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The voice purrs my full name, the name I stopped even responding to when Kasper twisted it to his own ends.
“Jonas—” I seethe. “Jonas, I’m going to?—”
“I’m going to hurt her, Maleqqi. And you’re going to listen while I do it.”
The line goes dead.
42
FREYA
I feellike I’m floating, my body untethered from reality.
I can’t focus. Everything around me blurs and fades in and out of darkness.
It’s cold, too—a biting cold that gnaws at my skin, though the pain in my head overshadows everything else.
Where thefuckam I?
The last thing I remember is walking into that speakeasy cocktail bar with Hana to meet Cain. Then there was just blackness?—
Hana.
My heart lurches and I bolt upright, wincing as sharp, throbbing pain punches through my skull. My breath catches in my throat, and I instinctively press a hand to my temple.
“Hana…” I rasp, my voice cracking in my parched throat.
A soft whimper. Scuffling sounds nearby. I blink, forcing my vision to clear, and the blur around me slowly becomes slightly more defined—a stone floor beneath me, damp and roughagainst my palms. Stone walls, too. No windows. No light except for a single, dim bulb hanging over me, casting long, eerie shadows.
Panic twists in my gut as I turn, searching frantically for Hana. Then I see her.
“Hana!” I choke, scrambling to my knees and crawling toward her. She’s lying on the floor not far from me, curled up into a ball, her face pale, her breathing shallow. “Hana, wake up!”
My hand trembles as I touch her shoulder, gently shaking her. She stirs, groaning softly, her eyelids fluttering open. Her gaze is unfocused, and she looks how I feel. It’sweirdto see her like this. She’s always so put-together, without a hair out of place. Now her makeup is smudged around her eyes, her hair tousled, and her clothes streaked with grime.
It’s unsettling.
“Freya…?” she mutters, sounding disoriented, her voice thick.
“Yeah, it’s me. Are you badly hurt?”
Hana squints, slowly getting herself up onto her elbows. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”
“Same.” I try to smile, but it’s devoured by the dread crawling up my spine. “Do you remember what happened?”
Hana shakes her head slowly, her movements stiff. “We were at that place your friend told us about. And then…” She pauses, frowning, clearly trying to piece things together. “Then everything just went dark.”
Yeah—I remember that much, too. We’d walked into the “tea shop” front for the trendy bar, found the back room behind theshelves of cleaning supplies, opened the secret door to the bar itself. And then…nothing.
“I think someone drugged us,” I mutter, my voice tight with fury.
Hana groans again, pressing a hand to her head. “You think?”
“Yeah,” I mutter quietly. “Pretty sure.”
It happened to me once before, in the south of France. This was way before we found our footing and teamed up with Damian and Kir. Annika and I were thieving our way up the French Riviera, skimming watches and credit cards off drunk rich guys at clubs. I was feeling celebratory and ordered a glass of champagne. The next thing I knew, after three sips, the room was spinning.
Luckily, Annika was sober and got me out of there and back to our hotel, where I slept for almost an entire day afterward.
