Chapter 30

Ithink I saw Lana. My sister. I think I hallucinated a lion. I almost fell to my death. My brain recycles these statements over and over and over, until the room spins as the man/scorpion thing that's held me captive for what feels like a week or more carries me around.

I'm going to be sick. Despite barely eating for days, my stomach turns in on itself, and I try to throw up. I struggle, trying to escape the man's grasp. A low keening noise tugs at my ears. It's coming from me. The man places me on the cold tiled floors. Like everything else in this god-forsaken place, it's black.

I dry-heave again, my shoulders shaking. Again. Again. My hands tremble and twitch, my palms pressed hard against the floors. My hair falls in tangled knots around my face, and I can smell the thing's otherness, like some sick perfume that clings to my skin. My skin crawls, and I shudder. It had me. Its talons clawed into my arms. When I look down, there are six marks weeping blood on each bicep. Oh god.

I bring up bile. My vision swims. I collapse onto the floor, the chill seeping through my thin dress.

I am alive.

My stomach heaves again, and I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth. A cool cloth presses against the back of my neck.

I sit up with a start, then immediately regret it. The cloth falls off, slapping wetly against the floor. I scooch back, away from the puddle I've made.

Away from the man picking up the washcloth, scowling at me.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

"Why won't you let me help you?" His voice is a snarled rasp, and I open one eye, trying to calm my too-fast heart. Cheekbones jut from his face, his eyes an impossible emerald green, framed with black lashes. Soft black hair falls over one eye, and he pushes it back with an impatient hand.

Nausea twists my stomach.

This man, this objectively gorgeous man, is the scorpion that's been keeping me locked inside a tower with barely enough food to survive on for the last few days. It's impossible. All of this is impossible.

I throw up again, and then something cracks hard against the floor. The ceiling spins overhead, a fuzzy smattering of silver stars spangling across it. Oh.

The cracking sound was my head.

His pretty face comes into view, and I take a deep breath. He's like a fairy prince, an evil one, flashing green eyes and sharp, sharp features. Everything about him screams dangerous. He slaps the cloth across my forehead, muttering something I don't understand under his breath.

I'm so weak.

"You need food," he says, and this time I understand him.

Food should be the last thing on my mind, considering how disgusting I feel. But it's been days of not enough. Of catching rainwater in my hands, in the filthy containers in that damned tower room. I ate a lizard. A few of them.

I flop to my side. The floor is so cold, and I'm so hot.

"Food," the man mutters, like it's a foreign concept. Maybe it is. A small giggle bubbles out of me, and then I moan. My head is going to split open, a watermelon that's too ripe.

"What the hell have you done to my sister?"

I can't sit up. Everything hurts— but I'd know that voice anywhere. Relief washes over me as the edges of my vision begin to tunnel. Lana's here. Lana will make me better. This nightmare is over.

I won't have to catch any more lizards.

The man's face contorts with fury, and I reach out a hand to Lana. When the man takes it, his teeth bared at Lana, I try to wriggle out of his grasp.

I'm too weak. He gathers me to him, and I inhale deeply at the sudden change in posture. He smells like the sun. The beach. Sand and salt and somehow heat itself.

The room spins, and I pass out.