Page 261 of The Queen’s Shadow

“Give me your shirt.” He said suddenly, and I raised my eyebrows, but did as he asked. I took off the collared shirt I had thrown on and handed it to him. He inspected the collar, his lip quirking up in a smile.

“Ah-ha.” He said smugly, tugging out what looked like a small piece of plastic.

“What dat?” I asked curiously, and he grinned at the find.

“A collar stay. We’re lucky, not all shirts have them, but this will do.”

I watched, fascinated as he glanced around the cell, his eyes falling on my discarded cap.

“Yes!” He smirked, scooping it up. I watched him flip it inside out and put the inner seam to his mouth. He tore out the stitches with his teeth and ripped the wire out from the rim.

“What yuh gwaan do wit dat?” I asked and he shot me a look.

“I’m going to try to pick the lock to this cell.”

I gasped. “Yuh can do dat?”

Jeremy shrugged, using the collar stay to bend the wire into weird angles that made no sense to me,

“You can take lock picking courses with the OPP. It’s a handy skill to have. I haven’t picked a lock in years, and I don’t know if locks in this world work the same as at home but… it’s worth a shot.”

“Yuh damn right it worth a shot!” I exclaimed, feeling myself get excited. He shot me a nervous look.

“Well, if you’re the type to pray, Conrad, now is the time.” He said darkly. “Because if this doesn’t work, I’m out of ideas.”

Amon

“Kiss me.” Ash Nevra purred, her lips pressed against mine. I didn’t bother fighting it. I kissed her, letting my body mindlessly follow the motions the bond forced it through. Her hot tongue slid over mine and I barely felt it. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. There was no more pain, no more anger. Just a cold acceptance.

I didn’t know how long it had been since I had thrown Raven from my mind, but without her there to remind me of what I had to fight for, it had been much easier to slip away into this numb state I needed to embody to survive here. Not that I believed I would be surviving for much longer.

Ash Nevra had grown more and more unhinged the colder I became. She had taken to working through increasingly extreme methods to persuade me to give her a reaction. The more I obeyed without protest or argument, the angrier she became.

Each time she lost patience and control, she brought me closer and closer to true death. There had been several times now where I didn’t believe she would allow the magick folk to bring me back. I wondered idly, if today would be the day that she finally killed me.

At least then there would be nothing left for her to hold over Raven’s head.

Ash Nevra pulled away from the kiss. I knew it was not what she had wanted it to be. The cold, robotic movements were not the consensual throws of passion she kept trying to coax from me, but something was different today. I looked down at her, where she sat on the edge of the bed in my cell. She reached up and ran a crimson nail down the side of my face. I barely felt it, as she used the edge to slice my cheek.

Her finger came away bloody, and she inserted it into her mouth, sucking it clean while looking up at me, as if she were sucking on something much more intimate. She gave me a sinister smile.

“I have a surprise for you tonight, my Shadow.”

I said nothing. I hadn’t spoken in weeks. I just watched her, waiting for her next command. Normally, my indifference infuriated her, today it seemed to egg her on. For the first time in days, I felt a flash of anxiety. This behaviour was out of the norm, which meant she had something she knew was going to hurt me.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?”

No.

“Come on, sweet Shadow, don’t you like surprises?”

I had stopped liking surprises at age six, after I had been forced to watch my father nearly beat my mother to death for the first time.

Surprise… you’re the offspring of a monster.

Ash Nevra stood up, pressing up on her toes to leave a sickeningly soft kiss on the underside of my jaw. I stared straight ahead, wondering if she was going to push this farther or leave me to wonder when she would return.

“Fine. I won’t tell you. Why don’t you get some rest? You have a big night ahead of you.” She purred, and I resisted the urge to glance at her.