CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I hadn't explored the stairs in the opposite direction from my room since that first day. Thoran had mentioned a conservatory, but we hadn't gotten around to taking our walks there yet; we hadn't even finished the area beyond the office.

But following the silent figure moving quickly down the marble steps, the chamber at the bottom of the stairs dark and still, I wasn't sure I wanted to be there.

"I don't hear anything else. Maybe it's over," I offered, wincing when my voice carried into the entire cavern of space.

It could have been an old ballroom. The room expanded deep into the shadows despite an entire wall of French doors lining one whole side. Lace drapes protected the darkness from the hint of light on the other side. Our feet barely made a sound, yet still echoed into the abyss.

It was so dark.

So confining.

"I really ... can we please," I tried, steps faltering when I spotted the arched doorway into even more nothingness.

My heart fumbled to remember Thoran would never allow anything to happen to me, and I was with someone he trusted. I was fine. I wasn't alone.

"Don't be ridiculous. It's just a little further." His large hands encased in a leather glove took my elbow. "This is what Thoran wants."

After nearly getting him killed twice because I hadn't listened, I didn't argue. He was fighting Jarrett. He needed to stay focused. If I got him killed this time, they would have to kill me, too.

"What is this?" I asked, needing something to distract myself.

"This place was built with hundreds of secret passages that lead to every room in the house. They're a great place to hide."

I frowned. "Thoran never mentioned passageways."

He didn't speak for a long moment. We passed under the arch and an immediate bend that started down a circle of stairs into even more darkness.

The hand on my arm tightened when my feet faltered. He gave me a tug and I opened my mouth to tell him I didn't want to go down there when a shuffle from behind me had hope rocketing in my chest. Hope that it was Thoran coming to get me.

But the barren room remained still. Dark. Except the faint outline of a woman behind the lace curtain.

My heart jumped in my chest, but I was already being dragged down.

"Wait," I tried, but he moved faster.

I could barely keep up. My flats kept slipping on the sand lining the steps. I lost one, but he wouldn't wait for me to grab it.

He was beginning to frighten me. His hold was too tight. His strides were too quick. He was breathing too hard, and he was no longer talking to me.

"Please, can we go back?" I begged softly.

We hit the bottom of the stairs and the faint glow from the dangling light was muffled by eons of cobwebs creating a thick mesh across the ceiling, but it was just enough to outline the door at the very end.

"Wait." I dug my heels into the floor littered with dust and sand and mouse excrements. The naked foot rubbed raw against the concrete, but I kept trying to dislodge him. "Please, wait. I don't want—"

"Stop!" His voice boomed like the crack of thunder. It shot through the cramped tomb, but it was nothing to the hard, vicious shake he gave me. "Please stop. I don't want to hurt you, too, okay?"

I stared up into the round face peering down at me with such sorrow and heartbreak. There was such pleading in his eyes I would have reached for him if his words weren't ringing in my ear.

"Too?"

He ignored me.

His attempts to drag me increased and I was pulled up to the door and through.

The room inside was a stone storage with crates and the stench of gunpowder and metal. He pushed me behind the pile to a corner that looked like the others but he pressed a raised brick and a metallic click unhitched a person sized door that popped open inward.

I had no time to think or react as I was yanked through. The only thing I managed to do before the door sealed us in was to kick off my last shoe; when Thoran came looking for me, at least he would have something to go by.

The room on the other side opened to a ... lab? There were two tables in the center that took up most of the room and shelves lining all the walls filled with jars and bowls, and containers filled with liquid and chunks of floating things.

"What is this, Oliver?" I gasped.

"My life's work," he said quietly. "Years of blood and sweat." He dragged me to a chair and nudged me into it. "I have given everything for this."

He still hadn't told me what this was, but the stench of industrial cleaner, the rot, decay, and the coppery stench of iron made me feel ill.

"What are you doing, Oliver?" I rasped around the bile in my throat. "Where are we?"

His hands were shaking, rubbing over his face and back over his shaven scalp. The skin glistened with sweat ... and tears.

