Chapter 23

Why was my mouth so dry? My head was pounding, and my stomach was churning like there was a whirlpool forming in my gut, even though I didn't think there was any food in there to actually throw up.

"Tallulah! Wake up. Come on. Wake up, wake up, wake up."

Was that Austin? The words were such a low hiss, I was struggling to place the voice.

"'m awake," I slurred, annoyed that my tongue was being so uncooperative.

"Tallulah." Okay, that was definitely Austin's voice. Austin's serious voice. "I need you to wake all the way up, because we are in something of a predicament right now."

"Are we?" I mumbled, trying to make my eyelids cooperate with my brain. "I don't feel good."

"You were drugged. We were drugged."

We were? I blinked my scratchy, heavy eyes open, immediately blinded by the uncomfortably bright light filling the room. And it wasn't the soft, silvery orb light of the shadow realm either. It was a harsh, fluorescent white, complete with the faint buzz of electricity that I hadn't heard in months.

Fuck.

"How did we get here?" I rasped.

"I'm still trying to work that out. I'm guessing it has something to do with Lochan, though."

Right. Right! Lochan had been there. He'd brought us tea. Everything after that was a blur.

My eyes came into focus slowly, and I took in our surroundings, trying to work out where we were. It looked to be some kind of cell, but not a permanent one. Like someone had shoved the contents of their basement to the outer walls and erected a temporary cage in the middle. As the feeling came back to my limbs, I realized that I was bound on a chair, my ankles tied to the chair legs and wrists tied behind my back. Austin was in the same position, judging by the impatient huffs and grunts of exertion as he struggled against them, but I couldn't see him. We were back-to-back, not in touching distance.

"How are you feeling?" Austin asked worriedly. "Any, um, aches or pains?"

I swallowed thickly, trying not to think too hard about the baby or I was going to lose the tenuous grip on calm that I was maintaining.

"Nothing unusual," I managed, my voice sticking in my throat. I definitely felt dehydrated, and my head was pounding, but I imagined Austin was going through that too.

"Stay positive, okay? We're going to figure something out."

I really wished I could share his optimism, but I wasn't there yet. The bonds around my wrists and ankles were secured tightly, and as much as I struggled, all I seemed to succeed at doing was rubbing my skin raw.

We both fell silent and still for a long moment, and I fixed my gaze on a distant spot on the wood-paneled walls between the bars, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

The more I stared at it, the more I felt like I'd been here before. The seventies-style wood paneling was sparking something in my brain, and whatever memory I was scrambling to grab hold of didn't feel unpleasant, either. Everything about the situation was terrifying now, but it still felt like it hadn't always been this way somehow.

"Does this place look familiar to you?" I murmured, wondering if I was imagining things. Maybe it was just the drugs.

"Kind of," Austin replied cautiously. "Though there definitely wasn't a giant fucking cage in it, because I'd have remembered that."

"If you recognize it, then maybe we've been here as kids," I said slowly, looking around with fresh unease. Aunt Carol had a giant basement that we'd sometimes come down to when we were playing hide-and-seek. It had always been filled with assorted boxes and holiday decorations and abandoned exercise machines.

"Oh my god, is this Aunt Carol's house?" Austin whispered loudly, coming to the same realization I had. "Did our own fucking family kidnap us? This is insane. They are insane. We should have a reality show or something."

"We might end up on Dateline."

Austin made a choked sound. "That was bleak, Tallulah."

I winced. "Sorry. But also, you know… Maybe."

I didn't want to say it out loud and make Austin feel bad, but he was kind of public enemy number one, maybe number two, after Astrid. But Astrid wasn't recognizable to the general human population, and Austin was a full-blown internet conspiracy.

It was chilling to think about, but I couldn't imagine any scenario where Austin was allowed to walk free. And if they'd taken me as well… Presumably, Grandfather wished to dispose of both of the grandchildren who'd brought him shame.

"I'm sorry, Tallulah," Austin whispered. "I think you might be here because of what I did. And I was fine with making that choice when I thought it was just me that I was endangering. You shouldn't be suffering for it."

My heart ached for him. For us. For the loved ones we'd left behind in the shadow realm, who were undoubtedly frantic with worry. For all of it.

"It's not your fault, Austin. We should have seen this coming. Grandfather was never going to accept any of his family members defecting, publicly or otherwise."

