Page 738 of Coal Hearts

What could we say?

Henri couldn’t hear us.

He couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t see.

By four a.m., I tripped in and out of desperate, despairing sleep. I woke to a slicing pain deep in my middle from hunger or horror—I could no longer tell the difference.

I glanced at Henri.

His knees had buckled, his arms stretched high and holding him upright.

I hoped he slept.

I hoped he’d passed out from the pain and claustrophobia of being so shackled.

A trickle of saliva ran down his naked chest, catching the moonlight outside. I cried myself back to sleep, imagining the agony of his jaw with the ball gag locked between his teeth. The way he wouldn’t be able to stop drooling. The absolute panic he must feel being so vulnerable and bound while blindfolded, gagged, and deafened.

I’m here. I opened my heart and sent him all the love I had left. I’m here. You’re not alone.

He groaned and sagged against the pole.

Peter shivered quietly in the dark.

And I begged the sun to rise before we froze.

* * * * *

“Did you piss on my floor, Paavak?”

I shot awake just as Victor kicked Peter across the room.

He grunted as Victor’s loafer caught him in the side.

Backing away, Victor growled at the closest guard. “Get a cleaner to disinfect the floor. He’s made a fucking mess.”

“Yes, Sir V.” The guard took off but not before his gaze narrowed on me as I fought trembling, exhausted limbs and tried to sit upright. I’d managed to ignore the slicing pain in my bladder, but...I wouldn’t be able to for much longer. And the thought of wetting myself added yet another layer of horror.

I stopped breathing as the guard skidded to a stop on the threshold and looked back. His gaze met mine. He sighed with a wince as if unable to stand our condition, then took off before I could decide if it was real or fanciful wishing.

Was that one of the guards Ben and Stewart said were on our side?

Closing my eyes, I committed him to memory. Lean but tall, narrow chin and short dark hair. Clean-shaven with a tattoo of a fading butterfly on his hand.

Henri cried out, wrenching my attention to him.

“D-Don’t...” I reached a feeble hand toward Victor as he wrenched off Henri’s hood.

My heart fisted with despair as I caught Henri’s gaze.

Last night, his eyes had been clear and fierce. Lucid and full of fury. Now...

God, now...

I flinched as Henri’s nostrils flared. He tried catching a breath around the ball gag. His face dripped with condensation from his breath trapped in the hood, and those stunning silver eyes no longer belonged to a man but to a creature.

A creature that’d been pushed to the brink of sanity and had stared into the pitch-black darkness all night. A darkness full of silence and terror, starvation and torment.