Page 12 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

I ’d never been this far down the tunnels in any direction.

The dungeon was much larger than I expected, and we were not its only prisoners. I didn’t see any other people, but I heard them: moans and groans, chains rattling, wheezing breath. At one point, a loud crack rang out, followed by a raw scream, and I jumped back hard enough to hit the wall.

Adonis merely smiled and tugged me forward.

He led me by the damned collar around my throat and each tug pricked my neck with the spikes inside. For someone who didn’t like blood, he sure did choose a bloody leash.

The moment his face came into view to retrieve me, my stomach knotted, and it hadn’t relented. He was too excited, too giddy—a kid in a candy shop.

Bile rose in my throat when he started whistling, the only sound in the empty stone hallway other than the roaring in my ears and our footsteps, his loud under his boots and my bare feet nearly silent—bare and freezing. I hadn’t looked at my own feet in days for fear my toes would be blue.

I didn’t know where he led me or what he planned to do to me when we got there, but every prospect made my skin crawl in revulsion.

For Livvy, I reminded myself. Negotiate. Negotiate. Negotiate.

When he stopped in front of a door, he pulled a key from his pocket and took his time unlocking it. I flinched at the sharp click.

Inside was not what I expected.

The silver table I’d become accustomed to was nowhere to be found. Instead, there were…couches? A rug stretched over the floor, and a fire flickered in the corner. I could’ve moaned or sobbed when we stepped inside, but I did neither, refusing Adonis a reaction.

A shiver ran down my spine at the heat, my toes and fingers tingling, nearly burning. I stepped from stone onto warm, cushioned carpet and released a shaky breath, not having realized how bad my heels ached.

The relief was short-lived.

Adonis shut the door behind me, the damned lock clicking again. With my back to him, I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. When my eyes opened again, I clenched my jaw and forced my spine straight.

I had what he wanted, whatever that was, which meant, despite the spell-bound chains, I had the upper hand. He couldn’t break me, so he needed me to agree.

I held onto that mentality, telling myself it was true over and over again as he walked around me, still whistling and swinging his keys in a circle around his finger.

“What do you want?” I spat.

“You called me, Ara.” He shrugged as he sat on the edge of his desk. “What do you want?”

Another long exhale. “You want in my head for a reason, Adonis. Be man enough to say it already.”

The smirk slid from his face, his keys stopping their infernal movement, but it was when he shook his head and laughed that my heart sank.

“Be man enough?” He hummed thoughtfully before hopping back to his feet. “All right then.”

As he strode toward me, I stood tall, my chin high, but it was for naught as he dug his fingers in my hair and wrenched me up by the strands until I stood at eye level with him. A gasp tore from me before I regained composure, standing on my tiptoes to offset the burn in my scalp.

“What I want, mutt , is to remove these chains and slide into that wretched head.” He knocked his knuckles on my skull, and pain spread from my temple.

“Why?”

He laughed again—an unnerving, unnatural sound. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

With chest-splitting anxiety, I asked, “I’ll…let you. I won’t fight.”

He stilled and pulled me close enough to feel his breath on my skin. “Why would you do that?”

“Let Livvy go.” I put as much strength into the words as I could. Nonnegotiable. “Let her go and you can…do what you will with me.”

His eyes widened slightly with an emotion more disturbing than any other: excitement. I swallowed against the rising knot in my throat.

“Deal.” He released my hair, and I fell to my knees as he stepped back, holding his arms to the side.

I gripped the armrest of the couch and pulled myself to stand, unease slithering down my spine.

No, that was too easy.

“I never wanted her.” He waved a hand through the air and took a seat on the couch. “She was just the leverage.”

My stomach sank to painful lows, and I closed my eyes. This was exactly what he had wanted. “I want to watch her go first.”

“Fine,” he replied. He didn’t waste a second as he gripped the chain attached to my collar and led me right back into the freezing tunnel.

One of his men held an unconscious Livvy in his arms, already waiting for us.

My chin quivered. Right into his plan.

We walked in the opposite direction we’d come from until we reached the end, capped by a door. Adonis held my gaze with a sickening grin as he opened it.

I scrunched my eyes when blinding light flooded in. As they adjusted, my jaw fell slack, throat burning.

Daylight reflected off bright snow.