"I just ... I need you to know I never wanted to hurt you. I don't. I still don't." He dropped his arms. They smacked into his sides, and I flinched. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I'm trying to fix things."

Pain and fear twisted across my chest, around my neck. I was too terrified to swallow and ease the pressure in my throat in case it upset him. I could only sit and watch him sniffle and rub his sleeve under his nose.

"But no one will just leave me alone."

I dared a glance in the direction of the walls. The filthy jars.

"I don't know what I did..."

"Nothing!" he practically sobbed, and I jerked as if struck. "You did nothing, Naya. You are such a sweet person. So much like Abby. She would have loved you. You're exactly the kind of girl she would want for her son and so do I. Thoran loves you so much and seeing him with you ... it makes me so happy."

Tears, hot and endless slip down my cheeks and soak into my sweater. "Then why...?"

Another chair was pulled over and placed across from me. He lowered himself down. His warm, kind eyes bored into mine, desperate.

"Because Thoran wouldn't understand. He's so much like his mother that way. Abby didn't understand either. I tried to explain to her I was trying to help people. I was doing the right thing. She got so angry. She threatened to tell Aerys." He mopped at his face with his damp sleeve. "I never wanted to hurt her, Naya. I swear. I swear!" His massive shoulders heaved with a sob and the ground beneath my feet cracked as his implication hit me in the gut.

"Oliver ... what did you do?"

He gasped for air and fell back against his chair. Rimmed eyes fixed on the low ceiling overhead.

"She followed me down here. I got sloppy. She thought I was messing around with the cargo, but I don't like guns. I don't like violence." His chin wobbled. "She called me sick. She said I wasn't her brother anymore. That I betrayed her by bringing my work into her home with her family." He rocked his head slowly from side to side as tears fell down his face. "I only wanted her to listen. I didn't mean to grab her that hard. Her stupid heels slipped..."

"Oh my God!" my hands flew up to cover my mouth. "Oh my God, Oliver."

He burst into heaving sobs that bent him over as if the pain was eating him up from the inside.

"I didn't mean to. I didn't. I would never hurt Abby. I loved her so much. She was my world. My best friend."

I was crying with him. The pain in his voice. The agony tearing through every word. I felt each one as if they were burrowing into my heart and becoming mine.

"If she had just listened. Just ... why wouldn't she stop?" he raised his head and met my watery gaze. "If she just listened..." He scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands. "No one ever listens. They don't try to understand or see that I'm not a bad person. What I'm trying to do is going to help so many people. It just needs more time."

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice small and hoarse.

Oliver sighed heavily and shook his head. "You won't understand either. None of the others did, no matter how long I explained."

My heart sank. "Others?"

He closed his eyes and continued to let his head rock as if the motion was soothing. "The others. The ... brides." He opened his eyes and rolled them as if it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "I regret what happened to them, but they were just ... unreasonable."

I stared into the face of someone I genuinely was beginning to care about. "Did you kill them?"

Oliver's chin lowered to his chest. "They didn't leave me any choice."

I thought of Thoran telling me about their deaths. Their accidents. The curse.

"You let Thoran believe he was cursed," I said, accusation unhampered in the words.

"I didn't." He frowned at me. "He believes that because of the terrible stories his father would fill his head with. What seven-year-old needs to hear that at bedtime? But Aerys had to make sure his son knew his fate. I know Abby loved him and he was very good to her and Thoran, but he was so caught up in those bullshit stories. Thoran would wake up every night crying. His bed wet. Why would you do that to a child? It's abuse. I don't care what anyone says. And Abby let him. They would stand together in front of those vile portraits and Aerys would go on about whispers and shadows, and things in the house waiting for his soul. I was glad when he finally did Thoran a favor by taking a long walk into the swamps."

I swallowed sharply to moisten my throat. "But you made it real by taking all those women."

Oliver's annoyance slipped. "You're right. But I never meant to hurt him. I just couldn't tell him, Naya."

"Then tell me. Please. Why?"

