Page 10 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

T ime somehow simultaneously crawled and passed by in a blur.

No sunrise. No sunset. No regular schedule from what I could tell.

Rogue still hadn’t found us, and my certainty that I’d heard him began to waver. Had that been only a dream? Had it been another creature down here, another Fae or shifter? One of his wyverns?

“Did you find the wyverns?” I whispered under my breath. “Are they helping you? I hope so. I hope you’re not alone.”

Adonis had not returned since our last encounter, and Livvy was taken while I slept, leaving a few bloody footprints in her wake and a heavy stone in my gut. I’d been left alone for the most part, only approached when necessary by soldiers I didn’t recognize.

While I was immensely grateful for that, I’d been left with unanswered questions and spiraling thoughts.

Adonis said he bathed in Vaelor’s blood. Was that true? It couldn’t have been…could it? Mother had said it was only Adrastus there. If that wasn’t true, then Adonis had altered her memories, too.

My head fell back onto the stone. He’d sunk his grimy claws into everyone’s mind.

He removed himself from her memory, but not Adrastus—not the entire night. He could have convinced her of any number of things, so why this?

The heavy stone in my gut neared shame, because I was almost ready to suffer another session with Adonis in the hopes of answers.

Livvy had hung unconscious across from me for what felt like days. I hadn’t seen the drugs they gave her, but someone must have been coming in at some point throughout the day—most likely when I slept to save themselves trouble.

Well, that was what I told myself because I couldn’t handle any other reason for not waking up. Not the bruised cut on her forehead that left dark, crusted blood in her blonde hair. Not the emaciation, or?—

Drugs. It was drugs.

The longer I stared at her, the deeper the nagging feeling dug in my gut.

She needed to wake up. She needed to open her eyes, to suck in a sharp breath, speak, cry, scream, anything.

I needed to see her survival, because she had to survive.

She’d been surviving her entire life, and it was her turn to live.

A tear slipped down my cheek, burning my frostbitten skin, and I swallowed the rising knot in my throat. I felt dangerously close to choking—nothing new down here, but never easier.

I needed her to live.

Livvy had to live.

“Open your eyes,” I begged, but the words were strangled and raw. “Open your eyes, Liv. Let me see them. Let me see that you’re still alive. Let me see?—”

The words stopped in my throat.

“Let him see,” I whispered.

My heart skipped a beat, and I stood straighter, wincing at the needles prickling my feet.

Had Orrys seen anything through them? He’d explained his sight to us in excruciating detail, claiming he wasn’t as talented as other seers, because he could only see through the eyes of people he cared for, but I’d firmly disagreed. “Those are the most important.”

I felt immensely and unbelievably idiotic now. If he could see through Adonis’s eyes, we’d be found already. Hell, this never would’ve happened, because we could’ve killed him months ago.

If Livvy could wake up and Orrys tried to see, which I was certain he already had, relentlessly, then he’d see me. He would see where we were trapped. They would at least know we were alive.

I looked around, studying the dungeon for the first time in Goddess knew how long, searching for any distinguishable features.

Other than stone, the occasional drip, and us, there was nothing.

He wouldn’t be able to hear or feel anything, so he wouldn’t realize how fucking cold it was.

My fingers had burned before going numb, my toes too, and my skin had long since stopped feeling anything but aches.

But at least they would know we were alive.

Would I be able to see him looking through her? Would her eyes turn black, too?

Though I supposed I’d never know.

They took Livvy away before she had the chance to wake up. I didn’t know where they’d taken her, but I prayed it was somewhere warmer.

I still hadn’t deduced Adonis’s end goal, but I knew his immediate one.

He wanted to use his manipulation on my mind.

These chains blocked any magic in or out—but there was no way, in any hell, I would ever agree to let him into my mind.

I would suffer every torture, every agonizing minute, and devour his life the second he unlocked this collar.

I would die down here while offering him a bloody smile before I ever let him touch my mind.

But that was before, when I thought it was only my life at stake.

My resolve waned with each passing day, and he knew that, too.

That was why Livvy had hung for so long atop Rogue’s rotted bones—why I was trapped with them and isolated, forced to look and look and look.

He taunted and provoked, grinning like he could see my walls crumbling, and reveled in watching my fight seep out of every crack in my strength.

If Livvy’s life was the bargaining chip, which didn’t make any sense because she was his mate, then I would eventually cave. It was inevitable. If he threatened her life again, I would agree.

Even the thought left a bitter taste in my mouth, disgust slithering up my throat.

I had run through every possible outcome I could conjure, and the most likely haunted me day and night. He would force me to go back to Draig Hearth with some kind of mission. I would be forced to betray Rogue, just like Delphia…or worse.

There were always worse things.

I released a long exhale, my shoulders slumping, and shifted on my feet. They were bare, just like they’d been since the moment I woke in this hellhole. Walking felt like stomping on gravel, glass even, after standing on frozen ground for so long—three months, if Adonis was to be believed.