Snow as far as I could see. No trees, no vegetation. Just…snow. My face whipped back to Livvy, clad in a thin gown—a summer dress, tattered and shredded. Her limbs and feet were bare.

“She’ll freeze to death,” I shouted.

The man walked forward with her body, and I raced after him. A second before I could grab his shoulder, Adonis yanked my chains, and I flung back. Spinning to Adonis, I wrapped both hands around it and jerked, earning an amused laugh from him. It didn’t budge in his grip, and neither did he.

“She’ll freeze to death, you bastard!”

“She’ll be free,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

I stilled as the man tossed Livvy into the snow. She landed with a thud and whimpered, but she didn’t open her eyes.

“If you think I’ll allow you into my head for this, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Adonis fisted my hair again. “Unfortunately for you, I’m not.” He looked toward his henchmen. “Stay here until I return. If I don’t return”—he met my gaze—“kill her.”

“Yes, sire.” The man stepped outside and shut the door.

Plunged back into darkness, Adonis dragged me by my hair, and this time, my sobs were uncontainable. I stumbled behind him, back to his Goddess-forsaken room.

I lost. Worse, I failed.

I failed everyone.

He threw me inside and slammed the door shut.

I fell to my knees with a hard crack. “W-wait.”

He wrenched the chain toward him, and I gasped, clawing at the metal as he choked me with it to pull me to my feet. Blood ran down from the spikes but he seemed too angry to care, too focused on glaring into my damned eyes.

“Tell me about Vaelor,” I said in a rush.

He froze, nostrils flared, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. Seconds passed with no response, and the roaring in my ears grew louder, my heart racing.

“You bathed in his blood?” I asked.

I couldn’t tell if I was pushing him in a way that would benefit or hurt me. His lips flattened, his jaw clenched, but the hand holding my chain trembled slightly.

“Did you…murder him?”

“No,” he snapped before blinking once and taking a step back, releasing the chain like it’d burned him. His gaze followed the chain to the floor where it rattled against stone, and he pulled at his hair nervously. “No. I did not murder Vaelor.”

“Liar,” I whispered.

His focus snapped back to me, and I flinched, staggering away from him. Black smoke swirled in his irises, his pupils slitted.

Oh.

He bared his teeth, and they had sharpened to points, two needle-like canines. Instead of a growl, a hiss slipped past his lips, deeper than a serpent’s.

Scales rippled over his skin, but they looked wrong. Blood seeped around the edges of the sporadic patches, like they were slicing rather than shielding.

“You…” I sucked in a useless breath, my muscles tensed to flee with nowhere to go. I staggered away from him and subsequently, away from the door, my lungs burning worse with each step. He didn’t follow, but I continued until my back hit the wall, my head knocking the corner of a picture frame.

It rocked back and forth on its nail.

A fucking frame. For artwork.

In this pit of death and despair.

My hand felt up the wall until it reached the frame. Metal, probably gold.

Disgust curled in my gut.

I almost turned to see what he deemed worthy of hanging in his comfortable room, centered in the depths of this hellhole. Plush rugs, fire, a couch , artwork —meanwhile, blood flowed in the next room and down the hall, bones broken, and screams echoed.

Agony dealt alongside his leisure.

Heat pulsed under my skin, my hands balling into fists.

“I am not a liar, mutt.” His voice was garbled, forced—a beast trying to speak. “You know nothing. ”

“I know you can shift,” I said. “I know you bathed in Vaelor’s blood, so you were there, and now, shockingly, you have an aversion to blood. Why?”

Why did he make Mother forget?

Why was he more upset that I called him a liar?

Why was he bothered by the accusation that he murdered him at all?

My eyes widened when the realization poured over me like ice water. “You knew Vaelor.”

His face blanched, the beginnings of his shift disappearing beneath his skin. He backed away until we were on opposite sides of the room.

“You…knew my mother?”

That snapped him from his trance.

He strode to the desk and grabbed a key before stalking in my direction. I pressed myself back into the wall, opening my mouth to speak, but he slammed my head back on the stone wall.

A choked sound filled my ears before I realized it was my own, and nauseating pain swallowed my skull. My vision spun as I slumped to the side. When my legs gave out, he caught me and laid me on the carpet, digging a knee into my chest.

