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Comfortingly dark.

It rankles to know that no matter how hard we try to make upstairs feel like home, nothing soothes the frantic vigilance quite like being in this darkness. Down here, nothing actually matters. The senses are so deprived that it dulls out even the twitchiest nerve.

I can’t say what compelled me to come down here. One second, I was gathering my stuff for my first lecture of the day, and the next, I was tugging the sconce to open the passageway down here. Now, I’m standing in the doorway of the empty cell, gazing into its shadows.

Father is dead.

Gone.

He died knowing this blankness. This void. This aching expanse of loneliness.

My only regret is that he couldn’t die in here.

“Hey.”

The voice doesn’t startle me. From down here, I know every sound in this palace. I could hear her coming from the second-floor landing.

I flick one of the bars. “I don’t like you being down here.”

“Funny.” When I glance behind me, she’s giving me a tense grin. “I was going to say the exact same thing about you.”

Shrugging, I bury my fists into my pockets. “Just seeing if the Barons earned that clean-up fee.”

She steps next to me, winding her arms around my waist. “Maybe we should fill it in with concrete,” she says, but I know I couldn’t bear to.

“Then where will we run our lucrative torturing business?”

Humming, she takes a beat to consider this. “Port-o-potties.”

Snorting, I place my hands over hers. “And damage the palace’s curb appeal?”

“You could just,” she burrows her face into my side, “nottorture people.”

I turn, tipping her face up to search her eyes. “You don’t approve of what we do,” I wager.

Frowning, she looks away. “I’m not saying people like Bruce and Rufus don’t deserve it. And I know justice doesn’t come without imparting a little pain. It’s just…” She bites at her lip, wondering, “Doesn’t it cling to you?”

I thumb her lip from her teeth. “What?”

“Inflicting hurt.” Her eyes are so wide and innocent that another man might fold.

“Did it cling to you?”

Humming, she winds her arms around my neck. “If it did, it was more like… static cling. Easy to shake off.” She shrugs, as if proving it. “But I’ve also only done it once.”

“You hit Heather with a frying pan,” I remind her.

She groans. “Am I never going to live that down? Of all my actions, that one was the most justifiable! She broke the girl code, and she knows it.”

I point out, “You helped me kill Charlie.”

“Thatwas self-defense.”

Tugging her closer, I add, “I bet, given half the chance, you’d castrate at least a dozen of the men in Forsyth,” and she frowns.

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.” I lean down to kiss her, licking my way through the seam of her mouth. “And it wouldn’t be because you’re an Ashby, it’d be because they deserve it. This town doesn’t raise happy, well-adjusted men, Rosi.”