There was actual curiosity, but I needed to buy Thoran time to find me.

Oliver rose. His giant frame towered over me, covering me in his frigid shadow as I wondered if he would kill me now, too.

He moved away to the furthest wall and returned with several empty, glass jars. They were lined on the table with faint clinks.

"Elena found the door in your room ... your old room and she followed the passages here. I thought she would keep my secret. Even said she would, but the second I let her out, she ran. Why would she do that? She ... just like Abby!" The jars rattled violently under the fist he slammed into the table. He winced when I cried out. "Forgive me. Please. I didn't mean to yell."

"What ... what about the others?"

He unscrewed the lids to each jar and set them neatly in a row.

"Penelope caught me discarding some of my ... failed attempts into the swamps. She started screaming and saying horrible things. I had to shut her up. She was so loud. I didn't mean to push her into the swamps, but she wouldn't stop. Constance was my fault. I was sloppy. I opened a passageway without checking and she wouldn't stop talking about it. I didn't want Thoran to find my lab until I could prove everything I was doing worked."

"You threw her into the well?"

Oliver stopped and blinked. I could see him trying to recall.

"No, that was Danika. That bitch." His lips curled back in the first show of loathing for another person. "She recognized me. Her uncle sometimes gets me the ... parts I need and she kept threatening to tell Thoran if I didn't give her money. I did the first few times, but she would make little comments in passing over dinner and I had enough. Thoran deserved better."

From a cupboard along the bottom, he unearthed a white bottle and set it next to the jars.

"What about Anne?"

He paused "Anne. Oh, poor Anne. She was such a tragic and unnecessary death. She really would have been good for Thoran. She had such a good heart, except she kept trying to get him to quit. I need the connections. How am I supposed to do the work if I can't...?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "She didn't even try to understand. She tried to tell me I was a monster, but would a monster make sure she was safely asleep when taking her out into the woods? A monster wouldn't do that. A monster wouldn't care if she felt pain."

He spoke so calmly now. Methodically while he worked. Having something to do seemed to help him focus in a way that was even more frightening.

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked. "I didn't know about this."

He nodded once, eyes fixed on a tiny dropper filled with the clear liquid in the bottle. He dripped three drops into one jar. Two in the other and four in the last one.

"That's why this is so hard. You're so innocent and you've done nothing wrong." He raised gray eyes to my face with vehement earnest. "You need to believe that, Naya. You did nothing wrong."

I waited for the tears of frustration, even fear, but fury prickled my throat and loomed heavy in my chest as I met his gaze squarely.

"Then why? I liked you. Thoran adores you. Why are you doing this?"

"Because I realized something, Naya. No matter what, this will never end. Eventually, you would have found out and ... it's better this way, isn't it? I'll make it quick and painless. Unlike the others. It'll be humane. This will just put you to sleep, and I'll put you back in your bed. Won't that be nice? No pain. No suffering. Just peaceful rest. And it'll be better this way for Thoran, too. He won't blame himself. He'll be sad, but you just passed in your sleep, and it'll be easier for him."

I stared at him for a long moment. Not believing my ears

"You're going to kill me to keep me from finding out about your secret cave? I never would have gone into the tunnels, Oliver. I'm afraid of the dark. I have a phobia of small, tight places. You never would have seen me down here."

He was silent. His head stayed down over the jars and the drops of clear liquid. He seemed to process what I was telling him with a deep V between his eyes.

"Well, that is unfortunate." He raised his head, his expression truly regretful. "I wish I'd known sooner, Naya. But I don't know if that would have made a difference even then. It seems to be an unfortunate fate I will continuously have to deal with."

"You will devastate Thoran," I warned, refusing to submit quietly. "If you take another woman from his life—"

He shook his head. "No, you're wrong there. This will destroy him." His large hands pressed into the wood on either side of the jars. "Your death will kill him. He loves you so much, he won't bother going on."

Hot, angry tears prickled the back of my throat and I had to dig my nails into the chair under me to keep from doing something wild and crazy like run at him and claw his sad, pathetic face to shreds with my nails.