There was a sort of squirmy guilty feeling in my gut that the idea hadn't occurred to me before. I'd been convinced that Iris, as a Nash, had a target on her back, yet it had never occurred to me that my family would do the same. I'd never considered that I might in any way be valuable enough to be worth getting back. And I wasn't, not really. I was just a miscellaneous Thibaut descendent who'd already shamed the family name once before.

"Do you think he'll come down and see us?" Austin asked.

"No." I shook my head before remembering he couldn't see me. "He won't want to deal with this ugliness firsthand."

Grandfather would consider such messiness beneath him. I fully expected that we'd only see Lochan and other minions firsthand, and that the family would be kept away from this entirely.

"I can't understand how he got us here," I muttered, my head thick and aching. If he'd gotten us to the in-between, I could see it being doable. After all, one of the portals had remained open and accessible from the human realm side. Yes, the in-between was guarded, but from what I gathered, Evrin was the only one who actually took it seriously and knew his way around, and he couldn't be everywhere at once.

But there was no way Lochan could have gotten us to the in-between without someone seeing us. He'd have had to traipse through the palace grounds, somehow transporting two unconscious bodies. Even if Sebastian had been helping—and Cora—that would have been an impossible feat.

"I don't think they could have done it without insider help."

"From a Shade?" I gasped, the idea not even crossing my mind once. Obviously, the shadow realm wasn't all sunshine and roses, but I'd always felt safe there.

"Maybe?" Austin hedged. It was such a grim thought, I didn't even want to entertain it.

I lost the battle to keep my eyes open, dozing in my chair for long enough that my neck and back were stiff and aching by the time I woke up.

"Someone's coming," Austin whispered, bringing me back to full alertness. I rolled my joints as much as I could, wishing I had some way of making myself at least look less defenseless.

Lochan pushed open the basement door first, holding it open for two of his minions to follow him inside, though I didn't recognize either of them.

"Thibaut cousins! Welcome home," Lochan said cheerfully, unlocking the cell door. A tall woman approached me, not making eye contact as she shoved a water bottle with a straw into my mouth.

As much as I wanted to object, my mouth felt like it was lined in sawdust, and my head was aching from thirst, so I drank and hoped for the best.

"What is the point of all this?" Austin drawled, far better at hiding the fear in his voice than I was. "Do you need us hydrated before you kill us?"

Lochan snorted. "The timeline is still being established, so I'm to keep you functional in the meantime. Unfortunately, the Council are being rather shortsighted about the whole thing, not appreciating your grandfather's vision."

"And what vision is that?" I demanded.

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Regardless of what they say, neither of you will ever be returning to the shadow realm. That's all that matters."

"I'd love to know how much Grandfather is paying you for this," Austin said mildly. "What is the going rate for sacrificing pieces of your soul these days?"

The words seemed to have struck a chord.

"You're the sacrifice, not me," Lochan snarled, ushering the others out of the cell.

"Sure," Austin agreed easily as Lochan secured the lock. "But you don't think you're going to walk away from this unchanged, do you? After taking two lives?"

"I've killed dozens of Shades!"

The words made me feel nauseous, but Austin managed to respond. "In their wraith, human-realm forms. Where they couldn't speak. Couldn't scream. Couldn't bleed. I fully intend on looking you in the eyes while I bleed out, just so you know. I hope the image haunts you for the rest of your life. You're going to leave my child without a father. How does that feel?"

Tears silently tracked down my face at the picture he was painting. At the future we'd miss out on. The lives we could have, that we were supposed to have.

"I'll be sure to remember the look in your eyes while I'm drinking cocktails on the beach in the Seychelles," Lochan snapped, though his hands shook slightly as he finished locking the door, the other two already heading up the stairs. With a final glare—though it was a wary one—Lochan followed, shutting the basement door behind him.

"You definitely rattled him," I whispered shakily.

"I wish I could have done more."

So did I, but our options were at a solid zero. If only we could knock out even one of the lights that was flooding this place with brightness. It wasn't some high-tech place with difficult-to-access LED lighting. It was Aunt Carol's straight-out-of-the-seventies basement. There was a dangling lightbulb in one corner that was practically begging to be used as target practice, except they'd been very careful not to give us anything that could be remotely used as a weapon.