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“I’m glad to hear that. Now, can we actually try to get shit done?”
“By all means.” He reaches into a drawer under his bed and pulls out a small notebook and pen. He makes a couple of quick drawings, then moves over to sit next to me on the bed. With him on my left and Flint on my right, it’s a tight fit, so I angle my shoulders to give us all a little more room on my tiny bed.
Hudson moves to sit on Remy’s bed directly across from me and flashes the warlock a little fang. I’m pretty sure it’s on account of me—a quick reminder of whose mate I am—and I can’t help it: I giggle because the whole thing is so ridiculous. Which makes Hudson smile sheepishly at me for a second before going back to glaring at Remy. It’s total caveman behavior, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I mean, there were a few moments earlier when Calder was licking her lips that I had to warn her off as well. Turns out, we’re quite the possessive pair.
“So this is our cellblock, right?” he says, pointing to the rough chain of cells he drew.
“And this right here is something they like to call the Chamber.” He points to an oval he drew directly between the two ends of the chain.
“And what does the Chamber do?” Flint asks.
“Makes you wish you were never born.” Calder is stretched out on her bed now, braid gone and hair fanned around her head like a crown. The fact that her tone is so mild, she could have been talking about lunch or the weather or a million other topics, only makes what she said sound worse and resonate more.
“Could you maybe be a little more specific?” Flint asks, and he looks really nervous.
Not that I blame him. I’m pretty sure I look nervous, too. Hudson’s face having gone completely blank says he’s feeling the stress as well.
“The Chamber was built for rehabilitation purposes,” Remy tells us.
“Rehabilitation as in learn a trade?” I ask. “Or as in the Spanish Inquisition?”
Remy thinks about it for a second. “I’d say a little more painful than the Spanish Inquisition.”
“By a little, he means so much more painful,” Calder translates. “Like so, so, sooooo much more painful.”
“And we have to go into the Chamber to get to the Pit?” I ask, my stomach churning wildly now.
Calder sighs. “It’s because the prison is judge, jury, and executioner. I’m sure you know how hard it is to have a real trial in the paranormal world—people use magic to game the system or use their power to topple the Court. All kind of things. So this prison was built with an unbreakable curse—no one in here could game the system. And once you’re in, the only way out is to prove that you’re rehabilitated.”
Remy laughs, but there’s no amusement in the sound. “Of course, that means the prison itself gets to judge when you’re rehabilitated. It provides your punishment in increments via the Chamber, and when it thinks you’ve atoned enough, it decides to let you go.”
Calder nods to Remy. “And if you’re unlucky enough to be born inside, well, being born is apparently your crime—and there’s no way to atone for that sin.”
I gasp and stare at Remy. No wonder he’s so certain a flower is his only way out.
“The prison decides,” Hudson says, totally blank-faced. “And who runs the prison?”
“That’s the kicker,” Remy says. “No one does. Supposedly, the prison is governed by ancient magic. It makes its own decisions, does its own thing, and because it has no human emotion or drive, it can’t be bribed or get angry or anything. Although I have my suspicions.”
“My mom said something when I was being arrested about atoning,” Flint tells us. “I didn’t know what she meant, but she must have been telling me to go to the Chamber.”
“She couldn’t have known what she was asking,” Calder says. “Nobody would wish that on someone they care about.”
“And yet you do it every month just so I can get to the Pit.” Remy smiles at her.
For the first time since we’ve met her, Calder seems a little flustered. But she recovers quickly. “Well, I have to go get my nail polish anyway. Beauty has its costs.”
Flint looks from her nails to Remy to me, and I shrug. I would be the last person to go through a little light torture for a new nail polish color.
“So how do we get to the Chamber?” I ask, terrified but also resolved. We need to get to the blacksmith, and then we need to get the hell out of here. If the Chamber is the way to do it, then sign me up. “And how long does it take to get from where we are to the Pit?”
“Do you know, Calder?” Remy asks. “I can’t remember where in the cycle we are. I think we’re six or seven days out—”
“Six,” Calder says, and now she’s sitting up, painting her toenails black. I have no idea where she pulled the polish from, but I have to say, she’s really, really good at it.
“So in six days, we’ll be in the Pit?” Hudson asks.
“If you choose to risk the Chamber every night.”
“What do you mean, ‘risk it’?” Flint asks, and he, too, is watching Calder paint her nails.
“It’s like playing Russian roulette,” Remy explains, standing up and heading back to his bed as Hudson moves over next to me, “and the Chamber is the bullet. If we decide we want to play, that night we’ll join the rotation. We may land in the Chamber; we may not. If we don’t, we still drop a level and we get a good night’s sleep, then play again the next day. If we do land in it, we go through hell and then—if we’re up for it—we play again the next day. Six days out means six spins of the Chamber, six possible nights of torture, but then we arrive at the Pit.”
“We’ll be up for it,” Hudson assures him. “How badly could they hurt us in one night?”
“Oh, it’s not physical,” Calder says. “The Chamber never harms a hair on your head. But you’ll be begging for mercy by the end.” She puts her nail polish away, pulls her knees into her chest, and rocks a little.
“What does it do?” I ask, terrified to hear the answer.
“It makes you face the worst things you’ve ever done, over and over and over again, until it’s sure that you’ve atoned for them all. Days, weeks, years.” Remy’s face is grim. “People go crazy from it—sometimes the first night, sometimes several months in. It simply depends on the person.”
“And the crimes,” Calder reminds him.
“And the crimes,” Remy agrees. “So I guess you have to ask yourselves. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
How Can You Tell
the Future if There’s
No Future to Tell?
The question hangs in the air for what feels like forever after Remy asks it, growing bigger and bigger and bigger until it’s all I can think about. All any of us can think about.
Flint is the first to move. He stands up and starts pacing, the look on his face telling everyone that he’s already in a dark place.
Hudson doesn’t react at all. His face stays blank, and he doesn’t so much as move a muscle. But I’m holding his hand, and I can feel him trembling.
I try to catch his eye, but he’s staring straight ahead, and I know he’s going over and over and over those last days and weeks at Katmere before Jaxon killed him. I know at the time he thought he was doing the right thing, but I also know how much his mistakes hurt him now, in retrospect. The idea of having them shoved in his face all night—every night—seems beyond cruel.
“What if you don’t want to play?” I ask abruptly. “What if you don’t want to risk ending up in the Chamber?”
“The prison isn’t completely cruel,” Remy answers. “You simply don’t slot yourself in for the spin. You stay exactly where you are. You can take six months to get to the Pit. Or you can take a year. Or you can take forever. But if you don’t atone in the Chamber…”
“Then you never get the chance to leave,” I fill in for him.
“Exactly.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Flint growls from where he is still pacing, showing no sign of settling—or sitting—down.
“So we already know we don’t have enough flowers to get all of us out of here, and we’re six days from reaching the blacksmith,” I say, ticking off the information that we have in an effort to make a plan—and to avoid my own stress about my own “crimes.” I may not have used my mind to force people to kill themselves, but not standing up harder against Jaxon about the Unkillable Beast and then getting Xavier killed is not something I even like to think about, let alone relive again and again and again.
But if we do this thing, I am going to have to relive it. Until the prison thinks I’ve atoned enough and lets me go…or until we find a way to escape anyway.
Like Flint said. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Out of curiosity,” I say as I go over in my head everything Remy and Calder have told me. “What are the odds that we get to the Pit in six days and the prison decides we’ve atoned enough and just lets us go?”
“Zero,” they both answer at once.