“I will break you,” Sebastian said tightly from the doorway. He was just a sliver of solid black among all the shadows. “You can be sure of that.”
He vanished into the tunnels, leaving them alone but not exactly at peace.
Chapter Nine
They found out soonenough how Sebastian intended to break Iz.
Time passed slowly in their dark cave, but it still passed, and whether their minds could keep track of it or not, their bodies could.
They still got tired, even though they didn’t know when it was time to go to bed.
And even though they couldn’t keep track of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, they still got hungry—only now the food didn’t come.
> Iz said.
Logan, who was way more loyal than she deserved, shook his immense black head. >
>
That made her even more miserable than the gnawing hunger. Sebastian was doing this to punishher, not Logan, but Logan was getting caught in the crossfire. Whether Sebastian wanted to admit it or not, in his heart, he still knew that they were both human. He didn’t even know they could talk to each other, but he knew Logan would share food with Iz if he had it and she didn’t.
Sebastian liked to pretend Logan was so broken down now that he was more animal than man, but the truth came out in how he acted. All his tortuous little schemes had to work around the inconvenient fact that the “beast” in his hoard was a better man than he’d ever been.
Iz hoped Sebastian had just enough self-knowledge for that to eat at him.
> Logan said. >
True. If anything, she wished she could have escalated things even further.
She’d never killed anyone before, but in her head, she could fry Randolph Sebastian to a charred little crisp, like a Looney Tunes cartoon. He would hold up a little sign that said OUCH! and then collapse into a pile of ashes.
She was certain the reality of death wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying or tidy. It was probably nothing she wanted to have in her head. Cartoons were better.
She showed her mental image to Logan, and he let out a kind of happy rumble-bark of laughter.
>