26
Mercy
Stupid,stupid, stupid.
As I struggled against Kaige’s hold, anger rose inside me like a cresting wave. I’d been so distracted by the cat tail I’d let Kaige capture me, let these assholes drag me into yet another ridiculous situation. His bone-crushing grip offered no give.
I couldn’t even squirm away from the rope he wrapped around my ankles, and Wylder managed to trap my wrists at the same time. Shit. What the hell were they up to now?
“Wait,” Rowan said, his face weirdly pale. “We’ve given her plenty of tests already. We don’t have to—”
Wylder cut him off with another snarky remark that I barely processed. Why was Rowan arguing aboutthisafter everything else he’d seen his friends put me through? Was he just feeling guilty about the past after our conversation yesterday?
Kaige hefted me, striding forward again, and Rowan sprang after us. “No, stop!”
His frantic tone made my pulse hitch. Wylder simply smirked as he blocked him.
“Tick, tick, tick, Princess,” the Noble heir said. “Every second counts, so make sure you get out fast!”
Then Kaige dropped me—into a huge, thick-walled box some part of me recognized as a freezer. My shoulder jarred against the smooth surface inside before my back hit the bottom.
My lungs seized. I opened my mouth to spit out a protest, but the lid was already banging shut overtop of me.
A scream caught in my throat. Total darkness enveloped me, smothering me. I flailed my bound limbs, futilely banging at the walls.
Get out. Wylder expected me to get out.
But the old panic was already rolling over me. In the darkness, this didn’t feel like a freezer at all. My mind fell back through the years to the concrete pit in the basement back home.
Dad used to stuff people he had a beef with in there to torture them. He’d leave them in there for hours until they’d pissed and shit themselves, until they’d do or say anything just to end the horrible impression of being buried alive, the sense that any breath might be their last.
I knew because he’d tossedmein there whenever he got particularly frustrated with my failures. As the heavy cover had thudded into place, air thick with the scents of stale vomit, urine, and blood would clog my nose. The utter darkness would suffocate me. I’d scream until my throat was hoarse, scratch at the slab of cement that sealed the pit until my fingertips were scraped raw, but he’d never come. Not untilhewas ready.
The first time I’d been five. I hadn’t stopped shaking for the rest of the day afterward. The nightmares had haunted me for weeks.
And each time after, it’d only gotten worse. Just the feeling of the walls around me and the closing darkness would trigger all the worst sensations of every time before.
Those sensations rolled over me now, dragging me down deeper into the pit of my mind. Another scream tore from my lungs. I flailed and gasped, sobs choking me and setting off a fresh flare of panic. I couldn’t breathe.
The stench clogged my nose, the darkness squeezed tight, and my whole body turned cold. Shivers wracked my body. I was down there again, down there in that void of nothingness, and maybe this would be the time he never came at all, not until I was dead.
I couldn’t manage even a shriek now. A whimper spilled out of me with a hitch of breath. Then the door above me flew open.
Light flooded in on me with a wash of gloriously fresh air. Arms descended and hauled me out of my coffin. Rowan—Rowan was holding me.
He tried to set me on my feet, but my legs gave. I slumped to the floor. Four figures stood over my quaking body, their features blurry to my tear-hazed eyes.
I had to get a hold of myself. Had to pull myself together. But no matter how much air I sucked into my lungs, I still felt as if I were drowning.
“What’s wrong with her?” someone said.
Rowan knelt and started untying my limbs. The release of the pressure around my wrists soothed my nerves just a little. “She’s having a panic attack. She just needs to— No, don’t dothat.”
Cold water splashed across my face. I flinched, and some dribbled into my mouth. A shudder ran through me with the vague sense that it was seeping from the coffin I’d just been dragged out of.
No, not a coffin. A freezer. I wasn’t back in my family home in that awful pit. I was in the basement of the Nobles’ mansion.
Rowan wrenched the rope off my ankles and gripped my shoulder. “You’re okay now. Can you sit up? What do you need, Mer?”