"Why would you do that to him? Why would you hurt him like that?"

Oliver frowned and straightened. "I don't want to do this, Naya. Do you think I like hurting people? Do you think I wanted to kill the only family I had left in this world? But every great person who has changed the world has had to make sacrifices. Being alone seems to be mine."

"But you weren't alone!" I exclaimed. "You had so many people who cared about you. I cared about you."

His face softened. There were tears in his eyes as he lowered them to the jars. "You're right."

But rather than walk over and show me how to open the passage door, he returned to mixing and adding different liquids to each of the pots. He stirred and studied. So focused on his task that it gave me a chance to take a closer survey of my surroundings. The room was circular with built in shelves and an alcove in one of the corners with large, tin barrels tucked inside. The spot we'd come through resembled a plain wall with dark bricks and no visible ways of escape.

I glanced back at my captor who was swirling a concoction the color of urine up towards the filmy light.

"Oliver," I kept my voice soft, helpless. "Can you please check on Thoran for me before ... before...?" I lower my gaze. "I just need to know he's okay."

He looked up. "Of course! I understand. Let me finish. I want to make sure you don't get sick like Anne did. Her system didn't like it, but that could have also been nerves."

"What is that?" I asked, trying my best to play the role of someone soft and agreeable.

"It's a sleeping drought I created. It stops the heart, so you just drift off. It took me years to perfect."

Years? How long had he been doing this to other women?

"Can I ask what it is you're trying to do? It all looks so complicated."

Oliver chuckled. "It can be. I've always had a love of science and changing the world. Making it better." He shot me a bright smile that usually made me smile back but only turned my stomach now. "Abby used to be my lab assistant as kids, and we'd create potions and serums that cured everything. We had so much fun and then our mom was diagnosed with stage four Esophageal cancer, and no one could do anything for her." His smile slipped. "They gave her six months. She died in four. Mom was never very strong, but she tried. After her death all I wanted was to find a cure to save others. I went to school and studied, but my ideas were too radical. Too unhealthy, according to the board of medicine. But I know I can do it if I'm just given the chance."

I let my attention drift to the wall of pickled things coated in dust and nestled in shadows. Something about them made my stomach whine. The whole room.

"Tell me about your work," I whispered, not really wanting to know, but needing him to keep talking.

Oliver shook his head. "You don't need to worry about that." From a side drawer, he unearthed a syringe neatly wrapped in its sealed packaging. He tore the paper off and gingerly lowered the needle into the mixture. "We, sadly, don't have much time left anyway. Thoran would have already dealt with Brixton, and he'll come looking for you. You need to be in bed. We can't let him get suspicious, okay? This needs to be as painless as possible for him."

For someone so clearly unhinged, his workspace was immaculate. Not a pen out of place. Not a single weapon I could use to defend myself as the syringe was filled with the yellow toxin. I could use the chair, I mused. I could throw it at him, but then what? We'd only run around the room until he caught me because I didn't know how to open the secret door. I could throw the jars off the wall at him, but he would eventually catch me.

Helpless and scared, I could only sit and watch as he flicked the poison and smiled triumphantly.

"Oliver, please," I attempted one last time. "I'm begging you, please don't."

"I promise it's painless. Just a little prick and you'll just drift off."

He didn't understand.

"I don't want to leave Thoran," I whispered. "I'm happy for the first time in my life and I want to have a family with him. That's all I want. I won't tell anyone about your experiments. I won't. I don't care. I just ... I just want to be with Thoran."

He lowered his arm and for a heart fluttering moment, I thought maybe he would agree.

"I'm sorry, Naya. I really, truly am. I wish I could make you see that I really don't want this, but I have a responsibility as a scientist to help the world. Now," he started around the table, syringe in hand, "I'm going to inject this under your toenail, okay?"

My adrenaline took that moment to spin into overdrive and I bounded out of the chair. Oliver seemed momentarily startled, but that didn't last when I snatched up the back of the chair and swung. The piece of wood would have collided with his face if he didn't backhand it at the last second. The needle slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. The chair sailed into the corner and hit the wall before crashing to the ground.

