexiglas cubicle about five feet by five feet. The woman holds open the door and says, “Step inside, please.”

I don’t want to step inside, but it’s not like I have a choice. And not like fighting is going to do me any good. So I take a deep breath and pretend that I’m not completely freaked out at the thought of being locked inside a small, see-through box.