I’d wondered many, many times what the others must be doing. My mind always went to Rogue first and last, by far the most painful.

I couldn’t fathom what he must be going through or the havoc he must be wreaking.

I’d watched him accept the obsidian crown, and it accepted him, too.

The wyvern woke to crawl beneath his skin and settle around his throat.

We opened that line of communication, and I could only hope they were consuming Adonis’s world in flames.

Maybe that was why Adonis hid down here with me—to save himself from Rogue’s wrath.

But I also hoped Rogue protected himself in every way, mentally and physically. I hoped he slept and ate, surrounded by our family and his wyverns. It would be all too easy for him to let the fury and fear consume his every waking thought.

“We can’t both rot,” I whispered to him. “One of us has to stay strong, and it has to be you.”

As for Delphia…

I should have been angry—I was angry months prior. Now, I couldn’t help but hear her scream when she realized what she had done, how her first thought was how ashamed Doran would have been, how he would’ve hated her.

She was wrong, though. Doran never would’ve hated her, not for this or anything else. They were twins, and she was half of him. He’d told me as such.

But Alden…

I scrunched my eyes and shoved that thought back into the tightly locked box in the back of my mind before the pain could reach my heart and shatter it completely.

I didn’t even know if Delphia still lived.

She’d been stabbed more than once that night and struck in the head.

For all I knew, she could already be living alongside Doran on the other side of the veil, but I hoped she didn’t die with that much hatred in her.

There was nothing she could’ve done, not with that dark filth in her head. She had no autonomy, no choice.

Still, Alden died , and Rogue’s wings were taken.

His wings. His flight. His freedom.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “So, so sorry.”

Pain burrowed into my chest, and I forced myself to exhale slowly.

Rogue lost his wings and I in one fell swoop.

She was a puppet, and now, I would be too.

A minuscule part of me, repressed and shoved down, secretly hoped I might be able to consume whatever energy he used, and any magic he forced into my skull could be used back at him, the same way I took it from Delphia.

“Right?” I asked. “Something has to work in my favor…right?”

There was so much fucking doubt in my body. Doubt that I would be able to stop Adonis when he started tinkering around in my head. Doubt that I would save Livvy. Doubt that I would escape.

Most of all, the nagging fear I’d refused to acknowledge: was I sacrificing Rogue and his kingdom, our entire family, to save Livvy with no guarantee she would ever walk free? Would I sacrifice the world to make sure she lived?

Livvy’s unconscious face filled my mind again: her cheeks sunken in, her lips cracked and skin unnaturally pale, pulled taut. She’d always had ample curves and sun-kissed skin, but there was none of that left. She’d faded into a living corpse.

I forced my eyes open to disband the vision and stared at the stone wall. The chains hung empty, flickering with the light of distant oil lamps.

No, I wasn’t trading one for the other.

“I’ll save us all. I have to, because the alternative—there is no alternative.” I pulled my lips between my teeth, tasting salt and copper. Rogue’s bones still sat at the base of the wall beneath Livvy’s chains, and I stared at them until my vision blurred. “I’ll save us, one step at a time.”

If I ever had the chance.

It’d been a long time since Adonis had come down here. My last show must have struck a nerve, because he had never gone this long without tormenting me in some way.

My gaze flitted to the ceiling, as black as always, but he was up there somewhere.

“Maybe you’re giving him a run for his money,” I whispered to Rogue, but hope was fleeting.

I shoved it back down as quickly as it came.

Hope was too dangerous down here. It only existed to be crushed in places like this, and I would not offer my heart on a silver platter to be bled.

No, hope would not exist in the confines of my rib cage until I laid eyes on Rogue’s face.

Until Livvy and I were far, far away from this hellhole.

Until I held Mother in my arms and made sure she was okay.

I would accept hope when there was hope to be seen.

That was not now, not when the sound of distant footsteps echoed down the tunnel.

As they grew closer, my heart beat faster and harder until I feared it might explode, but it wasn’t Adonis who appeared from the darkness.

It was his shadow of man, every exposed part of him as pale and still as the moon. He kept his face hidden in darkness, sometimes the bottom half covered by a cloth, but even without it, he never came close enough to reveal his features. He didn’t have to.

Adonis liked to inflict my pain himself.

This man’s knuckles were coated in red, the only color on him other than his black clothing and the ghostly white of his skin. He pulled two things from his pocket, a vial and?—

A glint of silver.

A needle.

Drugs.

“No!” I shouted before he took another step, chest heaving.

I jerked my wrists, and the chains rattled against stone—too loud for the silence my ears had grown accustomed to.

He didn’t walk closer or utter a response.

Not a single part of him moved. “No, please, no. I-I want to talk to Adonis. Please take me to him, or bring him here, or…”

He methodically tucked the items away and stepped closer. The torchlight illuminated his features enough for me to meet his emotionless gaze—or at least, I thought I did.

My breath hitched. A heartbeat passed. A scream built in my throat.

No pupils. White eyes met mine.

White eyes in a familiar face.