"Naya!" he snapped in the tone of a disappointed father. "Now it's filthy."

Exhaling, he bent down and scooped the poison up. Rather than chase me down, he went back to the other side of the table and found a small packet of alcohol wipes. He shook his head while he cleaned the needle carefully.

I didn't wait for him to come at me again. I tore off in the direction of the wall where the door was ... somewhere. I ran my hands up and over the cold stones, pushing and pounding and finding nothing.

"You're going to hurt yourself," Oliver warned gently. "Don't put bruises on you that will make Thoran wonder. We want him to think you died naturally."

"I'm twenty!" I snarled over my shoulder. "There is no reason for him to believe I just died naturally."

"That's why we need to make sure he suspects nothing out of the ordinary."

He was truly and utterly insane. He had to be.

Satisfied, he started towards me once more and I scrambled to the opposite end of the room.

"Naya, please don't do this. I'm trying to help you."

"You're crazy," I retorted.

I raced towards the alcove and drums, thinking I could use one of the lids as a weapon.

"No! Don't touch those!"

Oliver barreled towards me with a mad urgency that had me tightening my fingers around the icy metal.

It was heavy and took all my strength, but I heaved my body into the side and upended the entire thing across the dirt floor.

Putrid, rancid water burst from the top and arched into the air as the lid popped off and the contents congealed over my feet and flopped lifelessly in a puddle of blood stained urine.

I screamed.

I screamed even before my brain could register the horror wrapped around my ankles.

I screamed as it twitched and rippled.

I stood paralyzed as all I could do was expel the air from my lungs and shred my esophagus.

It moaned and slithered, and I threw myself away as my motor skills finally kicked in and I could move. I was clambering onto the second table without even realizing as Oliver dove to scoop it back into the barrel with his bare hands.

It was human.

It wasn't human.

It had a head on its shoulders and tentacles for arms and no eyes, but two noses and one ear, and long, straggly hair and no lips and a tail. It had breasts with a tiny, shriveled penis and pussy lips. It had two legs in different sizes and colors. It was moving, but dead. It was dead. The human was dead, but the animals moved and writhed.

I threw up.

I hit the table on all fours and emptied everything including my stomach lining. It splattered over my hands and ran down my front. I was crying and still screaming, and it was moving and struggling as Oliver wedged it back into the bin.

He shot me a look of disappointment as he hurried to grab a mop.

"That was not necessary, Naya. They get confused when you let them out."

I stared through a wall of sharp tears as he idly started mopping up the rancid fluid off the floor. I was vaguely aware that it covered my feet and had soaked into the hem of my tights. My attention was on the other eight barrels.

Eight.

Stuffed into the corner.

A choked sob lodged in my throat as I scrambled back, like that would make a difference.

"What have you done?" I whimpered.

"I made it possible for humans and animals to interchange parts. If you can use a pig's heart to keep a human alive, why can't you give an amputee fins? Or gorilla arms? What if we could use dolphin lungs to help humans swim better? The possibilities are endless and I'm not hurting anyone. Everything is donated."

I had more questions, but I couldn't think past the circle of darkness threatening to pull me under. It kept pulsing, making the putrid air thick.

Oliver cleaned up the mess before turning to me. He took in the vomit running down my front and sighed.

"Well, we can't take you back like that, can we?" He exhaled again, louder. "You have certainly made this quite difficult, my dear. I was hoping we could make this look peaceful, but now it seems we might have to make it look like you were trying to hide and died of fright from all the chaos."

I couldn't even rationalize what he was saying when my ears were ringing, and I couldn't take my eyes off the barrel with the lid slightly askew. A tiny tentacle curled the edge.

I recoiled, tender stomach muscles seizing.

"Okay, I am going to go get you clean clothes. You stay here."

"No!" I crawled on weak limbs to him. "Please. Please don't leave me alone with those things. Please."

Oliver smiled. "They won't hurt you. Just stay there."

