“Don’t want to.”
Zero.
Percent.
Interested.
My lock jiggles, and I open my eyes to see him delving a key into it, clonking it open.
I sigh.
“Wonder how your brother feels about you thieving his keys and breaking his prisoners free?”
“I’m not breaking you out, so don’t get your hopes up.”
I snort-laugh. “Charming.”
He kicks the door open, stepping into my foul-smelling chamber. “And my brother has eyes in only one direction,” he mumbles, crouching before me, encasing me in the robust medley of his warm scent. A lush comfort in this harsh place, which I ignore the pleasure of, choosing to breathe through my mouth.
“Well, feel free to tell him I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to kill him before I died. I was really looking forward to it.”
“I have no doubt,” he says, producing another key from his pocket that he uses to unbolt the bar connecting my two chains, placing it on the ground beside me. He fails to unshackle my wrists or ankles, meaning he’s got … plans for me.
Plans I want nothing to do with.
He stands, towering above me, blocking the light spilling from my lantern. “Up.”
“Die in a ditch. Or better yet, a coliseum—getting feasted on by a flock of Moltenmaws. I’ll meet you there.”
Asshole.
I sponge a little satisfaction from his rumbling sigh.
Even if I wanted to stand, I’m not sure I could. I may have put on a show at the trial, but my entire body feels like a frayed seam.
It hurts to breathe. To blink. It hurts to tap my tapping foot. There’s something surging through my veins that’s making me nauseous and cold.
I usually like the cold, but this is different. This cold feels wrong—wedging into my marrow like it’s masticating me from the inside out to make space for itself.
“Now is not the time to be stubborn, Moonbeam.”
“Wrong. There’s only one thing males see in a shackled female,” I seethe, my words laced with enough venom to stop a heart. “If you want that, you can take it right here so my cellmates can see what a monster you are.”
A low rumble boils in his chest, making my skin pebble. “I’m not that sort of monster, Prisoner Seventy-Three. I would not take pleasure from you were it not given freely. Now, stand on your own or suffer the embarrassment of being picked up and carried.”
His words wedge between my ribs and stab me where it hurts: my withering pride, the remnants of which I’m determined to take to my impending grave, tied to the stake he sentenced me to die upon.
“Your choice,” he growls. “Make it.”
“I did make a choice. You took it from me.”
“Because it was the wrong one.” He reaches out as if to grip me around the shoulders—
A snarl rips up my throat, and I snap my teeth at his fingers. “I’m doing it.”
“Then do it.”
“Not until you turn around.”
Another rumbling sigh before he spins, giving me the privacy I need to suffer through what’s going to be a monumental task I’m not sure I have the capabilities to achieve. Right now, the ground is my friend. Unless I’m standing—then it’s my enemy.
At least with his back turned, he won’t see me crumble.
“Any progress?”
“Mentally strangling you as we speak,” I mutter, setting my hands on the ground to my left. I pinch my trembling lips together and shove all my weight into my palms, rolling into a wobbly crouch.
The pin in my shoulder grinds against bone, bolts of pain shooting through my arm …
Shit.
I squeeze my eyes shut, snap them open, and shove up, rocking to my feet. Warmth dribbles down my back as I sway. As my surroundings split, converge … split, converge …
“You’re not going to fall, are you?”
I lift my chin, steady my spine. Stare at the back of his head while lit with a blaze of retribution. “Course not. I’ve never been more sturdy in my life.”
“Good,” he says, then stalks from the cell with a dash of his white robe, condemning me to follow with a curt “This way.”
I’m led through a tangle of corridors to a quiet tunnel with a single door at the end, nerves popping beneath my skin as the Incognito King pulls the door open and gestures for me to pass.
To enter ahead of him.
“You first,” I rasp with a steadying hand against the wall, not believing a word he said about not being that sort of monster.