Page 16 of Beg the Night (Mystics of Ashora #1)

SIXTEEN

athena

S inner said nothing to me for hours. He stayed on his side of the tiny cell, as far away from me as he could get.

I didn’t blame him. I’d literally begged him to touch me last night. Could I be any more pathetic? Clearly, I had no restraint. The same could not be said for Sinner. He’d gotten me off quickly, then extricated himself, obviously not affected at all by the drugs they pumped into the cell.

Drugs or not, he had more self-control than I expected. That, or he didn’t think I was half as attractive as I thought he was.

Now that the haze of those drugs had lifted, I was regretting every choice I’d ever made in life.

Nobody had ever touched me like that. Nobody had ever made me tremble under their grasp. And the scariest part? A sensation I’d never experienced before sparked to life in that moment—one that had nothing to do with his hands on my body. And part of me suspected he felt it, too.

Especially when he finally broke the silence.

“You’re telling me you’ve never used powers before? Even by accident?”

He sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, his back against the bars. I couldn’t even look at him without picturing the way he literally licked my slickness off his fingers.

If only that drug had killed us.

It would’ve saved me this misery.

“No,” I answered on instinct. “Never.”

He eyed me skeptically. I wanted to ask him what we were both thinking. Did you feel that, too?

Instead, I kept my mouth shut.

“And your family? Your sister? What tier is she? What’s her gift?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Seeing my sister here had obviously been a surprise. One I had done all I could to avoid thinking about.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. It was a weak lie, one he would see right through. But how did I tell him the truth? How did I show him the pieces of myself that I hadn’t even taken out and looked at on my own? “We weren’t that close.”

I lowered my head and picked at my nails, unconcerned that I’d already caused them to bleed.

He watched me with such intensity, his attention bored holes into me and blanketed me with an invisible weight.

And there was nowhere I could go to hide. Not this time.

“Hm,” he started. “So you have a sister. Anyone else crawling around in the Ministry I should know about?”

I forced myself to keep my breath steady. “No. Everyone else is dead.”

One beat. Two beats.

“Your whole family is dead?”

I nodded.

“How?”

“Different things. Accidents. Illness. My younger sister died right before the Ministry found me and brought me here. I had just finished burying her with the others.”

A long silence fell upon us. Long enough that I dared glancing up at Sinner.

When I saw the pain in his expression, I immediately regretted seeking him out.

“You buried your own family?”

I shrugged, averted my focus again. “I had help. Until Katherine left and Jasmine died. Then it was just me.”

“Why did she leave? How did she end up with the Ministry?”

I shifted, no longer caring about what he could read in my body language. Let him see the discomfort. “You’re awfully talkative today.”

He scoffed. “And you’re awfully secretive. I can tell when you’re hiding things from me, Athena.”

Athena. That was the third time he’d called me by name.

I hated the way my body reacted at the memory of my name falling from his lips last night.

“You’re hiding things, too,” I asserted. “You think I can’t see the concrete walls you’ve built around yourself? People don’t do that when they have nothing to hide.”

He swallowed, but held my gaze. “Be very, very careful with what you say next.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’ll happen if I don’t? You’ll kill me?”

Few things made me shiver the way his smile did. “We both know I could do things far worse than that.”

“What else can your power do?” I pushed.

He wanted me to talk about a power I didn’t possess, but he wasn’t willing to give me information about his own power or his life. “When did you discover it?”

“Conversation is over,” he barked, his eyes sharp. “Let’s just sit here in silence. It’s much less painful.”

Agreed.

We sat like that for hours. Time and time again, I had to bury thoughts of how his fingers had scoured my body deep into the shadows of my mind. I tried to think of literally anything else, forcing myself to consider where Margaret might be and what might have happened to all the other people at that damn ball.

Were they back in the dungeon like nothing ever happened? Was Margaret with them, or was she miles and miles away from here by now?

I was seconds away from losing my mind entirely when guards finally approached. Sinner was on his feet in an instant.

“Let’s go,” one of the men dressed in head-to-toe black ordered. He fumbled through keys and inserted one in the lock.

Sinner stepped to the side in a way that, if he were anyone else, would make me think he was shielding me with his body. “Go where?”

“You’re going back with the others. Make it fast or I’ll drag you both there myself.”

I bit back a scoff. As if he could.

The cell clanked open with a loud bang, then he waved an arm, impatiently motioning for us to exit. Sinner didn’t move. He didn’t even flinch, actually, until I stepped forward and put a small hand on his back.

He snapped to life and stepped forward, breaking our connection, without bothering to give me a glance.

I followed him out of the tiny cell.

Back to hell.

At least we wouldn’t be trapped in a four-by-four space any longer.

We were led silently through the tunnels, and within minutes, we stood outside the massive, fortified door that led to the dungeon.

The dungeon that was slowly starting to feel like home.

“Welcome back,” the guard sneered.

It took every ounce of strength I had—which, admittedly, wasn’t much—to control the urge to punch him square in the face.

As the door opened and several familiar faces turned our way, I was hit with a strange sense of relief.

But Sinner was as tense as ever.

A few steps in, he stopped in his tracks, nearly making me run directly into him.

Hands on my hips, I glared up at him. What the hell was his problem?

Carter and Leon, walking side by side, approached. “Where have you been? We thought you were dead!”

“Director wanted to run some tests on us,” Sinner said. “But we’re back now.”

“Tests?” Carter crossed his arms over his chest, chin tilted up. “What kind of tests?”

I kept my focus fixed on a spot on the floor between us, hoping the guys wouldn’t ask me directly. Sinner could handle it.

“Tests you don’t need to concern yourselves with.”

Carter laughed. “What? You two fuck or something? Did Director send you back here so you could finally share?”

Between one blink and the next, black smoke erupted from Sinner’s chest and wrapped around Carter’s neck, then his torso, until his entire body was bound tight.

Shit. Sinner had officially lost his cool.