He started for the door and I threw myself off the table to hurry after him, refusing to be left alone with those things I could now hear shifting against the metal walls of their prisons.

I grabbed his arm, not caring that he was the one who wanted to kill me when the alternative was so much worse.

"No. No, please. Please."

Oliver opened his mouth when something popped and groaned, and my head snapped around to the corner, expecting an army of mutated things to be crawling towards us.

But there was a gust of cool, fresh air against my back, ruffling my hair and I spun to see the most beautiful face.

"Thoran!"

He stood in the open doorway, his amber eyes dark and focused. They found me immediately. Took me in. Took in the room, but only briefly before returning to me and narrowing.

"Come here, Naya," he said sharply.

I didn't need telling twice. I was running. I started to.

Oliver twisted his hands in my hair, tearing out strands from the root. I cried out as I was dragged back into his chest. But the pain of my ponytail twisted in his meaty fist was nothing to the needle against my neck.

I froze.

So did Thoran.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"Goddamn it, Thoran," Oliver muttered. "You just can't..." he blew out a breath. "You were supposed to be gone a little longer."

Thoran wasn't listening. "Let her go. Now."

Oliver shook his head. "You can't tell me what to do this time, I'm afraid. There are much bigger things at play than your authority. If you had just stayed upstairs a little longer, Naya would be up in your bed right now and everything would be fine."

I could see the confusion in Thoran's expression, but there was also a hard, dangerous concentration that warned Oliver he would not go lightly on him.

"I don't give a fuck, Oliver. You hurt her, you know I will flay the skin off your fucking bones, uncle or not. I will carve you to pieces."

Oliver nodded slowly. "I understand. Your father would have done the same, but unfortunately, you will kill me regardless."

Thoran didn't argue the fact. His stone, cold stare stated very clearly that was exactly what would happen the second the needle was off me.

"Come here, Naya," Thoran said again softly, eyes never once leaving the man holding a vile of poison to my vein.

Oliver's fist tightened in my hair. Something hot and wet trickled down my neck and across my collarbone, making me wince. Thoran watched the trickle of blood with a flare of his nostrils before eyes the black of night shot up to the man wielding the syringe.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but you're not walking out of this room alive."

There seemed to be a standstill as the two stared the other down. Something squelched in the background, an abhorrent sound of a wet suction. Thoran must have heard it, too, because his gaze wavered over Oliver's shoulder, a flick that turned into horror.

"What the fuck?"

Oliver, possibly as worried as I was about that thing coming up behind him, looked over his shoulder. I couldn't see what was happening, nor was I given a chance to when a bomb exploded in the silence of the tomb. A ricocheting explosion of noise that reverberated across the walls.

Oliver jerked.

The needle sank into my neck. A pinching sting that made me cry out.

Thoran grabbed me in the same heartbeat and yanked me to him. The hand not bunched in my vomit covered sweater, grabbed the needle. Tore it out. His palm pressed into my skin. His eyes wide and feverish.

"What was in there?" he demanded, breathing hard against my face.

"I ... I don't know." My lips were tingling. My fingers felt numb as if all the blood had left my limbs. "Did ... did it go in?"

His hand was shaking when he lifted up the needle to look at the tube. "I don't know. How much was in here?"

He must have realized I didn't have the answer when he scooped me up into his arms and ran. Uncaring that I was filthy and stank to high heavens.

We were in the ballroom and sprinting up the stairs without ever breaking stride. I wasn't exactly a basket of feathers, but the way he carried me through the entire house and out the front door, I may as well have been.

"Car!" he bellowed to someone I couldn't see.

"Thoran," I breathed into his neck, my head light. My vision flickering in and out of focus.

"Shhh. It's okay. I'll make it okay. I promise. Hold on."

Waves of hot and cold scuttled across my skin, making me itch and shiver.

"I love you."

"Stop talking," he growled. "You're not fucking leaving me, Naya. You fucking swore."

I tightened my arms around him. "Love you."

I didn't hear his threats as I slipped into that cool, dark place.