CHAPTER 19

ADARA

T he doctors left a while ago.

The lights had been dimmed to mimic nighttime but were still bright enough for the overnight staff to see by when they came to periodically check on us. They didn’t do much more than peek their heads in to make sure Reece and I were still alive, but at times it felt like we’d drift away into death’s embrace before their next check-in.

Reece had been motionless for longer than I cared to admit. At first, when the cutting and stabbing had finally ceased and we’d been left alone, strapped to these cold metal slabs that were slick with gore from our own bodies, I’d turned to him for support only to find him deathly still.

At first my screams were louder, made even more panicked by the thought of being left alone with the corpse of my friend, so I had looked away. It took too much effortto move my head, so I settled for squeezing my eyelids together instead.

The pain didn't abate, either. It increased as time went on, the burning and throbbing agony threatened to push me over into death's promise of peace more than once, and I blacked out too many times too count.

I had made the mistake of looking down at the mess they'd made of my flesh, but immediately learned what a mistake that was. The cuts were deep and, despite the precision of the skilled hands that had created them the edges were jagged where they were peeled back to keep them open. The white of my bones peeked through the red that now trickled lazily from the gashes, no longer spurting wildly like they had when the initial cuts were made.

Eventually, I dared to open my eyes again to seek out Reece. I needed to know if he was alive or not, and in all honesty I couldn't decide what would have been worse. I’d stared for ages, willing him to move, for his eyes to open and connect with mine, anything to prove he was still alive. It had taken me longer than I cared to admit to finally notice the shallow rise and fall of his ribcage, proving he was still breathing. Barely, but enough to assuage the majority of my fears.

He hadn’t abandoned me here to suffer alone.

It was a selfish thought, one I was immediately ashamed of, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t think I could survive this if I was on my own. Not even the thought of Xander worried sick and helpless as he tried everything in his power to reach me would have been enough for me to hold on if I was alone.

I’d stopped drawing strength from Artemis after I’d been forced to watch them cut into Reece first. The mere idea of her surviving anything close to what they were doing to us made me physically sick. Genuinely. I actually threw up. She’d spent her entire life at the mercy of this malignant organisation, and I couldn’t bear to think about what else she’d suffered through when this was what they started with.

It made me think of what else they were still planning to do to us.

Hope was a fickle thing, too. As I lay there, my open wounds seeping onto the metal slab beneath me, the aching, stinging, burning agony throbbing through every inch of my being, I could feel that hope slipping away almost like a tangible thing slithering from my body. I wanted to believe we would be rescued, but if the wet gurgling with each of my laboured breaths was any indication, I had serious doubts we could even survive long enough for that to happen.