Bastard.
“Are you done with your food porn show? I have a cold wet hellhole I need to get back to.”
“Sooner or later you’ll break,” he said.
“Keep hoping.”
“You’re a survivor. Voron put you on the edge of that cliff again and again until he conditioned you to claw onto life. You’ll do whatever you have to do to survive, and I’m your only chance of getting out. At first you’ll balk, but with every passing hour my offer will look better and better. You’ll convince yourself that dying will accomplish nothing and you should at least go out with a bang. You’ll tell yourself that you’re accepting my offer just so you can stick that broken sword into my chest and feel it cut through my heart. Even if you die afterward, the fact that I’ll stop breathing makes your death mean something. So you’ll call me. And you’ll try to kill me. Except you’ve gone three days without food, and that body . . .” He tilted his head and looked me over slowly. “That body burns through calories like fire goes through gasoline. You’re running out of reserves. I can put you down with one hit.”
“You’re right about the sword. You broke mine. I owe you one.”
He tapped his naked chest over his heart. “This is the spot. Give it a shot, Kate. Let’s see what happens.”
“What is it you want from me, Hugh?”
“Short term, I’d like you to say my name with a please attached to it. I’d like to walk into Jester Park with you on my arm.”
Jester Park, Iowa. Once a park in Des Moines, and now one of my father’s retreats.
“Long term, I want to win. And I will win, Kate. You’ll put up a good fight, but eventually you’ll be sleeping in my bed and fighting with me back to back. We’ll be good together. I promise you.”
“What part of no don’t you understand?”
“The part where I don’t get what I want. You need to be taught your place. It’s not at the Keep.”
Something inside me snapped. “And you’re going to teach me where my place is?”
“Yes.”
Time for a reality check, Hugh. “You have what you have only because my father mixed your blood with his. Everything you do and everything you are, you owe to someone else and when he’s done using you, he’ll toss you aside.”
Hugh’s eyebrows came together.
I kept going. “I’ve carved my own life out of this world. You try getting by without Roland’s help and then come back and lecture me. Oh wait, you did, and first I kicked your ass, then Curran broke your spine and threw you into a fire. How does that feel, Hugh? To know you’re second best?”
“You’re pushing it,” he told me.
“You’re hired help. You can’t even tell Roland no. So how about you shut up and go back to what you do best. Roland’s boots need cleaning.”
“Suit yourself.” He put his hands behind his head and smiled. “I have nothing but time.”
I jerked awake. The cold water washed over me. Ghastek stared at me, bleary-eyed.
“Curran will come for me,” I told him.
• • •
MY LEGS WERE cramping. The cramps came with sickening frequency, twisting me, so painful I would’ve screamed if I hadn’t been so weak. We had gone through four magic waves now. During the third, Ghastek spoke to the wall begging his mother not to die. We were on our fourth wave now and he had fallen silent hours ago.
I’d tried using power words, but none of them worked. They just bounced off the walls of the shaft. Hugh must’ve warded it.
I tried to sleep as much as I could. When I couldn’t, I counted the bricks. Lately they had turned blurry and out of focus, as if I were looking at them through hot air rising from the pavement. I was no longer Kate. I was a thing. Cold. Exhausted. Starving. Filthy.
I don’t want to die in this dark hole. I don’t want to die!
I just want to see the sun. I want to hug Julie one more time. I want to kiss Curran.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe he wouldn’t find me in time.
• • •
WARM. DRY. FOOD. Hugh.
“Five days in. It’s an anniversary. I thought I’d check on you. The offer is still open.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay then.”
Cold, wet darkness. Ghastek convulsing in his restraints. Holding his head above water. Don’t die. We will make it. We have to make it.
• • •
THE WATER SPLASHES me. I no longer know if it’s warm or cold.
The wall of the shaft falls apart. Curran looks at me. I see him. I see his gray eyes. I hear his voice. “I’m coming, baby. Hold on. Just hold on for me.”
He’s come for me! He’s come to get me out. “I love you so much . . .”
I just want to touch him, but I can’t get through. Something is blocking me. He is right there. I can see him right there. I can’t . . .
“Kate! Kate!” Something is trying to hold me back, but I have to get to Curran. I have to get out.
“It’s not real.” Ghastek’s voice. “It’s not real. See?”
Curran fades. There are only the stones, the dark cold stones and smears of my blood, where I’d clawed at them.
• • •
SIX MAGIC WAVES. I float in a lake of blood. I’m hallucinating, but I can taste it on my lips, the salty hot flavor of a human life.
It will pass. It’s just the hunger.
Ghastek, blurry, his face out of focus, floating in the blood next to me. “I’m afraid.”
Have to keep him alive. “We’ll make it.”
“I just wanted life,” he whispers. “I watched my mother die. She suffered. She suffered so much. I can’t do that. I can’t. I’m too afraid. I did all this because I wanted the Builder’s gift. I wanted him to make me immortal.”
He stares at me with deranged eyes. He doesn’t really see me.
“Ghastek?”
“My name is Matthew.” His voice is a feverish whisper. “If the Builder cares about you, if he needs you, he’ll let you live forever. He won’t let you die.”
“I care about you, Matthew. Hold my hand. I won’t let you die.”
• • •
SEVEN MAGIC WAVES.
Curran stands on the grate above me and I talk to him. I say, I love you all. This is not the end. I won’t roll over and die.
I wish I had been a better person. I wish things had been different.