Sharp pain dug into my head where it touched the floor, and I whimpered, fighting the blackness creeping around my consciousness.

I tried to shove his hands away as they spun the collar around to reveal the lock. I kicked and flailed, but the room spun, and I missed him more times than I made contact. His damned knee pressed into my chest harder and harder, forcing my breaths shallower.

The collar fell away with a clank.

Energy hummed across my irises.

I grabbed him, and he shouted as bolts of white erupted from him to race up my arm. I pulled, yanked, demanded his life, and light exploded, air crackling—until his life force hit my heart like a sledgehammer.

A scream shredded my throat when the energy surge slammed into my drained system, the pain shocking my nerves alive, but it was still a relief, a reprieve from the bone-deep exhaustion.

I sucked in a sharp breath, eyes snapping wide open to find the room cast in silver. Light burned from his skin, smoke rising with the scent of scorched flesh.

He dropped to one hand with a grunt.

The ache and cold left my bones.

Faster. I just have to be ? —

He lunged quicker than a viper. His hand hit my throat with enough force to fucking kill me, but I went lax. My arms and legs fell to the ground, my magic suffocated in an instant. Darkness swirled in my mind, quiet and calm like death.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move anything , not even those around my lungs. They started to burn. My eyes watered. When my brain should’ve fought to live, when my lungs screamed for air, and stars sparked behind my eyes, he leaned down to my ear.

“Breathe,” he whispered, his voice somehow distant and inside my skull at the same time.

I gasped again and again, unable to do anything else.

He released my neck to fall back on his ass, breathing heavily. With a low laugh, he said, “Goddess be damned, you almost had me.”

We stayed like that while he recovered, then he was on top of me again. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t brace myself.

My only reaction was the lone tear that slid down the side of my face.

“Aw, don’t cry.” He wiped it away, and I wanted to bite another finger off. All of them. I wanted the blood and crunch of them all . “We’re on the same team now.”

I fought against his hold, searching for the black fog I saw in Delphia, muscles strained tight enough to tear tendon from bone, sweat beading along my forehead.

I felt it, the wrongness, but I couldn’t grasp it. In Delphia, it had been as tangible as any other life, easily grasped and pulled, but now, it swirled around my magic’s feelers like smoke.

“Storm bringers are strange creatures among the Fae. They, unlike the rest of us, pull their energy from the world around them.” He tapped my chest. “Not from within. Unfortunate, hmm?”

What? Why…

A choked sob worked its way up my throat.

Failed.

I have failed and doomed us all.

My focus slid beyond him, above him, to the painting on the wall. Another tear fell, another and another. I could hear what little hope I had shattering within my ribs, alongside my heart, as I stared at his artwork with blurred eyes.

I’d been right. The frame was gold, and it held a familiar painting of two daggers, words scribbled beneath them.

Artwork of weapons in a place that held only weapons and their unwilling targets—fitting, I supposed.

He gripped my chin and forced me to look at him. A sickening, feline grin stretched across his face as he whispered, “Forget Rogue Draki.”

My breath hitched, and I flailed against my invisible restraints.

Move. I begged my body. Move. Move. Move.

He scoffed. “You’re as stubborn as your mother, but like her, it’ll do you no good.

” More black smoke filled my mind. A deafening silence drowned my thoughts until his voice was all that remained.

“Forget Rogue Draki. He did not find you. You did not spend time with him. You did not mate him. You did not love him. He is nothing to you but the King of Ravaryn.”

A sob wracked my body, the only movement I could manage. My chest ripped and burned, like something clawed its way from the inside. I screamed until my throat was raw, and Adonis slapped a hand over my mouth.

“You do not know Rogue Draki.”

My chest sliced so painfully, my gut wrenched. When I tried to roll onto my side, my body moved—thank the Goddess—and I retched on the intricate red and gold carpet, nothing but water and stomach acid.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I sat back and reclined on the wall with closed eyes, grateful it was cool against my sweat-slicked skin.

“Who is Rogue Draki?” Adonis asked.

I peeled my eyes open, chest still heaving as I tried to catch my breath. “The King of Ravaryn.”

“Who is Rogue Draki to you ?”

My brows furrowed. Shaking my head, I replied with the only answer I could conjure… “Nothing.”