Chapter 2

Well, well… what do we have here?

Libra fucking Thorn.

I can't get back to my room fast enough.

When I plow through the door, Raithe is doing pushups on the floor while Mordecai reads from his bent copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War .

It took a lot of scheming to get the biggest room in Absentia Asylum so that all three of us could be together. After what happened during the Winter Solstice Ball at Tenebrose, we aren't letting anyone get the jump on us again.

"You're never going to believe who's here," I say, panting. I literally ran all the fucking way down the hall.

Raithe turns his head to the side, his eyepatch slipping slightly from the sweat dripping off his brow. He lowers himself to the ground, his arms shaking. This fucking guy's been going for an hour. "I don't care," he grumbles.

"Yeah, you do. You both do." I snatch the book out of Mordecai's hands and toss it on his bed.

He hisses as he bolts up. "How many times have I told you to keep your hands off my shit?"

I tilt my head to glare at him. He's got at least three inches on me, but I can take him in a fight all the same. There's a reason the Nocturnus initiates used to call me Fists . Well, one of the reasons. "What is the one thing you want more than anything in this world apart from getting out of here?"

"Vengeance," Raithe growls in between pushups.

I nod. "Yes. Well, boys, we're about to fucking have it."

Mordecai backs up, giving me space. "Go on."

I run my hands over my arms, tracing my scars with the tips of my fingers. "Libra Thorn is here. She's been admitted. I don't know how long she's been here or why, but she's right down the fucking hall. Strapped to a bed."

Raithe pops up from the floor and grabs a towel. He lifts his eyepatch, revealing a hole where his other green eye used to be. "Are you sure it was her?" he says through the towel as he wipes the sweat off his face.

I nod. "I walked in on Gormon giving her one of his famous sponge baths. Sick fuck. She's scared and alone. And no one knows she's here except us."

Mordecai's pupils dilate, stretching deeper inside his brown irises. He licks his lips. "Her family will have her out of here within hours."

I shake my head. "Nope. I don't think they know she's in here. Dr. Hall doesn't believe that she's Libra Thorn for some reason. Something must've happened on the outside. So she's all ours."

Raithe flexes his arms, his corded muscles taut and glistening. "I want her to suffer. To feel every inch of the pain her cousin made me feel."

"That spoiled cunt has no fucking idea the nightmare I'm going to fucking drag her through," Mordecai adds.

The euphoria bubbles inside me again. I think of all the ways I'm going to torture her, play with her, use her like she's my fucking pet. We all will. "I snuck a peek at her file. They've got her heavily sedated. She's out of it and confused. But she recognized me. She even begged me to verify her identity to Dr. Hall."

The three of us burst out laughing.

Raithe pulls on a black T-shirt. "What, and ruin all the fun? Nah. That slut isn't going anywhere until we're done with her."

"Until she's in a fucking body bag." Mordecai snatches his book off the bed and plops back down in the chair to continue reading.

I shudder as a painful memory surfaces, threatening to drag me down into the darkest depths of my mind. The night we lost everything—our coven, our place at Tenebrose Academy, and our friends. But the worst was when they took our sigils; they carved them out of us like we were animals.

Raithe, Mordecai, and me are the only three out of twenty-something initiates who survived that night. The rest of them fucking bled to death. But Riot Graves made sure that we'd never see the light of day again. He and his fucking coven control the whole town of Raven's Gate, including this asylum.

But if Libra Thorn is stuck in here with us too… well, that means their control is starting to slip. And I'm going to make sure that we take full fucking advantage of it.