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He wrinkles his nose and looks down at my week-old dress. His face is colored with more bruises than the self-inflicted ones he left with early this morning. Both eyes and cheeks are now purple and blue and swollen, and finger marks mar his neck—his punishment for me “disappearing” on his watch.

I stand up. “Let me out.”

“Never,” he whispers with a slight hiss, stepping so close that his face nearly touches the bars.

“What do you mean,never?”

“It’s your word. You didn’t want to come willingly, so why should I trust you?” He pulls back a smidge. “You’ll run and get yourself killed, and that’s not going to work for me.”

“You’re actually leaving me in this tiny shit hole of a cage?”

“Nook. And yes. I take good care of my things, especially the pretty ones, which means keeping you alive.”

“Possessive prick.” I grab the bars, pulling myself closer to him. “You only want me alive because you need something from me, but what happens after that?”

He hesitates. “I keep you.”

Keep me?No one ever wants me to stay. “I’m not for keeping.”

His forehead rests on the bars, and he rakes in a deep breath through his nose, his eyes fluttering shut and reopening.

“Did you just fucking smell me?”And why does that turn me on?

He lifts his head. “Yes.”

“You’re not even going to deny it?” I ask.

“Are you going to deny you liked it? I can smell that too.”

Dammit. “You’re an animal. Tell me what you want from me.”

Eli drags the lone chair in front of the cell door, flips it around backward and straddles it, his chin resting on top. He gives me a long look, as if so much depends on his next words. Maybe he decides to keep them to himself because he lifts his chin from the chair, reaches into his pocket and hands me a bar—almondflavor today. I pick off bits of black-and-blue lint with my overgrown nails. He must have moved it from a jumpsuit pocket to the black pants, evidence of his effort not to let me starve.

Watching me swallow down the last hunk of a sad excuse for food with an audible gulp, he says, “You’re a Hollow.”

“So you’ve said.” Crumbs launch from my mouth.

Eli dips out of the way, frowning at me. “Which means you can take magic, and that’s what I want you to do. I’ll get what I need from you when it’s time.”

I throw my hands into my tangled hair. “You actually believe in that magic nonsense?”And want me to do exactly what everyone else wants me dead for?

“You don’t?”

“As little as I believe in the gods.”

“You don’t believe in them either?” He latches tighter onto the back of the chair. “Whatdoyou believe in?”

I don’t know how to respond to that. Or the way he looks right into me. It’s too…intimate. I thought I might believe in something after meeting Kelt, something I had squashed deep down in years past, something dangerous, yet fragile.

Hope.

But I was wrong.

“Nothing,” I say.

He drums a little beat with his fingers. “Everything has to be hard with you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”If you only knew.“But not as hard asyouget over nothing.”