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From his chair, he watched me with steady eyes. That was maybe the scariest thing about Nathan. With the exception of that first burst of anger and screaming, he didn’t act crazy. He was always rational, explaining everything. It didn’t matter that his conclusions were horrific.
I couldn’t breathe. I was slipping away from everything while he looked at me. Going back to that bed in Florida, unable to move or think because of the pain. The smell and sound of my own flesh burning. I’d blocked all those things out—I hadn’t talked about them to Lucas or Rayne—but those details were fresh, and now they were all I could focus on.
Lucas would find me. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that he would tear down the world to get to me. I just had to give him the time to do it. I couldn’t let myself go black. I had to keep thinking. But my mind was a snarl of adrenaline and fear. I could taste it.
“Most people,” Nathan said, “when you warn them about something repeatedly, take the hint and change course. That doesn’t seem to be the case with you, does it, Evelyn?”
I didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t matter if I did either way. He wouldn’t listen to me. His mind was already made up.
“What did I tell you the last time we had this conversation?”
Pressing my lips together, I only looked at him. No.
He stood, and in seconds, he was over me, staring down. His face was so close that I could feel his breath. Cold anger radiated from his eyes. But I heard none of that in his voice. The words were simple and matter-of-fact. “Before we continue, I’m going to hear you say it.”
What would keep him talking longer? Delay him the most? If he wanted to lecture me, I could take it. Please, let Lucas have a clue where we were. I swallowed. “You told me that I was yours.”
“That you were mine until you died. I made that very clear.” He turned away and walked back to the fire. His enormous shadow on the wall loomed over me the way he had.
Lena was breathing hard. Panicking. I shook my head. He didn’t want her. Only me. She needed to stay invisible.
“I thought that I’d given you a good enough lesson then.” Nathan ran his eyes over me. “And I see that it’s held up well. But this time, Evelyn, you will learn.”
All the breath went out of my lungs as he pulled the red-hot ring out of the fire. It glowed like the fucking sun in the half light of the room, and every bit of strength I’d thought I had evaporated. Panic choked me and I fought against my restraints. There wasn’t anything in me but sheer, black terror.
“I learned it,” I said, begging. “I promise that I did. You don’t have to do this.”
“Clearly, I do. Maybe it will be enough to remind you that you’re mine. End of story.”
The metal handcuffs dug into my wrists and my ankles, as he brought the ring towards me. I twisted away from him as far as I could get and already the sounds that escaped me weren’t human. They were base and instinctual. Survival sounds mixed with pleading.
But the look on Nathan’s face... He was as cold and beautiful as ever, and he was utterly unmoved.
The second the ring touched the skin of my leg the world went white. I heard a scream, but it wasn’t mine. I was just trying to survive. It was Lena.
“Shut up,” Nathan growled at Lena. “Shut the hell up.”
She didn’t. Through a haze of pain I managed to see her. She was screaming to draw his attention away from me.
But that wasn’t going to work. He would only get angrier. Brand-new terror soaked my mind. My life was already spoken for. I wasn’t going to let my friend die or walk out of here with her own scars. “Let her go.”
Fear nearly closed my throat as I said the words. I wasn’t sure how I was managing to speak, but I did. Buy more time. Get Lena out of harm’s way so that Lucas could find me. Or if he couldn’t find me, then find Lena.
“I’ll stay with you,” I said. “I’m already yours. You can have me. Just let her go.”
Lena was still screaming. Nathan glared at me, and in two steps he’d crossed the distance to Lena and hit her hard enough to stop her screaming. She slumped, unconscious.
“Please,” I whispered.
Nathan rolled his eyes like we were having a normal conversation. “You know I can’t let her go. She’s seen too much, and I need her now. Besides.” He pulled the ring out of the fire again, freshly glowing. “You think that you can wipe four years of the slate clean? Come back and live our life like nothing happened? That’s not the way this works, Evelyn.”
He stalked closer. The grip he had on his control was thinning. It was as close as I’d seen him to that first day with the screaming. His eyes promised my death, and somehow that didn’t scare me as much as I’d thought it would. Because this had always been coming. He’d promised it. And there weren’t a lot of paths that didn’t end up with us in these exact positions.
Not that I didn’t wish it were different. I did. I wished that I could stay here and be happy. Live with Lucas and work with Lena. Train animals to help people. But that future was evaporating like morning mist.
“I gave you plenty of chances to come back. Four years of chances. I would have taken you back, and you would have been happy, Evelyn. Your entire life, I would have given you everything. But you chose your path when you let someone else touch you. When you gave yourself away like a whore, knowing that you already belonged to me.”
He didn’t wait for a response. The ring touched my other leg and everything was pain. This time I screamed. He smiled through my sobs then did something that scared me even more.
