Chapter 3
The dungeon stairs were stone, each one slick with centuries of moisture and despair. Wyatt's grip on my uninjured arm was iron, his fingers digging deep enough to bruise. My feet barely touched the steps as he hauled me down, down into the earth beneath the pack house.
"Wyatt, please—" My voice came out broken, threaded with pain. The silver burn in my shoulder had spread to my chest, wrapping around my lungs like barbed wire.
He didn't answer. Didn't look at me. His jaw was locked, a muscle ticking beneath his skin.
The dungeon opened before us—a cavern of wet stone and rusted chains. The air tasted like iron and rot. Wyatt shoved me forward. I stumbled, my knees hitting the ground hard enough to split skin. Cold seeped through my ruined dress.
"I saved you." The words scraped out of me. "The blade was meant for—"
"Shut up." He crouched, his face level with mine. Those amber eyes I'd once loved held nothing but ice. "You think I'm stupid? The blade was in your hand. Adelyn's blood was on it."
"Because it grazed her after I knocked—"
His hand cracked across my face. My head snapped sideways, stars exploding across my vision. I tasted copper.
"Five years," Wyatt said, his voice low and venomous. "Five years I let you stay here out of pity. And this is how you repay me? Conspiring with rogues? Trying to murder my Luna?"
The chains were old, the kind used for prisoners who'd committed unforgivable crimes. He locked them around my wrists, the metal biting into my skin. Then my ankles. The silver content wasn't high enough to kill quickly, but it would burn. Constantly.
"I gave you everything." My voice cracked. "My wolf essence. Three years of my life. I loved—"
"You gave me nothing I didn't pay for." He stood, brushing off his hands like I'd dirtied them. "You were compensated. Housed. Fed. That debt is settled."
The hollow space in my chest where my wolf used to sing throbbed with phantom pain. Eleven days left. Maybe less now, with the silver poisoning spreading through my system.
Wyatt walked toward the stairs. Stopped. Turned back.
"If you survive the night," he said, "I'll decide your sentence in the morning."
The door slammed. The lock turned. Darkness swallowed everything except the distant torch flickering in the corridor beyond my cell.
I don't know how long I hung there. Time moved differently in the dark, measured only by the drip of water somewhere in the shadows and the steady burn of silver against my skin. My shoulder screamed. My wrists bled where the shackles cut deep. The cough building in my chest promised more black blood.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Multiple sets. I lifted my head, hope flaring stupidly in my chest. Maybe Wyatt had come back. Maybe he'd listened, finally heard—
Adelyn stepped into the torchlight, flanked by two guards I recognized. Brock and Silas, both fiercely loyal to the Luna. Both known for their cruelty.
Adelyn's scratch had been bandaged with theatrical precision, white gauze wrapped around her entire forearm like she'd lost a limb. She smiled, and it was the most honest expression I'd ever seen on her face.
"Hello, Camille." She circled me slowly, her heels clicking against stone. "Comfortable?"
I said nothing. Saved my strength.
"I want you to know something." She stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell her perfume. "I knew you were innocent. Obviously. That blade barely touched me."
My breath caught.
"But you see, you've always been a problem. Even powerless, even dying—" Her eyes flicked to my chest, and I realized she knew. Somehow, she knew about my failing wolf spirit. "—you're still in his head. He still looks for you in crowds. Still flinches when someone mentions your name."
She nodded to the guards. Brock moved to the wall, lifting something from a hook. Silver-laced whips, the kind used for execution.
"So I'm going to make sure," Adelyn continued, her voice light, conversational, "that even if you survive this, you'll be too broken for anyone to want. Especially him."
The first lash tore across my back. I screamed, the sound echoing off stone walls. Silver fire raced along my spine.
"Don't hold back," Adelyn instructed. "I want scars."
The second lash. The third. I lost count after seven. The whip found my back, my shoulders, my face. I felt skin split, felt blood run hot down my body. The silver burned deeper than flesh, searing into muscle, into bone.
I stopped screaming. Didn't have the air left.
Adelyn's face swam in my fading vision, beautiful and terrible. "Goodbye, Camille. Thank you for your service."
Darkness pulled at me, merciful and complete. I let it come.
Somewhere in the void, I felt hands on my wrists. Different hands, gentle ones. The chains fell away. A voice, old and rough with emotion, whispered near my ear.
"Forgive me, child. I should have come sooner."
Reuben Young's face materialized above me, his weathered features twisted with horror. Behind him, a guard lay unconscious on the floor.
"Stay with me." Reuben lifted me like I weighed nothing, cradling my broken body against his chest. "There's a tunnel. Old escape route. I'm getting you out."
I tried to speak. Couldn't. My back was on fire, my face wet with blood. The world tilted as Reuben carried me through a gap in the stone wall I'd never noticed, into a passage that smelled of earth and freedom.
Behind us, the dungeon door remained locked. Wyatt would find an empty cell in the morning.
I hoped it haunted him.
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